Here we go again.

[Longranger 148]

LM may or may not take note but Austin consistently misses what the majority want so we end up with the same argument. X-Plane will soon be better when we have add ons for weather, traffic, atc, textures, seasons, etc. The problem is I've been waiting for those for years and years.

 

I wish X-Plane did all those things because I still like the potential of X-Plane. Prepar3d will definitely be 64bit, we know it is coming. We don't know X-Plane will get all those things though. We are assuming and hoping but Austin has different views.

I don´t think the argument against X-Plane is so simple. Austin is no longer really the problem. Laminar had the problem that the cor of X-Plane 9 was years behind the FSX. And while they made the fundamental decision for X-Plane 10 to break several key components but they had the problem that they had never developped a GPU based system and OpenGL doesn´t really teach you, what happens in the background. This was a key problem of X-Plane 10.0 .

But they learned. IXEG, PMDG and so on finally got their override systems. Systems that are now used by AirFoilLabs and simCoders. These features improved the flexibility for designers compared with the beginings of X-Plane 10, when they more or less had the options to tweak the aerodynamic profile. Fundamentally there was nothing wrong in this approach but if you wanted good planes it got really expensive. The default GPS and FMS were far beyond, even the default FSX. The shaders in X-Plane 10 were ratehr simple Unified shaders. Far beyond the capabilities of todays graphics cards. But they are used to break compatibility if it helps, and the developers have learned not to complain, but to follow.

 

LM on the other hand.had the trouble that there were a lot of developers that were used to do what they wanted. FSX was not moving. In X-Plane such a developer would have got an ice cold reply: "We never allowed you to do this, so deal with it."

X-Plane simply switched to 64 bits in 10.20 . They didn´t wait for a full version. They simply said to the developers: "Sorry guys. We have to switch. We are running into OOMs." The 3rd party developers were not excited, but they saw the same problems.

LM didn´t dare to do this and they have the problem that they must not target directly hobby pilots. Not they but DTG have the necessary license. The mangement of LM wouldn´t have a problem to simply put the whole blame on the shoulders of their developers if they would get complaints.

LM has the advantage, that they could have in theory a much bigger budget. But they have to fight for this budget.

Laminar had trouble, when they developed X-Plane 10. They had talked to early about it. I think without X-Plane mobile, we would have never seen X-Plane 10!  While the market share of X-Plane 10 was tiny compared to FSX and P3D it was multiple times bigger compared with X-Plane 9. And they increased their developer pool. Now they really got an achievement. No one knew when they started with X-Plane 11 exactly. But with the release of the DC-6, the IXEG 737 and the AirFoilLabs X-Plane 10 increased their popularity significantly. Half a year before no one knew what X-Plane 11 might be. And even after they showed it EVERYONE expected a release at the end of next year. No one was more shocked then the 3rd party developers, when they heard: No, not next year, this year.

A lot of developers were afraid that they would get something thrown together simply to have something against DTG.

And now we look at X-Plane 11. Even in its beta it is more stable than X-Plane 10.1 . The development tools are more or less ready. PMDG decided to support X-Plane in a big manner even before X-Plane 11 was an open secret. Even this made X-Plane 10 a potential plattform for several FSX developers. Now it is more a question: Can I survive if I don´t support X-Plane?

The big advantage of LM was the compatibility to the FSX. But now they are in a position that they have to drop the compatibility in several places and they have a rather restrictive license policy. One of the biggest problems in the eyes of PMDG.

You won´t find P3D on steam, you won´t find it on your phone or your iPad. The FSX Steam Edition was due to its price more interesting than X-Plane 10. But X-Plane 11 plays in a different league. When you start with this hobby even the steam edition is too expensive since you have to buy several add-ons to compete even on the ground.

In X-Plane 11 we will have two weather add-ons that compete with each other. If Rex or ASN don´t think about X-Plane now, they won´t have to bother in one or two years. It takes time to learn the basics on a new plattform.

 

I was an FSX user till X-Plane 10 and I had P3DV3 on my last computer. But on my new computer I didn´t saw a reason to install P3DV3. P3DV4 would be a different thing but the 3rd party developers won´t adapt for free.

If they change the scenery ORBX would have a huge problem. which part of your catalogue to convert first?

