A Tribute to the Great Cities : New York City (X-plane 10)

[skully 1,045]

The old saying.. "Build it, and they will come".

The devs see the clamor about XP10 now that people are giving it a try after begrudgingly (in my case) kicking and screaming trying to hold on to my dear FSX.

We do though see that the FSX engine has been taken as far as it can go with P3D not showing much improvement other than some nice clouds and shadows.

The key is in the world engine and depth and life that XP has.

XP has the world, all it needs now is more high end aircraft, airport scenery and improved in sim navigation functions.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Until P3Dv2 goes 64-bit, the door is going to be wide open for X-Plane.

 

I suspect the memory problems have more to do with the underlying engine than necessarily an inadequacy of 32 bit. Beyond the simulation genre, others have done extremely impressive things that amply display that 64 bit is not necessarily the end all and be all solution to everything.

 

P3Dv2 seems to run very well on its own. Once vendors start converting in earnest to native P3D offerings, I suspect the clamoring for the 64 bit option will remain on the table, but with much reduced urgency. At that time, P3Dv2 and beyond will almost certainly begin building enormous momentum, especially as LM seems focused on all aspects of the sim while LR seems to follow a path that kind of reminds me of the old "Family Circus" cartoon where the kids are told to go to some particular destination but wander randomly all over the place, attracted by various momentary interesting distractions while trying to get there!  :lol:

 

 

Too pessimistic? I hope so!

[Comanche 417]

When XP10 went to 64bit, only a scarce few addons worked with it. Most developers had to update their planes to the 64 bit version. Some were able to update right away, but planes that were more complex, took some time. Plus there was some instability with the program itself once 64 came out and a few developers sat it out before updating their planes.

 

Laminar made a smart move by having both a 32 bit and 64 bit version to allow people to still use their addons until everything got sorted out.

 

I would expect P3d to have the same issues if it were to ever go 64bit. Nothing will work until developers update their stuff for 64bit. Hopefully Lockheed will do the same dual version. If not, there will be a lot of impatient users crying that their addons no longer work.

 

Rob

[alpilotx 505]

I suspect the memory problems have more to do with the underlying engine than necessarily an inadequacy of 32 bit. Beyond the simulation genre, others have done extremely impressive things that amply display that 64 bit is not necessarily the end all and be all solution to everything.

I think - and this comes from years of work with scenery data and X-Plane - you miss one important point. Even though its very important to have a well optimized engine, there are still limits how far you can "optimize" the storage needs of any data structure (be it complex aircraft objects or scenery or what ever). These are pure mathematics and not some vague estimations! Thus, when ever someone comes up with enough complexity in any add-on (especially in scenery) or any combination of more than one add-ons active at a given time ... you will always come to a point where you either need more RAM than 32bit can make available (and this limitation is nothing which can be discussed away, but its a hard fact of information theory) or need complex and time/performance consuming mechanisms to offload anything not needed at a given moment (and even such theoretic techniques would at some point fail) .... And thats where 64bit just plain wins ... it removes all your concerns about address space (at least for a few years :lol: ), and you can relatively easily counter resource shortage by for example adding RAM modules etc. (whereas in the 32bit world, you can't help this way!).

 

... so, even though "P3Dv2 seems to run very well on its own" it will hit a wall as soon as enough "content" is thrown at it (and add-ons are all about more content) ... No super clever engineering can remove some hard laws of information theory (it can only mitigate it slightly to some point).

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Well........

 

In the end that seems close to saying that if you keep filling a barrel, it will eventually overflow. Of course it will! But you still have a choice of how efficiently you use the contents of the barrel. To put out a fire, you might spray the contents as a mist, or for instance use it to shower three people using an amount of water once required for only one......

 

A less philosophical example. Until very recently, the Clouds in Xplane were very very expensive to use, and the results themselves, in retrospect, could have been better. Along comes Silver Lining, Fast, compact and super efficient. Result? Less computational overhead, much more realistic appearance and even better effects! What changed? Nothing. Its just an example that there are almost always better ways to get the same (or better) result.

 

Lets go to P3Dv2.

 

Just out a short while and OOM's galore; but there are already indications that there is a rather large memory leak involved, and incompatibilities with legacy hardware as well in the issue. Its a certainty that once developers learn to work more with the program (and its at least partially updated code) they will find opportunities to do things well beyond the capability of simply FSX, and LM will certainly be working hard to pull greater efficiency from the code. (And don't forget the capability for flight dynamics modeled outside of the sim!)

