I'm not running the XP demo, or any other flight sim, at this time. I want a new computer to handle the best possible, or nothing at all. In the past, X-Plane 9 would start with higher visabilities, but then limit them with fog, to keep the fps up. An example that would get to me, is the Salt Lake Valley, at KSLC. In real life, it's very easy to see mountain ranges on both sides of the valley at 20+ miles apart. From certain view points, and especially in a airplane, you can see additional mountain ranges, that are 50- to over 100 miles away. But unless the day is just very hazy, you can always see these two ranges that sit on each side of the valley from the airport. So the question is....how does XP-10 handle the view looking south from KSLC (Runways 16)? Do the mountains to the left and right, both show up? Just curious, as my XP10 demo would only show water here, which was expected.

 

P.S, I've seen fantastic X-Plane videos of flight over mountain country, and I really like some of those "flying just below the cloud base" videos. XP will definately be a part of new desktop sim system. As Five by Five suggests... a high powered system,,

Is it a bug or a feature? :lol: It depends on the view you have on it.

• If you want to see it as a bug ...: the landscape of X-Plane is divided in 1°x1° tiles. Usually there are (I think) 6 of them loaded which are hi res, the ones farther away are low res, so more blurry. But you see it only when up higher in the air. Place yourself via the local map at say FL 300 and see yourself.
• If you want to see it as a feature: it prevents the sim from falling back to fps below 10, as only 6 tiles are loaded at the same time in hi res, thus saving resources.

Now as we have 64 bit, probably LR is working on that - but remember, double the visibilty and you will need four times the resources for viewing farther (probably no only an issue with the VRAM, but also you might have more calculations on the GPU to be done, what will lower the fps). Everything in life comes with a cost ...

 

Edit:

Actually it isn't a bug, but a feature to save resources. A bug usually is something unintended, this one is intended to save resources with the cost of blurry textures farther away.

I'd say, it is like a car with, say 100 HP, which saves fuel, at the cost that you can't drive 250 km/h (compared to a car with 250 HP, which needs more fuel).

After reading your post I will not call it a bug anymore.

But it leads to a different question. If you have a look at my hardware first please. I have low to medium settings. HDR off during day time. Clouds at 30%. I get 20-25 fps flying the A320 by Peter, 2d panel. What does eat all power? You might say that my hardware is low end. Right. But the other sim, I avoid it's evil name, give me same fps. Higher settings, PMDG 3d panel and visibility limited by OPUS weather only.

 

Edit: I hope I'm running the first PMDG plane in XPX on new hardware next year anyway...

Is it a bug or a feature? :lol: It depends on the view you have on it.

 

If you want to see it as a bug ...: the landscape of X-Plane is divided in 1°x1° tiles. Usually there are (I think) 6 of them loaded which are hi res, the ones farther away are low res, so more blurry. But you see it only when up higher in the air. Place yourself via the local map at say FL 300 and see yourself.

 

 

 

I see it as a bug.  Allow me to illustrate:

 

Below is a screenshot centered on my plane...... well if you hit shift-4 to get spot view and then move the camera away, then you get an effect similar to what we have below.   You can see detailed textures and coastline near to the camera, but the terrain where my plane is is masked by the low resolution global textures.

 

Here's the thing:

Those detailed textures near to my plane are still loaded in system memory (not sure about video memory).  So they are using up resources regardless.

 

 

 

Here's another screenshot of the local map view with the texture view mode.  6 tiles makes up a decent area, and as you can see a circle with a 50 mile diameter centered on the plane doesn't make up much of the scenery that's loaded. 

 

Now with x-plane 9, it was possible to use a map view in a 3-d mode where you could see the mountains in perspective.  I don't think that's possible anymore, but in XP9 I found this 3d mode to be quite friendly on frame rates.

 

 

 

So I think the following should be enabled.

1.  9 tiles loaded with scenery rather than 6

2.  36 tiles loaded with nav aids rather than 6.

3.  All terrain loaded should be visible if rendering settings allow it.

 

There will be extra load on system performance, but I don't think it needs to be much.  We certainly don't need to see roads, buildings and trees 90 miles away (I have my world detail distance set to medium).  I'm just talking about terrain, mesh and water boundaries. 

I see it as a bug.  Allow me to illustrate:

 

 

No.

 

What you described in your first screenshot as "detailed terrain loaded in memory, but masked ..." and outside of the circle in your second screenshot respectively is precisely NOT detailed terrain and detailed textures but low res - the same textures are used when you are watching from space towards earth (as in the screenshot below).

 

 

 

Those detailed textures near to my plane are still loaded in system memory (not sure about video memory).  So they are using up resources regardless.

 

 

Yes and no. The textures near your plane are still loaded, but not the DETAILED ones.

 

So I think the following should be enabled.

1.  9 tiles loaded with scenery rather than 6

2.  36 tiles loaded with nav aids rather than 6.

3.  All terrain loaded should be visible if rendering settings allow it.

 

And that's what LR might work on currently, as we now have 64 bit (but I don't know for sure).

What you described in your first screenshot as "detailed terrain loaded in memory, but masked ..." and outside of the circle in your second screenshot respectively is precisely NOT detailed terrain and detailed textures but low res - the same textures are used when you are watching from space towards earth (as in the screenshot below).

