P3D 3.0 Speculation & General Nonsense

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

It's not Prepar3D v3.

[Poppet 710]

It's not Prepar3D v3.

Ah but it might be.......ok point taken . Fun while it lasted

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Gui will be same why would they change that - other than transparent atc window some are screaming for - it will be the same

 

So has the transparent ATC window been confirmed for 3.0?

[Pete Dowson 558]

Having said that V3 will be announced before the end of this month if not released:

 

 

Hmm. Seems quite likely, as I'm away (in Madeira as it happens) all next week. Not back till October!

 

Pete

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

So has the transparent ATC window been confirmed for 3.0?

 

No idea - sorry - probably will be included how hard can that be 

 

To all the non believers of course its v3 in his latest videos - do the math folks 

[Poppet 710]

Ahhhh, I knew it, Brandon is a secret spy sent in by Rob to crush the rumours. Ok back on track again. And this confirms it

 

Hmm. Seems quite likely, as I'm away (in Madeira as it happens) all next week. Not back till October!

 

Pete

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

No idea - sorry - probably will be included how hard can that be

 

Unfortunately I have the feeling it's not coming in 3.0 either.

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6317&t=112946

 

And it was a feature that was promised since 1.3.

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Unfortunately I have the feeling it's not coming in 3.0 either.

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6317&t=112946

 

And it was a feature that was promised since 1.3.

 

Beau says that it wouldn't come with a point release (a minor update). Version 3 would not be considered a point release. So, it's always possible. We shall see.

[Guest]

So has the transparent ATC window been confirmed for 3.0?

 

Anyone knows why getting this done is so hard...? Since FSX had it...?

[Zuendholz 50]

Anyone knows why getting this done is so hard...? Since FSX had it...?

 

Is this important?

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Beau says that it wouldn't come with a point release (a minor update). Version 3 would not be considered a point release. So, it's always possible. We shall see.

 

Yeah, but I think it's weird that Beau is going on about how hard a transparent ATC window would be to implement when a new major version is supposedly coming soon. And if John Venema is true on 3.0 being closer to something like 2.6, then I'll not be surprised if we'll have to wait until 4.0 for a major UI rewrite. Especially if major versions don't mean major changes anymore.

 

Anyone knows why getting this done is so hard...? Since FSX had it...?

 

+1

[Christopher Low 5,369]

Why would implementing a transparent ATC window be difficult when FSX had one by default? Why would better water texture animation at altitude be difficult when FSX (via REX) did a much better job of it? I don't think that LM are looking at this from the viewpoint of home flightsim enthusiasts. They probably just think that both of those features are irrelevant for their military customers, and therefore not worth bothering about.

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

Ahhhh, I knew it, Brandon is a secret spy sent in by Rob to crush the rumours. Ok back on track again. And this confirms it

 

 

Dont forget I was the first one to predict it will be here before end of month! 

[Poppet 710]

Dont forget I was the first one to predict it will be here before end of month! 

 

(1) Poppet                       10/Oct/15

 

(2) GaryH                       16/Nov/15

 

(3) Christopher Low        30/Nov/15

 

(4) SlowFlyer                  05/Jan/16

 

(5) DuthAir                      25/Nov15

 

(6) TheFlightSimGuy      30/Sep/15 

 

Foggy perception

Tenebrific moments

A long tunnel of 

Uncertainties 

Makes journey’s askew 

So near, yet, so far

Never ending maze

And a blinding haze

 

Good luck and god speed people   :smile:

[Guest]

Anyone knows why getting this done is so hard...? Since FSX had it...?

 

Transparency is always hard, both on performance and getting it in the right place in the render pipeline.  It's best to think of a single frame render as many "layers" of processing (often called passes) ... it's not much unlike Photoshop, Premiere Pro, etc. with the "Layer" concept ... only it's all done real time.  Also keep in mind that AA is really just another render pass at changing pixel colors to make them seem less jaggy (blender).  AA never really makes an image "more sharp/crisp" all it does is adjust edge blending of pixels by changing their color slightly ... ultimately the best image quality comes from a screen resolution that is sufficient to NOT need AA processing (that is defined also by dot pitch and view distance).

 

Good example is cloud shadows ... can't render cloud shadows before you rendered terrain or else you'd not see the cloud shadows effect on a scene's terrain pixels color information could not be calculated properly because there is no color information (terrain texture) to calculate against ... it would just be the black geometric primitive (bunch of black pixels) and not a texture.  So render order is very important.

 

So a transparent Window would need to take into account the render order do all that rendering to get a scene then apply another pass and adjust the pixels once again to give a transparent look to the ATC window.  So we're looking at about 50% more render passes in P3D (not taking into account a transparent ATC window) than in FSX where transparent ATC window isn't a big performance issue.

 

Best way to view a frame and how it's made is to think pixels and color ... all you really have are a bunch of pixels that change color and any single pixel's color information gets changed by each render pass (stages of the pipeline) until you have a final frame which then gets displayed.

 

A little over simplified, but hopefully you get the idea ... all you really have are pixels and color information.  It still amazes me to this day how GPU's can do so much processing in such a short period of time ... but I guess that's probably because my first computer was 256 x 192 pixels and 3bit color (8 colors)

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

EDIT: edited this a bunch of times and probably more info than folks wanted to see ... but it's important info to understand and can help you realize ways to get the best out of your hardware and software.