PREVIEW - how about an UHD Mesh Scenery?

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

This beg for the canadian rockies region upgrade. Pretty pretty please !!!!

[alpilotx 505]

Looks great! From your screenshots one can clearly see that mountain regions gain more improvement than flat regions. So for the Alps, Rockys and the like UHD would be a big improvement! Really looking forward!

Which are also the only regions, where 30m mesh makes really good sense - at least in a flight sim ... in the flat land, I would not bother with it.

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

Which are also the only regions, where 30m mesh makes really good sense - at least in a flight sim ... in the flat land, I would not bother with it.

 

This is fantastic, and can't wait to give it a go at some point, but I think it might a little too much for my old computer.

 

I'm thinking it could also possibly make sense around coastal areas. I'd love to see how this would improve the appearance of small islets, cliffs and islands.

[JimmiG 244]

It's too bad X-Plane still doesn't have the ability to scale the LOD of the mesh dynamically with distance like FSX does. Then this kind of detail would be possible without pushing the system requirements too much.

[Pugilist2 878]

Grand Canyon and the Four Corners area look great.  Looking forward to it....

[strider1 575]

It's too bad X-Plane still doesn't have the ability to scale the LOD of the mesh dynamically with distance like FSX does. Then this kind of detail would be possible without pushing the system requirements too much.

 

What does that mean to "scale the LOD of the mesh dynamically" ?

[alpilotx 505]

It's too bad X-Plane still doesn't have the ability to scale the LOD of the mesh dynamically with distance like FSX does. Then this kind of detail would be possible without pushing the system requirements too much.

That would only work, if X-Plane would build the mesh "on-the-fly" out of some half-prepared GIS data ... But instead, X-Plane has - at least up to now - followed the other approach: pre-build the complete mesh at scenery generation time ... Of course, here the drawback is, the a completely pre-created mesh is hardly LOD-able (at runtime) ... but the advantage is, that neither does X-Plane need any CPU cycles on generating the mesh on the fly. This also allows to spend as much time on the mesh generation as we want (because it happens at scenery creation time ... where nobody notices) ... which is necessary when creating a complex, irregular mesh.

 

This paradigm of pre-generating was very important in the past years ... BUT I agree, that maybe in the future this might (though, I have absolutely no idea when/how ... or if at all ... definitely not in the short term) change, as hardware becomes even more powerful (and adequate to generate similar scenery on-the-fly). Because on-the-fly mesh generation has not only the LOD-ability advantage but also needs less storage space. A complete triangle mesh (especially with the still necessary redundancy at texture transition - where triangle need to exist multiple times) at higher and higher resolutions "wastes" more and more space (on the other hand, storage space - and luckily even internet bandwidth - becomes less of a problem) ...

 

But for the time being, it is as it is ... and still works quite nicely as we can see B)

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

Are you talking about procedural mesh  ? I would think that would be very intensive on the GPU.

[alpilotx 505]

Are you talking about procedural mesh  ? I would think that would be very intensive on the GPU.

I am not really talking about anything  ... I am just throwing around some very vague ideas, which came to my mind (and they have no relation to any tech discussion I have with laminar - really only my private thoughts).

So, thus I wouldn't even say if GPU/CPU ... what ever ... Just very abstract thoughts about doing more things on-the-fly at some point in the future.

[JimmiG 244]

That would only work, if X-Plane would build the mesh "on-the-fly" out of some half-prepared GIS data ... But instead, X-Plane has - at least up to now - followed the other approach: pre-build the complete mesh at scenery generation time ... Of course, here the drawback is, the a completely pre-created mesh is hardly LOD-able (at runtime) ... but the advantage is, that neither does X-Plane need any CPU cycles on generating the mesh on the fly. This also allows to spend as much time on the mesh generation as we want (because it happens at scenery creation time ... where nobody notices) ... which is necessary when creating a complex, irregular mesh.

