Edit: Of course I could be wrong. But having worked with PBR for the unreal engine, this is the general process and is quite different from the older diffuse/spec/normal workflow in XP

 

Ben said: 

 

In v11, ATTR_shiny_rat controls the glossiness/roughness parameter. I do not know if we will have an ATTRibute way to control the metalness parameter. So far our artists have needed the normal map for most aircraft, and the metalness parameter is jammed in the blue channel. You can always make a tiny 4×4 normal map if you don’t need it for anything else but materials.

A question about this new PBR system: Will this allow actual reflective surfaces like polished bare metal that reflect the environment? 

 

Iconic aircraft often seen in bare metal like the DC-3 and F-104 have never looked right in X-Plane, showing just a dull gray surface. This is something FSX has been able to model reasonably well (if not perfectly) for years. I know there is a plugin out there somewhere to do this now, but it really should be part of the basic sim engine.

 

A question about this new PBR system: Will this allow actual reflective surfaces like polished bare metal that reflect the environment? 

 

Iconic aircraft often seen in bare metal like the DC-3 and F-104 have never looked right in X-Plane, showing just a dull gray surface. This is something FSX has been able to model reasonably well (if not perfectly) for years. I know there is a plugin out there somewhere to do this now, but it really should be part of the basic sim engine.

 

I believe so yes. The surfaces, from my understanding of the presentation, will have real time reflections of the surrounding environment. They have also found a way to reduce the GPU load by estimating how reflections will look on lower end systems 

 

 

A question about this new PBR system: Will this allow actual reflective surfaces like polished bare metal that reflect the environment? 

 

 

I believe so yes. The surfaces, from my understanding of the presentation, will have real time reflections of the surrounding environment. They have also found a way to reduce the GPU load by estimating how reflections will look on lower end systems 

 

Yes the reflections are gathered around the aircraft; not based on textures/maps. The quality of the reflections is going to be adjustable (fps killer), so even with low quality reflections you will still get quite convincing ones.

Iconic aircraft often seen in bare metal like the DC-3 and F-104 have never looked right in X-Plane, showing just a dull gray surface. This is something FSX has been able to model reasonably well (if not perfectly) for years. I know there is a plugin out there somewhere to do this now, but it really should be part of the basic sim engine.

 

What Ilias and Jason said. And I'd like to add that PBR is way ahead of any reflection system with a static environnment map (FSX). And all materials, not only metal, should look much better with PBR.

 

Pascal

P3D has dynamic / real reflections - but it crushes fps

Nonsense taildraggers

Just bit the bullet and bought XP11. Here's to the wait, but I wonder what XPX  10.final is going to be? 10.52?

Just bit the bullet and bought XP11. Here's to the wait, but I wonder what XPX  10.final is going to be? 10.52?

 

10.50 was already the final, the rest of the version are bug fix releases. So 10.52 or 57. Whichever one is the last stable release.

P3D has dynamic / real reflections - but it crushes fps

 

Hi Ryan!

Just currious, but are P3D's dynamic/real reflections the same as PBR?

No idea

 

They introduced it with 3.3 I think

 

It basically reflects the world - for instance you'll see the runway centerline underneath the fuselage as you rotate etc.

PBR will define how rough the reflection is, so even little scratches will reflect light differently. I'm not sure if this was added in P3D though.

_{Well many Reflections can be described as PBR (Physically Based Rendering), they simply has to obey certain rules.}

_{1. conserve energy: This means objects must not reflect more energy, than they receive.}

 

_{But this has several consequences: They have to use HDR internally, before they color map to the display as the last step. Otherwise rounding errors destroy the results.}

 

_{Since they added the feature between versions I don´t really think, that they really changed anything major to normalize values.}

Since the normal reflections didn´t use these features I think that they simply replaced the static reflections with dynamic reflections.

It wouldn´t harm anything, but it couldn´t be called PBR.

 

Even if two engines use PBR you shouldn´t expect that they use the same shaders.

I honestly have no idea what physically based rendering really is (also I'm quite drunk :smile: ) but it seems to me that folks are becoming very invested in early points of view before XP11 is released. It seems to be a common theme and I could be wrong here (remember I'm quite drunk! ) but maybe we should wait until the actual release before starting to argue the minutiae. I for one can't wait to pay for the latest iteration, which lest we forget, will get better (everybody say free updates ) as the 11 run progresses. Perhaps we should all take a breath and remember that this is all actually a lot of fun? I know!!!! It's crazy. I should get some coffee.

I honestly have no idea what physically based rendering really is (also I'm quite drunk :smile: ) but it seems to me that folks are becoming very invested in early points of view before XP11 is released. It seems to be a common theme and I could be wrong here (remember I'm quite drunk! ) but maybe we should wait until the actual release before starting to argue the minutiae. I for one can't wait to pay for the latest iteration, which lest we forget, will get better (everybody say free updates ) as the 11 run progresses. Perhaps we should all take a breath and remember that this is all actually a lot of fun? I know!!!! It's crazy. I should get some coffee.

 

Drunk and he uses the word "minutiae".