Have payware add-on developers lost the plot?

[SteveW 1,792]

Great that we can pretend to visit the loo, but some things would improve the immersion of flying too. Guys, how about a jacket hung on the coat hook sways in the direction of gravity/inertia, and how about those books and charts coming off the shelf during a bad landing, or rough weather, or heavy-handed manoeuvres?

[Jimmy RFR 406]

 

 

Guys, how about a jacket hung on the coat hook sways in the direction of gravity/inertia

 

I have a few addon aircraft where certain items do sway in the direction of gravity.  It really adds a lot, more than one would think.  In fact, there's a certain rotorcraft I like to fly, where there's a highly visible item that hangs loose straight in front of the pilot and does not move at all, and it bugs the crap outta me!

[gfd 15]

gfd: I'm not altogether sure that 64 bit will provide the magic everyone is looking for. Even if the data throughput and bandwidth is wider you still have a lot of calculations that need to be processed all at once by the processor, however wide the channel. It so depends on what is done to use the increased bit count efficiently. I hope I'm wrong.

 

You are absolutely right. There are no guarantees. We do know that unless somebody invents a way to make textures smaller; if we want immersion, we're going to run out of address space. As a commercial member, you would understand that far better than I. I'm just thinking that 64 bit in concert with DX12, may offer some relief. My understanding is that DX12 will improve the performance of CPU bound games, by spreading the work out more evenly between cores; and that it is abstracted away at a lower level, allowing developers to interact more intimately with hardware. Please understand I'm speaking as a consumer, and not one in the know.

[NGXfanatic 85]

This is a fascinating topic.  I have noticed that while I love to drool over the impressive detail of some of these new fangled airports, especially with the uber realistic inside terminal operations and intricate parking lots, car rental facilities, flying seagulls, etc......there is a fine line between realism and wasting resources.  This kind of detail is vital for games like the GTA series or Skyrim, but not so at all for flight sims.   Bottom line, I think it's safe to say most of us do not intend to leave the cockpit and wander around inside the terminal to simulate picking up our baggage or taking our shoes off for the TSA.  As real as it gets my....   I even wonder what the point is of detailed signage and objects in the roadways outside the terminal. All these things use up precious resources, something we can't afford to spare with an application as old and poorly coded/optimized as FSX.   We need every bit of performance we can get, don't waste it on things we are not paying attention to.

 

It would be one thing if FSX was a native 64bit application, or if the developers added the ability to turn off some of this unnecessary eye candy.   To be fair, lots of them do give the user the flexibility to turn such objects off to balance visuals with their PC's ability, but there is only so much that they can allow to be user customizable.  To summarize, these ultra detailed airports are great to look at in videos or pictures, but I have a much different take when I'm in the cockpit, when I am so immersed in the flight operations that I can barely notice what is happening outside.  That is why I record all my flights and enjoy replaying them with FSrecorder, as only then do I get a chance to relax and enjoy the scenery, smell the flowers, and see the airport details as the developers have originally intended.  When you are in "replay mode", the computer is not so bogged down in flight and panel data calculations, or displaying the complex cockpit geometry so prevalent with high end addons like PMDG, that the frame rate is so much faster because I focus exclusively on wing or outside spot views.  

 

That's just my take.  

[Fi5kuS 57]

Its beginning to get a little paradoxical when scenery developers produce ultra-realistic scenery with loads of specials eye-candy, when we anyways end up switching it all off in a configurator to save VAS and FPS. To be honest, it seems like its the only thing we discuss everytime a new scenery is released. Think I'm about done with buying new scenery for a while. Even though many of us carry powerful OC'ed rigs, we still have to live with 16-17 fps with heavy aircraft add ons, autogen set to zero-realism and cloud layers of the moon. 

[zmak 331]

Its beginning to get a little paradoxical when scenery developers produce ultra-realistic scenery with loads of specials eye-candy, when we anyways end up switching it all off in a configurator to save VAS and FPS. To be honest, it seems like its the only thing we discuss everytime a new scenery is released. Think I'm about done with buying new scenery for a while. Even though many of us carry powerful OC'ed rigs, we still have to live with 16-17 fps with heavy aircraft add ons, autogen set to zero-realism and cloud layers of the moon.

+1

 

Usually I just buy the latest release but bugger that, now I read the reports and didnt buy the last 2 fly tampa sceneries because of crazy VAS and FPS issues. From now on I stick with companies like Pacific Island Simulations, excellent scenery and can fly the PMDg 777 out without a dent in FPS

[Zuendholz 50]

Also for me. I don't need people inside the terminal or other stuff inside. 

 

That's why I love FlightBeam and FSDT scenery so much. They are always low on VAS and very very FPS friendly because of their technique. 25 - 30 FPS are no Problem with PMDG aircraft. No OOM, ultra smooth and lovely airports. 

[robert young 2,897]

Please understand I'm speaking as a consumer, and not one in the know.

 

I'm not exactly an expert myself.

[gfd 15]

 

Its beginning to get a little paradoxical when scenery developers produce ultra-realistic scenery with loads of specials eye-candy, when we anyways end up switching it all off in a configurator to save VAS and FPS. To be honest, it seems like its the only thing we discuss everytime a new scenery is released. Think I'm about done with buying new scenery for a while. Even though many of us carry powerful OC'ed rigs, we still have to live with 16-17 fps with heavy aircraft add ons, autogen set to zero-realism and cloud layers of the moon.

