Microsoft Flight Webisode #3

[frankla 44]

who needs outterra when there is Wings of Prey?http://www.airwargame.com//eng

the best and all-you-can-eat autogen - mega tons of it, cloud shadows, fantastic rain drops in VC, most realistic colors, highest framerates, no stutters, best graphics in any pc based FS simulator I have seen. too bad it is military. this is what I will compare FLIGHT's graphics against. FLIGHT preview videos are lame compared to this already 1 year old game.just download some 720p versions of the Wings of Prey videos from youtube and play them back from harddisk so you can enjoy the smooth as silk frame rates, or better yet, download the free demo version and do some touch'n goes, simply breathtaking.This is what FLIGHT should have been, or looked like.

Did you notice how limited the visibility radius in those videos are? I don't think they have more than 5-10 miles of scenery rendering. That is how they can have such more detailed graphics with smooth as silk frame rates. They are rendering a lot less objects. I don't think you would want that in a flight simulator which concentrates on procedures and realism instead of one that concentrates on action per Wings of Prey.

[alainneedle1 97]

Realism = this LOL.......now any simulator based on something like that will see my plastic card......

[strider1 575]

Realism = this LOL.......now any simulator based on something like that will see my plastic card......

Outerra is the engine of the future for flight siming ! You like trees ? Here you go ! http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=234

who needs outterra when there is Wings of Prey?http://www.airwargame.com//eng

the best and all-you-can-eat autogen - mega tons of it, cloud shadows, fantastic rain drops in VC, most realistic colors, highest framerates, no stutters, best graphics in any pc based FS simulator I have seen. too bad it is military. this is what I will compare FLIGHT's graphics against. FLIGHT preview videos are lame compared to this already 1 year old game.just download some 720p versions of the Wings of Prey videos from youtube and play them back from harddisk so you can enjoy the smooth as silk frame rates, or better yet, download the free demo version and do some touch'n goes, simply breathtaking.This is what FLIGHT should have been, or looked like.

Wings of Prey sucks. It has some nice eyecandy but it's very limited in scope...

[strider1 575]

Friday, February 18, 2011Ocean Rendering Let me first say that I'm often visiting my own blog to read how I did certain things. This is mostly true for some of the older, more technical posts. I decided to blog about recent water rendering development in a way that will be helpful for me in time when my brain niftily sends all the crucial bits to desert. I apologize in advance if some pieces seem incoherent.Now for the rendering of water in Outerra.There are two types of waves mixed - open sea waves with the direction of wind (fixed for now), and shore waves (the surf) that orient themselves perpendicularly to the shore, appearing as the result of oscillating water volume that gets compressed with rising underwater terrain.Open sea waves are simulated in a usual way by summing a bunch of trochoidal (Gerstner) waves with various frequencies over a 2D texture that is then tiled over the sea surface. Obviously, the texture should be seamlessly tileable, and that puts some constraints on possible frequencies of the waves. Basically, the wave should peak on each point of the grid. This can be satisfied by guaranteeing that the wave has an integral number of peaks in both u,v texture directions. Resulting wave frequency is then Other wave parameters depend on the frequency (or its reciprocal, the wavelength). Generally, wave amplitude should be kept below 1/20th of wave length, as larger ones would break.Wave speed for deep waves can be computed using the wavelength λ as:Direction of waves can be determined by manipulating the amplitudes of generated wave, for example the directions that lie closer to the direction of wind can have larger amplitudes than the ones flowing in opposite direction. The opposite wave directions can be even suppressed completely, which may be usable e.g. for rivers.Shore waves form as the terrain rises and water slows down, while the wave amplitude rises. These waves tend to be perpendicular to shore lines.In order to make the beach waves we need to know the distance from particular point in water to shore. Additionally, a direction vector is needed to animate the foam.Distance from shore is used as an argument to wave shape function, stored in a texture. This shape is again trochoidal, but to simulate a breaking wave the equation has been extended to a skewed trochodial wave by adding another parameter determining the skew. Here's how it affects the wave shape:[/url]The equation for skewed trochoidal wave is:Skew γ=1 gives a normal Gerstner wave.Several differently skewed waves are precomputed in a small helper texture, and the algorithm chooses the right one depending on water depth.Distance map is computed for terrain tiles that contain a shore, i.e. those with maximum elevation above sea level and minimum elevation below it. Shader finds the nearest point of opposite type (above or below sea level) and outputs the distance. Resulting distance map is filtered to smooth it out.Gradient vectors are computed by applying Sobel filter on the distance map.Gradient field created from Gaussian filtered distance mapBoth wave types are then added together. The beach waves are conditioned using another texture with mask changing in time so that they aren't continual all around the shore.Water color is determined by several indirect parameters, most importantly by the absorption of color components under the water. For most of the screen shots shown here it was set to values of 7/30/70m for RGB colors, respectively. These values specify the distances at which the respective light components get reduced to approximately one third of their original value. Red: 7m, Green: 30m, Blue: 70m, Scattering coefficient: 0.005Red: 70m, Green: 30m, Blue: 7mAnother parameter is a reflectivity coefficient that tells how much light is scattered towards the viewer. Interestingly, scattering effect in pure water is negligible in comparison with the effect of light absorption. Main contributor to the observed scattering effect is dissolved organic matter, followed by inorganic compounds. This also gives seas slightly different colors.Scattering coefficient: 0.000Scattering coefficient: 0.020Here's a short video showing it all in motion.

