FTX Global 1.2 is out but...

[geolpilot 88]

 

 

All the add on material we are trying to use was made and intended for FSX

 

Well said!

 

Issues with square moon, square flashing beacon lights, white light/boxes, water textures; the list is endless, all being blamed on LM. All these issues are texture related, textures that were optimized for FSX, and worked perfectly in DX9. Despite Steves' hard work to eliminate some of these issues in FSX DX10, some of them are definitely there still (just look at the complaining that went on about the DX10 fixer!). The way DX10 and DX11 handles certain textures is clearly different to how DX9 did, plus add in the variables of new volumetric fog and HDR, that all old light and building textures have to be compatible with.

 

Its no wonder that some visual artifacts have surfaced, and I am not surprised by them at all given that some of this texture stuff dates way back to FS9!. And users somehow expected that, with V2, LM would have also checked and re-done all the problematic textures. They specifically stated that the main focus on V2 was the core engine, moving to GPU and DX11. Fixing textures will come later, probably by 3PD devs, as I do not really see this as being LM's task.

 

A prime example of this is the water visuals that some have slated outright, The default FSX water has an ocean background texture that has a wave pattern ingrained (open up FSX or P3D scenery/world/texture 313 to 336b2su1.bmp if you have default or AS2012 textures installed to see this). In DX9 these were essential to creating a wave pattern. In DX10 and DX11, they lie under the transparent moving water surface with its own wave pattern (now look like a wave pattern on the sea floor), and totally clash with certain surface wave patterns to give a not-too-nice visual effect. If you have REX textures injected, the effect is not there, because REX do not have such a strong wave pattern in these same texture sets, neither will you notice it over coral seas, because both AS2012 and REX have some really artistic coral base textures, that the surface waves can really give a shine to.

 

My point is, wait till various scenery devs get the hang of what-to-do / what-not-to-do texture wise, and we will see DX11-based P3D start to show its glory.

 

No white-caps, oh no! Really bad fail for some. Nope, just not been programmed yet, and look at what the potential could be with the new DX11 engine (simply not possible in FSX).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UKiuCMXXsQA

 

As far as white boxes on buildings go, I have produced many of those when modelling buildings, just one slip-up with the texture material's specular, diffusivity etc settings and buildings can really glow! Whether its ORBX library buildings doing this, or default autogen buildings doing this, I can't pin down, but right from the release of P3D this was reported, so I suspect under certain conditions it may be there in default objects. Its also not as simple as having volumetric fog on/off, its your viewing angle relative to the objects and the sun. Get the sun low behind you, and look from a low elevation / view angle, you will probably see white boxes (region specific autogen?). Slew up, the white boxes recede and disappear, as you get higher. All this tells me its an autogen building texture / light-map / reflection issue that the new shaders etc are really exposing.

 

Broken legacy textures, not a broken P3D engine. All that is happening is the new rendering engine is showing up the faults of the outdated "carry-overs" from FS9. Not fair at all to hammer on LM and the beta-testers about this. Better to hammer on Microsoft's doors for canning ACES so that they could not complete their work on DX10!

 

Rob

[styckx 1,871]

Aren't the holidays when the drama and bickering is supposed to begin? :lol:

 

The biggest arguments I ever got in were with my grandmother over her obsession with saving wrapping paper.. You'd got the look of death if you didn't carefully, literally, unwrap gifts by carefully pulling the tape off and unfolding the whole thing. She eventually buckled in her later years and tearing it apart was acceptable. 

[DarkstarF16 72]