 

Would 64bit be better? Sure, I never argued that point. But I also believe that the legacy code of current sims holds things back nearly as much in some ways as 32bit does, and that 64bit is not necessarily the ultimate cure for everything. Even now, DCS does quite fine with complex flight models and instrumentation, not to mention damage models, AI, Missile trajectory's explosions, weather........ all in 32bit without a hiccup.

 

War Thunder is doing the same at framerates that we can only dream of, and Aerofly is heading that direction as well. And all are currently 32bit

 

I suspect the old saying ending in the words "Its how you use it" has some application to the situation. And the capabilities/performance of those other programs suggests there may be significant additional functionality to be wrung from more efficient 32bit code created in the last few years while civilian sims have remained relatively stagnant. Is 64bit nice? Yes? Does it offer advantages? Yes. Will everyone head that way as soon as they can? yes.

 

But could we probably do much better with what we still have? I think that's a clear yes as well, and with that said, P3D probably has room to maneuver for at least another year or two.

 

And its in that time frame that people will be choosing their loyalties for years to come.

[Humpty 751]

oh come on please , huh where's my wallet

[jcomm 5,890]

DCS does quite fine with complex flight models and instrumentation, not to mention damage models, AI, Missile trajectory's explosions, weather........ all in 32bit without a hiccup.

 

Nope, It's been 64 bit ** only ** since 1.2.6. They abandoned the 32 bit version and went full 64 bit :-)

 

Now, certainly it is not the 64 bit code that makes up a sim... But it'll help a lot making it stable, provided we can have the adequate hardware and operating system, and when complex add-ons start being added ...

 

But, for instance, MS FLIGHT ( the GREAT MS FLIGHT! ) is 32 bit!

[HiFlyer 9,343]

Nope, It's been 64 bit ** only ** since 1.2.6. They abandoned the 32 bit version and went full 64 bit :-)

 

Now, certainly it is not the 64 bit code that makes up a sim... But it'll help a lot making it stable, provided we can have the adequate hardware and operating system, and when complex add-ons start being added ...

 

Looks like they did it in the last few months and I had better update!!!

 

But it doesn't invalidate what I said, since up to that moment the program was still doing all I mentioned and doing it with nary an OOM in sight. It will be interesting to see what they eventually do with the extra room.

[jcomm 5,890]

 

 

It will be interesting to see what they eventually do with the extra room.

 

Mostly the new EDGE complex and highly detailled scenery ....

[Murmur 3,941]

A less philosophical example. Until very recently, the Clouds in Xplane were very very expensive to use, and the results themselves, in retrospect, could have been better. Along comes Silver Lining, Fast, compact and super efficient. Result? Less computational overhead, much more realistic appearance and even better effects! What changed? Nothing. Its just an example that there are almost always better ways to get the same (or better) result.

 

War Thunder is doing the same at framerates that we can only dream of, and Aerofly is heading that direction as well. And all are currently 32bit

 

I suspect the old saying ending in the words "Its how you use it" has some application to the situation. And the capabilities/performance of those other programs suggests there may be significant additional functionality to be wrung from more efficient 32bit code created in the last few years while civilian sims have remained relatively stagnant. Is 64bit nice? Yes? Does it offer advantages? Yes. Will everyone head that way as soon as they can? yes.

 

I partly agree and partly disagree with HiFlyer. On one hand, nobody ever said that 64 bit is the ultimate cure for every limitation, but I think 64 bits is necessary today (and will be ever more in the near future) for a general purpose flight sim with world coverage and open to 3rd parties. Differently from other products like War Thunder and Aerofly FS which are, after all, more limited in "scope", and where performance/memory usage can probably be more optimized than in an open, general purpose flight sim like X-P or P3D. For this reason I think the move to 64 bit is one of the smartest things Laminar did, and a big advantage X-P has over P3D (for now!).

 

On the other hand, I agree that X-P needs many improvements in its visual rendering engine (environment + weather). The FSX/P3D engine, while far from perfect and less "spectacular" with regard to certain effects/situations (e.g. night lighting), is undoubtedly much more complete when evaluated in its capabilities, particularly when depicting weather phenomena and high altitude visuals. The new volumetric fog in P3D gives some spectacular and very realistic visuals (you can find examples in the screenshots forum) that nobody knows if/when will be available in X-Plane.

[Slai 10]

There are some nicely textured NYC buildings actively being developed and posted to the org.  The Aerosoft package converts well so its hard to imagine why they don't release this for Xplane.  Drzewieckis has great coverage of all the boroughs but the textures are not so great.  Following is a mashup of all the above:

[a1994114a 0]

where is the download link?