New extended night lighting in beta

[Paraffin 2,197]

Check this out, they've started doing extended night lighting in auto-gen. It's the texture approach past individual light sources, so it doesn't kill the frame rate (presumably, I haven't tried it yet):

https://developer.x-plane.com/2018/03/now-serving-11-20b1/

[Pugilist2 878]

Looks really good!

[ryanbatc 12,804]

Anything is better than that annoying cut off world look hehe.

[tonywob 4,768]

Obviously this approach won't make the slightest bit of difference for ortho fans, but it looks good in the default scenery

[Paraffin 2,197]

6 hours ago, tonywob said:

Obviously this approach won't make the slightest bit of difference for ortho fans, but it looks good in the default scenery

Good point. I guess you could temporarily swap out the ortho scenery folders for night flights, then restore for daytime? A bit kludgy, and it wouldn't work for the dawn/dusk transition.

I don't use orthos for many reasons, and this just adds another one. But I can see there is a conflict brewing between this kind of enhancement of default scenery, along with compatible add-ons like the new Terramax seasons, vs. current free and upcoming payware ortho-based scenery (Orbx). Each with their own set of advantages.

Looks like the XP user base will be divided into these two camps for a while yet. 

[ryanbatc 12,804]

I like Ortho a lot but with HD Mesh v4, and now this fix - might be enough to sway me back to non ortho.  And I'd save a lot of HDD space hehe

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

5 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I don't use orthos for many reasons, and this just adds another one. But I can see there is a conflict brewing between this kind of enhancement of default scenery

There are many conflicts brewing as the younger crowd comes in demanding sceneries, mobile, VR, and who knows what might be next.  I think (and, yes, I am old) that giving in to these demands takes away from the efforts to make the less obvious but important things better.  As one who has done flight simulation since the days when it was no more than lines and imagination (DOS days), I see the younger crowd wanting what can only be achieved in "games' with extremely limited scenery areas. I find myself starting to pull away again as I did when FSX lost its appeal (many years ago) because the devs are losing interest because of trying to hit a moving target - Carenado and PMDG are examples.  Changes are good, but what is being demanded today, is a whole new platform - as this old guy sees it.  There - I said it!

John

[skully 1,045]

I was hoping for the lights to go even further out.

I just installed the latest XP11 yesterday.

These shots are from default ABQ in XP11 and P3Dv4.2 ABQ with Taburet's night lighting for New Mexico over photoreal scenery for the state of New Mexico.

I just installed the incredible new Albuquerque payware package for the area and I will look again if there is a draw distance improvement with the new scenery.

 

Latest XP11 Beta 11.20 b

 

P3Dv4.2

[skully 1,045]

I will add, in all other lighting situations XP11 for the win hands down. Not even close.

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 hours ago, skully said:

These shots are from default ABQ in XP11 and P3Dv4.2 ABQ with Taburet's night lighting for New Mexico over photoreal scenery for the state of New Mexico.

I just installed the incredible new Albuquerque payware package for the area and I will look again if there is a draw distance improvement with the new scenery.

Latest XP11 Beta 11.20 b

Note: the store page for that payware scenery says this:

Stunning photoscenery covering the Albuquerque area with NAIP imagery and 1/3 arc-second mesh, made by forkboy2

The ortho scenery in that package might be suppressing the new autogen extended lighting. You get one of the other, not both. I don't know if this is what's happening, but it might be.

[skully 1,045]

The new ABQ scenery does indeed reduce the lighting draw distance compared to the default XP11 photo above to the area where the bright lights stop. Regardless, the new scenery is beyond impressive, a must have for anyone flying in that area often.

[Swe_Richard 1,172]

Looking at the screenshots at the developer blog one can clearly see the cut of where the 3d light becomes the 2d lit texture. I guess this still means that we will get the rather sudden "pop-in" of large swaths of 3d lights as we move in closer...?

Still an improvement though and a step in the right direction.

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

4 hours ago, Swe_Richard said:

Looking at the screenshots at the developer blog one can clearly see the cut of where the 3d light becomes the 2d lit texture. I guess this still means that we will get the rather sudden "pop-in" of large swaths of 3d lights as we move in closer...?

Still an improvement though and a step in the right direction.

Yes you do but it is not so noticeable from high altitude with the new extended lighting.

The XP version of Taburet night lighting works with ortho. Luckily the Taburet packages coincide with most of my Ortho areas. It also seamlessly links with the native XP extended lighting when you fly out of the ortho area.

Funnily enough I thought 'oh no I've wasted a few pounds' when the XP extended lighting came out ( I only purchased the Taburet packages about a week before XP released the extended lighting) but as it happens I didn't because of this ortho issue.

Interesting that Taburet can get it to work with ortho - I guess Laminar will work it out. (No doubt Tony could explain the reasons why one works with ortho and the other currently doesn't)  

 

cheers

Peter

[Paraffin 2,197]

8 hours ago, CaptCWGAllen said:

The XP version of Taburet night lighting works with ortho. Luckily the Taburet packages coincide with most of my Ortho areas. It also seamlessly links with the native XP extended lighting when you fly out of the ortho area.

Funnily enough I thought 'oh no I've wasted a few pounds' when the XP extended lighting came out ( I only purchased the Taburet packages about a week before XP released the extended lighting) but as it happens I didn't because of this ortho issue.

Interesting that Taburet can get it to work with ortho - I guess Laminar will work it out. (No doubt Tony could explain the reasons why one works with ortho and the other currently doesn't)  

Just guessing here, there could be two reasons:

1) The new extended lighting texture in XP is a mix of textures in the distance and actual 3D light sources closer to the plane. I don't have the Taburet product, but I assume it's all texture that replaces the default lighting? Laminar probably doesn't want to mess with their default 3D light source modeling in the foreground by providing an alternative that replaces the 3D lighting with textures. If anything, they probably think the more distant textured lighting is a stopgap, until computers get powerful enough to model everything in full 3D.

2) Another guess here, but Austin has said in the past that he doesn't like orthos and texture-based scenery. It's why we haven't had default seasonal changes for so long. I don't think Laminar will go out of its way to support ortho scenery with default night lighting features, but I could be wrong. 

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

Just guessing here, there could be two reasons:

1) The new extended lighting texture in XP is a mix of textures in the distance and actual 3D light sources closer to the plane. I don't have the Taburet product, but I assume it's all texture that replaces the default lighting?

No the native 3d dynamic lighting still works as normal with the Taburet pacakge

cheers

Peter