 

A problem that in X-Plane 11 only bothers Carenado. But they have the advantage that it is rather simple to get their X-Plane 10 planes working in X-Plane 11. But to fully support X-Plane 11 they can probably sell it as a new product.

 

And DTG? A huge problem. At the moment they have no user base! How to attract 3rd party developers for their plattform? What do they have that X-Plane or P3D can´t offer? A bigger compatibility to the FSX? Would this be an advantage?

[Longranger 148]

I'm not missing his point at all. I was sat in front of him when he's mentioned real snow etc etc and I love the idea but there is more to it than that. He is missing the point that for seasons we don't mean green fields then cover them in snow.

 

I don´t think that he means it either. The typical problem of a developer. I often talked with a customer and I knew I already had this feature implemented for more than a year. The ground textures are Dataref depend. You can exchange them without additional costs. You only need the artwork. And now they have the money to pay artists for it.

And John Maxx is still working on a Seasons Add-on. With the exception of the artwork you could implement FSX seasons right now! But is it worth the trouble? If you have additional shaders you at least get some results on photo sceneries and so on.More or less a problem that the FSX had too. How often did you reach an airport in winter and on the airport you had summer. It got even more ridiculous if you looked out of the window and people were wearing T-Shirts...

For P3D such advances wouldn´t be a problem either. But they have ther trouble how to sell it to their accounting? They must not argue from the perspective of hobbyists but what could we sell to the Pros with this feature?

[bonchie 2,305]

I've basically quit simming. I fly in the real world and P3D's flaws have just become too much from a suspenion of disbelief standpoint. The hard autogen line, the lack of global lighting, the city textures that look like someone just threw up LC and autogen, etc. We all know the flaws.

 

XP11 looks really good, but XP still has some features it must add before most move over for good.

 

With a new version of P3D, if it's not 64bit, doesn't significantly improve LC presentation, and if it doesn't have global lighting (i.e. like XP10/11), then I'm not buying. I've spent enough money on sub-par products that never really do what I want.

 

So if XP11 ends up the sim, then so be it. If P3D releases a truly next-gen version, then so be it. No biases anymore from me.

 

As for DTG, I've got basically no confidence that they are going to release anything substantial.

[vgbaron 3,627]

OK, this has gotten way off track from the OP.

 

I'mshutting it down, let me know and if you want to continue this, I can move it to Hangar Chat

 

 

 

Vic

 

edit:  reopened for further discussion in Hangar Chat

[nthabti79 17]

Thanks Vic, I hope the discussion can go on now  :wink:

[bonchie 2,305]

Hopefully, we'll hear something soon about what LM has up their sleeve.

 

I'd be surprised if this next version had all the changes I mentioned, but if it at least shows there's a definite path toward them, that's progress.

 

I just don't think it's too much to ask in 2017 for there to be a real lighting engine and 64bit. It's not like I'm hoping for unrealistic features with those requests.

[nthabti79 17]

Hopefully, we'll hear something soon about what LM has up their sleeve.

 

I'd be surprised if this next version had all the changes I mentioned, but if it at least shows there's a definite path toward them, that's progress.

 

I just don't think it's too much to ask in 2017 for there to be a real lighting engine and 64bit. It's not like I'm hoping for unrealistic features with those requests.

 

I really hope they come up with a new lighting system too that allows for light sources other than the sun and the moon. I am so tired of the night lighting that we've had since FS98...

[ErichB 3,643]

nthabti79, on 05 Dec 2016 - 4:12 PM, said:

nthabti79, on 05 Dec 2016 - 4:12 PM, said:

I really hope they come up with a new lighting system too that allows for light sources other than the sun and the moon. I am so tired of the night lighting that we've had since FS98...

I did a flight last night and parked up at the gate afterwards looking at the 777. It was night in the sim, and even with a beaming floodlit apron, the aircraft was shrouded in darkness. It just looks wrong. I'm with you on a new night lighting system.

 

Is it possible to create a night lighting system similar to Xplane in P3D?

[pmb 5,137]

Silence on that front. Don't tell me that Twitter Blurb on

 

https://twitter.com/LockheedMartin

 

referred to the September update...

 

Kind regards, Michael

[Guest]

 

 

Hopefully, we'll hear something soon about what LM has up their sleeve.