 

This paradigm of pre-generating was very important in the past years ... BUT I agree, that maybe in the future this might (though, I have absolutely no idea when/how ... or if at all ... definitely not in the short term) change, as hardware becomes even more powerful (and adequate to generate similar scenery on-the-fly). Because on-the-fly mesh generation has not only the LOD-ability advantage but also needs less storage space. A complete triangle mesh (especially with the still necessary redundancy at texture transition - where triangle need to exist multiple times) at higher and higher resolutions "wastes" more and more space (on the other hand, storage space - and luckily even internet bandwidth - becomes less of a problem) ...

 

But for the time being, it is as it is ... and still works quite nicely as we can see B)

 

It works, but FSX is able to render 5m or even 1m mesh without too much of a performance or RAM hit. X-Plane doesn't seem as scalable by comparison. I don't know exactly how FSX does it, but the downloads tend to be smaller as well (I don't remember, but the 38m mesh I downloaded for the entire US was only a couple of GB's), so I guess it does more work "on the fly". The drawback is obviously that many suffer from stutters, uneven framerate and blurries. Different sims, different drawbacks/advantages :-)

[alpilotx 505]

Yes, of course FSX does it mostly in the on-the-fly way ... And one of the main reasons (there are quite a lot of other aspects to it ... but lets "simplify" here) why that worked many years ago is, that it does not bother to generate an irregular mesh like X-Plane does, but simply generates an orthogonal mesh. At least with default (landclass) style scenery, you also have some visual drawbacks with this "rectangular" approach (at least this was my impression until FS2004, which was my last MS sim ... and it is still my impression from many current FSX screenshots). But of course, this on.the-fly scenery generation approach is the reason for the smaller files ... In the end, as you correctly point out, both approaches have advantages and disadvantages ... but in the very long run (this is just plain guessing on my side!), I think, that things will slowly shift to more "on-the-fly" scenery generation ... Step by step.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

This is way beyond me technically (but then most things are in the digital world!) but if the reason that X Plane has a steady, non blurry detail, with terrain and objects pretty much visible as far as the eye can see (at lowish altitudes) I cannot for the life of me see any advantage in changing. I have given up on P3D v2 as I cannot live with the texture of a mountain side coming into focus bit by bit (even when up close) like pieces of a jigsaw being added.

 

I assume this is as a result of loading textures on the fly - if not then as I say I am useless at this stuff - if it is as a result of the on-the fly-load then please Andras/Austin/Ben don't change anything. Blurries are the biggest immersion killer, followed closely by stutters, followed closely by OOMs. X Plane has none of these..but for me P3D has all of them (although the OOM thing has reduced significantly) and my system is no slouch.

 

In X Plane I can fly at 450knts at 100 ft altitdude with pretty high settings across San Francisco with no blurries, stutters or OOMs. Not what flight sims are for I know but heck it is such fun. Can't have the same fun in the other options. (I do use it properly as well though for re-running my real life flight training and practising up and coming real world exercises - so I can behave when needed).

 

So please - if it would mean losing that sharpness of detail and fluidity- don't change a thing!

 

cheers

Peter

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

I have given up on P3D v2 as I cannot live with the texture of a mountain side coming into focus bit by bit (even when up close) like pieces of a jigsaw being added.

 

+1. This is the biggest turn-off for P3D/FSX at the moment for me. I purchased some photoscenery for it from FranceVFR and the popup and blurry textures were just really bad and ruined it for me. Maybe X-Plane takes longer to load the scenery, but it's worth it in my opinion as there is no annoying popping or blurry textures.

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

+1. This is the biggest turn-off for P3D/FSX at the moment for me. I purchased some photoscenery for it from FranceVFR and the popup and blurry textures were just really bad and ruined it for me. Maybe X-Plane takes longer to load the scenery, but it's worth it in my opinion as there is no annoying popping or blurry textures.

 

I am not experiencing blurry texture at all in P3D or X-plane. How much memory do you have on your videocard ?

 

Note : if it does happen, it not apparent enough that it bothers me.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

I am not experiencing blurry texture at all in P3D or X-plane. How much memory do you have on your videocard ?

I have a Titan. I believe it has 6gb - but don't quote me. Terrible blurries and stutters.