FSX does have a demo actually

 

Yeah, that's a nice time capsule you've found there

Ha !!!   That's indeed quite interesting - until, let's say, 2 years ago it was a "fact" that the UI is almost unusable. Now, there are more and more people taking the plunge and nobody complains about the UI - although it is unchanged since the release of XP10  .

 

That's strange, I had heard that the latest news was that the UI was undergoing a radical change. I assume this was being done for a reason........... 

 

There are few things in the world that can't be improved, and some have thought the X-plane UI was one of them.

 

Hey everyone,

I attended FlightSimCon today and watched the X-Plane presentation. Austin Meyer and the Laminar Research team discussed the future of the sim and shared some really jaw dropping new features. For anyone interested who did not get to attend, here is what they are working on:

X-Plane 10.50 (Mostly old news)

• Entering public beta this week!
• Autogen now takes into account OpenStreetMap heights. This allows for cities to look like cities, where autogen buildings will be matched with the approximate height of their real world counterparts.
• Updated King Air, Baron, and airports.
• Static aircraft now park at terminal gates and GA spots.
• Global winds aloft
• Some other cool stuff that I forgot about...

Future X-Plane (X-Plane 11?) Laminar Research also announced some (in my opinion) game changing new features:

• New UI: Finally a modern looking user interface! It sort of looks like a hybrid between Flight School and P3D. The plane selection screen lists all of the aircraft with images for each one in a grid. Both weather and time of day are changed with sliders, and it shows a preview of how each will look in the sim (i.e. 8pm will show a sunset image). Settings are very organized. Control mapping is incredibly easy, with images of the joystick or yoke you are using. Clicking a button on the image allows you to change the action of that button on your yoke. To top it all off, the new UI is supposedly much faster!

• Physics Based Rendering (PBR): PBR is a technique used in most modern game engines. PBR essentially renders light reflections off objects based on both the color and material of the object. They showed before and after comparisons shots and the difference was jaw dropping. It's hard to convey how incredible the difference was. The example that stood out to me was a Cessna 172. The aluminum body of the plane reflected more light at angles parallel to the camera (as it naturally does). When looking perpendicular, the light reflections were diminished. Another example showed a Boeing 737. The landing lights naturally reflected off of the edge of the wing and engine cowling. This rendering happens dynamically for all surfaces (all planes, buildings, roads, grass, etc.) and is different depending on the surface's material. It makes the sim look incredibly realistic. Makes for some amazing sunset pics!

• Ambient Occlusion: Ambient Occlusion is another technique commonly used in game engines. It essentially shades the image based on how much light is hitting the object. This didn't have as drastic an effect as PBR did, but it made objects in general look more realistic. Shadows looked more true to life. The example they used was an enhanced shadow under a baggage cart and jetways.

• New Sound Engine: The new engine allows sounds to be mapped to physical events. One of the examples they showed was how the pitch of the Cessna's gyros was mapped to the frequency they spun at. By turning the battery on and off, you could hear the sound pitch go up and down. Sounds are also assigned location and direction, so depending on where the camera is located a different sound mix will be heard. Opening and closing the doors of the aircraft alters the sounds of the engine (as it should!). Noticeable air noise at speed and ground noise during taxi and takeoff. Essentially, all sounds will be dynamic.

No timeline was given for any of these upcoming features, but when they arrive I believe it will drastically change the sim experience. There were audible gasps from the audience when Laminar demoed each of the features. It's hard to describe to you how crazy this stuff was without screenshots.

For anyone else who was there, please let me know if I missed anything. It will be interesting to see what Dovetail shares with us tomorrow!

 

That's strange, I had heard that the latest news was that the UI was undergoing a radical change. I assume this was being done for a reason........... 

 

There are few things in the world that can't be improved, and some have thought the X-plane UI was one of them.

 

 The XP UI has been around for close to two decades, it's time for a change regardless of what you may think of the current UI or it's functionality.

XP 10 Global Steam version offers money back if you have only played it for a few hours ( As with all their software).

 

I tried it early last year, thought I didn't like it, had it on my HDD for about 2 weeks, used it for about 2 hours in that time. Got an instant refund.

Have re purchased though.