Was looking on the Alabeo website and noticed they released the C195.  Looks beautiful and will have to pick it up soon.

It does indeed look beautiful. But no rain effects...

What is much more sad than rain effects is that here it is very visible that X-Plane does not have the same kind of fake environment reflection FSX has. On FSX, on bare metal aircraft it gives you the feeling that the metal reflects the sky and ground. It is not real reflection, but just some fake textures are applied by FSX on the aircraft for that. Looks good, anyway.

 

On X-Plane, this is missing by default (but theoretically possible by plugin, but no aircraft developer has done that yes), making it very hard to impossible to get good metal effects. Just compare on the Alabeo website the screenshots of the FSX and X-Plane versions ...

What is much more sad than rain effects is that here it is very visible that X-Plane does not have the same kind of fake environment reflection FSX has. On FSX, on bare metal aircraft it gives you the feeling that the metal reflects the sky and ground. It is not real reflection, but just some fake textures are applied by FSX on the aircraft for that. Looks good, anyway.

 

On X-Plane, this is missing by default (but theoretically possible by plugin, but no aircraft developer has done that yes), making it very hard to impossible to get good metal effects. Just compare on the Alabeo website the screenshots of the FSX and X-Plane versions ...

Correct. The effects are created using cube maps. They mimic nicely what resembles environmental, dynamic reflections. The problem is not enough X-Plane users have put pressure on Ben Supnik to implement this. I know of two developers who have taken their requests to Laminar and they have fallen on deaf ears. This is unacceptable. If these effects can be achieved on an 8 year old sim, there is no reason or excuse to deny users this feature for X-Plane.

 

Get your act together Laminar, we're in 2014!

Correct. The effects are created using cube maps. They mimic nicely what resembles environmental, dynamic reflections. The problem is not enough X-Plane users have put pressure on Ben Supnik to implement this. I know of two developers who have taken their requests to Laminar and they have fallen on deaf ears. This is unacceptable. If these effects can be achieved on an 8 year old sim, there is no reason or excuse to deny users this feature for X-Plane.

 

Get your act together Laminar, we're in 2014!

I can assure you that it did NOT fall on deaf ears. Your implication is that they have refused to address this at all and that's simply not true.  Read this. It is a matter of priority, and your priorities are probably significantly different than Laminar's.  No one knows better what needs to be a priority for implementation into the sim than Laminar. You may not like it, but that's the way it is.

 

 

No one knows better what needs to be a priority for implementation into the sim than Laminar. You may not like it, but that's the way it is.

 

Are you sure about that?

Are you sure about that?

Am I sure about Laminar's priorities? Yes, it couldn't be any other way.  Since users do not have access to the code, Laminar are the only ones who can know best what the priorities need to be.  End users may have a wish list of priorities but since they don't do the actual work on the sim code they can't possibly know better than Laminar in what order things need to get done.  ie.  It's quite possible that 5 or 10 other things need to be coded before reflections can even be considered.  This is not to say that users have no influence on the priorities, but they can't possibly know better than Laminar what the priorities should be.

 

Am I sure about some users not liking the priorities that Laminar set?  Yes, your response proves it

 

Note:  I'd be happy to continue this discussion, but this thread was about the C195 and has gotten off track.  

Yes, it couldn't be any other way.  Since users do not have access to the code, Laminar are the only ones who can know best what the priorities need to be.  End users may have a wish list of priorities but since they don't do the actual work on the sim code they can't possibly know better than Laminar in what order things need to get done.  ie.  It's quite possible that 5 or 10 other things need to be coded before reflections can even be considered.  This is not to say that users have no influence on the priorities, but they can't possibly know better than Laminar what the priorities should be.

 

But you are forgetting that Austin is extremely stubborn and he's doing with X-Plane whatever he wants, without listening to the userbase.

I can assure you that it did NOT fall on deaf ears. Your implication is that they have refused to address this at all and that's simply not true. Read this. It is a matter of priority, and your priorities are probably significantly different than Laminar's. No one knows better what needs to be a priority for implementation into the sim than Laminar. You may not like it, but that's the way it is.

