Prepar3d V2.0 entering beta

[TheDanger 182]

 So a 2GB+ video card becomes more important these days.

 

V2 may be the excuse I need to upgrade from my 670 to a Titan or 780

[simmerhead 885]

There is a lot available for 3d programming with the dx11 api. I am must wondering if LM has announced what features they will implement in this next release.

 

Bob

 

From Beau (Prepar3D Software Engineer): In V2 we do terrain lighting and mesh generation dynamically on the GPU. Fast flight terrain paging performance is much improved as a result. By leveraging D3D11 texture arrays, hardware instancing, and tessellation, we can draw the terrain and water for the entire globe in one draw call. (No promises that we will ship it as one draw call because it may be more optimal to break up, but it's pretty exciting that it's possible with D3D11.) In addition, we encode the land class into the elevation model which allows us to shade differently for each land classification. (e.g. snow will appear shiny in the regular scene and cold in the IR sensor scene.)

[N1G 88]

From Beau (Prepar3D Software Engineer): In V2 we do terrain lighting and mesh generation dynamically on the GPU. Fast flight terrain paging performance is much improved as a result. By leveraging D3D11 texture arrays, hardware instancing, and tessellation, we can draw the terrain and water for the entire globe in one draw call. (No promises that we will ship it as one draw call because it may be more optimal to break up, but it's pretty exciting that it's possible with D3D11.) In addition, we encode the land class into the elevation model which allows us to shade differently for each land classification. (e.g. snow will appear shiny in the regular scene and cold in the IR sensor scene.)

 

Very nice indeed. I was reading about some of the technical terms and with your post here I am really looking forward to this. I don't know if my 570 card will hold up though.

 

Bob

[OmniAtlas 93]

I am getting excited. Where do I sign up to beta test?

[learn-by-flying 37]

:yahoo:

[gandy 18]

 I don't know if my 570 card will hold up though.

 

Bob

 

 

I would guess we would have to lower the very high AF and AA settings we tend to use but the 570 is no slouch so it can still be good to go

 

Running a 760 myself and hoping that will be enough with a decent amount of AA and AF

[AndyPaul 11]

See here a longer description of the features (Scroll down to the comments): http://www.simflight.de/2013/09/23/prepar3d-v2-0-ist-in-beta/#comments

[HighTowers 1,434]

No need to panic about changing video cards for p3d. We should be running decent cards now anyways with FSX in order to draw textures quickly like clouds etc. The point of dx11 for p3dv2 is that it makes a small step towards what mainstream gaming has been doing for awhile, meaning that the GPU  plays a big role in the performance of the game, whereas FSX is more or less CPU dependant. The bottleneck of p3dv2 is still the old code foundation unless they have managed to get all of it out. I think they got alot of it but not all. But when you see things like 'tiled resources' technology coming up for gaming, flight simulation has very bright future. 

 

Wow! Just saw the link above for the features. What an impressive list of improvements.

Edited September 23, 2013 by HighTowers

[simmerhead 885]

Holy cow! That was an impressive list!

[gandy 18]

That list of features and fixes is super awesome

 

Cant wait now....

[LeeL 272]

Yup! That's FS11!

 

This is interesting...

 

"Updates to the digital rights management and licensing process"

[simmerhead 885]

Yup! That's FS11!This is interesting..."Updates to the digital rights management and licensing process"

I'd say far from it, more like SP4. Still, LM is taking this forward and into the future!

[Clutch Cargo 384]

That's beyond a list... that's a whole new sim!  One item caught my eye (among the many)... Cloud shadows!

[G MIDY 101]

Doesn't really matter how long it takes, it's great to hear a flight simulation like this is actually being worked on at all.

[jfail 2]

I am really impressed by the list of updates/improvements.

 

By far the most important thing to me would be the ability of the 2.0 installer to install right over 1.4 so that we do not have to go through the painful process of re-installing scenery etc.   It took me several days of pretty intense effort to update to 1.4.   I did not see that on the list of updates/improvements but I could have easily missed it amongst the many items in the list.

 

Licensing and cost of 2.0 and how they will be implemented compared to previous versions will be interesting.