Improvements in V4.3

[Greggy_D 937]

2 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Are you aware of the costs to produce games like COD MW2 or GTA V?  around $280,000,000 US

A bit misleading since $200M for MW2 and $128M for GTA5 were marketing costs.

[ahsmatt7 1,201]

6 hours ago, JanReidar said:

If you compare this to other sims out there, I would say the progress is really slow. Problem with P3D right now is that it does not come with much improvements in major releases either. The current state of the sim is that it's full of old legacy bugs inherrited from FSX. I can name ground friction bug, rpm/MP bug (opposite of what is reality), lack of realistic helicopter flight dynamics, lack of realistic turboprop simulation and a lot more. We're talking big issues here, not smaller ones. I'm not expecting the sim to be perfect in this regard, but I do expect it to simulate things somewhat realistic, and at least not opposite reality. The current state of the issues named, are major flaws and has been on the platform for so many years now without any effort to fix them. We also obviously have other things related to graphics, scenery development etc. But in my opinion they should focus on fixing simulation flaws first, before anything else. I would love to be able to fly a helicopter or a turboprop with a certain level of realism. That is not the case today. I need to use other sims to be able to do that if I want a certain level of realism. All issues named here are quite easy to fix, but LM refuses to break backward compatibility with older addons, which is a real shame because it stops the sim from moving forward past a certain point.

Whether or not P3D is the future, remains to be seen. I certainly hope so, but then they really need to start bringing the platform forward at a higher rate than what we've seen the last couple of years.

They refuse because you only give them 200 dollars every two years. Thier real clients are the concern and they shell out millions. 

[ahsmatt7 1,201]

30 minutes ago, Greggy_D said:

A bit misleading since $200M for MW2 and $128M for GTA5 were marketing costs.

Marketing does play a part in overall costs. Does it not? That's part of doing business......marketing your product.

[warbirds 555]

1 hour ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Here's what I suggest. Buy both XP11 and DCS. Then you will be three times as frustrated, but at least it will be about different aspects of flight simulation.😉

I have all three and each has their place. X11 for full dynamic night lighting, DCS for combat and P3D for when I want to fly daytime commercial (747). If I had to only use one it would be P3D because it is more universal and covers more types of flight, all very well (and maybe also because I was with FSX from the start and P3D feels more like home to me because of that).

Sure I have been frustrated by all sims but looking back at flying blocks of color in the past and now, today, flying amazing mimics of the real thing I am more than happy.

PS: I think GTA 5 is amazing and hope that someday we can experience that type of graphics and such covering the whole world.

Edited July 3, 2018 by warbirds

[Greggy_D 937]

23 minutes ago, ahsmatt7 said:

Marketing does play a part in overall costs. Does it not? That's part of doing business......marketing your product.

Overall costs, yes.  Production costs, no.  Production cost is what was being discussed.

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Greggy_D said:

A bit misleading since $200M for MW2 and $128M for GTA5 were marketing costs.

Or it means developers are on the wrong side of the expense budget.  I don't recall limiting the discussion to "production" costs ... but don't you mean development costs?  Can't sell anything without Marketing ... LM's website is marketing costs, accepting payments is marketing costs, download servers are marketing costs, etc. etc.  Either way you slice it, GTA V had 1000's of people involve from artists to developers to web designers to marketing ... and still 4 years to make one product without an "official" SDK.  I don't think it's misleading at all, just a hard realization many don't want to accept of the Flight Simulation market ... it's not the same and really should NOT be compared to mainstream gaming markets as it often is ... FS is a slow moving market but it is picking up speed and I'm fairly optimistic of a very good future for FS.

With that said, if you want the BEST looking flight simulator on par with GTA5 visuals and incredible FPS, then AF2 holds that top honor, the recent update to AF2 with "Beta Vulkan" is amazingly impressive, I do mean seriously impressive ... lets hope they bring some weather and other features to AF2 as they have the advantage of not really needing to care about backwards compatibility.

Cheers, Rob.

[Cargostorm 151]

19 hours ago, JanReidar said:

The current state of the issues named, are major flaws and has been on the platform for so many years now without any effort to fix them. We also obviously have other things related to graphics, scenery development etc. But in my opinion they should focus on fixing simulation flaws first, before anything else.couple of years.

Yep, I essentially agree. There are things inherited for 12 years from FSX that in my opintion are essentiell for a serious non-entertainment simulator platform and therefore should be fixed withouth relying on 3rd party developers. Maybe the priorities are different or one gets blind over time without seeing the issues:

1. The Navaids database is still from 2006 (FSX). Why not providing updates with each point release? Herve thankfully provides the updates each month: http://www.aero.sors.fr/navaids3.html

2. Time Sync: a second in the sim does not equal a second in Real World. We must rely e.g. on FSUIPC or FS Real Time to correct that UTC (Zulu/GMT) time and date are in sync with the Real World.

3. Time Zones and DST (Daylight Saving Times): So far we need FS Time Zone fixer or FS Real Time to fix this.

Beside, I do really appreciate all the efforts of the developers and also recognize that resources are limited, even at LM. One could gain the impression however that some "bugs" are not fixed because then this would destroy the bussiness modell of 3rd party developers that fix these bugs with their software. Is it live and let live?

Cheers,

Chris

[simbol 5,832]

12 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

With that said, if you want the BEST looking flight simulator on par with GTA5 visuals and incredible FPS, then AF2 holds that top honor, the recent update to AF2 with "Beta Vulkan" is amazingly impressive, I do mean seriously impressive ... lets hope they bring some weather and other features to AF2 as they have the advantage of not really needing to care about backwards compatibility.

