May 19, 201412 yr Whcih won't be a part of the first beta! Must have missed this... where did you read that it won't be part of the first beta? And... if that is the case, what exactly does that mean time frame wise? I am a fairly new X planer so I have a hard time understanding 1st beta, 2nd beta, etc as it is much different than what I am used to. Well, its really RAM which will be the crucial point here (everything else is not so much critical). For long range visibility with default Global Scenery and simple airports, you will be fine with 8 GB. With HD Mesh Scenery v2 I will already recommend - highly! - 16 GB of RAM. Its all about plain "physics" ... the extra (double amount!) data needed for long rang visibility just has to fit into the memory (somehow). Regarding X plane needing that much ram... this seems much different than the specs recommended for P3D V2. Is it because of differences in the rendering engine, etc? I have to be honest, I have never heard someone say for the "other simulator" that I need anyhwere close to 16 gigs of ram. Why is XPX different? I could be totally missing a simple concept, but I want to learn -Phil Phil Long
May 19, 201412 yr I have never heard someone say for the "other simulator" that I need anyhwere close to 16 gigs of ram. Why is XPX different? 64 bit sim....
May 19, 201412 yr 64 bit sim.... I was hoping for an explanation a bit more in depth than that. I realize the high level difference between 32 bit and 64 bit, but I am asking WHY it needs so much. P3D V2 with the add ons I have looks spectacular, yet it does so with a 32 bit application and I have yet to have a single OOM with the new version... so my question is what exactly is XPX needing all that ram for. What advantages does it offer that necessitate eating up so much ram? -Phil Phil Long
May 19, 201412 yr Regarding X plane needing that much ram... this seems much different than the specs recommended for P3D V2. Is it because of differences in the rendering engine, etc? I have to be honest, I have never heard someone say for the "other simulator" that I need anyhwere close to 16 gigs of ram. Why is XPX different? I could be totally missing a simple concept, but I want to learn X-Plane and the MSFS family use different methods for creating the world around the airplane. In the MSFS world, distant data is loaded using lower resolution and lower fidelity sources. This minimizes the memory footprint needed to see long distances at very little visual expense since things are so far away. This is represented by the "LOD" radius tweaks that folks like to use. (*Increase this radius, and you push towards an OOM) It seems as though X-Plane does not do this... instead, X-Plane loads in very large chunks of detailed data all at once, in a fairly large area around the airplane. Although the scenery elements may be very far away, X-Plane's design requires that it load it all in to memory.... this contributes to the visible "hard limit" on the scenery when you get higher in altitude. When the new X-Plane 10.30 update hits with the expanded visibility option, the sim will be loading MORE of this data into RAM, requiring that much more headroom to push the visibility limit outward. Because of this requirement, higher detailed scenery (Andras's HDMesh2) and/or more scenery (the eventual distance expansion option of XP10.30) will put far more pressure on memory usage than other platforms. It's an architecture thing.
May 19, 201412 yr Why X-plane is different is ... well .... a quite complex topic, which wouldn't fit in this topic. But to make it short, yes the main reason is, that it has a completely different scenery / rendering engine than P3D/MSFS (if it would be identical, then it wouldn't be a different sim ... eh?) with a quite different approach. A long time ago, there was an interview with me on an old Blog, where I described some of the basic ideas in a bit more detail .... if you are brave enough (and have time), you might read trough that to better understand the situation: http://xsimreviews.com/2011/12/10/developer-interview-andras-fabian-mr-x-terrain/And indeed, 64bit is NOT the reason for more RAM hunger ... but its the vehicle which allows XP10 to use more than 4 GB RAM at all! So, any other sim (especially P3D / MSFS ... at least until now) which is 32bit CAN'T even use more than 4GB RAM(thats pure information theory - no magic) at all. Even if there would be content to go above that limit (and obviously there is such content ... otherwise there would be no OOM problems ... I think). Andras Fabian / Alpilotx Visit www.alpilotx.net, a site about X-plane scenery You can see some landscape and other photographs from me here: http://www.flickr.co...s/weathermaker/
May 19, 201412 yr Exactly the detail I was looking for! Figured it was variation in the rendering engine. I have made a mental note to increase my current 16 gigs of memory for my next build in a couple of years. The way I look at it LR and dedicated developers are really moving forward with XPX. I will happily buy more ram if it means the sim is getting that much better. Phil Long
May 19, 201412 yr Must have missed this... where did you read that it won't be part of the first beta? And... if that is the case, what exactly does that mean time frame wise? I am a fairly new X planer so I have a hard time understanding 1st beta, 2nd beta, etc as it is much different than what I am used to. This came from a reply Ben made on May 9th. "Please note that at this time our plan is to go public beta WITHOUT the view distance increase – the view distance increase will be added to a later public beta." http://developer.x-plane.com/2014/05/art-controls-are-an-active-volcano/#comment-8655
May 20, 201412 yr Commercial Member In general, everybody (and maybe esp. the new X-Plane users) should remember that a "public beta" is for testing. So only use the beta for exactly that, testing and reporting bugs, don't consider it finished, and install it on a copy of your current 10.25. Just reminding ... Mario Donick .:. vFlyteAir
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