That's certainly true, but when you think of all the resources a company such as Lockheed Martin have access to, and that's only the ones we might know about, let alone all that black project super stealthy grooviness and reverse engineered alien spaceships. Only joking, or am I? Oh no, there's an unmarked black van pulling up outside my house lol

 

Seriously though, they tout it as, quote: 'a visual simulation platform that allows users to create training scenarios across aviation, maritime, and ground domains.' for 'pilots, commercial organizations, militaries, and academia'. Which means at least as far as the marketing blurb goes, its primary purpose is simulated systems reality and operational simulation rather than looking beautiful, in much the same way as pro full motion sims have that focus. Personally, for me that means that rather than using the Steam version of FSX to plan my next military coup, I'll be sure to use P3D safe in the knowledge that I'm using the right tool for the job at hand lol. I just knew all that money I spent on choppers for FS would come in handy one day...

 

The 3rd party prettiness is therefore a bonus rather than a raison d’être as far as Lockheed Martin are concerned. Sure it helps to make those training scenarios more realistic looking, but it's the system simulation which is the purpose of such training. Thus one assumes that unless Lockheed are thinking of going toe-to-toe against Call of Duty, they're really not interested in marketing a game with knockout graphics, because if they were, I'd be willing to bet they have the bucks to do so rather than hoping Carenado do it for them lol. After all, that's gonna be peanuts in comparison to developing ooh, I dunno, say a radar invisible stealth bomber for example. And let's not forget that is what MS marketed FS as in spite of us propellerheads claiming it's all about serious simulation, which LM have been at pains to emphasis shift along with us plane nerds. Nobody's gonna want to do a check ride in a Level D sim and hear the operator going, hang on a minute whilst Rex downloads some new cloud textures, ooh they're so pretty. :-)

 

So I'd be willing to bet they'll be far more concerned with things such as VR working in P3D than whether the cirrus clouds look just so.

 

Although I must admit, I like the idea of some general in some banana republic waiting for a christmas half price sale on Orbx scenery for his country before he can be bothered to plan his operation against the rebel encampment in the hills in his academic license copy of P3D and asking the repainters on Avsim if they'd do a repaint of the Aerosoft Huey in his army's colours in return for granting them the honourary rank of colonel in the militia.

Well, the proof is in the pudding, and as J van E says, very little known stuff has been done to improve on physics and system realism compared to the eye candy. 

 

There is no contradiction in making a serious simulator platform for serious training and having excellent graphics. On the contrary, good graphics heightens immersion and realism, which in turn makes the training more efficient. 

 

That being said, I get your point. LM is after all just making a sandbox, and its is up to each individual client to add content to make it into a simulator. I still haven't seen any use of P3D for anything other than flight training though. It would be interesting to know how efficient the platform is for other areas of simulation, because I really don't get how it could be used for that with the total lack of good land vehicle and water physics. 

Well, the important thing for planning for example, an underwater assault say with littoral craft, beyond knowing the tides, would be to know the depth and contour of the sea floor in various locations, and apparently P3D does have that bit accurate, so who knows? I mean if some army or navy have used it for that, they're under no obligation to tell us about it.

Sometimes I wonder why it is so hard to keep this topic on topic...

 

Anyway, somewhere the coming week I will start flying the airliners in AFS2, probably the Airbus, mainly to see if the sim is better up (very) high than it is down low. I am dying for my first OMG experience with AFS2.

my first OMG experience with AFS2

 

My 1st was the framerates. When you've had a few years of going "Eureka!" and doing the happy dance at hitting anything much over 30fps, 200+ is like seeing the holy grail covered with chocolate and whipped cream. 

 

2nd was loading times. In one sim I won't name, I've gotten into the habit of reading a book (seriously!) while I wait for it to load. Nine seconds from hitting start to being on the runway? Yes, please.

 

3rd was all flying, no tweaking. Does Aerofly even have a CFG?

 

4th was the cockpits. Did these guys model every single rivet in 3d?! And there's a pilot! And his hands are actually on the controls and moving!

 

5th was VR. Its displaying each frame twice for 3D, and it's still faster than... (name other sim)

 

6th was potential. Just imagine what could happen if third parties..........

 

Etc.

I'm pretty excited by this sim.  Especially after the update that came through the last few days that fixed my crashing (sim, not my flying in case you asked!)

 

Everything looks really promising - and it's very early days!

Found another, unfortunately low quality, video of Orbx Palm Springs, showing how carefully and skillfully they have to blend their photos into the landclass. Probably a relief for them if they could just go all-out.

