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

[jcomm]

Andras, one of the reasons I have diverted to military flight simulators ( the other being the marked supremacy in terms of flight and systems modelling ), is that they also have a very plausible World, some times recreating historically accurate zones of the World, they have astounding scenery including weather rendering, with superb clouds that cast shadows, have their effects, etc...

 

All of these is combined with massive management of AI, that gives you a hard time, in the air and from ground / sea.

 

I couldn't find in any of my civil flight simulators any thing that comes closer to the sensation of being there like the scenery, and the skies, in Rise of Flight and this, now IL2 Battle of Stalingrad and this, or DCS World!

 

Heck! They're all DX9, not 10 or 11!!! They perform smooth as silk on my systems, with dense graphics, AI, etc...  

 

I keep asking myself, what the hell prevents civil flight simulation from achieving this level of detail, quality and fluidity???? I don't understand, really.... nor the graphics, nor the flight dynamics and overall systems modeling, and I get mad when I read some ( not your's ) excuses from developers... 

[jtwhite]

Rats... im on a 3-week-plus vacation road trip (ahhh retirement) and wont be near my sim to try this out. Hmmm, maybe i can convince my wife that i left the oven on!!

Rats... im on a 3-week-plus vacation road trip (ahhh retirement) and wont be near my sim to try this out. Hmmm, maybe i can convince my wife that i left the oven on!!

[alpilotx]

I keep asking myself, what the hell prevents civil flight simulation from achieving this level of detail, quality and fluidity???? I don't understand, really.... nor the graphics, nor the flight dynamics and overall systems modeling, and I get mad when I read some ( not your's ) excuses from developers... 

Maybe plain, simple, cold money? I mean, users (casual users) etc. like killing each other - virtually that is - much more than just "plain" fly around. And where the money is, there is also more dev resources .... plain economy .... If you have 1-2 devs working exclusively on atmospheric effect, clouds, weather ... then they can for sure do a bit more. And maybe there are other, less visible constraints or trade offs, which are not visible to the naked "user" eye ... . maybe .... or not .

 

Just a thought for the monday ...

[GamerNurd]

Will definitly try this out. Just remove OSM+autogen that I have for europe, right?

Will definitly try this out. Just remove OSM+autogen that I have for europe, right?

[alulekk]

Re:  Clouds:

 

I also wish they "looked" more realistic.

 

Comparing XP clouds to what can be achieved in P3D from a visual standpoint is a complete difference.  Even when I turn the clouds in XP all the way up (and create a fps issue), I don't really fell they "look" very convincing myself.

[gizmosellsbunnys]

Flew 10.3b2 not bad at all and FSX or P3d not the only option. The items that are lacking every user aware of. 1080p get more fuild fps and visuals than I ever got with FSX. Good to use both FSX and XPX.

[alulekk]

Yep. XP more fluid...

Just wish there were some way to get more major devs interested in 3rd party scenery for XP

[Sesquashtoo]

Will definitly try this out. Just remove OSM+autogen that I have for europe, right?

Will definitly try this out. Just remove OSM+autogen that I have for europe, right?

Yes...just take all your downloaded OSM folders and place them in a holding folder on your desktop. Then delete the scenery .cfg file...and let it rebuild on your first run.  Now, you will see just what the new .3x comes with, and with your new FPS headroom, can start to increase features across the board, until you arrive at your own required-to-maintain FPS threshold.  

[captain420]

just add scenery_custom_disabled to temporarily turn them off, no need to move anything or rebuild scenery files.

[Longranger]

 

 

All of these is combined with massive management of AI, that gives you a hard time, in the air and from ground / sea.

 

I couldn't find in any of my civil flight simulators any thing that comes closer to the sensation of being there like the scenery, and the skies, in Rise of Flight and this, now IL2 Battle of Stalingrad and this, or DCS World!

Well, Andras already mentioned the money perspective. The other difference: none of them tries to simulate the world, instead they can use custom build sceneries. If they see that a scenery generates a huge load they simply give it back to their specialists to  optimize this scene and/or tweak the rendering engine.

X-Plane, FSX and so on have the problem that they have to offer a very simple interface that people can add their own sceneries, so you have to limit the number of options. So the rendering engine has to be optimised for rather generic objects.

[nikaslan]

I know I'm resurrecting a 6 month old thread, but as a new XP10 user one of the first things I naturally did was to install all Simheaven OSM sceneries, as per numerous suggestions. My [email protected] + GTX970 4GB system was coming to a crawl in big cities like NY, Paris etc. So I naturally was forced to lower the settings and live with it. Not even once had I thought to test XP10 using only the default autogen.

 

After reading this thread I disabled all OSM data, maxed out default autogen and was gobsmacked by the result! Amazing performance everywhere! Amazing urban scenery!

 

As a sidenote, at least in my system the Simeheaven "Europe_Library" is on its own a performance killer, even if used with the default autogen only. I can live without European style building if this gives me 30+ fps everywhere.

 

Yesterday I applied the "Missing city buildings" fix, as per this thread. In short, in XP 10.30+ the low to medium height urban buildings are missing, and these areas have reverted to single family houses. OMG! After the fix urban areas have become absolutely stunning, using default autogen only and keeping the same great performance!!

[tonywob]

 

 

My [email protected] + GTX970 4GB system was coming to a crawl in big cities like NY, Paris etc

 

Well, this is no surprise, since most of France has every single building inside OSM. Paris, as well as Amsterdam and Berlin are absolute killers. The other major difference is that the X-Plane autogen uses a set number of different models, so hardware instancing (drawing the same object hundreds of times) really helps here, and I suspect without it, even this sort of autogen wouldn't be possible.

 

The other major issue is that the facades (the building blocks used in OSM2XP to create complex buildings) are highly inefficient. Basically, if you have a 14 storey block, 14 different buildings are stacked and stretched on-top of each over, and that's just going vertically, the same happens horizontally as well.

 

I've been experimenting in World2XPlane 0.7.0, and basically created some efficient facades designed for various heights and placed these to match the buildings correctly. I've also limited the amount of objects used down to about 50, and there is quite a large performance improvement. However, development has basically stalled, as I don't have the time or energy to create local facade artwork. So cities like New York now look decent, but at the expense of European cities, etc..