I find it rather interesting reading all the posts about problems with P3Dv2. Some objective, others with hostility, and some rather like little children throwing a tantrum.Given the thousands of different systems and configurations out in computer land that this platform will run on, how can L.M. guarantee there will be no problems with all of them? Even with beta testers, they will be lucky if they even encounter 1% of the possibilities. From low end laptops to over the top PC systems. Think about this and how likely 100% problem free operation will be.People have no patience with software, their computers, or themselves. Many people complaining are the architects of their own problems. Some installed P3Dv2 and immediately edited the .cfg file with all the old FSX tweaks before even trying the simulator first with a raw .cfg file. They are under the misinformation that P3Dv2 is nothing more than a beefed up FSX, not realizing that old FSX tweaks can actually do more harm than good to P3Dv2, and that major changes have occurred in the rendering engine code. For this error, they will blame L.M.People read P3Dv2 will put more work on the GPU and use multiple cores more effectively on their CPU. This immediately implies one can crank all the sliders to the right because for once a simulator can finally utilize all the power under the hood of their 5 year old computer build. For this error, they will blame L.M.People in all their excitement, like the first night with their new bride, hastily start installing all their FSX/P3Dv1 favorite aircraft and scenery only to realize the excitement is over all too quickly rather than taking it slowly and seeing exactly what it can and can not do. For this error, they will blame L.M. and 3PDs.I challenge anyone to install P3Dv2 on their computer, leave the sliders and .cfg file alone, select a default aircraft and find the massive glowing errors outside a few current known issues. They just won't be there for most users I'm afraid.All the add on material we are trying to use was made and intended for FSX. Not a single product has been made exclusively for P3Dv2 or to take full advantage of its potential as of date. If it was, it would not be compatible with FSX, simple as that. Even the default aircraft are FSX native in their initial inception. Since the majority of users are still using FSX, this will prove a challenge. If a product is made compatible for FSX and P3Dv2, it will likely not be optimized to take advantage of P3Dv2 capabilities but more sales will be made. If a product is made compatible for only P3Dv2, it will likely perform very well, but will not be compatible with FSX resulting is less sales. This whole issue was experienced with the release of FSX after FS9, why should it be any different with FSX to P3Dv2? Since P3Dv2 is a much larger step, this will require two complete and separate products for each platform. Not an easy situation for developers both on time and monetary resources.Orbx material was made and designed for FSX compatibility. It uses DX9, not DX10 or DX11. I would be almost willing to wager that if Orbx made FTX Global 100% native to P3Dv2 there would be no issues and it would look amazing. Remember, there is not a single add on utilizing DX11 yet for P3Dv2. This move however to the benefit of the P3Dv2 user would render the software useless in FSX. I believe the challenge for Orbx will to be ensure their products are compatible with P3Dv2 and pushing it's capabilities whilst at the same time not destroying backward compatibility with FSX. This is deja vu all over again.Before we start to weigh in on the value of P3Dv2 over FSX, perhaps in fairness, we should ensure that we are comparing apples to apples if those testing or comparing want to ensure integrity in their findings and quality of data that actually can be repeated by all and measured. Comparing FSX with all native and optimized material for that platform to P3Dv2 with that same FSX material is junk science. Rather compare it to P3Dv2 native and optimized material and compare the results, that's sound measurement. But wait! We can't do that yet because it doesn't exist does it...Given these facts, why do people persist to blame L.M. for issues that resulted from making a better platform than what we had? Why do some slam down hard on developers who's products don't function optimally in P3Dv2 when they were never designed and optimized for it in the first place? Do we want products that work in FSX, but are not optimized for P3Dv2, or do we want products that are optimized for P3Dv2 but won't work in FSX. We can not have both without separate products. This is a dilemma we must choose as well as developers. FSX DX9 material is castrating P3Dv2 so why do individuals expect it to perform better than the FSX material was designed for. We are still putting lip stick on a pig. When P3Dv2 native and exclusive aircraft, scenery, and weather are used, let's then make those comparisons and see what comes out on top and which has the greater stability and less issues. Then, and only then, will we have that apples to apples comparison. For now and the near future I believe there will have to be a compromise that we will have to endure through, until FSX usage starts to become the exception and not the norm.

Extremely well stated.