[fly_like_an_eagle 10]

@ strider1no one said Wings of Prey is an alternative for FLIGHT. No one would really expect a combat type sim like WingsofPrey to come with all those nice GA type FSX features as GPS, AI, ATC, IFR and what have you. all I wanted to point out is that FLIGHT's graphics does not yet seem state of the art and therefore "sucks" compared to Prey. take Wing of Prey graphics engine and incorporate it into FLIGHT and you have a winner. browse through the Prey youtube videos and see for yourself. While outerra has a nice scenery engine, it lacks the vivid, immersive colors and graphics. period.

[maxter 0]

Flight's improvements are slowly emerging and I for one am getting pretty excited about it.All this talk about Flight looking like FSX with xxxxxxxxxx added on is really a good sign for me because if that is a baseline, then I salivate over what it might become.I certainly recall when FSX was released (buggy I know) there were many similar remarks about how it didn't look as good as FS2004 with all the add-on's. Now just look at what Orbx, A2A and PMDG has done with that engine even with it's shortcomings. If the ability to further develop Flight was on a similar scale, then the possibilities are amazing. Who really cares if it looks somewhat like it's predecessor.One thing is as flight sim fans, I can't believe the level of negativity towards Flight right now. All based on 3 extremely short videos and ten screen shots. Having flown SubLogic Flight Simulator Ver 1.0 from pretty much it's initial release, I am constantly amazed at just how wonderfully our hobby has developed. Long may it continue to do so. If Flight provides me with a more realistic rendition of the flying experience, I would drop FSX and my approximately $3000.00 dollars worth of add on's in a heart beat.

[fly_like_an_eagle 10]

"If Flight provides me with a more realistic rendition of the flying experience, I would drop FSX and my approximately $3000.00 dollars worth of add on's in a heart beat. "agreed, wouldn't we all !the question is: what and how much exactly is required for "a more realistic rendition of the flying experience"? after a 5 year hibernation since FSX release in 2006 the current FLIGHT previews do not yet look as promising in terms of graphics technology compared to what exists in other games. Flightsim has never been on the leading edge of graphics, except maybe back in the FS5 days, when texture mapping was new to pc based games, all done in software on very basic dumb VGA adapters.show me this level of autogen density at 50 FPS in FSX with no stutters on a 3 GHz average system:http://www.airwargame.com/eng/media/screenshots/29/this is the minimum I'd expect from a future FSX successor in terms of graphics. And yes for the record, I am somewhat aware that WingsOfPrey does not include a 747 with autopilot that can capture a LOC DME. ACES promised DX10 style graphics in FSX, and didn't deliver. isn't it about time after 5 years?http://www.airwargame.com/eng/media/screenshots/http://www.airwargame.com/eng/media/video/

[dtrjones 356]

But, I guess they are saving money reusing the same old bloated technology, again.

Part of a Microsoft quote from PC Pilot on key differences talks about addressing performance and optimizing the code. They say after 30 years FS has become fat, time to hit the gym... Microsoft also talk about shortening the development cycle so the changes they are doing appear to allow much quicker turnaround of possibly patches and future versions.Seems pretty convicing to me and should ease your concerns regarding the existing bloated code base.Cheers,Dave.

[maxter 0]

the question is: what and how much exactly is required for "a more realistic rendition of the flying experience"?

You're right, each to his/her own. The screenies and videos look pretty good to me for a baseline platform. There is enough for me to see some important difference and improvements and as long as it is not a slide show, I would go for it...

