Some news about 10.40

[tonywob 4,768]

Finally some news about 10.40 has appeared

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/2015/06/x-plane-10-40-the-new-dsf-loader/

 

The new DSF loader hopefully will fix some of the stuttering problems which happens when flying and the sim is loading in the background. There is also some information about the extended region/visibility

 

 

[rdb 44]

Great news!

This has to be the most annoying X-Plane problem for me. Loading tiles of HD mesh, W2XP and custom payware scenery can pause the sim for as long as 5-10 seconds on my system. And i'm running of a fast SSD. Can't wait to try 10.40.

[mdavis 10]

Running XP from an SSD has almost no effect on scenery loading during flight.  Also, read up on SSDs.  There are many people trying to run XP from an SSD that is filling up.  An SSD, because of the way in which it purges and replaces data blocks, needs a lot of empty space to avoid becoming overloaded and slowing down.  SSDs are not the best way to run XP, IMHO.  Please check this web site or others for SSD info.  A full SSD is little better than a HD.

 

http://tinyurl.com/k6t947y

[alulekk 3]

The comment about "no fog changes" was interesting.

 

What were the fog changes people have been wanting?

[tonywob 4,768]

SSDs are not the best way to run XP, IMHO

 

I would have to disagree with you here. I have 2 laptops both with X-Plane installed, one with an SSD, one without, and both have similar CPUs, Memory and GPUs. The one with the SSD is so much faster in everyway that there is simply no comparison. Maybe the HD I have is very slow, but I notice smoother flight, less stutters and of course much faster loading times. So much in fact, that I simply find it painful to now go back to a mechanical hard drive.

 

 

What were the fog changes people have been wanting?

 

Apparently there was supposed to be some kind of more realistic volumetric fog. There were rumours and some screenshots posted some time ago, but since then, we've heard nothing more of this.

[mdavis 10]

You're the last person I'd disagree with, @tonywob.  In all fairness, I'm running a near state of the art rig with extremely fast 4TB HDs with 64GB cache on SATA3 6GB/sec cables and a super fast gaming mobo and RAM setup.  It may be that the data is streamed into the big cache which is optimized to accept data from the multiple platters (I guess you could consider the cache as an SSD - didn't think of that, but it clears when power is removed unlike an SSD) and then into RAM/VRAM.  The high speed SATA3 cables are almost twice as fast as SATA2, and I have 32GB of RAM so the purge/load cycle may take some advantage of the extra RAM space to load before purging - not sure how XP handles that.

 

So in all fairness, it's probably a whole lot more efficient than an "ordinary" HD.  Thanks for the comment and comparison.

[Baber20 1,438]

Uh I dont even bother looking at the dev blog anymore. They had a couple of years to make a perfect sim but unfortunately they seem to be focusing on the wrong things. People want more realism. No fog update ? Why am I not surprised. Still lack of atc, weather, fog are a few basic things that come to my mind. Oh and did I mention that all aircrafts in Xp10 look like they are made up of plastic? Lack of real time reflections thats why. Lower the visibility and you will see that the lighting engine sucks. Its like you are under a shadow. Ofcourse It's Austin's personal play toy so he can do whatever he wants to but I am still hoping that we get to see a brighter future.

[Arthur42417 193]

10.40 was supposed to fix the visibility issue from release, did they lie? :rolleyes: 

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

10.40 was supposed to fix the visibility issue from release, did they lie? :rolleyes:

 

No

 

"X-Plane 10.40 also has the option of an extended DSF scenery region for sharper terrain; with this option off, two DSFs are loaded at one time during sim boot and one or two are loaded at a time while you fly. With the extended DSF region on, up to four DSFs are loaded at once during sim boot and one or two are loaded while you fly."

 

"2. There was a bug in the shaders that caused the fog to have a white artifact zone in the middle that should now be gone."

 

"However, the extended DSFs _do_ allow us to show higher visibility clearer, so the upper altitude views should be a lot less “foggy”. I think I showed some high altitude pics a while ago that showed the difference."

 

cheers

Peter

[Arthur42417 193]

No

 

"X-Plane 10.40 also has the option of an extended DSF scenery region for sharper terrain; with this option off, two DSFs are loaded at one time during sim boot and one or two are loaded at a time while you fly. With the extended DSF region on, up to four DSFs are loaded at once during sim boot and one or two are loaded while you fly."

 

"2. There was a bug in the shaders that caused the fog to have a white artifact zone in the middle that should now be gone."

 

"However, the extended DSFs _do_ allow us to show higher visibility clearer, so the upper altitude views should be a lot less “foggy”. I think I showed some high altitude pics a while ago that showed the difference."

 

cheers

Peter

thanks Peter 

[Pugilist2 878]

Good news.

[highflyerbel 3]

To be honest I don't really care much about the extended visibility while I fly with HDR on and using the right art controls, at high altitude the lighting and haze look pretty realistic in my opinion, especially in compare to fsx/p3d where the visibility is high but not realistic at all because the lack of atmospheric scattering..the only real issue that keep me away from x plane is the lack of a decent weather engine and unrealistic clouds, those are a real show stopper..

 

Anyway with the statement on the blog about fog and the focus on the mobile platform for a long time now I pretty much lost all hope, its a shame, with hd mesh, photoscenry and world2xplane there is so much potential for a great sim

[Arthur42417 193]

very true M. Camp, weather and clouds do suck in XP10.  Even Skymaxx payware looks horrible.

[gizmosellsbunnys 106]

rather see work on weather engine and clouds worked on. Don't expect much difference till newer version of Xplane like 11 comes out. Easier money made with tablet apps as there less overhead and fatter profit margin, and coding is easier on tablets no legacy code or products to support.

[Mochi 82]

Agree with M. Camp - there's something about a certain stubbornness in the X-Plane >> dev << community that appears to be led from the top of the chain! After 3 years of updates to version 10 we are still looking at the same god awful weather 'engine' Don't get me wrong, am overall glad to have this sim as an alternative and for night flying it has the upper hand (luckily darkness hides that problem I just ranted about) I purchased skymaxx pro and while the clouds look great they are limited by the weather engine - have tried EFASS and NOAA and they do help but seem inhibited by underlying x-plane code.

 

Similar for Flightfactor (Ramzzess) 777, which I also purchased. They refused to fix the cockpit and so Pumper came along and fixed it for us (huge props to him for that) The last glaring anomaly are the wings and for an 80 dollar plane, its just incredible they refuse to fix them.

 

It is only because of the great work of  the >> non dev << community that x-plane 10 has been at all usable - they have fixed the mesh, the textures, the visibility, the performance..... kudos to you guys.