The Living, Breathing World

[bonchie 2,305]

So you're pitting stock X-Plane 10 against FSX with thousands of dollars worth of third-party add-ons and then complaining that X-Plane comes up short. Is that really a fair comparison?

To be fair, you only need FSX with about 200-250 dollars worth of addons to get most of the way there. UTX, REX, ASX, UT2 (or WOAI for free) and a good payware plane will have you doing airline ops at a pretty immersive level. I use default ATC with fine results.I can fly into an endless number of small Intl or regional airports in even default FSX and find terminals, taxiways, and at least some hangers/other buildings in their correct places. Even more so for the major airports. No addons needed. So while it's not perfect, let's at least be honest about each sims pros and cons.I'm not sure what's holding XP10 back from auto-populating airports at least semi-realistically in this manner.For some airport ops are more important than others. I understand that's a personal preference.

Or the lack of shadows from the cars (not that there are any cars in either FSX or Flight)

This confused me. You are saying FSX and FLIGHT don't have cars? Of course they do, as well as boats, airport vehicles, etc.

[bonchie 2,305]

Yes it does, according to Austin, each AI aircraft (up to 20) has it's own flight model, and runs in it's own thread, which is why he says it will take a 20 core system to run it with no performance loss. Of course it will run with fewer cores, but performance will be divided between available cores

Which is a design decision I don't get. Yeah, FSX's AI don't fly perfectly realistic all the time, but it's plenty close enough 99% of the time (I've personally had zero problems with UT2 coming from WOAI). Why create a system that will require each AI aircraft to hog as many resources as the user's plane? I know it sounds great in theory, but in practice it's going to limit the number of AI that you can use immensely and any flight characteristic differences you won't even notice, especially if you are observing AI in the traditional manner (as part of your flight and not spotting).Whether the engine will even allow a 3rd party to come in and do something like UT2 does for FSX is a big question for me.I'd be interested to hear whether the developers think it's even possible because for a ton of simmers AI with realistic schedules (or at least plausible schedules like MTX does) is a huge deal.

[h2egc 32]

It's suppose to a "flight-sim", not an AI sim...For "ME" AI doesn't matter, I like to hand-fly low & slow in remote areas.I think 2 or 4 planes in these area's will seem more realistic anyway.I can see the point of the Jet-Jockeys looking for more, but airport traffic also depends on time of day and schedules.Also Austin's idea of AI is to make the aircraft act like real-aircraft, showing flaps and such, not just a plane going from A to B.

[Geofa 108]

It all really comes down to what one wants to sim. I actually leave ai traffic turned of in fsx-it just is not important to me. I do have car traffic turned up quite high-as that is important to me. (I got an awesome shot of car traffic at the end of a video I took last week on my flight which I am more likely to see in my flying than a huge number of commercial airliners) However, I do find airports with buildings (they don't have to be exact replicas) respresented in their semi correct locations important to me-fs has even had the hangars my plane was in correctly depicted at several different airports, and it just "feels" more like an airport when I see that.To be fair though-I believe it was probably a rather expensive fee to Jepp that allowed the fs series to batch airport buildings, approaches for all rw airports, and real weather downloads. I don't know that for a fact but since the weather is provided by them a good guess. Perhaps something like that is not affordable to a smaller operation like xplane.In any case I am very impressed by the autogen and alive world to look at in the next xplane and it is really hard to judge by static screen shots what kind of experience it will be. As a flight sim enthusiast I will of course purchase it, but what will remain my primary choice of sim will be based on the features I need, as I am sure it will be for all other simmers. I don't think it really has to be a competition.

[Mountain Man 142]

To be fair, you only need FSX with about 200-250 dollars worth of addons to get most of the way there.

He said thousands, but regardless, the point stands: it's really not fair to compare stock X-Plane to a competitor's sim with add-ons. However, the fact that he has sunk thousands of dollars into FSX would certainly explain his rabid loyalty.

[Mountain Man 142]

Why create a system that will require each AI aircraft to hog as many resources as the user's plane?

This was explained in one of the developer's blogs. The short answer is that the full flight model is not as taxing on the CPU as you might think. The most expensive part of the system is ground collision detection, and if the plane is at a certain altitude then those numbers don't need to be crunched, and if the plane is on the ground then you do want to process that data so that it moves realistically and you don't end up with things like you see in FSX where a plane's wheels are buried halfway into the pavement. While in theory they could create a simpler flight model just for AI planes, that requires more development time to build and test, time that could be used making the full flight model faster and more efficient.

[bonchie 2,305]

It's suppose to a "flight-sim", not an AI sim...For "ME" AI doesn't matter, I like to hand-fly low & slow in remote areas.I think 2 or 4 planes in these area's will seem more realistic anyway.I can see the point of the Jet-Jockeys looking for more, but airport traffic also depends on time of day and schedules.

That's personal preference. For me part of the illusion of simulating real world flight is AI traffic and it's a big deal for a large part of the community here.Several choices offer real world schedules, including excellent freeware in WOAI.My biggest point wouldn't be to slam XP10's AI. FSX's AI sucked out of the box as well. What I really want to know is if the engine will even allow realistic AI going forward from 3rd parties in the way FSX does or is it now married to each AI having to be modeled in the current given fashion. That's a huge question mark for a lot of people.

Also Austin's idea of AI is to make the aircraft act like real-aircraft, showing flaps and such, not just a plane going from A to B.

FSX's AI do show flaps, spoilers, etc. assuming the models have such (most every UT2 model I observe has this).

[JSkorna 137]

So Jim,Are YOU going to be developing for X-Plane 10?

Develop what?

[alainneedle1 97]

Develop what?

Addons for XP-10?

[coma 6]

Regarding multithreading in X-Plane 10, scenery loading and tear-down runs in another thread, ATC runs in a thread, and the native AI traffic, as has been discussed, runs in other threads. The core rendering engine and flight model, however, all run in a single thread.

[JSkorna 137]

Addons for XP-10?

I should have asked "What Add-ons for XP 10?"

[alainneedle1 97]

I should have asked "What Add-ons for XP 10?"

Would be easyer just to tell us wich one you will make for XP-10 if one you'll make....

[JSkorna 137]

None.

[alainneedle1 97]

See, that was easy, and I bet it did not hurt......

[h2egc 32]

LOL, thanks Alain, you took the words right out of mouth.