While it is true that X-Plane development has been slow for a long time, it is interesting to make a comparison though.

 

When P3D v1 was released, X-Plane was at version 9. Now, we are at Prepar3D v3 and X-Plane v11. In this lapse of time, the development X-Plane has received between v9 and v11 has been a loooot more than the development P3D received between v1 and v3.

 

There are a lot of youtube videos in which it's very hard to tell if they've been shot using FSX or P3D v3 (not to talk about the screenshots in these forums), whereas it's virtually impossible to mistake an X-Plane 9 video or screenshot with an X-Plane 11 one.

 

That being said, X-Plane has been too slow in improving such features as weather, ATC/AI, and certain aspects of the scenery (seasons, regionalization, etc.).

And about water colors .... well, I do not want to spill the beans, but some experiments have been conducted in that area (getting some halfway usable data for it was more complicated than some might imagine .... because water color is a - scientifically - complex topic ... but I think I found something halfway acceptable) and some code is in place in XP11 (which might need some tuning, tweaking) and some data to support it is now ready too .... ... And now forget what I wrote here, and be happy if something comes at some point

Interesting... looking forward to hearing (or better yet, seeing) more about this. 

Now, what was I writing about again 

You're talking about trying to accurately model the entire earth!  That's such an absurdly monumental task that I think the few times a flight sim manages to get it right is more notable than the many, many times it gets it wrong.  Austin's goal with X-Plane is plausibility and not "I can see my house" fidelity.  I'm not a pilot but I have flown commercial many times, and based on what I've seen out of a jetliner's windows, X-Plane is pretty darn close.

 

It's not that far off from being pretty darn plausible. I don't think it's an unrealistic goal.

 

Adding waterclass for varied colors + more varied autogen regions + more varied ground textures is really all that's needed. FSX/P3D already has all that so it's possible (they just don't have advanced scenery engine to present it in a pretty way aside from hand-placed addons).

 

 

 

Well, it is a flight simulator and not a scenery simulator.

 

If it weren't about scenery we'd all still be flying wire frames or worse, black walls with plotters. It's a fair assumption that a majority of flight simmers do indeed care greatly about the scenery and it's a driving factor in them playing.

If it weren't about scenery we'd all still be flying wire frames or worse, black walls with plotters. It's a fair assumption that a majority of flight simmers do indeed care greatly about the scenery and it's a driving factor in them playing.

 

That's a bit of a straw man. I never said that scenery didn't matter, only that it's not practical to model the entire earth with a high degree of fidelity. Austin's plausible world is not intended to compete with photo textures and hand placed props. It's simply to make the ground look like something you could plausibly see outside the windows of an airplane, and I think it looks terrific.

That's a bit of a straw man. I never said that scenery didn't matter, only that it's not practical to model the entire earth with a high degree of fidelity. Austin's plausible world is not intended to compete with photo textures and hand placed props. It's simply to make the ground look like something you could plausibly see outside the windows of an airplane, and I think it looks terrific.

 

It looks terrific depending on where you are.

 

There are ways to fix that and it doesn't require photoscenery and hand placed buildings.

It looks terrific depending on where you are.

 

There are ways to fix that and it doesn't require photoscenery and hand placed buildings.

 

I totally agree.  Default X-Plane 11 looks extremely good in my home area; in Northern New England.  I'm having a blast with this Beta!

Adding waterclass for varied colors + more varied autogen regions + more varied ground textures is really all that's needed. FSX/P3D already has all that so it's possible (they just don't have advanced scenery engine to present it in a pretty way aside from hand-placed addons).

... and i repeat, that even though it might sound easy-peasy for some users, creating that artwork (ground textures / autogen) is likely one of the most time consuming / resource hungry tasks ... Thats why there has to be some prioritization and not everything (by far) can be had.

Well, about criticism of bad autogen ... I can only repeat: it is extremely (!) resource intensive to create artwork. Period. Even if everybody is unhappy, that doesn't change this simple fact. And to get more autogen variety (which is technically absolutely no problem in XP10/11) you simply need more resources .... And usually you can choose for "needing more time" (to have the same number of artists produce more artwork) or "spending more money" (for more artists etc.). There is simply no such thing as free beer ...

 

...and when a  new company, which has always been leader of generic scenery (autogen, landclass) in the competitor sim,starts to develop for Xplane what does Austin do? Provoke them to the point they dismiss their project. Quite logical, you don't invest in scenery development but at the same time you fight who shows interest to do that.

...and when a  new company, which has always been leader of generic scenery (autogen, landclass) in the competitor sim,starts to develop for Xplane what does Austin do? Provoke them to the point they dismiss their project. Quite logical, you don't invest in scenery development but at the same time you fight who shows interest to do that.

 

I don't think Austin drove anybody away.  I suspect that Orbx was never serious about developing for X-Plane in the first place.

Never understimate the touchiness of some people...but I humanly uderstand Austin, he'd been waiting for three years to write those lines. :wink:

 

Nobody living on sim flight scenery can be so blind not not to read how many FSX/PR pilots moved to Xplane recently or are evaluating this move. Both Austin and JV acted against their interest just to boost their ego.

As written elsewhere is not Orbx sceneries per se that we'll miss but the stop such a mve means for other developers to start developing for XP as well. We live in a fashion driven world, hype is important as much as quality.

What exactly did Austin say? I never found the quote. I only heard him talk on skyblue radio about ORBX and there he sounded quite enthusiastic that big developers would join.

Something like "Wait a second, didn't you say X-Plane had no future?". That was all, but I heard they also exchanged some emails. Guess we'll never know. 

Not only that sentence, many lines with some harsh tone regarding JV's wrong prediction.

 

Since they admitted to have 97% of the first scenery completed it's quite obvious that it was a personal decision to give up porting to XP to try to take a revenge over Austin's revenge. Austin behaved like an adolescent (he'd some rights after all), JV acted as a child while leaving a small door open just in case in 2018/19 XP11 became the leading flight sim.

 

 

That was all, but I heard they also exchanged some emails. Guess we'll never know.

Questionable decisions by both men (without knowing what really led to the fallout). Disappointing outcome to say the least but I've moved on.

Something like "Wait a second, didn't you say X-Plane had no future?". That was all, but I heard they also exchanged some emails. Guess we'll never know. 

 

We'll never know, but my guess is still that the reason was business and tech related, not the personality clash. If it was possible for money to be made from X-Plane, then Orbx would be here. I'm betting it was that Orbx couldn't figure out a good enough way to protect their scenery with DRM on X-Plane's open scenery file system. The email exchange might have been about that, for all we know... maybe testing the waters to see if Austin would alter the scenery system in a way to protect files.

 

Anyway, pure barroom speculation there, but it's a logical explanation for the move to Aerofly FS2. That sim has a much smaller customer base (so far), but it does have easy, built-in DRM management via Steam or Aerofly's own built-in DLC protection systems.