Live: X-Plane Developer Q&A

[Pugilist2 878]

I wonder when they plan on adding the new autogen city enhancements to Las Vegas etc......

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 hours ago, mpw8679 said:

Maybe this is a dumb question but why wouldn't this be priority?  IMO this is the number one thing holding xplane back.  I really hope Hifi can work a miracle when they come to xplane.

Maybe they can, but I'm still skeptical that a 3rd party developer can totally replace the weather engine in a way that gives us true 3D weather, with discrete systems like towering CBs and vertical convection.

It seems that better weather just isn't a priority for the v11 cycle at Laminar. It may be that the kind of changes we all want, would be too heavy a hit on the CPU/GPU at a time when they're focused on optimizing performance. A massively better weather engine would probably be at cross-purposes with that goal.

Either that, or Laminar is coasting, and taking advantage of the fact that people seem to be happy with 3rd party addons like ExEnviro, which are basically just eye candy and not fundamental improvements in the weather engine. I hope that's not the case.

1 hour ago, michaelray said:

One thing I was a little disappointed in was the fact that it didn't sound like there was a proper fix for seeing the lights through the clouds in any reasonable time frame. Ben explained that it was hard to get the drawing order correct and I don't feel this was properly addressed in the session.

Along with the weather I think this is another area that really deserves attention now. I hope the is something more positive going to happen with this.

Well, at least he acknowledged that it was a problem. He seemed to sidestep it by saying that we need better GPU hardware, but if he knows it's a problem then maybe it will get fixed at some point. Or at least improved. It's encouraging to hear that Austin is doing enough night flying to notice this, since ultimately I think he's the one setting the main priorities for developer time.

[Murmur 3,941]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

It seems that better weather just isn't a priority for the v11 cycle at Laminar.

Yeah, the weather system is basically the same from X-Plane 6, apart from the addition of 3d clouds. In some respects it's even worse, because in the past it used to have some features like dynamic changes over time (although globally) and downdrafts.

With the concrete rumours of DTG FS further improving weather with the addition of TrueSky, that's one key area where X-Plane is gonna fall even more behind compared to competition.

 

[Longranger 148]

1 hour ago, Paraffin said:

Well, at least he acknowledged that it was a problem. He seemed to sidestep it by saying that we need better GPU hardware, but if he knows it's a problem then maybe it will get fixed at some point. Or at least improved. It's encouraging to hear that Austin is doing enough night flying to notice this, since ultimately I think he's the one setting the main priorities for developer time.

And I think you are mistaken. In such an environment he will be rather carefull not to push too much.

Bens Problem is simply: There is no real solution since the graphics hardware is in no position to really calculate translucent things like clouds. So everything of the clouds is faked. You try to create something that looks like a cloud and people believe that it is a cloud, but it is only an amount of tricks. So there is no right or wrong, there are only better compromises.

So it isn't really a bug that you can fix, it is more that you have to find a better idea how to fake a cloud. But right now there is a huge amount of real bugs and improvements other members of the team depend on. The graphics engine has to become faster and more efficient.

The particle engine has to be activated. In fact the water effects of FSW are only a slight modification of their particle engine..

[Paraffin 2,197]

Yeah, I'm very interested to see if TrueSky actually makes it into FSW or not. On the other hand, I'm not familiar enough with what TrueSky actually is.

Is it just fancy eye candy or dynamic systems? Some flight simmers seem to be easily impressed with pretty sunsets and puffy cumulus under a blue sky. Me, I want those raging storms tossing my plane around (if I'm dumb enough not to steer around those CBs). The skies in flight sims are way too safe. 

P.S. looks like no weather news today with FSW, it's pax and cold/dark starts.

[Longranger 148]

1 minute ago, Paraffin said:

Yeah, I'm very interested to see if TrueSky actually makes it into FSW or not. On the other hand, I'm not familiar enough with what TrueSky actually is.

Well True Sky is a direct competitor of SilverLining, the engine behind Sky Maxx Pro. It has a bit more features but it won't be a magic wand.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

2 hours ago, pugilist2 said:

I wonder when they plan on adding the new autogen city enhancements to Las Vegas etc......

It's close to release I think - it is out on test at the moment with a few people.

 

cheers

Peter

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

2 hours ago, Paraffin said:

 

4 hours ago, mpw8679 said:

Maybe this is a dumb question but why wouldn't this be priority?  IMO this is the number one thing holding xplane back.  I really hope Hifi can work a miracle when they come to xplane.

Maybe they can, but I'm still skeptical that a 3rd party developer can totally replace the weather engine in a way that gives us true 3D weather, with discrete systems like towering CBs and vertical convection.

 

Will be interesting to see what HiFi (Active Sky) come up with - they said at Flightsimcon they have made a major breakthrough with XP11 and hope to release toward the end of the year.

 

cheers

Peter

[Longranger 148]

Just now, CaptCWGAllen said:

Will be interesting to see what HiFi (Active Sky) come up with - they said at Flightsimcon they have made a major breakthrough with XP11 and hope to release toward the end of the year.

