The New Faster, Leaner Next Generation Flight Simulator SIM-Posium is Now Available for Your Input

[codechris 9]

To be fair, Flight Sim appear less frame rate intensive then other games, since people appear to be happy at 30FPS, rather then others where people demand 60 or more. But maybe I've misunderstood on that one

[srborick 0]

Thanks. I had seen that and was aware it had capabilities; my real question was how the tools worked and how user friendly were they? The small bit of information I found regarding that, looked more like working in blender rather than the intuitive process in cities; skylines, but the info I saw was old and things may have changed.

 

 

And we have the opportunity to influence those changes as UNIGINE continues their version 2 trek. 

 

HiFlyer... know anything about 3D engines? Want to join the eval team? PM me.

 

Stephen B.

 

 

To be fair, Flight Sim appear less frame rate intensive then other games, since people appear to be happy at 30FPS, rather then others where people demand 60 or more. But maybe I've misunderstood on that one

 

 

For me... I'm perfectly fine with 20 fps as long as it remains consistent and smooth. When running the Port Angeles tech demo my system keep things up above 40 and higher, often topping out at 70 fps... a little stuttering was noticed in some area, but certainly not a game stopper and more than likely can be fixed.

 

My point is... the Port Angeles demo has quite a bit of detail to include clouds and rain effects and the immersion was fantastic.... I couldn't really tell the difference when the frame rates dropped down to 40 or were as high as 70 fps... and that's what I'm talking about. 

 

I believe the threshold should never dip below the frame rate that takes away from the immersion. Some say that's 18 fps, some say it's 20 and others say higher... is there a consensus or actual fact as to how many frames per second are enough to maintain immersion of flying?

 

How about you codechris, interested in playing around with the UNIGINE eval kit? PM me....

 

Stephen B.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

To be fair, Flight Sim appear less frame rate intensive then other games, since people appear to be happy at 30FPS, rather then others where people demand 60 or more. But maybe I've misunderstood on that one

 

Well keep in mind that VR is becoming very popular, and is probably the wave of the future, so take any normal frame rate and double it, probably. This means that no matter what engine is used, how resources are used, and maintaining set framerates is going to be very important. A lot of modern engines even examine your computer and give recommended settings, or they juggle resources to keep a set framerate. Outerra for instance juggles priorities of certain tasks to keep frame rates steady, and I think people are quite tired of threads about lagging and stuttering.

 

A modern sim should be smarter by taking that sort of thing into account in the beginning.

 

No more sims that your computer can't run except at the lowest settings for a few years. 

 

My point is... the Port Angeles demo has quite a bit of detail to include clouds and rain effects and the immersion was fantastic....

 

I saw the detail as well, but then I went "down in the bushes" for an up close and personal. I was interested in if the streets were drivable, and started to see a few anomalies... sideways streets where the mesh didn't quite match the textures, trees and streetlights in the middle of streets etc. I even took a look underwater.

 

This looks something like an Orbx design process; painstakingly hand crafted scenery, but I wondered if there were automated settings, and how extensive of a city could they create without detailed hand modification, and how accurately, which started me thinking about tools.

 

Just curiosity.

[pmanhart 176]

 

 

Well keep in mind that VR is becoming very popular, and is probably the wave of the future, so take any normal frame rate and double it, probably.

 

I have to disagree with you there, VR is going to be a fad because of the seclusion from other people... I wouldn't dream of putting a hood over my face and shutting out my family from what I'm doing, and I don't think a lot of other people will as well.

 

Like 3D TV, we've been down the VR road before and it fizzled.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

I have to disagree with you there, VR is going to be a fad because of the seclusion from other people... I wouldn't dream of putting a hood over my face and shutting out my family from what I'm doing, and I don't think a lot of other people will as well.

 

Like 3D TV, we've been down the VR road before and it fizzled.

 

Time will tell, but there comes a time when a technology reaches the point of practicality, and an awful lot of people and very smart companies are spending an awful lot of money on all different types of VR.

 

I wouldn't be so certain......

 

I can't think of any companies off the top of my head working on 3D applications, not taking VR into account.

 

Any other mutants here like me, who can see 3D with the naked eye? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgpLkL62csk

[dtmicro 1]

I think the issue with 3D (and also VR) is it has always caused eye fatigue to people. If they can make it more natural feeling, then it might gain wider acceptance, but I think the natural feeling is expensive and a long ways off.

 

I don't see it as a fad, but more of a niche.

[HiFlyer 9,343]

I see it as more like the introduction of tablets, when a lot of people said "What a silly idea, who's gonna carry those things around?"

 

Right now the sets are just being introduced, but everyone who can, seems to be gearing up to produce "experiences" with them.

 

As the price drops, they might become as ubiquitous as headphones: something everyone has a couple of, laying around somewhere. At which point, the virtuous circle sets in. Augmented reality, Phone functions migrating to our glasses, and maybe our clothes.......