 

My 1st was the framerates. When you've had a few years of going "Eureka!" and doing the happy dance at hitting anything much over 30fps, 200+ is like seeing the holy grail covered with chocolate and whipped cream. 

 

2nd was loading times. In one sim I won't name, I've gotten into the habit of reading a book (seriously!) while I wait for it to load. Nine seconds from hitting start to being on the runway? Yes, please.

 

3rd was all flying, no tweaking. Does Aerofly even have a CFG?

 

4th was the cockpits. Did these guys model every single rivet in 3d?! And there's a pilot! And his hands are actually on the controls and moving!

 

5th was VR. Its displaying each frame twice for 3D, and it's still faster than... (name other sim)

 

6th was potential. Just imagine what could happen if third parties..........

 

Etc.

Exactly, the above in correct order in my OMG catalog....agree.

Does this Sim take advantages of SLI?

 

I have a pair of 970's

 

Thanks Michael Moe

If VR works, and works well according to those running with it...I'd imagine that SLI is right up there....

Does this Sim take advantages of SLI?

 

I have a pair of 970's

 

Thanks Michael Moe

 

From what I can see, it doesn't even have an Nvidia profile. So there's no SLI either.

I don't think any sim can take advantage of sli unless Nvidia provides a profile. 
 
Though it's kind of a moot point (maybe) since Nvidia seems almost to be (very slowly) backing away from the whole sli thing.

 

........................................................................

 

In other news, from over at Orbx, in response to this question:
 

John, will this be distributed through Steam, or ORBX Direct?

 
JV replied (which should be of interest to J van E and maybe others:
 

Certainly yes to Steam, not sure about OD. If we make a 100GB photoreal region with every building, POI, tree placed and airport upgraded then the bandwidth costs us $15 per copy on our CDN, clearly not feasible. I'd rather give that Steam zero bandwidth cost saving to IPACS as their share to help them grow. Whatever the case, enjoy the Early Access prices they are selling their DLC for on Steam because we can't spend $100,000 developing a photoreal region and sell it for $6.99, not going to happen.

Last night I had a pretty immersive experience in my FIRST full flight in AFS2, using navigation and 737, KSFO - KLAS.

It's incredible how physics and performance are super mega smooth, how believable  airplane movements are with slight corrections, you can also see that in my video below. AUtopilot is limited but functional, whole flight was on LNAV, but on some point aircraft started to follow some imaginary line somewhere around 80nm from KLAS, I had to switch to HDG mode, which resulted to full VFR landing. I wanted to enter ILS frequency in NAV, but the sim won't let me to do it, not sure what was the deal.

Once more AFS2 proved to me that it is a strongest contester as a flight sim with the most potential out there.

 

 

I have just had a look at the Airbus A320, and noted that the registration on the panel remains unchanged (D-ACLF) when I cycle through the various repaints. A minor issue, but one that I assume needs to be corrected. The aircraft also appears to be rather "bouncy" when the brakes are applied (an attribute that it shares with the Boeing 737-500). With respect to the video above....is there a lack of tyre smoke on touchdown, or is that a replay issue?

I don't think any sim can take advantage of sli unless Nvidia provides a profile.

 

Though it's kind of a moot point (maybe) since Nvidia seems almost to be (very slowly) backing away from the whole sli thing.

 

 

 

 

........................................................................

In other news, from over at Orbx, in response to this question:

 

JV replied (which should be of interest to J van E and maybe others:

I think they are backing away from SLI because DX12 has more potential (which is able to use any combination of GPU's you have).

 

And thanks for the heads up on the Orbx regions! That is indeed of interest to me and something I am very happy to hear! So they are indeed planning (!) on doing what I'd like the most! Great! That sounds VERY good! Pity it probably won't happen before 2018... If they deliver what JV is talking about I don't mind at ALL that prices will be higher than current DLC. This is the kind of scenery I want, in fact, this is the kind of scenery I'd want in XP so if Orbx pulls this off in AFS2, AFS2 might become my main sim. Again, pity it will take ages before all this is going to happen (if it is ever going to happen) but you just raised my interest for AFS2 some 50 to 100%.

 

Also a pity I am banned for a week on Orbx because I'd like to share my enthusiasm there now. Maybe someone can post over there on my behalf that I am very happy with this news LOL Heck, this might be the best news I have heard in ages when it comes to flight simming. I am not kidding. "A 100GB photoreal region with every building, POI, tree placed and airport", bring it on!