LR major announcement at the 2016 Flight Sim Expo!

[Guest-475 81]

More likely that P3D 64Bit will be a plugin for X-Plane 11. Can't be too much work. And probably freeware.

[yidahoo 365]

That makes no sense ?

 

I thought that, but didn't want to be the first to say it

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

Benefits? This video might give you an idea...

 

Interesting, thanks for the link. It seems to me like the video on the right isn't using instancing whilst the one on the left is? If this isn't a question of instancing and it's the same hardware then it's a seriously huge performance difference and I'm quite skeptical about it. I've found that modern GPUs can handle a lot of geometry at ease and devs can add more details to their models than simple box shaped buildings, etc. What seems to still kill performance are HD textures, and this remains a challenge that I don't even think Vulcan can resolve and something PBR will make worse with its multiple texture maps (as opposed to Diffuse, Normal/Spec and night, we will have Color, Metal, Lit, Roughness, Normal) and AO will be calculated on the fly). Interesting times ahead for XP

[Denco 48]

Do you mean it softens the variability and gusts ? 

Exactly.

[Murmur 3,941]

Interesting, thanks for the link. It seems to me like the video on the right isn't using instancing whilst the one on the left is? If this isn't a question of instancing and it's the same hardware then it's a seriously huge performance difference and I'm quite skeptical about it. I've found that modern GPUs can handle a lot of geometry at ease and devs can add more details to their models than simple box shaped buildings, etc.

 

The video description says neither of the two is using instancing, and from what I understand it's running on an Android device, not a PC.

 

If the performance difference is even half of that shown in the video, things look bright! But I'm cautious too.

[mtaxp 666]

I read on one of the comments of the blog that LR are working on a code "that never have stutters".

I guess it's about stutters that mat occur on loading scenery, and most likely means FPS improvements.

Maybe for XP11, with al those new features im sure there will be engine improvements in terms of performance.

[alpha12125 213]

The only thing that can be said with certainty at this point is this :

 

 

This is a accurate representation off all people commenting in this thread

 

[Pascal_LSGC 298]

Interesting, thanks for the link. It seems to me like the video on the right isn't using instancing whilst the one on the left is? If this isn't a question of instancing and it's the same hardware then it's a seriously huge performance difference and I'm quite skeptical about it. I've found that modern GPUs can handle a lot of geometry at ease and devs can add more details to their models than simple box shaped buildings, etc. What seems to still kill performance are HD textures, and this remains a challenge that I don't even think Vulcan can resolve and something PBR will make worse with its multiple texture maps (as opposed to Diffuse, Normal/Spec and night, we will have Color, Metal, Lit, Roughness, Normal) and AO will be calculated on the fly). Interesting times ahead for XP

As Murmur said, none is using instancing.

 

From what I gathered from the developer's blog, in Vulkan, multiple CPU threads can send in parallel some 3D work to the GPU. In the video, we can see (if I remember well) that the load is evenly distributed between the CPU cores.

In OpenGL (or DirectX <= 11), only one thread can work with the GPU (to prepare/send the data). This is a big problem now in X-Plane, as we see people with the latest most powerful GPUs complaining they are CPU limited.

X-Plane should take a huge advantage of this, given it's CPU limited nature (as all flight sims are). Sure, it's partly multi-threaded already, but not for the purely graphical workload, which is the biggest part of calculations.

 

Pascal

[Airfighter 150]

Interesting, thanks for the link. It seems to me like the video on the right isn't using instancing whilst the one on the left is? If this isn't a question of instancing and it's the same hardware then it's a seriously huge performance difference and I'm quite skeptical about it. I've found that modern GPUs can handle a lot of geometry at ease and devs can add more details to their models than simple box shaped buildings, etc. What seems to still kill performance are HD textures, and this remains a challenge that I don't even think Vulcan can resolve and something PBR will make worse with its multiple texture maps (as opposed to Diffuse, Normal/Spec and night, we will have Color, Metal, Lit, Roughness, Normal) and AO will be calculated on the fly). Interesting times ahead for XP

It is without instancing. The essence is (although those things are hard to be explained with a few words) that game developers, with Vulcan, have much more access to the "metal" of GPU (not incidental Apple named its graphics API... Metal!). This allows things to be done a lot faster with modern GPUs.

 

Now, about the VRAM issue:  1) the new generation of GPUs (ie. Nvidia 10xx series) start at 6GB and up. 2) Not all things require a lot more VRAM space. An example. You got a 4096x4096 orthophoto (50 cm/pixel) which in png format can exceed 20MB in size, that covers a square about 2km/side, or 4km^2. Not extremely detail, actually will look too fuzzy when you are very close to the ground. But, in X-Plane, there are shading options, that allow you to pass extreme resolution without any significant VRAM penalty. The called...decals! With the decals in X-Plane you can use small size textures (even up to 3 of them), and what you actually do, is using the orthophoto as a colormap, so depending the color of the orthophoto, you can "assign" the small textures to be displayed, which are high repetitive (seamless grass,dirt, or tarmac). Moreover this allows to use the orthophoto in smaller size. A 2048x2048 is 4 times smaller, and in DDS format (specially DTX1 if you don't need transparency) the size is roughly 1-2 MB. I believe the big benefit will be from the extend use of shaders and not from the raw image quantity.

 

The video description says neither of the two is using instancing, and from what I understand it's running on an Android device, not a PC.

 

If the performance difference is even half of that shown in the video, things look bright! But I'm cautious too.

 

I'm expecting the bigger performance gains when a scene is packed with objects, like a high density city with a detailed airport. Now the end results, with Vulcan, are depending to the programmers now! And having Ben Supnik on the wheel, I'm waiting amazing things! 

[Christopher Low 5,353]

 

That makes no sense ?

 

It was a joke, guys! Good heavens, do I need to spell it out in huge glowing neon letters?? :huh:

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

The called...decals! With the decals in X-Plane you can use small size textures (even up to 3 of them), and you actually do, is using the orthophoto as a colormap

 

I used decals extensively in ENHA. I originally used higher resolution ground textures but lowered the resolution later and added decals. It works well and gives the impression of very high res textures (if the user has gritty textures enabled in the settings). I'm doing something similar with ENOV, but I've used high-res textures almost everywhere and before release I'll likely have to drop some of them down (or offer two versions) so that people with cards under 2GB can use it. Luckily it's only a small airport, and with larger ones I'd have to use another approach. 

[Airfighter 150]

I used decals extensively in ENHA. I originally used higher resolution ground textures but lowered the resolution later and added decals. It works well and gives the impression of very high res textures (if the user has gritty textures enabled in the settings). I'm doing something similar with ENOV, but I've used high-res textures almost everywhere and before release I'll likely have to drop some of them down (or offer two versions) so that people with cards under 2GB can use it. Luckily it's only a small airport, and with larger ones I'd have to use another approach. 

You might not noticed, but when you set the decals parameters, you actually "adjusting" an OpenGL shader!

 

If you open the file Resources/shaders/terrain_frag.glsl you will find a section referring to decals. But you need to know OpenGL shading languge to understand that stuff!

[sparkie66 81]

It was a joke, guys! Good heavens, do I need to spell it out in huge glowing neon letters?? :huh:

 

This is the x plane forum, so yes you do.

[yidahoo 365]

It was a joke, guys! Good heavens, do I need to spell it out in huge glowing neon letters?? :huh:

 

I realised it was a joke, but even as a joke it made no sense.

[strider1 575]

It was a joke, guys! Good heavens, do I need to spell it out in huge glowing neon letters?? :huh:

 

It wasn't funny, but I see the sarcasm !