 

I agree, the low res global textures is what you can see (in simulator view, not the map view), but the detailed textures are still there loaded in memory.  It's just that you can't see them, because the global textures are masking them.  I wasn't meaning that things loaded into system RAM are necessarily seen.

 

If the detailed textures wasn't loaded in memory, then the effect of zooming the camera away from my plane would be a lot of hard disk stutter and activity as new detailed textures were loaded into memory.  That doesn't happen, therefore the detailed terrain is already there in system memory.

my main issue with xp10....the visibility bug :angry:  :(  :unsure:    everything else is slowly coming into place:  new moving clouds coming soon, seasons, new 3rd Party weather addon, 757, IXEG 737, etc. etc. :Love:

Five, do you think we will see what you anticipate in V 10.X?  Hope so...before 11.x pops around...surely hope so. Great sim!

 

Ses

Five, do you think we will see what you anticipate in V 10.X?  Hope so...before 11.x pops around...surely hope so. Great sim!

 

Ses

already confirmed

Five, do you think we will see what you anticipate in V 10.X?  Hope so...before 11.x pops around...surely hope so. Great sim!

 

Ses

http://youtu.be/Yb1-k2uE9pM

 

this dev is also making a seasons addon :drinks: plus the 757 and FS Global Real Weather already coming to xp10 soon.

I agree, the low res global textures is what you can see (in simulator view, not the map view), but the detailed textures are still there loaded in memory.  It's just that you can't see them, because the global textures are masking them.  I wasn't meaning that things loaded into system RAM are necessarily seen.

 

How do you know the detailed textures are loaded in memory - have you seen them yourself? :rolleyes:

Ok, seriously - it makes absolutely no sense to load hi res textures and masking them with lo res textures, because you would have hi res and low res textures at the same time in the memory what is even worse in regard of memory usage (and also perfomance).

 

If the detailed textures wasn't loaded in memory, then the effect of zooming the camera away from my plane would be a lot of hard disk stutter and activity as new detailed textures were loaded into memory.  That doesn't happen, therefore the detailed terrain is already there in system memory.

 

For moving this far away as in your first screenshot, you need approx 2 minutes - plenty of time to load the hi res textures below you camera (=viepoint) and unload the hi res textures around your plane and replacing them by the low res ones.

If you are this far away and zoom in to your plane, you won't see any more the hi res textures and terrain which are in direct vicinity of your plane, but it is all blurry.

How do you know the detailed textures are loaded in memory - have you seen them yourself? :rolleyes:

 

Yes I have. 

 

Go to the local map view.  The six scenery tiles are there.  Zoom into any part of the map and you'll see the detailed roads, railways and water bodies in the sectional chart view.  You'll see the detailed textures in the texture view.  Now all that is loaded into system RAM.

 

Now in the local map view, it's not just the textures loaded within 25 miles of the plane, but all the textures for the six tiles loaded.  You'll find distance markers showing miles on the bottom and left hand edge of the map.

 

 

Ok, seriously - it makes absolutely no sense to load hi res textures and masking them with lo res textures, because you would have hi res and low res textures at the same time in the memory what is even worse in regard of memory usage (and also perfomance).

 

I agree that it makes no sense, which is why I think it's a bug B).

 

Now I'm talking about system RAM here, not video RAM.  I imagine the distant textures aren't loaded into video ram when they are masked by the global textures.

Lots of games these days allow players to set their own LOD values for different things.

 

    xplane should not be an exception when it is obviously a problem.    If you dont call it a bug you can at beast call it a partially implemented feature.

 

    Code should have hard coded values that were set on the developers machine at any one point in time.

 

    Go the way that other games have gone and let people tailor it for their level of hardware.

Place yourself via the local map at say FL 300 and see yourself.

 

I never fly this high so I had to test it.. looks like this for me (FL300 over Brest, France). Horizon seems to disappear at the same distance regardless of my visibility settings..

 

 

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Discard...

    Go the way that other games have gone and let people tailor it for their level of hardware.

 

X-Plane has always been different and Austin decides what he wants to have in his simulator, and when to do this.

 

This said, of course he had also listened to reasonable arguments in the past (such as bringing back a quick start screen).

Go to the local map view.  The six scenery tiles are there.  Zoom into any part of the map and you'll see the detailed roads, railways and water bodies in the sectional chart view.  You'll see the detailed textures in the texture view.  Now all that is loaded into system RAM.

 

Now in the local map view, it's not just the textures loaded within 25 miles of the plane, but all the textures for the six tiles loaded.  You'll find distance markers showing miles on the bottom and left hand edge of the map.

 

Err ... well ... now I understand what you mean :smile:. You're right, the 6 tiles are loaded into the RAM. I'm not an hardware expert for GPU internals, but I can imagine that the reason for not loading all 6 tiles into the VRAM is that shifting so many high res textures across the screen (i.e. within the VRAM), slows down the system (a lot).

So, why is there a need to hold all the 6 tiles in the RAM? I don't know the code of XP, but again I can imagine, that the RAM us used as cache for shifting them via the bus to the GPU instead of loading them directly from the harddisk (that would lead to stutters, which usually don't arise).

 

 

I agree that it makes no sense, which is why I think it's a bug B).

 

Now I'm talking about system RAM here, not video RAM.  I imagine the distant textures aren't loaded into video ram when they are masked by the global textures.

 

With the above written, I still don't think that it's a bug :wink: but by purpose. However, if you think it is a bug - report it to Laminar, they are (usually) listening to complaints.