Dovetail Games Direction

[mibmab 6]

I do know that some of the Flight scenery guys are contracting for DTG, so I expect that at least some of the mesh and airports will be updated.  The thing that concerns me more is the weird cyanish color lighting.  I also don't seem to see any shadows, although there is something that looks like weird self shadowing on the trees, and drop shadows around the buildings at the airport.  Looks more like ambient occlusion to me though.  They may have taken the lighting technique for the vegetation from Flight, but hard to tell with the fog and lighting.

 

One of the DTG staff gave some details regarding the updates to the graphic engine on this thread in the steam forum:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/314160/discussions/16/412446890551915486/

 

Apart from support for DirectX 11 he mentions globally applied high dynamic range rendering (HDR) and atmospheric light scattering. For aircraft and other high detail models they have added support for physically based rendering (PBR).

 

Andreas

[tf51d 284]

Will they create realistic sloped runways and taxiways, like we already had in MS FLIGHT ?

 

What disappointed me the most now is learning that they had a great opportunity of picking up where MS FLIGHT stopped ( officially, because indeed by the hand of "Stonelance" and others it is still pretty much alive and kicking ), they chose to use FSX....

 

I'll wait and see :-/

and development would have taken 2x or more longer, because all the hooks to have a full feature sim was remove and would have to be coded back in, which is no easy task, these hooks are already built into the FSX/ESP engine.  The reason MS was able to have sloped runways in MS FLIGHT is the fact that there was no AI to deal with. FSX now is capable of this so long as you don't use AI on it. Here's an example

 

[mibmab 6]

Yes you understood it right. Many of us here at Flight! section of this forum, consider Flight! to be the far superior product than fsx, and are really really sad if it's potential is not used, but I guess again, you go there where the fence is lowest.

 

It's a bit like that historic win of VHS over Betamax. Though the latter was the superior system, VHS won :-)  I guess given the limited time frame DTG had for developing a new flight sim release, it made economic sense to built on the FSX base, also considering all those FSX add-on producers who may now be able to upgrade their add-ons with relative ease. Well - Flight still exists... I might just fly a round now :-)

 

Andreas

[jcomm 5,929]

and development would have taken 2x or more longer, because all the hooks to have a full feature sim was remove and would have to be coded back in, which is no easy task, these hooks are already built into the FSX/ESP engine.  The reason MS was able to have sloped runways in MS FLIGHT is the fact that there was no AI to deal with. FSX now is capable of this so long as you don't use AI on it. Here's an example

 

 

 

Interesting!  I had never thought about that being the reason...

 

Well, maybe they can overcome it ?

[HiFlyer 9,358]

and development would have taken 2x or more longer, because all the hooks to have a full feature sim was remove and would have to be coded back in, which is no easy task, these hooks are already built into the FSX/ESP engine.  The reason MS was able to have sloped runways in MS FLIGHT is the fact that there was no AI to deal with. FSX now is capable of this so long as you don't use AI on it. Here's an example

 

I would be interested in what Stonelance makes of this, since he was an actual developer on FLIGHT. My impression was that a lot of this was already done and was actually removed/disabled from flight, but I can't remember the exact story/details.

[Pastaiolo 1,688]

Doesn't X-Plane have sloped runways and AI planes using them?

[HiFlyer 9,358]

Doesn't X-Plane have sloped runways and AI planes using them?

 

Yes.

[Murmur 3,941]

Apart from support for DirectX 11 he mentions globally applied high dynamic range rendering (HDR) and atmospheric light scattering.

 

Adding HDR and atmospheric scattering, if well done, could improve A LOT the visual rendition.

If properly done, this would cancel one of the biggest advantages X-Plane rendering engine has over FSX/P3D.

 

Here's an example, look how that improves the realism of the scene:

 

NO HDR / NO ATMOSPHERIC SCATTERING (similar to FSX/P3D)

 

 

HDR + ATMOSPHERIC SCATTERING

 

[jcomm 5,929]

And X-Plane also uses exactly the same flight model for it's AI that is used for the "flyable" aircraft...