 

Well said!Issues with square moon, square flashing beacon lights, white light/boxes, water textures; the list is endless, all being blamed on LM. All these issues are texture related, textures that were optimized for FSX, and worked perfectly in DX9. Despite Steves' hard work to eliminate some of these issues in FSX DX10, some of them are definitely there still (just look at the complaining that went on about the DX10 fixer!). The way DX10 and DX11 handles certain textures is clearly different to how DX9 did, plus add in the variables of new volumetric fog and HDR, that all old light and building textures have to be compatible with.Its no wonder that some visual artifacts have surfaced, and I am not surprised by them at all given that some of this texture stuff dates way back to FS9!. And users somehow expected that, with V2, LM would have also checked and re-done all the problematic textures. They specifically stated that the main focus on V2 was the core engine, moving to GPU and DX11. Fixing textures will come later, probably by 3PD devs, as I do not really see this as being LM's task.A prime example of this is the water visuals that some have slated outright, The default FSX water has an ocean background texture that has a wave pattern ingrained (open up FSX or P3D scenery/world/texture 313 to 336b2su1.bmp if you have default or AS2012 textures installed to see this). In DX9 these were essential to creating a wave pattern. In DX10 and DX11, they lie under the transparent moving water surface with its own wave pattern (now look like a wave pattern on the sea floor), and totally clash with certain surface wave patterns to give a not-too-nice visual effect. If you have REX textures injected, the effect is not there, because REX do not have such a strong wave pattern in these same texture sets, neither will you notice it over coral seas, because both AS2012 and REX have some really artistic coral base textures, that the surface waves can really give a shine to.My point is, wait till various scenery devs get the hang of what-to-do / what-not-to-do texture wise, and we will see DX11-based P3D start to show its glory.No white-caps, oh no! Really bad fail for some. Nope, just not been programmed yet, and look at what the potential could be with the new DX11 engine (simply not possible in FSX).http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UKiuCMXXsQAAs far as white boxes on buildings go, I have produced many of those when modelling buildings, just one slip-up with the texture material's specular, diffusivity etc settings and buildings can really glow! Whether its ORBX library buildings doing this, or default autogen buildings doing this, I can't pin down, but right from the release of P3D this was reported, so I suspect under certain conditions it may be there in default objects. Its also not as simple as having volumetric fog on/off, its your viewing angle relative to the objects and the sun. Get the sun low behind you, and look from a low elevation / view angle, you will probably see white boxes (region specific autogen?). Slew up, the white boxes recede and disappear, as you get higher. All this tells me its an autogen building texture / light-map / reflection issue that the new shaders etc are really exposing.Broken legacy textures, not a broken P3D engine. All that is happening is the new rendering engine is showing up the faults of the outdated "carry-overs" from FS9. Not fair at all to hammer on LM and the beta-testers about this. Better to hammer on Microsoft's doors for canning ACES so that they could not complete their work on DX10!Rob

Extremely well stated.I wonder how many descenders would be able to write a 250,000 word essay, without a spell checker and ensure 100% error free spelling and punctuation?

[stevem72 10]

Personally, I am very very glad that LM are here, and are moving Flightsim forwards - P3Dv2 and onwards is the future of flightsim but it needs some time.

 

Lets face it, LM are the only real credible option right now (yes I am aware of X-Plane but it has just never "caught on" and taken over from FSX like it maybe should have done) and until they got involved, the "future" of flight sim was in the balance in that FSX could have been the very last version of a global sim.

 

The issue for me lies not with LM, but more with some of the major devs......and particularly those that have "beta-tested" it with their own products.

 

Many have then gone on to talk about P3D v2 as though its the mutts nuts and its flawless, and yet some of their products contain show-stopping issues - for me some of these devs have raised expectations to a level that was never going to be achieved at the release of v2.

 

You only have to look around to see some substantial issues with various products that are directly marketed as P3D "ready" or P3D "compatible".....the reality is that they are "ready" or "compatible".....but only on a very rudimentary basis.

 

I think when the devs get their heads around v2, and when the P3D v2 native stuff starts filtering through we will see a huge difference....here's hoping anyway!!

 

Regards

 

Steve

[Highiron 21]

The problem for developers who where also beta testers Steve is that the Beta version of P3Dv2 was a fast and quick moving target. The developers themselves did not even know what the release version was gong to look like right to the hour of upload to the L.M. servers. It was not clear what was or wasn't going to be included in the initial release based on problems found during the testing. Even after testing, there was no way that developers could change their products in such short order to guarantee 100% compatibility.

 

Almost all the products that are directly marketed as P3D "ready" or P3D "compatible" as you put it, are..., for P3D v1.4 that is, so they are not lying. Products that are native to P3D v2.x will not be compatible with FSX/P3Dv1.x, so there will be differences. At the moment I see no P3Dv2 native products. Everything is a port over, including default aircraft, autogen, and textures in P3Dv2.