CAref7ull in their own forum they were not ready to speculate about a release date. So I wouldn't bet on this year. And we shouldn't forget that Laminar is in the process of moving to Vulkan. In fact this might be a major reason why they don't concentrate on weather now.. The new graphics engine would open new possibilities.

But this might also be a reason for Hifi not to turn on afterburners.

[finkelstein 25]

I have to say I really enjoyed this stream, especially with the almost the entire LR team being there, and hope hope they do more of these at their next meetings. Not all of it was new, but we got a very personal Q&A session and that's what it was advertised as.

3 hours ago, michaelray said:

One thing I was a little disappointed in was the fact that it didn't sound like there was a proper fix for seeing the lights through the clouds in any reasonable time frame. Ben explained that it was hard to get the drawing order correct and I don't feel this was properly addressed in the session.

Along with the weather I think this is another area that really deserves attention now. I hope the is something more positive going to happen with this.

This was a very general all over the place Q&A session, so I don't think you could expect that. You can always comment on the issue on the dev blog and see if you can get some more info. Probably doesn't lead to it getting improved any faster though.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

9 minutes ago, Longranger said:

CAref7ull in their own forum they were not ready to speculate about a release d

Yes you are correct - checked back to the FSCon video and he says next 6 months or so. 

 

Cheeers

Peter

[Paraffin 2,197]

6 minutes ago, Longranger said:

CAref7ull in their own forum they were not ready to speculate about a release date. So I wouldn't bet on this year. And we shouldn't forget that Laminar is in the process of moving to Vulkan. In fact this might be a major reason why they don't concentrate on weather now.. The new graphics engine would open new possibilities.

But this might also be a reason for Hifi not to turn on afterburners.

I remember someone, I think it was Ben, in one of the panel discussions saying that when this happens it won't affect any addons using 2D. But addons generating anything in 3D like volumetric clouds would have to be re-written. That would include SkyMaxx Pro and ExEnviro (assuming they go 3D in the upcoming patch). It will be interesting to see how that migration takes place.

I assume it will be possible to choose whether you're running XP11 in OpenGL or Vulkan/Metal, which would preserve compatibility for a while. But if the frame rates are better in Vulkan then we know where the users will end up, very quickly.

And yeah, it could put the brakes on anyone who hasn't released a weather addon yet.

[Longranger 148]

41 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

 

I assume it will be possible to choose whether you're running XP11 in OpenGL or Vulkan/Metal, which would preserve compatibility for a while. But if the frame rates are better in Vulkan then we know where the users will end up, very quickly.

They hope to retain compatability to a point, but in reality it is a major shift.

In OpenGL they did draw outside the scope of X-Plane itself. They knew what type of callbacks were available, but in fact they didn't really know what X-Plane did draw and X-Plane didn't know what the plugins did draw.

But after the switch they do in fact give their draw calls to X-Plane and it will integrate these calls into its own callbacks, so they don't need to know if they are working in Vulkan, OpenGL or Metal . But now X-Plane is in a position to integrate these textures into its own environment, so it can try to correct the color of the sun and so on..Previously they had to guess what X-Plane was doing, while Xenviro sometimes overwrote Datarefs and more or less hijacked X-Plane.

.

[strider1 575]

14 hours ago, michaelray said:

One thing I was a little disappointed in was the fact that it didn't sound like there was a proper fix for seeing the lights through the clouds in any reasonable time frame. Ben explained that it was hard to get the drawing order correct and I don't feel this was properly addressed in the session.

Along with the weather I think this is another area that really deserves attention now. I hope the is something more positive going to happen with this.

I was a little disappointed as well ! Doesn't sound like there is a fix coming anytime soon :( The clouds in XP-10 are not transparent at night, not sure why it's a issue in XP-11....

 

[steve310002 1,198]

It's interesting that they said they would encourage 3rd party developers to create seasonal textures as Laminar have no plans to this anytime soon as it would involve too much work updating all seasons each time they improve scenery. I recall someone saying before that an FTX Global type of addon is difficult to create for X-Plane 11 due to limitations of the engine but according to what Austin alluded to in the video, it is fully possible in the engine to create replacement textures and indeed localized scenery texures in X-Plane 11 for each season. I wonder how 'easy' this is to do and why then no one is doing it? If done well, it would be a must by add-on as is still the case for FTX Global and would surely create a good return on investment for any talented developer.

Apart from the weather (as a priority), I would be happy if Laminar just updated even the current summer season of textures and trees. My one gripe is that they are too repetitive across the globe and too low resolution. The same for the trees. When I fly in Brazil, I see the same trees as when I fly in North America or Europe which really breaks the immersion. Also, whilst I understand the need for 'simple' tree graphics in terms of performance, they could do with creating something along the lines of Orbx HD Trees. Surely, it wouldn't take that long to do and would look awesome.