Ben's blog posting you are linking to is quite interesting. Most of it is about real reflection, but in the end he talks about exactly the kind of fake reflections that would be a nice addition:

 

For example, imagine if the airplane contained a single “reflection” texture – this texture would contain a fake ground texture and alpha transparency where the sky color goes. X-Plane could then fill in the sky color (where there is transparency) only when the weather conditions change, and then apply the texture keeping the plane’s orientation in mind. Such a proposal would give the plausibility of reflections (correct coloring on all parts of the plane across lighting, orientation and weather conditions) for a fraction of the cost of “real” reflections. I’m not saying this is the best idea, just that there’s a lot of intermediate ground between “full reflections” and “make a static texture”.

Unfortunately, that post is already 7 years old.

But you are forgetting that Austin is extremely stubborn and he's doing with X-Plane whatever he wants, without listening to the userbase.

Austin is not the only person at Laminar.  Austin is primarily involved in the flight model/aircraft characteristics.  Although he owns the company, there are others, especially Ben Supnik, who has a significant amount of say as to what goes in the sim, especially related to the "scenery".  This would include reflections on aircraft.

Don't really want to rock the boat but LR implement only what they want to implement.

 

Customers have been requesting legitimate features for years, mostly to bring it on a par with FSX, but these have been repeatedly poo-pooed by LR as not being important or high priority in their eyes.

 

Some sceptics would say that this has lost them many potential customers, but LR don't seem too interested in dominating the flight sim market anyway.

Ben's blog posting you are linking to is quite interesting. Most of it is about real reflection, but in the end he talks about exactly the kind of fake reflections that would be a nice addition:

 

 

Unfortunately, that post is already 7 years old.

The point was that Laminar has looked into this and it did not "fall on deaf ears".  Again, it's obviously not on the top of their priority list (probably for good reasons) and may be a "different" priority from the users. Things may have come along over the seven years that have pushed it down the priority list… that's Laminar's choice. As I stated before, they would know best how things need to get prioritized internally.

Don't really want to rock the boat but LR implement only what they want to implement.

 

Customers have been requesting legitimate features for years, mostly to bring it on a par with FSX, but these have been repeatedly poo-pooed by LR as not being important or high priority in their eyes.

 

Some sceptics would say that this has lost them many potential customers, but LR don't seem too interested in dominating the flight sim market anyway.

It's just hilarious how many people think they know how to design, code, price, market, create a business plan for, and distribute X-Plane better than Laminar.  It is a private business that is very successful and they will run it as they see fit.  You entitled to your opinion, but you can't possibly "know" what they are interested in or not.

It's just hilarious how many people think they know how to design, code, price, market, create a business plan for, and distribute X-Plane better than Laminar.  It is a private business that is very successful and they will run it as they see fit.  You entitled to your opinion, but you can't possibly "know" what they are interested in or not.

I think you misunderstand my point.

I honestly don't give a monkey's how LR is run, distributed etc. As a paying customer I am only interested in certain improvements and features which LR may or may not introduce. If LR put them in fine, if not I live with it or vote with my feet, end of story.

S

 

I can assure you that it did NOT fall on deaf ears. Your implication is that they have refused to address this at all and that's simply not true.  Read this. It is a matter of priority, and your priorities are probably significantly different than Laminar's.  No one knows better what needs to be a priority for implementation into the sim than Laminar. You may not like it, but that's the way it is.

 

Wow they were talking about this 7 years ago. Guess we are halfway there now.

The point was that Laminar has looked into this and it did not "fall on deaf ears". Again, it's obviously not on the top of their priority list (probably for good reasons) and may be a "different" priority from the users. Things may have come along over the seven years that have pushed it down the priority list… that's Laminar's choice. As I stated before, they would know best how things need to get prioritized internally.

 

I believe you're the one who's missing the point. I stated I knew of at least two developers who are quite unhappy this has not been addressed. As a customer, I am also very disappointed Laminar won't change their minds about coding it in this run of X-Plane. You can put all the systems you want in a plane but you need to follow the competition also as far as cosmetics go.

 

One thing for sure is, Laminar are brilliant mathematicians but lousy marketers. This should have been done long ago!