 

The developers are very excited about what they see in Prepar3D v2.x. Those who had beta versions where able to look into the SDK and the core of the program to see how it worked and glean new options not available to them in the past. They can see huge potential in what they are looking at. Remember, these are things that to date, nothing made for FSX can take advantage of or even showcase for us in any way that will do it justice. I believe from the undercurrents going on in the development community we are going to be knocked over by what this platform is capable of, it will just take time for them to expose it. If the developers are excited by what they see, then so too should we.

 

Give it time, they will need it. Keep it simple, don't try to jamb 50 add-ons into it, things will fail. I have a small number of aircraft that are confirmed to function, usually the more simple ones, and I use those until developers can test and modify their products to work in P3Dv2.  The more complex the aircraft, the greater chance of issues as they worked around the SDK to get things to work in FSX. Fixes will take time. Orbx is not immune to this fact, let's also give them some patients as they work through the issues. They know when we're happy, they are too. They don't need to be told or reminded. I'm sure this also applies to the majority of developers out there. L.M. had a huge lead on these developers with P3Dv2, lets cut these developers a little slack while they try to catch up in double time. I'm sure some are drinking from a fire hose at the moment.

[Guest]

I think the biggest mistake was that a few 3PD's released P3D 2.0 installers indicating their product was now P3D 2.0 ready. Which clearly wasn't the case. It was their announcements (already before P3D 2.0 was released) that made people install certain addons immediately, only to discover the 3PD's were mistaken. If all 3PD's would have said 'Our products are made for FSX and maybe P3D 1.4 so please don't use them in P3D 2.0 a lot if not most of the problems would have been prevented'.

 

I only installed FTX Global because Orbx said it was P3D 2.0 compatible, and the A2A C172 because A2A said the plane worked perfectly fine in P3D: they even showed a screenshot how good it looked. It wasn't until various problems arose that A2A posted that their product wasn't meant for P3D 2.0 and they wouldn't give support for it (which is a bit sad and disappointing imho). If both 3PD's had said from the start their products weren't compatible, I wouldn't have installed them.

 

You can't blame me or anyone else for installing these products, saying we were too quick in doing so and that it is our own fault. I have been very careful and cautios when it came to installing addons. In fact, I didn't install any other addons at all besides for testing purposes later on (and knowing it would lead to problems). I think that if you look through my posts from the last few weeks, you will see that I only complained about P3D 2.0 in combination with products that gave problems which were supposed to be 2.0 compatible or which were supposed to be working well. I posted a few times already that I couldn't get P3D default to crash on me. And I also didn't install a lot of addons without paying attention to their compatibility according to the developers like some others did.

 

Right now I only have FTXG installed because with medium settings I can fly with it without any problems (and things still look and perform better than FSX btw) and it's my choice to deal with the various bugs which FTXG may cause. At the same time it's also my choice to not do any serious flying until the first patches have arrived. And until the first truly compatible addons have been released.

[Guest]

Well, this is most definitely interesting. I just uninstalled FTX Global, then tested with volumetric fog on and off, using the Maule with the Major Thunerstorms theme over Washington DC. The result? I barely took any framerate hit when volumetric fog was enabled. With frames locked at 33, I maintained 33 without volumetric fog. With volumetric fog switched on, frames came down as low as 29, but mainly held between 30 and 33. So a minimal difference.

 

 

 

Now I'm wondering whether the volumetric fog problem is in fact a volumetric-fog-plus-FTX Global problem. I'd like to go back to previous threads and see how many of us who were struggling with frames in heavy cloudcover had FTX Global installed as opposed to default.

 

I will test this today! I will fly with an overcast sky with FTXG installed and vol-fog on and off. Then I will uninstall FTXG and repeat the test.

 

EDIT

Testresults: I couldn't acknowledge your findings, Alan. On my PC the drop in fps when I turn on volu-fog is the exact same with or without FTXG. I even restarted the PC between each test but I don't see a difference. Without volu-fog fps was near my max of 34 and with volu-fog fps was around 24/25, with and without FTXG.