 

Yeah kinda seems that way doesn't it? But if I were a developer with an eye to the future, I'd probably do exactly what FlyTampa did with Toronto. A lot easier to disable options now, than rewrite the software when this type of scenery design becomes the norm. And it will.

 

Also for me. I don't need people inside the terminal or other stuff inside. 

 

That's why I love FlightBeam and FSDT scenery so much. They are always low on VAS and very very FPS friendly because of their technique. 25 - 30 FPS are no Problem with PMDG aircraft. No OOM, ultra smooth and lovely airports.

 

Can you tell me what FSDT airport is giving you 30 FPS with the PMDG 777? I must have bought all the wrong ones.

[Zuendholz 50]

Yeah kinda seems that way doesn't it? But if I were a developer with an eye to the future, I'd probably do exactly what FlyTampa did with Toronto. A lot easier to disable options now, than rewrite the software when this type of scenery design becomes the norm. And it will.

 

 

Can you tell me what FSDT airport is giving you 30 FPS with the PMDG 777? I must have bought all the wrong on

 

Ok 30 was a bit unrealistic :ph34r:, only the outside view is giving me 30 FPS and more (every airport). 

 

I usually have 25 FPS with the 777 -> FSDT Geneva, Houston | FB Denver, Washington (in Cockpit)

About 21 - 23 FPS FSDT Vancouver and FB Phoenix. (in Cockpit)

About 19 - 21 with FSDT New York (in Cockpit)

 

And I never ever had an OOM. 

 

I don't know what they are doing, but it works perfect for me. 

 

But my point is that I don't need people and other stuff inside the terminal. Especially when the airport is in a difficult environment.

I love eyecandy, really. But not if the airport isn't suitable. 

[gfd 15]

Ok 30 was a bit unrealistic :ph34r:, only the outside view is giving me 30 FPS and more (every airport). 

 

I usually have 25 FPS with the 777 -> FSDT Geneva, Houston | FB Denver, Washington (in Cockpit)

About 21 - 23 FPS FSDT Vancouver and FB Phoenix. (in Cockpit)

About 19 - 21 with FSDT New York (in Cockpit)

 

And I never ever had an OOM. 

 

I don't know what they are doing, but it works perfect for me. 

 

But my point is that I don't need people and other stuff inside the terminal. Especially when the airport is in a difficult environment.

I love eyecandy, really. But not if the airport isn't suitable. 

 

Thanks for the comeback Phillip. I was really disappointed with Toronto when I first installed it with all the options on. I made a bunch of changes and now, with the 777 I am getting about 17FPS at the gate with approx 850MB of VAS left. I have FTX Global and Vector. My next move is to disable tertiary roads in Vector to see if that further improves things. I would like to say that the performance you are getting is a compliment to the way you have setup your system. I take your point about performance.

 

I am getting a bit off topic, but anyone with CYYZ should go to FlyTampa's website. The Toronto section is active and there have been a number of suggestions and downloads to address performance issues.

 

 

I'm not exactly an expert myself.

 

Robert, my comment was a compliment, not a dig.

 

Great that we can pretend to visit the loo, but some things would improve the immersion of flying too. Guys, how about a jacket hung on the coat hook sways in the direction of gravity/inertia, and how about those books and charts coming off the shelf during a bad landing, or rough weather, or heavy-handed manoeuvres?

 

What a good idea. Now what if we could also pick them up  :rolleyes:

[~Craig~ 10]

To me, there's no "right" or "wrong" in this debate, it's simply about preference.

 

What I personally think we are lacking in the payware addon scenery market, is more produts that feature more airports, at slightly less detail.    In other words; think of Drziwiecki Polish Airports Vol 1; Four fantastic, nicely textured, good performing medium sized airports, for $25 or so.   This is what I would love to see more of, instead of always just these hugely detailed mega airports at increasingly high 'single unit' costs.

 

Imagine, for example, a "Swedish Airports 1" package, with 5 southern Swedish airports, including Arlanda, Malmo, Gothenburg, Jonkopping, etc... medium detail, nice clean baked texturing, but not so much extreme details.  About $25.

 

Above is just an example, but with how many "complex tubeliner" FS fans there are out there who often have to sacrifice FPS or smoothness when flying to/from some of the Aerosoft, or FSDT, FT or Flightbeam airports, I'm sure there'd be a healthy market for a little more "quantity" and just a little less "quality" where scenery is concerned.

 

Certainly when I saw that the interiors of terminals were starting to get modelled, with baggage carousels etc, I did agree with the OP that this is just silly and going too far.

 

To be fair, with Orbx Homer, you can completely disable it.

[robert young 2,897]

Robert, my comment was a compliment, not a dig.

 

 

I realise that. I didn't take it as a dig. No worries.

[Jim Robinson 122]

To be fair with Orbx Homer, can you tell one iota of difference between having it enabled and not? I'm skeptical...

[Manny 1,293]

Anyone remember in FS9 we used to have those amazing Flight Zone sceneries... KPDX and KPVD and a whole bunch of small airports and the entire area build up.

 

How much memory did those take under win xp? 2GB of VAS?