[fly_like_an_eagle 10]

You're right, each to his/her own. The screenies and videos look pretty good to me for a baseline platform. There is enough for me to see some important difference and improvements and as long as it is not a slide show, I would go for it...

while u wait for FLIGHT:have you looked at those screenshots that I had posted and the demo videos plus some more on youtube for WingsOfPrey? if so, you may understand why some people like myself are getting pretty frustated with the low graphics quality of FSX, and hopefully not again with FLIGHT. I only stress WingsOfPrey to demonstrate what is currently possible in the flight sim graphics area, not because I prefer a combat sim, This quality has already been available for over 1 year from developers in Russia who did not invent DirectX 11, unlike Microsoft.:(

[frankla 44]

Flight looks too much like FSX. I was hoping for a brand new engine with a new look & feel.Lets see some heavy metal & some AI improvements. I doubt there are any. We might end up with a 3 sim split. FS9, FSX, FLIGHT.If it looks like FSX, its going in the wrong direction in my opinion . But, I guess they are saving money reusing the same old bloated technology, again.I'd never seen Outerra before today, but that Ocean rendering is freakin' stunning. We'll never have anything that nice in Microsoft Flight if they keep playing the cheap card & re using that dying 15 year old engine.

while I was impressed by Oterra's waves near the shoreline, the rest of the ocean rendering was so bland.

[frankla 44]

while u wait for FLIGHT:have you looked at those screenshots that I had posted and the demo videos plus some more on youtube for WingsOfPrey? if so, you may understand why some people like myself are getting pretty frustated with the low graphics quality of FSX, and hopefully not again with FLIGHT. I only stress WingsOfPrey to demonstrate what is currently possible in the flight sim graphics area, not because I prefer a combat sim, This quality has already been available for over 1 year from developers in Russia who did not invent DirectX 11, unlike Microsoft.:(

I don't have Wings of Prey. But perhaps it has a lot more processing headroom to allow for better graphics. Does it generate weather or is the weather preset in campaigns? Does it generate more than 5-10 miles visibilities that I have seen in all the videos you have posted? How many AI's does it handle at any given time? Does it render massive number of roads from a database? Or are the roads just predetermined in the scenery? ATC? Navigational data? Processing headroom for huge number of moving parts on any aircraft? Does it have to render glass navigational displays that eat up processing resources like crazy? The problem is not Flight, but the fact that our PCs are not strong enough to have it all. The wings of prey developers had years to come up with a Flight Simulator when everybody thought Microsoft had left FS for good. They didn't because they couldn't offer the same graphics with all the functionality of a complete simulator.

[fly_like_an_eagle 10]

just get the free demo and see for yourself. what the WingsOfPrey people have done is make better use of new directX capabilities, otherwise they would not have been able to incorporate mega tons of autogen scenery objects. the reason FSX stutters is not because of all their "clever" whole world coverage, ATC, AI, weather and what have you, but because it is 5 - 6 years old, and doesn't take full advantage of todays hardware. no huge difference if you use a 5 year old graphics card or the latest NVidia 580, there is no reason to defend 5 year old software technology, they just need to come up with a new 2011-style product. just 1 example: FSX doesn't even use volumetric lights, though it would have been possible 5 years ago. xplane had it since day 1. but there is always hope.

[Todd2 2,159]

Let me know when you can do this in Wings of Prey or Outerra:Pick your favorite aircraft, many of them freeware, find a repainted livery, plan a flight from one airport to the next anywhere in the world.Thanks Microsoft. FSX is the best option now for this kind of flying, and if Flight is an improvement in performance/visuals, we will be buying it.BTW, I'm not trying to put down Outerra, it looks real nice but all I see is grass, water, mountains, what about towns?Show me a view like this from another sim. How many sims can you get a small defunct company like Reeve Aleutian and an aircraft like the L-188 electra which no longer is even in the business of passenger service. That's the beauty of Microsoft FS it's the options and the community. PS: Microsoft, if you are reading it would be nice if I could import this team KBT Electra into MS Flight! (plus others of course)!

[fly_like_an_eagle 10]

let me know when you can fly FSX with autogen fully maxed at 30 fps with no stutters on an average pc.I was not comparing feature sets between GA and combat sims, (which is useless anyway) but pointing out the newer and much improved graphics technology that has evolved and made great progress in the last 5 years.go ahead and enjoy your now defunct airlines.