LR major announcement at the 2016 Flight Sim Expo!

[Lynk 4]

XP11 with PBR materials will look amazing.

[tonywob 4,768]

I think it is highly likely to be XP11 or at least something equally as big. Both Ben and Austin are flying over to the UK for it, so it must be worth the effort and money ;-)

 

 

XP11 with PBR materials will look amazing.

 

Absolutely, it will mean the end of fake plastic looking materials on buildings and planes. I've been playing with PBR in Blender and the Unreal Engine and the wait will be worth it. They also are adding real-time ambient occlusion, which is subtle but will make everything look more realistic without needing to bake it into your own textures.

[rdb 44]

Before adding all that fancy gfx stuff i would love to see engine rewrite using Vulkan or similar low-level, modern fast API + better use of hardware in general.
With 3rd party a/c and scenery + weather my GTX 1080 barely does 30 fps, sub-4k resolution. IMHO hand flying at 60 fps multiplies the immersion factor by 2 in X-Plane. I rarely get a good feel of the underlying flight model at 30 fps.

 

Better weather modelling would be most welcome too!

[TheFlightSimGuy 514]

Absolutely, it will mean the end of fake plastic looking materials on buildings and planes. I've been playing with PBR in Blender and the Unreal Engine and the wait will be worth it. They also are adding real-time ambient occlusion, which is subtle but will make everything look more realistic without needing to bake it into your own textures.

 

That didn't seem to work for DTG, the other 64-bit PBR sim! 

 

But seriously, I would LOVE for it to be XP-11. Those previews from FSCon are to die for. 

[mtaxp 666]

That didn't seem to work for DTG, the other 64-bit PBR sim! 

 

But seriously, I would LOVE for it to be XP-11. Those previews from FSCon are to die for.

 

I dont think that DTG uses PBR.

PBR will give XP11 the look of new modern games like GTA V, it IS "As real as it gets" in terms of graphics.

[tonywob 4,768]

DTG don't use PBR, in fact there is very little difference visually between FSX and flight school. 

[carrotroot 77]

 

 

Before adding all that fancy gfx stuff i would love to see engine rewrite using Vulkan or similar low-level, modern fast API + better use of hardware in general.

 

I think this is already happening. Ben Supnik has written some about adding Vulkan support since the beginning of the year. 

[Denco 48]

Has to be X-Plane 11. It's too late in the cycle for v10 for it to be anything else, and they've already shown previews. So maybe...

 

Better weather modeling, especially thunderstorms? (the big one for me)

Seasonal terrain?

Better ATC? (I don't care about this, but I know many do)

 

I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, since so much of this depends on what Austin thinks is important. But with v10 running so smoothly now, I think Laminar needs to make a splash with some big new features for v11 

Probably not, but you will get better lightning if that's your thing.

[jcomm 5,890]

What's PBR ?

[alpha12125 213]

What's PBR ?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOqiGHAEXN0

 

starts at 7:00 

[uwespeed 497]

Nah... they will announce something completely different...

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namely that they trashed XP11, bought instead P3D and made it 64bit .

[jcomm 5,890]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOqiGHAEXN0

 

starts at 7:00 

 

Thx!

 

No uwespeed, I believe  it wasn't P3D they bought, but rather Aerofly FS 2 !  And it's already 64 bit which saves them additional work :-)

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

What's PBR ?

 

It's a way of describing how a surface should reflect and interact with light. At the moment in X-Plane we only have shininess and most lighting details are baked into the textures which can look wrong when the lighting conditions change, but with PBR there are separate maps for roughness, metal, colour, etc. Shadows and ambient occlusion are not baked into the textures but are generated in real-time.

 

Imagine you have a metal panel with scratches, grease, fingerprints and rust, in PBR, each detail would reflect light differently, whereas presently in X-Plane the entire surface would more or less reflect light the same. The detail is very realistic but of course will come at a cost. Aircraft and buildings will look much better, whereas older stuff will continue to look like it does. 

[jcomm 5,890]

Thx for the detailled description Tony. Looks indeed promising graphics-wise!

[jcjimmy 150]

I hope it is X-Plane 11. Any incremental improvements will be appreciated. Flight simulators, in general, have come a very long way. We get a lot for our money. Don't be disappointed if it isn't perfect.

 

So, LR keep up the good work. Onward and upward........................................