 

15 years from now virtual reality in some form could be absolutely everywhere. (I actually suspect it will be sooner than that. The tech industry needs something new to sell us, now that we all have dvd players and big screens)

 

This is gonna be shoved right down the worlds throat as the next, indispensable big thing.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/freddiedawson/2014/10/31/how-virtual-reality-could-transform-society/

[srborick 0]

I can certainly see VR for some applications and I've been a fan of it for years and have at times purchased the latest thing. But for flight I've never been that partial to VR because of the inability to see what my hands are doing.

 

It will be interesting to see what becomes of the latest delve into VR... 

 

With that being said, I'd be more interested in what becomes of MS Hololens and it's applications.... now there's a technology I just might be able to wrap my head around... pun intended.

 

Stephen B.

[dtmicro 1]

I took at look at UE4 and Unigine as far as just reading stuff about it online, I like Unigine for the fact that it has a C# Wrapper, but not ever having used either engine, I'm not sure if there are any severe performance implications to using C# in Unigine instead of C++. I suggest srborick send an email to the Unigine eval support team and ask them something like:

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you see any downsides to using your C# API instead of the C++ API that you provide?

Since we are doing a flight sim and performance is paramount, do you see any gotchas to where we will need to use C++. Are we going to have to use any unmanaged pointers in C#?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

There was a C# wrapper under development for the Unreal4 Engine, but it got canned for various reasons because it was a third-party add-on. If we went with UE4, it'd have to be a C++ back-end, the front-end API stuff we build could still be in C# and some of the back-end too since we could wrap some of the key parts of it.

 

I think the downsides of Unigine not having as much public documentation and community support might be slightly counteracted by the fact it supports C#, compared to the huge user base of the UE4 engine (which has thousands of more users than Unigine does).

 

It's a bit hard for me to know exactly how much time native C# support is going to save in labor (hence the development process) when dealing with the game engine, because the way they are implementing C++ in these newer game engines is a little different than in the past, it's not quite as complicated as it used to be. The game engine developers finally realized, hey if we are going to expose everything in C++, that doesn't we mean we still do not need to heavily encapsulate it.

This thread is also interesting:

 

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?304-Which-is-the-largest-maximum-size-of-land&highlight=landscape+size

 

From what I gather, it is possible to create a flight sim in the UE4 engine, though there will likely be more coordinate correction issues than their would be if using Unigine. That is at least as long as Unigine does what their roadmap says and adds some native support for various GIS coordinate systems.

 

At this point, I'm pretty convinced to give Unigine a shot at least.

[dtmicro 1]

I am now convinced Unigine is what you are going to want to use, it was built for this purpose. I thought it would take me longer to be convinced, but many of the other engines had very few of the core features we needed for a Flight Sim, but Unigine does have many of them (not all, but a lot more than the others, but more importantly Unigine has a roadmap to add more). On top of that, it also appears to be highly capable in the graphics department easily matching (and in some ways outmatching even CryEngine3 and UE4), at least with some of the effects and transparency lighting stuff it had.

 

It looks like we might even get access to their vegetation, buildings, and textures as standard with the engine. If this is true, then a lot of the preliminary graphics work is already done and we'd be way ahead of the game. Creating a workable prototype, well it's pretty much already been done by them in the Port Angeles demo, not sure what we add for the prototype, I guess we could use mesh to create a different area.

 

Their graphics designers are second to none, I've never seen mountains look that good in a game. The tree models are some of the best I've seen, if not the best. The houses and buildings look amazing, the ground textures are also incredible. It all looks almost too good to be true for a Flight Sim.

 

It would be interesting how difficult or how long it would take to import a MESH and use the same included textures that came with Port Angeles (assuming they are included) to texture another area (like say Idaho or Oregon, or maybe even Upstate NY)...

 

They have basically already done the graphics so well, that I think I can safely say you can abandon aerial images entirely by following the general methods they are already using for graphics creation.

[codechris 9]

I've seen a fair few videos of people using Occulus Rift with Elite, GTA and Asseto Corsa to name a few and users always seam blown away. One re-occuring theme I find with these videos is people often speak of the a sense of scale, and how everything feels within touching distance.

 

However, the minimum graphics card for the Occulus when it's released next year is something like a 970. I have a 770 and have not found anything yet that it can't cope with, so a 900-series shows how much power it needs. As many people have stated when reviewing these, you need to have 60FPS or more, otherwise you can feel sick, which is also why it has such a high mimimum requirement.

 

 

I have to disagree with you there, VR is going to be a fad because of the seclusion from other people... I wouldn't dream of putting a hood over my face and shutting out my family from what I'm doing, and I don't think a lot of other people will as well.

 

Like 3D TV, we've been down the VR road before and it fizzled.