[barrel_owl 304]

As usual, game, set match for Murmur.

[tf51d 284]

And X-Plane also uses exactly the same flight model for it's AI that is used for the "flyable" aircraft...

and this is the reason X-Plane AI is limited to 20 aircraft.  With all the calculation required for a complex flight model for AI would affect performance to much. This should not be necessary for AI aircraft. Of course as systems become more powerful over time, more AI could theoretically  be added, but right now the 20 aircraft limit is hard coded in.

[jcomm 5,929]

and this is the reason X-Plane AI is limited to 20 aircraft.  With all the calculation required for a complex flight model for AI would affect performance to much. This should not be necessary for AI aircraft. Of course as systems become more powerful over time, more AI could theoretically  be added, but right now the 20 aircraft limit is hard coded in.

 

 

Yes, and I opposed it since the beginning... with no success :-/

 

And that's why while using XP10, I never enabled it, plus the ridiculous patterns XP's AI traffic followed.... But that's history.... DTG is the theme now....

[stonelance 136]

Apart from support for DirectX 11 he mentions globally applied high dynamic range rendering (HDR) and atmospheric light scattering. For aircraft and other high detail models they have added support for physically based rendering (PBR).

 

Thanks for the link.  That confirms my suspicion.  All of those are shader or post processing changes which are easier to slot into an exiting rendering pipeline without making many changes, kind of low hanging fruit that sound cool on a feature list.  At some point Brian had implemented an atmospheric scattering model for Flight, but we didn't use it because the cost out weighted the benefit, at least in D3D9.  It is probably easier to implement in 11.  His other comment makes it sound like they did some overhaul for DX11, which is a good thing if they did it right, instead of focusing completely on features.  The main thing limiting the FSX rendering engine is the content systems though.  Not sure how you break out of that without also breaking backwards compatibility.

 

I did notice from the video going around that the autogen buildings look like the same rectangular box that exist in FSX, so likely they didn't take the autogen system from Flight.  I wonder if it is still using batching, or if they converted it to instancing.  I also didn't see any shadows, which I think made the biggest immersive difference in Flight compared to FSX.

 

 

tf51d, on 14 Feb 2016 - 08:20 AM, said:

and development would have taken 2x or more longer, because all the hooks to have a full feature sim was remove and would have to be coded back in, which is no easy task, these hooks are already built into the FSX/ESP engine.  The reason MS was able to have sloped runways in MS FLIGHT is the fact that there was no AI to deal with. FSX now is capable of this so long as you don't use AI on it. Here's an example

 

I would be interested in what Stonelance makes of this, since he was an actual developer on FLIGHT. My impression was that a lot of this was already done and was actually removed/disabled from flight, but I can't remember the exact story/details.

 

Yeah. there is no reason that I can think of that AI is the limiting factor in the lack of sloped runways in FSX.  For example, if it was a problem they could have just make AI not use that airport...  Even in Flight the only sloped runways were dirt strips that didn't use ground polygons.  It is primarily a rendering and collision detection problem.  Sure AI, probably also need to be updated to understand slope, but that isn't as hard.

[tf51d 284]

You mean like this (FSX-SE with DX10 and Fixer)

 

[Murmur 3,941]

Thanks for the link.  That confirms my suspicion.  All of those are shader or post processing changes which are easier to slot into an exiting rendering pipeline without making many changes, kind of low hanging fruit that sound cool on a feature list.

 

You make it sound like a bad thing, but as I demonstrated in my screenshots, a properly implemented HDR+atmo scattering can improve the visual appearence a lot more than other features.

Currently all the major flight simulators (X-Plane, DCS, IL2) implement it except for FSX/P3D/Flight, and that's one of the reasons they look more realistic especially at altitude.

I think if DTG will add those features, it will be a lot more than a cool item on the feature list. :smile: