When can LESS, actually become...MORE? Well..read on...

[jcomm]

Yes Tony, you're right in every point you made :-)

 

I was actually writing a new thread, but this is the right place to post what I was about to post.

 

When I see the work contributors like you, Andras, "PilotBalu", our other glider pilot (once a glider pilot, glider pilot forever, although he writes "former" in his signature ;-), and recently also "gsagostinho" with his very interesting scripts to tune the colors of clouds according to daylight, I open my mind and my eyes to the potential in X-Plane 10.

 

True that this potential is there in a crude form, but it's there, and with time users and even the Dev Team at LR are becoming experts in tweaking and implementing features that are potentially present in XP10, even if not available by default.

 

Regarding the flight dynamics, I said "snakes and lizards" as we say here in Portugal, of 10.30b1, but again, if we look at it after calming down from the initial reaction to a total absence of news regarding the prop effects modeling, we can actually find that it was somehow addressed by Austin, pretty much like hooks are made available for those who are contributing to the rendering and scenery components of the simulator.

 

Austin made available some new datarefs that can be used to place forces at points of the aircraft. These forces can be calculated by some talented developers in order to fine tune many flight dynamics effects, and will be computed under the same BET framework, together with all of the other that XP already computes to give the "total" outcome, and, probably get the right feel out of a given aircraft model.

 

Pretty much like stall behavior in default XP10 aircraft is overall poorly reproduced, when someone takes the time to edit, through Plane Maker, the flight surfaces and set them in a way that allows for a much more realistic outcome, also these new datarefs, with dedicated work, will most probably give us what we would like to have with prop effects and many other aspects of the XP10 FDM.

 

Someone pointed out the power of these datarefs soon after Ben's "list of items for 10.30b1" was published in the Devs Blog. My first reaction was negative, but when I think about why the other simulators I now use, mostly because of the high standards in terms of flight dynamics ( DCS World, IL2 BoS and RoF ) have such sophisticated flight dynamics for their aircraft, which are, each of them, fine tuned using a wealth of RW data and pilot flight test logs, etc..., I believe that Austin ended up making the right decision - a generic FDM will never be able to suit each and every aircraft model, so, for those details that can't be correctly addressed by the default framework, let the devs have some way to fine tune the effects that will bring the model closer to the real thing!

 

And yes Tony, helicopters have always been a good proof of concept for X-plane's FDM. It's obvious that they are probably the best example of X-plane's FDM being, after all, a very sophisticated piece of code, now opened, through those "magic" datarefs, to even more fine tuning :-)

 

After all, this is exactly what A2A, RealAir, PMDG, Majestic and others have done to create the best models in FSX. Should only the default FDM in MSFS be used, we would never / ever be able to taste the effects of an A2A with the new Accusim v2, or a PMDG 737NGX, or the Q-400, to name just a few....

 

In creating and making available these datarefs, which talented devs can explore ( Goran, Felis, Dan Klaue, the guys at FJSim, iXEG and FF, etc...) to build even better models for X-Plane 10, Austin is doing for the FDM the same that Ben does for the scenery and weather rendering...

 

Then, with the recent work on rendering techniques, the skies painted by SkyMaxx or even the new default clouds, even very possibly the EFASS METAR-based weather injector that I do not own but some have pointed out to be very good, Andras HD Mesh V2, SimHeaven's OSM / World2XPlane or photosceneries, etc...things are looking very promising for 10.30 and upcoming releases.

 

I will naturally want to get the best effects with OSM and World2XP. BTW GREAT Blog Tony!!!! I've had a great time reading the articles there, and watching the photos and video! Thanks for the GREAT work!

[Humpty]

I took a round at Vancouver it all maxed but no HDR , it looked quite good but bad fps 10-14 ouch. No OSM or W2XP data used in this flight. Oops time to buy a new computer :(

 

@Jcomm

 

As to the dynamics only a real pilot can tell you for that particular aircraft.

 

I don't know if you are a real pilot but I think Tony is and he did comment on the Tomahawk for FSX and XPX saying they don't fly like the real one or behave like one.

 

Yes the torque is horrible. And a couple of things I guess.

[alulekk]

I'm eager to get some reports from those of you flying maxed out...

 

Try out Seattle area with a bunch of cloudy weather (normal Seattle weather) around sunset (lights on all over the place) in HDR mode.

 

Curious how that goes. Ben has mentioned that the clouds are an "open bug" right now, and thus my issues.

 

I can get very screaming performance with no weather....throw in lots of clouds (again..typical PNW conditions) and it's not a good situation in a hurry.

