Rex present Skyforce.

[Cruachan 705]

25 minutes ago, B777ER said:

If a horse race always had 10 brown colored horses and one day someone brought a different colored one and said it would for sure win, some of you in here would shoot the horse in the stall before it even got to the starting gate.

Harsh but true! I always thought it was a British tendency to knee-jerk initial doubt and disapproval when faced with technical innovation and individual striving for self betterment. Seems I may have been wrong.

Mike

[Tony P 160]

Since I've owned every single weather generator since Opus,  can't see why I wont try this one.  Hopefully it wont be too expensive for us REX users and we can then do some real comparisons.   Until then,  everything said here is purely speculation until we see it for ourselves.  

[B777ER 2,486]

My only question, does this render Envtex useless if you use the whole Sky Force program?

[Guest]

Not to be a downer, but there is no hardware available now and I’ll even venuture to speculate for the next 20 years that could do particle based clouds in real time with realistic motion.

maybe procedural clouds which aren’t true 3D volumetric clouds either.

We’re all going to have compromise clouds for reasonably acceptable performance for the foreseeable future.

They can be improved on, but you’ll always need a blind eye for real time rendering of clouds.

Cheers, Rob.

[bill10 13]

2 hours ago, B777ER said:

If a horse race always had 10 brown colored horses and one day someone brought a different colored one and said it would for sure win, some of you in here would shoot the horse in the stall before it even got to the starting gate.

Might be the best post ever.

[bill10 13]

2 hours ago, B777ER said:

 

 

[pracines 823]

12 hours ago, pmb said:

I would take all this with a grain of salt. REX are masters of promotion and big words, and sometimes I wished they would invest a few $$$s more into development than advertising.

ASCA+AS2016 work amazingly well. If Skyforce will be better, I'll certainly get it, but I'll sure wait for a few early reports.

In any case, their upgrade scheme with Service Packs etc. sucks. I own REX 4 + Soft Clouds, bought separately, not installed at present, but when I reinstalled it the last time it was a nightmare to achieve integration. 

Kind regards, Michael

There is a good reason why your post is most popular. Thank you Michael...well said.  

[GCBraun 2,392]

Hopefully this will play nice with P3D V4.1 Native VR. Was VR a test-case for Skyforce?

[Victoroos 205]

13 hours ago, rstough said:

It will NOT be a year and probably less than a week or two. ;)

 

that sounds like a great promise!

[Cruachan 705]

7 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Not to be a downer, but there is no hardware available now and I’ll even venuture to speculate for the next 20 years that could do particle based clouds in real time with realistic motion.

maybe procedural clouds which aren’t true 3D volumetric clouds either.

We’re all going to have compromise clouds for reasonably acceptable performance for the foreseeable future.

They can be improved on, but you’ll always need a blind eye for real time rendering of clouds.

Cheers, Rob.

Hi Rob,

Might explain why SkyForce 3D has been 3yrs in development. I'm not saying they have succeeded in accomplishing the impossible, but it would appear that a way has been found to display a convincing close visual alternative/approximation? If so, then this could well prove to have been a remarkable achievement! 

Also, for them to state that we can expect to see all this without punishing frame rate reductions, maybe even improvements, is quite extraordinary. Maybe there is some truth in the advertising hype after all? Why such bold (risky?) statements if not true? Yes, I'm inclined to trust them on this and am eagerly looking forward to see the results.

That excitement of anticipation is steadily growing!

Regards,

Mike

[Pivot 153]

8 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Not to be a downer, but there is no hardware available now and I’ll even venuture to speculate for the next 20 years that could do particle based clouds in real time with realistic motion.

maybe procedural clouds which aren’t true 3D volumetric clouds either.

We’re all going to have compromise clouds for reasonably acceptable performance for the foreseeable future.

They can be improved on, but you’ll always need a blind eye for real time rendering of clouds.

Cheers, Rob.

I seem to remember an older program, I think Pro Pilot, using the old 3DFX GPU which had this type of clouds. You actually flew through them and they would even make your wings disappear. I may be wrong and am not a programmer, but I don't think anything has ever been generated since that era that do that. All of the new model clouds just kind of jump out of the way like a matador to a bull rush. I think D3D was the death of that type realism. JMO

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

ASN creates an adequate compromise by adding a fog-like effect when one passes through the sprite-based 2.5D clouds. In its most recent incarnations this "in-cloud motion" effect has become quite realistic.

[ckyliu 1,749]

That in-cloud affect is awesome when cloud surfing, watching them fly over the windscreen!

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Cruachan said:

Also, for them to state that we can expect to see all this without punishing frame rate reductions, maybe even improvements, is quite extraordinary. Maybe there is some truth in the advertising hype after all? Why such bold (risky?) statements if not true?

My comment was nothing to do with or about REX.  Some members were stuck on "spinning" 2D clouds ... i.e. clouds that rotate groups of 2D planes to face view point.  I was pointing out that to do an entire virtual sky with particle based clouds (similar FX you see in AS4 cloud motion but limited to just ahead of the VC) is something current hardware and future hardware could not handle.  I don't know if one could generate an entire weather system using P3D particle based FX files exclusively (and be viewable from all cameras) ... but even if possible, it would not be good for FPS performance.

I don't know what REX are doing, but if it's similar to HiFi AS4 cloud motion option (a particle based FX generated in front of the aircraft in VC only view) then it should look very good in most situations.  I think this is a great compromise at providing a sense of "volume" when flying thru clouds as you really only need to see the effect close up and not being rendered for the entire virtual sky out to 200nm.

So my comment was NOT directed at REX, just about practical implementations of doing an entire 200nm weather system using particle based clouds (which are closer to "true" 3D clouds) ... a cloud is mass of water/ice collecting on dust in the atmosphere, billions of particles in a single cloud ... we don't have the hardware to render that and we don't need to, just render the immediate surrounding vicinity to the aircraft is in most cases a good compromise.  2D plane mixed in with some 3D particles should work well but there will always be extreme view cases (zoomed out and rapid head motion).

Cheers, Rob.

[vortex681 806]

19 hours ago, pmb said:

Now, FSW isn't ESP-based but FSX-based, but both have the same root.

Nothing to do with SkyForce but just to correct a common misconception. FSX isn't based on ESP, it's the other way around: "Built on the core technology behind Flight Simulator X, Microsoft ESP is a visual simulation platform..." - https://www.microsoft.com/Products/Games/FSInsider/developers/Pages/default.aspx