Fascinating presentation. It seems the number of developers is expanding; does anyone know how many are actively working for LR at the moment?

Still regarding weather, it would be great to have the chance to simply inject data for pressure (referred to geopotential height), temperature, dewpoint, wind direction and speed, presence of turbulence in the forms of shear and / or up and down drafts, cloud type and main characteristics, in an area around the present position of the aircraft, with a nice scale and blending with adjacent areas.

 

By default X-Plane could continue to base it's weather solely in METAR and winds aloft data, but open the possibility for 3pd to inject their own info and blend it or not with rw or historic METAR data.

 

There are many free and payware available sources for excellent weather data. My dream would be to have a simulator based on both METAR / SPECI / SIGMET / GAMET / PIREP but also on soundings.

 

Instead of investing too much time on such a solution, giving the right datarefs to 3pds would certainly create room for a much better experience in  this area.

Fascinating presentation. It seems the number of developers is expanding; does anyone know how many are actively working for LR at the moment?

 

I wonder the same. From what I know it is at least P.M., T.K., T.Y., B.S., C.S., J.G., M.?., A.?. A.F. and Austin himself. That's 10. A couple more in tech support, gateway maintenance, airport nav/data support, maybe one or two guys in the art departement.

But some of them don't work full time for Laminar and some just temporarily.

 

Flo

I'm not a graphics expert, is PBR just relying on Specular Maps?

If so FSX has had this from the start, although I'd say most scenery developers don't use it as it'll increase VAS having a spec map for each texture (and be more work)

 

Edit: watched the video a bit more, looks like it might work in conjunction with a speculator map, but perhaps not to the same level as p3d. Things like the reflection based on incident angle are possible in fsx with the right material settings and a fresnal ramp.

Will be interesting to see it side by side with p3dv3

 

Here's a good explanation of PBR:

https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/1rl7bq/could_somebody_please_explain_physical_based/cdoc9r3

 

 

 

Basically: instead of current lighting techniques like using multiple diffuse textures/specular maps for each part of every object in the game to represent different conditions, they can just create 1 texture for each part then artificially define properties like a refractive index to help parameterize a physics model that controls how light and shadow work when rendering frames of an in-game scene that contains that object.

 

Interesting stuff. Nice to see more flight sim engines trying to catch up with other modern games/engines. For many years, flight sims have been at least 10 years behind in terms of rendering techniques and taking advantage of new hardware capabilities (other than raw, single-threaded CPU power).

maybe one or two guys in the art departement.

 

My impression from outside is that the art department is the most understaffed (and it has historically been), if you look at the art assets that are still missing in autogen and ground (seasons).

I'm not a graphics expert, is PBR just relying on Specular Maps?

If so FSX has had this from the start, although I'd say most scenery developers don't use it as it'll increase VAS having a spec map for each texture (and be more work)

 

Edit: watched the video a bit more, looks like it might work in conjunction with a speculator map, but perhaps not to the same level as p3d. Things like the reflection based on incident angle are possible in fsx with the right material settings and a fresnal ramp.

Will be interesting to see it side by side with p3dv3

 

To try to achieve a photorealistic look FSX/P3D developers uses stuff like baking and cube maps (which consumes alot of resources and time)

While it can look awesome sometimes , most of the time it'll just look off.

FYI Xplane has a plugin that can add this kind of reflections , FF767 and dden's Challenger 300 have this.

 

PBR basiclly memics real physics and has an effect on everything , in the presentation Ben was focusing on the reflections on the aircraft , however you can see it makes the trees/water/buildings/asphalt/concrete look more natural.

So it'll look natural no matter what time or weather ,the final result is much more accurate comparing to what you expect to see in real life.

And developers don't need to do all of those baking stuff...

 

 

This is a better quality and audio video for the new features part:

 

I really like the new UI - makes X-Plane look like the ultra-professional sim it really is. Not that the current UI doesn't look nice, it just has a slightly dated, Mac OS X Tiger-esque look to it. 

