How flat is X-Plane 11's World ?

[jcomm]

Is it flat by tille ( 1º Lat x 1º Lon ) like in older ( up to xp9 at least ) versions or at a higher granularity level ?

How bout Mag Decl ?  I wonder if the calculations also tille-based, meaning that like in previous versions we have "jumps" in declination as we transit from one tille to the adjacent one, or is the algorithm different ?

[Murmur]

Good questions. Probably only Ben Supnik can answer those.

[tonywob]

I actually asked Ben about this the other day but not yet heard back. I'm making large models of cities using single objects which can stretch out over several KMs. I have to take the DEM height into consideration, but not noticed any curvature modeled. Over 4km or so, it should be almost a meter.

Anyway, I thought everyone knew that the Earth is flat

[tonywob]

Update: Ben has stated it is curved and needs to be taken into consideration

[jcomm]

Ah!  Good News then Tony !!!

Thx for the precious info!

[Murmur]

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

I'm making large models of cities using single objects which can stretch out over several KMs.

What's the reason behind? Better performance?

[tonywob]

Instead of rendering lots of little unique objects and houses with one per model or facade like you see in a W2XP city, I'm experimenting with grouping lots of objects together into a single model, offsetting them to match the mesh and Earth's curvature and then rendering bigger models but fewer of them. In theory, it should perform better because it's one texture sheet, and one draw call instead of thousands of draw calls.

I've tried 4km2 models, but that was far too big, down to 250m2 which seems to be more plausible. My theory is that it should be quicker and smoother, unless you are using hardware instancing, but this isn't possible when making cities because of the different geometry per building.

[Murmur]

Great experimenting, but shouldn't (hopefully!) all of that become irrelevant with the transition to Vulkan in one or two years from now? :-)

[tonywob]

I certainly hope so :)

[Desaix]

Speaking about mesh I read Ben is favourable, or not against, to a custom mesh local variation at loading time, that would be a real improvement for scenery designers. Hope this gets a high priority. Something like adding a local data for height data and XP takes care, while loading the scenery, of implementing the new data in the current tile mesh. Hope I have understood correctly? Anyone knows more about this?

[tonywob]

I hope so, that would be such a useful feature to have and probably a game changer in terms of quality addon airports