Microsoft Flight Webisode #3

[dtrjones 356]

As Empeck says, it’s not a matter of whether the lights are dynamic or not.FS has had dynamic lights for ages.It’s a matter of dynamic ColorByVertex vs. per-pixel…lighting. That’s the technology that is creeping into games.BTW, as you’d expect, per-pixel is not lightMapping - a static lighting method FS uses most of the time.As processing power increases per-pixel lighting can be used in larger and more complex environments.The sacrifice is frame rate. I have no idea if FS (the worst case for lighting) has the overhead to practically make use of this.The ocean is a shader issue…maybe call it an engine; but it’s also misleading to use jargon like that.The biggest influence on the quality of the ocean is resolution.Obviously the more resources you set aside for rendering the ocean the better it will look.It’s not rocket science to make a good ocean shader (just visit siggraph).The issue is what resources do you allot to the ocean…what else does the game have to do?For what it’s worth…I suspect Flight will have an excellent ocean shader.It’s valuable to look at WingsOfPrey and Outerra.Point out what’s working well…things we’d like to see. That’s constructive.But we can't assume we could add all the other FS systems to these products and still have a workable game.Also don’t assume FS isn’t capable of these effects...often they just won’t fit into the performance budget.The efficiency of the engine is just one of a dozen factors that influence the performance budget.In the big picture it’s not even the most important factor.My point is not that FSX (an old game at this point) doesn’t have lot’s of room for improvement…it does.I think about it this way, users gave MS a mandate to increase performance and the indication seem to be MS is making this a priority.

Good post dmaher. I'm interested in the tesselation wars at the moment and to see if Microsoft can be brave enough this time to see the potential in the use of tesselation. Dynamic tesselation used in some games has a measurable performance effect when rendering scenery at varing degrees of distances, imagine the levels of detail you could get in land and water when on the ground, but not scraffice any realism or performance when in the air - tesselation is the answer and a big part of the DirectX 11's kit bag. I hope its not too late and Microsoft embrace this technology for Flight, only time will tell of course....

[tcamike 0]

I'm curious if anybody has commented on the probability that Microsoft Flight will be a free product. For example Age Of Empires Online which is currently in development and announced at the same time as Flight will be released for free. Additional items could be purchased from the Games For Windows Live Marketplace to enhance the game. I'm thinking that is why Webisode 3 is entitled Free and just below it it states "Fly for free". It could be an interesting way of inviting a larger community to flight simulation by handing out a basic free version and then allowing people at their leisure to purchase upgrade packages to further enhance the sim. On the downside, this could get expensive (i.e. eventually more than you would pay for a stand alone product off the store shelf). Again, this is all speculation and time will tell what this new product will bring to us.

[Guest veeray]

Good post dmaher. I'm interested in the tesselation wars at the moment and to see if Microsoft can be brave enough this time to see the potential in the use of tesselation. Dynamic tesselation used in some games has a measurable performance effect when rendering scenery at varing degrees of distances, imagine the levels of detail you could get in land and water when on the ground, but not scraffice any realism or performance when in the air - tesselation is the answer and a big part of the DirectX 11's kit bag. I hope its not too late and Microsoft embrace this technology for Flight, only time will tell of course....

Tessellation on what? the aircraft already have too many polygons and everything else has too little to even benefit. What exactly would you apply it to?

[_michal 5]

Tesselation is new lens flare. Everyone wants it :(

[Guest veeray]

Well chances are if you weren't using any kind of tessellation before in your software, having it hardware accellerated isn't going to improve anything. I think there are plenty of things such as guages that are rendered on the CPU that could use a little GPU assistance. Heck Internet Explorer has better hardware rendering support than the guages...

[dtrjones 356]

Tessellation on what? the aircraft already have too many polygons and everything else has too little to even benefit. What exactly would you apply it to?

You got to be kidding me in'it, tessellation used for terrain, you got be seenin the individual grass yeah, like the water close up movin around, what about the dynamic tess effect, movin in out with detail changin, do you get me, you got get it yeah, its freakin cool know what i mean, do you get me, you got to get me!

TaajTaaj ManzoorRoving ground crew for FlyLo(ps currently on strike until the planes start flyin again...)