 

Now, if only they fixed the weather. I still haven't seen a decent towering cumulonimbus, even with the new SkyMaxx Pro.

Clouds, seasons, AI, sea traffic. The list of things I'm waiting for is getting smaller, but still not tempted to reinstall just yet...

Yes, X-plane is getting more attractive!

 

But what baffles me to no end is that they soon will use Physical Based Rendering, but still no seasons, realistic clouds and a dismal weather system.

 

This is what keeps me bypass X-Plane - for now....

 

 

Clouds, seasons, AI, sea traffic. The list of things I'm waiting for is getting smaller, but still not tempted to reinstall just yet...

 

Hadn't realised you left us :-). 

 

Does anyone know what happenend to SeasonsMaxx, it was meant to come out last year, but I've not heard from John (the dev) for some time

Yes, X-plane is getting more attractive!

 

But what baffles me to no end is that they soon will use Physical Based Rendering, but still no seasons, realistic clouds and a dismal weather system.

 

This is what keeps me bypass X-Plane - for now....

 

Noone said soon, they showed a tech demo. Specifically a tech demo of the guy working in that field.  They just showed some things they work on, not a complete featurelist of the speculated x-plane 11.

 

There have been interviews from over a year ago, where they talked about seasons and regionalized assets for a new x-plane (even in this talk, they talked about snow and how it makes it easier with this system).  I highly doubt we will see a complete new weather system like ASN in x-plane stock. What most likely will happen, is that the SDK will be expanded significantily and the 1° tile restriction will be be modified so 3rd party developers can finally use it to the full extent. However that is speculation. If Austin (or Laminar for that matter) do one thing religiously, it is talk about something when they are comfortable to show something with it. Thats why you dont hear them talking often about speculation and possible features.  Not showing everything they work on, in a 1h presentation is one thing that you can count on.

Wow, I'm extremely impressed with the tech that will be going into X-Plane 11; especially PBR. As for weather, particularly seasons, I know Supnik has mentioned on his blog that X-Plane would probably take a different approach to the depiction of snow on the ground than MSFS traditionally has. Given that CPUs and GPUs are significantly more powerful than they were in 2006 when FSX came out. I would probably expect that a future X-Plane would have dynamic snow, and not just simple texture swapping.

I know Supnik has mentioned on his blog that X-Plane would probably take a different approach to the depiction of snow on the ground than MSFS traditionally has. Given that CPUs and GPUs are significantly more powerful than they were in 2006 when FSX came out. I would probably expect that a future X-Plane would have dynamic snow, and not just simple texture swapping.

 

Yes, in the past it's been hinted that X-Plane will use procedural seasons. That promises to be great!

Wow, I'm extremely impressed with the tech that will be going into X-Plane 11; especially PBR. As for weather, particularly seasons, I know Supnik has mentioned on his blog that X-Plane would probably take a different approach to the depiction of snow on the ground than MSFS traditionally has. Given that CPUs and GPUs are significantly more powerful than they were in 2006 when FSX came out. I would probably expect that a future X-Plane would have dynamic snow, and not just simple texture swapping.

 

I think the path toward seasonal effects will be very similar to what Ben just showed us with PBR vs reflections. Reflection maps are a trick, PBR is the real deal. Seasonal textures are a trick, procedural snow (and vegetation?) will be the real deal.

 

I appreciate that Laminar mostly shoots for long term high quality goals. But it seems many simmers want everything right now.

Frankly, seeing the preliminary results with PBR, I can only say that I'm delighted to wait as much as needed to have that.

 

Oh, and did we mention the future sound engine ? X-Plane has been known for it's primitive sound engine, and suddenly Laminar takes out of his hat this impressive technology which will surpass everything we've heard before.

 

Pascal

Dynamic seasons and vegetation would be huge. I doubt P3D or DFS could even dream of that.