Great news on the autogen materialising - there's so much goodness coming from those guys.

Any ideas how many people are in the team?

No, and since they are a defence contractor I think it will stay that way.

Ok, so shadows aren't certain yet. I was already thinking that IF P3D comes with shadows for trees etc. Orbx needs to redo all of their sceneries because they all have very obvious shadows baked in! That will look very odd when you also get real shadows...!

 

That is one of my biggest gripes with ORBX sceneries. FSX has real shadows, they just are not that pronounced and are nearly non existent when there are any clouds. Plus from my experience with scenery design, most users turn them off for performance reasons which looks like crap IMO, but is probably the main reason ORBX went with this method.

 

FLIGHT had amazing shadows and if the ones in P3D v2.0 are similar to those, I will be in heaven!

 

 

FLIGHT had amazing shadows and if the ones in P3D v2.0 are similar to those, I will be in heaven!

Especially if the heavy lifting is done by the underworked and overpaid graphics card instead of the overtasked CPU.  

That is one of my biggest gripes with ORBX sceneries. FSX has real shadows, they just are not that pronounced and are nearly non existent when there are any clouds. Plus from my experience with scenery design, most users turn them off for performance reasons which looks like crap IMO, but is probably the main reason ORBX went with this method.

 

FLIGHT had amazing shadows and if the ones in P3D v2.0 are similar to those, I will be in heaven!

 

All FSX textures have always had shadows baked in.

 

The shadows you've always seen on moutains and terrain are baked in prior to load based on the time of day. This is the system that LM is supposedly replacing with a dynamic system.

 

I haven't seen mention of trees being part of that so the baked tree shadows Orbx does, for example, may not be an issue.

All FSX textures have always had shadows baked in.

 

The shadows you've always seen on moutains and terrain are baked in prior to load based on the time of day. This is the system that LM is supposedly replacing with a dynamic system.

 

I haven't seen mention of trees being part of that so the baked tree shadows Orbx does, for example, may not be an issue.

 

 

i am referring more to scenery objects and the shadows they cast more than the landscape textures. It would be very hard to create landscape textures with no shadows on them, unless done completely by hand. FSX already creates shadows with elevations of the terrain, but it is poorly done, so an improvement on that would be welcome.

I wonder if this rendering trickery is more effecient than alpha fade. Anyone?

 

Bob

I wonder if this rendering trickery is more effecient than alpha fade. Anyone?

 

Bob

 

What are the technical aspects of alpha fade? 

 

Also, More info about the shadows in V2 from WBard:

 

 

We have dynamic shadows from the aircraft onto itself in the new engine. We'll show off some shots here in the future sometime when we get off our keyboards long enough to show off the work 

 

What are the technical aspects of alpha fade? 

 

Also, More info about the shadows in V2 from WBard:

 

Have no idea and don't really care. The only thing I care about is how it affects my smooth as glass simming experience. :lol:

Prepar3d V2 is the future of flight simming.

"The future of flight simming"

 

That is just down right inspiring.

 

"What's on your computer?"

 

Bob

Add me to the list of P3D 2.0 watchers. I hope that DX11 P3D plays nice with ATI as ATI excels at DX11 in other titles.

 

If not I have no problem swapping to a GTX770 or higher (would need to as a replacement of a 7970). 

 

I hope LM knocks this out of the park.

 

Charles.

Wonder if that applies to clouds poping in also?

I'm not sure this may be any better! Instead of a building popping up in front of you, now you'll see what starts out as a ghostly image, slowly gaining more detail the closer you get to it. I don't see this being any more realistic, just different, if it's not done further out, then FSX does it now!!

The idea is of course that you won't really see those ghosts because it happens in the distance and slowly! In real life objects in the distance also slowly gain more detail which obviously is more realistic than buildings SUDDENLY popping up! You notice things popping up even when you don't really look at it: that certainly won't happen when things slowly fade in. Now I don't know what trick LM has come up with but if it comes close to alpha fading, it will be a major improvement!

I'm not sure this may be any better! Instead of a building popping up in front of you, now you'll see what starts out as a ghostly image, slowly gaining more detail the closer you get to it. I don't see this being any more realistic, just different, if it's not done further out, then FSX does it now!!

I may be mistaken, but I believe XP fades the buildings in and out.

 

Bob