I've been following the news/info about DTG flight school and sim for months now and there is one thing that I haven't seen or heard anything about.  Are female pilots/avatars modeled in this sim?  I'm concerned because all I have seen are male pilots/students in all the videos and screenshots.

 

Boys will be boys notwithstanding, to me this is a very valid question. On the Wii for instance, and on the Xbox, you are given a screen where you can create an "Avatar" using some basic parts to design a character that represents you in the game.

 

In Microsoft Flight, it was very common for groups of players to land and stand around chatting for long periods of time. The game allowed you to get out and walk around, but to many peoples disappointment, didn't allow a visible Avatar.

 

Having that Avatar allows players to identify much more with their "characters" and a generic white male for everyone just....... denies the very diversity of the broad base of players you presumably will be courting.

 

I stand with the request for more variety, and wonder if it would be possible to even take the request a step further and allow some individual customization as well.

Dunno, it is in P3D, & I do have a lot of fun with it. Made a few search & rescue missions. The code should still be there in the FSX coding.

Arwen, me bad for making light of your suggestion.

 

It could be quite fun, in multiplayer, for the avatars to get together at times. So, diferentiation could be an issue.

Dunno, it is in P3D, & I do have a lot of fun with it. Made a few search & rescue missions. The code should still be there in the FSX coding.

 

Yah, the Avatar request is one I've made intermittently for a long time (even just for walk-arounds), and I was glad to see it turn up in P3D.

 

I don't know if DTG has the time and resources to go that far, but I hope a bit of diversity on the player character would not be too resource intensive.

I'd be annoyed if they put resource into diving.

Yeah, we want to be able to fly to the Moon in the next sim....sorry was that not what you meant? lol

Steve, we could do that in FS2004, with 'LunarPilot' from Things-To-Come

It simulated a lunar lander test area that looked like the moon.

Ahh yes, it rings a bell Rob, you are the FS2004 expert.  :smile:

On a different subject Martin is a passionate Guy and has a great attitude as he has demonstrated by his responses and video commentary   :wink:

Hi everyone, 

 

Just a quick message to let you all know that I am off on holiday for a week. Therefore, I am not going to be about on the forums for a little while. Please keep your questions coming in and I will do my best to answer them as soon as I get back. 

 

Have a great week,

 

- Martin 

 

 

Just a quick message to let you all know that I am off on holiday for a week. Therefore, I am not going to be about on the forums for a little while. Please keep your questions coming in and I will do my best to answer them as soon as I get back

 

Bet you're looking forward to getting shot of us lot for a week.  Have fun

Have a good'n Martin.

 

That's a shame then, I've something to say and no-one to read it.

 

Goldilocks Exposure

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

 

A few weeks ago when all we had were some stills of the aircrafts, we made comments on the colours and some made comments on the dark ground.

While I didn't disagree with the dark ground comments, they still made me wince. I had my photographic head on and all I could think was if you exposed for the sky and aircraft, the ground WOULD be that dark, likewise, if you exposed for a lighter ground, the aircraft and the sky would be blown out. Colours aside, some of those early shots looked very realistic.

 

Last night, there were some images posted from Jordan King from the new beta build. New colours, new blended clouds and cockpit shadows.

However, that tonal realism had diminished somewhat. It looked like the ground was too bright for the sky.

 

So, I took out my paint box and had another bash using Jordans screen grab as the base.

Some notes on the method used. Photoshop :

Copy original image to two separate layers : Image|Adjustments|Exposure up and down per layer. Blend the two layers with a large horizontal eraser brush. That's it, no effects.

I did cut out the water features for the final Goldilocks image as the Dovetail engine would brighten the water if it was showing a brighter sky, I thought that was legitimate.

 

I experimented with the difference in exposure to see which gave the most realistic appearance. I found 3 stops was about the maximum difference between sky and ground, anything more excessive looked plain wrong (if you'll pardon the pun).

 

First attempt I tried darkening the ground. Although it started to take on a more realistic appearance and given the low light in the sky would allow for a very dark ground, I think the 'dark grounders' might object.

 

Second attempt I tried brightening the sky to allow for the original light ground. It was way too washed out to be of use.

 

Third Image, Goldilocks. +1.5 stops for the sky, -1.5 stops for the ground. Photographic realism.

 

Some caveats...

I don't know if the Dovetail engine uses HDR techniques in its rendering,

I don't know if there's allowance for where the viewer is looking (X-Plane and GTA will brighten or darken the exposure depending on the viewpoint).

I don't know if this would be an easy thing to achieve in Dovetails current engine or something that could only be looked at for the big flight sim.

I don't even know if anyone from Dovetail will even see this before release with Martin on His jollies. :smile:

 

Even so, I found the results interesting and thought I'd pass them on.

 

EDIT - If you imagine the goldilocks image is how the sky could look viewing the aircraft from the outside, if you tip the view down the ground and sky could increase exposure by say .75 stops, likewise if you looked up to the sky the exposure would reduce by .75, both just given as examples, trying to keep everybody happy. If the view was in the cockpit and you were looking outside similar rules would apply.

 

EDIT PART 2: Sorry.

Just to be clear, there's no magic here. All I've done is lighten the sky textures and darken the ground textures. Nothing more.

 

Brent.

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

 

Original image

 

Goldilocks Exposure (note the subtle colours still present in the sky showing this is still a dawn/dusk shot)

 

Comparison between the two

Hello

I Know that FSUIPC will not be supported in DTG Flying School or DTG Flight Simulator. However will Sim Connect be supported. I know that Sim Connect is supported in your release of FSX Steam. As this will solve a few problems that I think users are going to have with Saitek Pro Flight FIP's and Panels. I am sorry if someone has already asked this question, but i did search for the topic of Sim Connect without any success

Thanks

J M Smith

Everything that FSUIPC has historically provided will eventually be supported via DTG's SimConnect (or equivalent) from all that Martin's written thus far.

Sorry if this has been covered already (can't find any specific reference), but have there been significant improvements in terms of performance?

 

It's no secret FSX is abysmally poor at efficiently utilising multiple physical and logical cores, and also that the GPU usage is very low. Have these things been improved upon for Dovetail's new releases?

 

I recently built a new system around the i7 6700K and GTX 960 (as a stopgap for the Pascal cards), and I'm amazed at the level of detail and performance improvements to be had in much more modern sims like X-plane 10.

 

XP10 looks incredible with the new hardware, whereas it seems like I'm struggling with FSX:SE nearly as much as I was almost 10 years ago when I first installed FSX. Hence my apprehension when I heard the new sims are built upon the old FSX code. 

 

  

Sorry if this has been covered already (can't find any specific reference), but have there been significant improvements in terms of performance?

 

It's no secret FSX is abysmally poor at efficiently utilising multiple physical and logical cores, and also that the GPU usage is very low. Have these things been improved upon for Dovetail's new releases?

 

I recently built a new system around the i7 6700K and GTX 960 (as a stopgap for the Pascal cards), and I'm amazed at the level of detail and performance improvements to be had in much more modern sims like X-plane 10.

 

XP10 looks incredible with the new hardware, whereas it seems like I'm struggling with FSX:SE nearly as much as I was almost 10 years ago when I first installed FSX. Hence my apprehension when I heard the new sims are built upon the old FSX code. 

 

The testers said it has improved for sure. We will know that for sure in 6 days.