[stevem72 10]

Thad

 

I absolutely agree with you....what does gall a little though, is as Jeroen has alluded to, many devs have been unashamedly "showcasing" their products in P3D v2 with zero reference to potential issues......whilst never stating directly, but certainly suggesting that the products do work flawlessly i.e. P3D installers etc etc.

 

The reality is very different though, and many individuals are/have voiced/voicing the opinion that P3D V2 is a dead duck, whilst others (perhaps like you and me) are able to see the longer term.

 

Imo its a simple re-run of FS9 to FSX.....there was an outcry initially but the reality was that FSX lifted the ceiling/cap over what FS9 could do/offer.......FSX to P3D v2 is just the same....P3D v2 and onwards will lift the ceiling/cap over what FSX can do....with the huge added bonus that LM are still here and (hopefuly) ironing out bugs and problems.

 

Regards

 

Steve

 

PS - imagine the furore when they (again hopefully) get to 64 bit P3D!!!!

[nudata 10]

Very well stated commentary. I fully agree and have posted myself to slow down and think about tweaks and expensive upgrades.

 

It will not be too long before the emotionally challenged have an anger fit and arbitrarily decide to attack their favorite culprit. Let us hope they look in the virtual mirror and choose patience, caution and maturity.

[mgh 89]

Given the thousands of different systems and configurations out in computer land that this platform will run on, how can L.M. guarantee there will be no problems with all of them?

I don't think that excuse will wash. Other developers do manage to achieve this. I have a wide range of applications on my PC from major developers like, Adobe, Autodesk, Borland, Microsoft, and Oracle plus many others from smaller ones and they all run without the sort of problems exhibited by Prepar3d v2.0.

[alainneedle1 97]

Arwen,

 

Great post, but about being impatient, is it that peoples are impatient now that V2.0 is released for LM to fix the bugs or is it that peoples were impatient for LM to released V2.0 regardless of where they were in beta testing, my post was to say that V2.0 was FAR from ready to be released, peoples are indeed impatient, LM (including simmers) should have been patient and wait to release V2.0 only when ready, I stand by what I said though, any other new company that would have released a product with major bugs like that at released would have been crucified by this community, I hope that LM WILL think twice before releasing any kind of 1/2 *** patch, simmers will get tired of 1/2 way ready release pretty fast, just look at the kind of threads one can read on this forum.

 

I believe you when you say that P3D run well on your PC, BUT what are your settings....your settings does not matter really if you are happy with V2.0 but other simmers like a lot of eye candy and other stuff and that's when they try to push the sliders a little more that all hell brake loose, trust me we tried it on a top of the line PC with top of the line hardware with and without tweaks, enough tweak to get impatient...

[Arwen 289]

Thanks!

 

And, for the record, I'm likely as impatient as anyone here.  :blush:  I'm easily sucked into all the hype when something new is about to be released and I actually believe most of the hype (because I want it to be true).  

 

My current settings are posted here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/428296-prepar3d-v2-with-ftx-global/#entry2872035 . And my screenshots in my first post in that thread were taken at these settings.

[Anxu00 176]

Another problem is that P3D V2 alludes to offer backward compatibility with FSX Add-ons which allow people to preserve their investments.  However LM never guarantees this.  The likely outcome is that you will spend even more money to "preserve" your investments.  P3D V2 offers some performance gain over FSX, but I think people should start treating it as a complete new platform and set their expectation accordingly.

[N1G 88]

I think we should have the option to change the skin on the UI. I have been holding this in for ever. Now I got it out.

I think it is about time we talk about issues which really have some meat on it.

8P

 

Bob

[shivers9 1,174]

I don't think that excuse will wash. Other developers do manage to achieve this. I have a wide range of applications on my PC from major developers like, Adobe, Autodesk, Borland, Microsoft, and Oracle plus many others from smaller ones and they all run without the sort of problems exhibited by Prepar3d v2.0.

I see your point but, if we were to be honest and think back, most of those programs had many problems, patches and growing pains. P3D is only a couple of weeks old. Also do remember, LM has made a lot of concessions to make Ver 2.0 backward compatiable with a lot of add ons or at least tried too. It is easy to blame the new release but no new software is ever released without it warts and need for patches.