 

It is about that time again, too much silence from LM and the end is near speculation starts ... been that way ever since V2.0 release ... and yet here we are 3+ year later.  I guess Microsoft's closure of ACE's really scared many to paranoia.  Relax, it's the holiday season, give LM a break.

 

 

Is it possible to create a night lighting system similar to Xplane in P3D?

 

P3D already partially has a 3D lights system similar to Xplane, it's just not utilized as much, but there are significant performance implications with such a lighting system and XP11 as good as it looks does take an FPS beating even on my moderately high end PC and that's with default aircraft and default airports no cloud shadows and a few other missing elements.  But my hunch is if P3D did operate a full lighting system like XP11, we'd see very similar FPS hits.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[garrett_frank 150]

 

 

The hard autogen line

 

I don't feel like that gets talked about enough. Drives me crazy.

 

I always add this to the cfg file:

 

[sCENERY]

AUTOGEN_TREE_MAX_DRAW_DISTANCE=12000.000000
AUTOGEN_TREE_MIN_DISTANCE_TO_LOD=10000.000000

 

Those are the max values (or close to it). I happily take the VAS and CPU hits. If LM would allow us to go a little further, that line would effectively be gone.

[Longranger 148]

 But my hunch is if P3D did operate a full lighting system like XP11, we'd see very similar FPS hits.

Probably. Furthermore I am not sure if they would be able to get all the changes into one version. As an example HDR was a major problem in X-Plane 10. But for PBR HDR is a necessity. Without it, there is no PBR possible. The interaction with othe objects and structures would be another problem.

 

I don´t think that the old objects would look correct. And this would mean work for nearly every 3rd party developer. I would not expect that many of them would do it for free!

 

I would think we will have to wait for a 64 bit version to really find the next major problems. In X-Plane this change also brought a rush of really big textures, till they learned that these textures ate some performance, too. 64 bit only prevents many OOMs, but otherwise it doesn´t do anything. Instead you find surprises.

[adyfoot 19]

I don't ever recall LM announcing an incremental update (ie 3.4 -> 3.5). Like someone said above, they just "drop" those on us. Maybe I just don't notice. This seems to be a bigger update. "A whole new [virtual] world" seems to be a pretty obvious indicator of something substantial.

 

My guess is P3D v4 64 bit or a new rendering engine.

 

I'm not convinced this Tweet should be read into at all - doesn't look like much of an announcement to me.  But, then again, I have no experience on which to base that view - having joined the P3D bandwagon at v3.4.  

 

Have they made announcements in this way before?

[Guest]

 

 

Furthermore I am not sure if they would be able to get all the changes into one version.

 

Assuming "They" means LM?  PBR was relatively easy to implement in DTG FS which is based on the same "engine" ... although PBR was perhaps not implemented very well in DTG FS, it was implemented in a rather quick time schedule, so I would consider PBR as viable (at least coding wise perhaps not performance wise) in a future P3D.

 

Agree, PBR would change how textures are used/defined because 3rd party devs basically do their version of light calculations (by trial and error) at the time you do the textures for whatever object one plans to create ... but that is a static calc where as PBR will be a done dynamically.  It'll be hit and miss, basically the 3rd party existing textures that "guess" the best will need the least changes for a PBR setup.  But with that said, there is no reason a 3rd party dev couldn't do their own PBR via 3DSMax or other 3D render product to emulate how a PBR system would work ... that would take more time and probably isn't done, but it's not impossible to do.

 

64bit solves the OOM problem, it's unlikely to see any "performance" benefits (in terms of FPS) from a 64bit executable.  It is more likely performance (FPS) will drop as end users might have access to increased LOD radius ... I was somewhat disappointed with XP11 LOD radius when it comes to night lighting, it seems cut short when at higher altitudes relative to default P3D whose night lighting is not a visually good, but due to it's terrain base can actually extender further out than XP11 as demonstrated here:

 

 

Cheers, Rob.

[adyfoot 19]

I was somewhat disappointed with XP11 LOD radius when it comes to night lighting, it seems cut short when at higher altitudes relative to default P3D whose night lighting is not a visually good, but due to it's terrain base can actually extender further out than XP11 as demonstrated here:

Wow - my night lighting in P3D looks nothing like that Rob.  Is that with an add-on of some kind?

 

Cheers,

 

Ady