 

 

This makes me really wonder how you play games. When I'm playing I am on my own, unless you mean, for example, family coming in and watching the screen with you. I can't say I expected people to do this. When I'm playing games I am technically secluding myself from others, although I don't see it that way. However, I see what you're point is. I can't say I thought a lot of people do that, I mean, especially on Vatsim the last thing I want is someone coming in and talking to me. Middle of a game you can pause it which is fine if someone once to asks you something. It would be the same with this, except you just need to raise it above you're eyes, in fact you wouldn't even need to do that unless you needed to look. But When you are using the Occulus, people can still watch your monitor, although the view is a little odd.

 

Something over your eyes does have other problems though, other then the one which you describe, which is not being able to easily see controls. Form what I've seen it's easy enough to lift above your eyes, that could still be very annoying. I'm not sure there are any good ways to get around that. I question how much of an issue that really is though. I guess we'll find out next year. I can't say I would want to always play games on the Occulus, however there are some games that simply look outstanding. The GTA5 video on the motorbike for example, and some of the scenes in Elite with good systems looks awe-inspiring. To me, I imagine using the Occulus in something as detailed as an NGX for example, would be as close as I would get to owning a simulator. But it's not for everyone admittedly. I can't see it going no where, however. I looks too good!

[dtmicro 1]

Don't mean to be picky, but we're getting a bit off-topic with all the VR talk.

[torium 207]

As a side note to simulator engines........

 

Last year John Venema (Orbx) had some comments about alternative simulator engines. Among other things, he wrote, quote:

 

I've said it before but nothing comes close to the FSX/P3D engine (now P3D2.x really in all honesty), and trust me when I tell you I am a 3D engine enthusiast that looks closely at the industry all the time.

 

I do get contacted all the time from 3D engine vendors, only recently a CEO emailed me and showed me some YouTube demos and an expensive stand they had at some trade show;  amazing visuals with grass reacting to rotorwash and lush trees, water etc. Only problem was their engine did not do whole round-earth, had an operating area of a few hundred miles which was a fraction of PNW and they could not convince me they wanted to put skin in the game to help us even port a test area. So yet another pretty engine which is looking for a consumer market.

 

Let me give you a visual clue about Outerra: they have one single species of tree covering the entire planet over the top of procedurally generated bland terrain. That to me tells me that their basic terrain engine is an aftertought that needs serious R&D before they can provide a realistic global terrain engine that gives a sense of reality. Go back and review all their videos and your can see the landscape resembles a generic pseudo-world more akin to a fantasy roleplaying game than a simulator.

 

I understand that Orbx will defend the FSX / P3D engine - that's where they put all their eggs.

 

Any comments you have would be appreciated, dtmicro.

[Pastaiolo 1,686]

Yeah, i also think that.

Plus outerra is still quite work in progress, judging it from its current look is a little silly i believe.

 

 

The other video he showed with rotorwash was probably similar to this

 

 

 

@dtmicro: But, did you see how mountains are in Outerra?

 

i made this video back then, and i think, at least mountains with their general layout, look beautiful

[dtmicro 1]

I was VERY impressed with Unigine's feature list:

https://unigine.com/products/unigine/features/

Outerra looked good too in most respects, and I agree it's hard to judge Outerra, but Outerra is not really ready as a game engine. I am sure Outerra could be spiced up, and both Outerra and Unigine are probably in the same league graphics-wise in some respects.

 

For a game engine, one of the most important things you need is an active developer community and a lot of documentation, tools, and samples on how to do things. Outerra had some modders adding models and doing some physics stuff, but those are not actual games. Outerra has a ways to go, maybe many years unless they get funded and get more help. Unigine is already a well known engine, even though it is not NEARLY as widely in-use as Unity, CryEngine3, Unreal4.

 

Unigine has split their SDK into 2 versions, one is SPECIFICALLY built for designing flight SIM's. Unigine has already been used to produce Helicopter simulations, and at least a few games.

 

There are people in the CryEngine3 forums complaining that they want more of the lighting and transparency effects that exist in Unigine added to the Cryengine. Even the hard-core CE3 developers in their own forums were talking about how advanced the Unigine engine is and how it has partially surpassed both the CE3 and UE4 engines.

 

Now that wasn't what convinced me, all that stuff is fine and dandy, but what I was really looking at was what would be quickest and the lowest budget way to create a great flight-sim in. Here it was easy, none of those engines were targeting the ability to handle a FULL-WORLD generation as part of their primary or core functionality, but Unigine is. Now Unigine might not have completed everything you need, but they have a clear road map including most of the features we need to finish a flight sim to completion.

 

Unigine has already done much of the work that I was worried we would have to do ourselves. I think they have set a high foundation for graphics work as well, and likely their demos and instructional materials are going to reveal how they created those demos, meaning the techniques can be reproduced and modified to produce more variety.