FSDT WOW - Control Tower Fun

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Now this is amazing

 

Thanks to airdailyx for heads up

 

Isint avator mode only in P3D - I believe it is  :wink:

 

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

Imagine being on Vatsim and watching traffic from there. It will be amazing!

[Pe11e 812]

It's incredible!

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on which features some developers lose their time and resources, instead on focusing what is most important for us simmers - VAS usage, performance, and good detail ON THE APRON! I really don't care for airport interiors, hundreds of cars parked around the airport, garbage cans, bushes, etc,  and ugly trees completely different from ORBX variants! On your usual tubeliner flight, when you are usually overhelmed by procedures and monitoring, I simply can't imagine myself looking at every detail around the airport, especially ones that are not visible from the apron/taxiway/runway. For few airports I purchased so far, I disabled few bgls on single one of them to kill unnecessary vas/fps eating feature that ARE NOT VISIBLE on your usual flight. Thank about that.  :wink:

 

And if some developers just love to play bringing new features like this, it's completely fine with me as long as developers include the option to disable them. Simple as that.

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

Posted by Umberto and I believe him

 

We explained this on our Facebook page, since many users seems to be concerned about VAS and FPS impact of these features.

 

We do memory management in an entirely custom way, thanks to your friend the Couatl engine, which allows to save quite a bit of VAS, by creating/destroying objects using its own logic (without depending on the default memory management of the sim or, more precisely, the almost non-existent and bugged memory management of using plain .BGL files...), running a script which runs entirely outside the sim, using its own VAS space, multithreading on spare CPU cores cycles unused by the sim, and even running its own sound engine.

 

The Tower interior is a separate object and is loaded in memory, unless you go very close to it and to the correct altitude so, its bounding box is basically a cylinder only slightly larger than the tower itself. Outside this perimeter, not a single byte of precious VAS is taken away from the sim, which won't even know the tower interior is there.

 

This about the actual 3d object + textures, which are the only things that CAN take VAS from the sim. Only after being loaded, of course. After the tower is loaded, everything that belongs to it is allocated in an entirely separate VAS space. The custom collision data (which allows the Avatar to walk realistically inside a building), the background positional sounds (yes, if you have a surround system or a 5.1/7.1 headphones, you'll hear telephones, chat and other sounds according to their proper position in the 3d space) and all the program logic that drives all of this, has its own separate VAS (Couatl's), that doesn't take away anything from the Sim VAS.

 

The same is true for the EMAS system we shown a couple of days ago. The actual object is just a normal 3d mesh which is not particularly complex that we might have just included as static (in fact, we did it in KFLL: there's a "dumb" EMAS there..), but the logic that makes it work, and the sounds effect it does when you hit it, are VAS-VREE, from the point of view of the Sim.

 

Same for the interior of the FedEx maintenance hangar. It's NOT loaded anywhere in memory, unless YOU choose to OPEN it, using the appropriate menu command. When the doors are closed, the hangar is empty, so it's not taking any more VAS than it was an entirely static object to begin with.

 

In addition to that, there are about 200 animated scenes, with animated characters that populates every parking. If we had to do it in the traditional way, there was no chance in **ll the scenery would ever fit in memory. But thanks to your friend, the Couatl engine, we have a script that automatically populates parking spaces, but only loading the parking you are close to, and the 2/3 nearby parkings. And they are only created when you slow down the airplane (less than about 1 knot), so the process of creation/removal won't cause "stutters" while you are taxiing or flying.

 

We are taking VAS and FPS issues VERY seriously, which is one of the main point of the existance of the Couatl engine: it doesn't simply do cool tricks: it's there to save and optimize memory, or doing things that would be otherwise impossible because of VAS constraints.

[Pe11e 812]

Very nice of them, that is indeed a professional approach! But, I'm not touching Couatl even with a 10 foot pole. Reading about so many complaints regarding Couatl made me think that way, sadly.

[be77solo 125]

Well, they had me with the elevator music ha!

 

Absolutely great!  Thanks for sharing this, I hadn't seen it!

 

I do love their airports.

Very nice of them, that is indeed a professional approach! But, I'm not touching Couatl even with a 10 foot pole. Reading about so many complaints regarding Couatl made me think that way, sadly.

I haven't researched it much, but have four of their airports running great without issue.  

 

Maybe it's sort of like installing hacked shader files?   

 

Sorry, couldn't resist.... I kid of course.  But, to each their own, and I love their airports and your shader pack 

[RW1 615]

 

 

I'm not touching Couatl even with a 10 foot pole

+1 on that, it`s an innovative feature! however i see no use for it personally, i prefer to fly aircraft in flightsim, not walk around in 3rd person arcade style.

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

+1 on that, it`s an innovative feature! however i see no use for it personally, i prefer to fly aircraft in flightsim, not walk around in 3rd person arcade style.

 

P3D, the 3D arcade sim not intended for entertainment purposes. Lol. Coming next, they will allow you to dress up as a flight attendant and greet passengers. 

[basementflyguy 156]

P3D, the 3D arcade sim not intended for entertainment purposes. Lol. Coming next, they will allow you to dress up as a flight attendant and greet passengers. 

Ahh ... But then you need to buy the commercial license ...

[tf51d 284]

+1 on that, it`s an innovative feature! however i see no use for it personally, i prefer to fly aircraft in flightsim, not walk around in 3rd person arcade style.

 if you use any FSDT airports, or GSX, you are already using COUATL!!

[RW1 615]

News Flash, if you use any FSDT airports, or GSX, you are already using COUATL!!

News Flash, i don`t use any FSDT products (face palm)

[tf51d 284]

News Flash, i don`t use any FSDT products (face palm)

You're right and I'm sorry, I just came back to edit the first part out, but you already posted. That part was unnecessary!!

[Guest]

Finally someone is leveraging P3D's AVATAR mode and heavy use of dynamic reflections ... well done FSDT ... I can smell the jealously already!  Now lets see more devs rolling with SpeedTrees and ScaleForm P3D features ... haven't seen many devs take on those new features yet.

 

AVATAR mode would be a vital aspect of training, military or commercial ... everything from crew positioning on aircraft carriers to loading Humvees into a cargo hold.  We're just lucky enough to be able to piggy back LM's development talent into "other" aspects of aircraft, airports, flight, etc.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[tf51d 284]

 

 

Finally someone is leveraging P3D's AVATAR mode and heavy use of dynamic reflections ... well done FSDT ... I can smell the jealously already! Now lets see more devs rolling with SpeedTrees and ScaleForm P3D features ... haven't seen many devs take on those new features yet.

 

It's not using P3D's AVATAR mode, the lead in to the video, says it's for FSX. Looks like similar functionality but probably using Couatl instead. I assume there will be a P3D version as well though at some point.

[Dazzlercee23 66]

The AVATAR Tower Experience does use the AVATAR mode and is P3D only, as per the KMEM previews on the FSDT forums.