[gsagostinho]

When I see the work contributors like you, Andras, "PilotBalu", our other glider pilot (once a glider pilot, glider pilot forever, although he writes "former" in his signature ;-), and recently also "gsagostinho" with his very interesting scripts to tune the colors of clouds according to daylight, I open my mind and my eyes to the potential in X-Plane 10.

 

Hi jcomm, I am very glad you liked that script of mine. If you'd be interested, I also shared another script that takes care of the night lights (they are now gradually turned on during dusk, instead of at once). You can check those scripts here: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=23164

 

Take care,

Gilberto

[Guest conura]

I'm eager to get some reports from those of you flying maxed out...

 

Try out Seattle area with a bunch of cloudy weather (normal Seattle weather) around sunset (lights on all over the place) in HDR mode.

 

Curious how that goes. Ben has mentioned that the clouds are an "open bug" right now, and thus my issues.

 

I can get very screaming performance with no weather....throw in lots of clouds (again..typical PNW conditions) and it's not a good situation in a hurry.

 

With HDR off, running SkyMaxx pro with the Flight Factor 757 over Central London with scenery to extreme, trees to 'filled in', shadows on aircraft, roads on tonnes, in bad weather at sunset I get 33-35fps. In 10.25 using lower settings (scenery set to mega-tonnes) I'd get about 25fps. The days of FSX @ 15fps followed by a crash seem like a bad dream

 

The increase is significant!

[jcomm]

Obrigado Gilberto, vou certamente experimentar!

 

Abraço!

 

Thx Gilberto!

[gsagostinho]

Bacana, um abracao!

[alulekk]

With HDR off, running SkyMaxx pro with the Flight Factor 757 over Central London with scenery to extreme, trees to 'filled in', shadows on aircraft, roads on tonnes, in bad weather at sunset I get 33-35fps. In 10.25 using lower settings (scenery set to mega-tonnes) I'd get about 25fps. The days of FSX @ 15fps followed by a crash seem like a bad dream

 

The increase is significant!

Wow. What screen resolution? 1080p?

[Guest conura]

Wow. What screen resolution? 1080p?

Yup - 1920-1080 on a 23" monitor. Looks great Not often you get an update that lets you turn the graphics settings up and get a huge fps increase.

[captain420]

clouds really puts a dent in my performance with 10.30b1. I tried disabling all the osm scenery and set pretty much everything max'd out except for 'extreme res', I'm only using very high res. And yet it doesn't seem smooth and responsive. I'm running at 2560x1600, so maybe thats why? For me to get the smoothness back I have to bump down the AA level to 2x and use 4x+FXAA. Still not a big difference as I can tellin graphics quality so I'll stick with the lower settings. Really hope the cloud issue gets fix and more optimization. It would be great if I can run with cloud puff settings higher than 23% without a huge loss in performance, X-Plane is almost getting there. Just need more fine tuning.

[alulekk]

Yep.

I'm also @1600p

 

All the "it's amazing and butter smooth maxed out" stories seem to be coming from those pushing a lot less pixels at 1080p

[saed45]

clouds really puts a dent in my performance with 10.30b1. I tried disabling all the osm scenery and set pretty much everything max'd out except for 'extreme res', I'm only using very high res. And yet it doesn't seem smooth and responsive. I'm running at 2560x1600, so maybe thats why? For me to get the smoothness back I have to bump down the AA level to 2x and use 4x+FXAA. Still not a big difference as I can tellin graphics quality so I'll stick with the lower settings. Really hope the cloud issue gets fix and more optimization. It would be great if I can run with cloud puff settings higher than 23% without a huge loss in performance, X-Plane is almost getting there. Just need more fine tuning.

i think your resolution is very high 

[Guest conura]

For you guys having problems with clouds - have you considered SkyMaxx Pro? GRanted there are no cloud shadows but it's beautiful, and they run far better.

[alulekk]

For you guys having problems with clouds - have you considered SkyMaxx Pro? GRanted there are no cloud shadows but it's beautiful, and they run far better.

Yep. Using it. It helps...still not as wonderful as I'd like though.

 

Definitely seems to be the desire to run at 1600p that's holding me back.

 

May try out my rig attached to my 55" 1080p plasma to see how it runs.

[alpilotx]

Well, with clouds, it will always be a limbo between performance and beauty .... They just cost a damn lot of fill rate on the graphics card. So, it will never be for "free". So, yes, I hope the Lamianr guys find a few ways to improve performance without sacrificing too much quality. But I think its important to understand, that having both (great performance and good quality) with clouds is hard to achieve (and under some conditions impossible).