Physical Based Rendering (PBR) lighting - alternatives

3 hours ago, simbol said:

The ESP Engine (FSX, P3D) was never designed to handle this kind of rendering as it uses Bitmaps and alpha texture to represent light, bear in mind the P3D is based on the ESP engine from FSX SP2 (released back in October 2007), Lockheed Martin bought the ESP rights back in 2009 but the ESP engine is much older than this!.

First of all, FSW is based on exactly the same engine as FSX and P3D and is gradually introducing PBR into the sim. Therefore, there would appear to be no reason why LM couldn't do it with P3D if they really wanted to. Just to clear up a common myth, FSX is not based on the ESP engine, it's the other way around - see: https://www.microsoft.com/Products/Games/FSInsider/developers/Pages/default.aspx which says "Built on the core technology behind Flight Simulator X, Microsoft ESP is a visual simulation platform...".

3 hours ago, simbol said:

If LM implements PBR today all your add-on's will stop working intermediately as it requires all content providers to "redevelop" their objects and textures, 3D objects would need to be redrawn on 3Ds Max to apply the PBR textures rendering materials and also being recompiled for the simulator, I imagine the current .BGL format would be incompatible or inefficient and therefor a new format of compiled objects would be required, the implications of this are huge!

Whilst I don't understand the technicalities of incorporating PBR, a number of people have managed to install FSX aircraft add-ons into FSW (which has already implemented PBR for aircraft) without having to modify the texture files. Not all of the instruments work but the visual models do. The PBR effects may be missing but that doesn't appear to otherwise stop the aircraft working in the sim.