Cheers, Rob.

I wish  AF2 would expand their SDK to the level of P3D.. unfortunately if they do this then they would realise how hard is to think about backwards compatibility so maybe for this reason it will never happen..

Regards,

S.

[AnkH 2,282]

13 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

With that said, if you want the BEST looking flight simulator on par with GTA5 visuals and incredible FPS, then AF2 holds that top honor, the recent update to AF2 with "Beta Vulkan" is amazingly impressive, I do mean seriously impressive ...

Haven't seen the pictures, but I really doubt that this will be "on par with GTA5 visuals". Or then our definition of "visuals" is different. The details inside GTA5 will never be reproduced on a worldwide scale for a simulator, at least not for the next 10 years. But honestly, it is also not necessary in my opinion.

[GEKtheReaper 374]

My 2ct:

P3D runs pretty stable since v3.x and therefore LM should have stopped streching this old FSX core to it's death. With each core optimisation there is another "improvement" (in visuals or etc.) that kills it.

Whats the point in displaying cloud shadows when the light source in the sim is broken and therefore(due to bad performance and visuals) the shadows have to be turned off?
Whats the point to enable dynamic trees when you have to switch them off?
Whats the point to go to 64bit when the sim can't load the textures?
Whats the point in enabling DL when the core can't handle it?
...

It's not understandable how modern power PC, with up to date top notch HW can't run the sim in it's full glory.

Modern "games" (like GTA5) do display a lot of details:  moving flora (moving leaves on a tree), birds, bugs, cracks in materials, dust, poles with wires, lights from diferent sources, lot of simulated objects, complex structures of buildings,....etc.

The critics will say: You can't compare them because the sim models the world! The hell yeah! Corse you can compare it because there is no need to see all those details from further away! Or is somebody seeing street dust from FL340, or window reflection, or....?

So IMHO LM should stop right now in making further small steps in optimising, and take some years to redevelop the core (they should know it by heart by now).

 

[Cargostorm 151]

8 minutes ago, GEKtheReaper said:

So IMHO LM should stop right now in making further small steps in optimising, and take some years to redevelop the core (they should know it by heart by now).

Well, I guess that would result in a completely new sim. Graphics- and performance-wise AF2 shows what is possible with a sim that is based on ESP. Unfortunately it does not cover the world...

Edited July 4, 2018 by Cargostorm

[NorwegianAviator 60]

18 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Here's what I suggest. Buy both XP11 and DCS. Then you will be three times as frustrated, but at least it will be about different aspects of flight simulation.😉

I have them all. The only thing I'm frustrated about in DCS is the complexity and steep learning curve of the planes and helicopters, but that is not their fault. DCS is simply stunning, but it's only military flying. But haven't really used it that much until quite recently. Last 2 months. XP has it's flaws for sure, but there is a lot in the pipeline the next few months. Including a brand new aerodynamics engine. XP is my number one choice for GA, helicopter and turboprops. P3D for all airline flying.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, simbol said:

I wish  AF2 would expand their SDK to the level of P3D

I think it would be easier to make P3D look like AF2 🙂  The P3D SDK/PDK is massive.  If P3D were to provide a "alternate" rendering path, I would drop support for swapping in a Mesh ... remove all the code that allows for that flexibility (sorry PILOT's and others) ... this would increase FPS and remove issues around morphing terrain and no more floating buildings and would allow for better AG placement.  Remove terrain load radius (make it fixed to match real world) ... control FPS thru AG density (distance should be fixed only density varies), shadows, reflections, implement some type of PBR, and DL radius.  Move to DX12 EMA with SFR (so we can see real benefits to multiple GPUs and DX12).  That "alternate" render path would be my ultimate P3D experience ... I can't see this being accomplish in any other way than providing users with a "alternate" render path that may not be fully compatible (or at all) with existing products ... giving time for developers to embrace the new alternate render path and SDK tools to convert their products over time.

This is how I would approach the future, but I'm not LM so this is just a personal fantasy of mine 🙂

Cheers, Rob.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Cargostorm said:

Graphics- and performance-wise AF2 shows what is possible with a sim that is based on ESP.

I don't think AF2 is based on ESP at all?  AF2 uses Vulkan which is closer to a replacement for OpenGL and not DX based which ESP is all DX9 and now LM evolved that to DX11.  Vulkan is cross-platform.

Cheers, Rob.

[simbol 5,832]

25 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I think it would be easier to make P3D look like AF2 🙂  The P3D SDK/PDK is massive.  If P3D were to provide a "alternate" rendering path, I would drop support for swapping in a Mesh ... remove all the code that allows for that flexibility (sorry PILOT's and others) ... this would increase FPS and remove issues around morphing terrain and no more floating buildings and would allow for better AG placement.  Remove terrain load radius (make it fixed to match real world) ... control FPS thru AG density (distance should be fixed only density varies), shadows, reflections, implement some type of PBR, and DL radius.  Move to DX12 EMA with SFR (so we can see real benefits to multiple GPUs and DX12).  That "alternate" render path would be my ultimate P3D experience ... I can't see this being accomplish in any other way than providing users with a "alternate" render path that may not be fully compatible (or at all) with existing products ... giving time for developers to embrace the new alternate render path and SDK tools to convert their products over time.

This is how I would approach the future, but I'm not LM so this is just a personal fantasy of mine 🙂

Cheers, Rob.

Indeed, in hence why I prefer to develop for P3D, regarding your second point well I have a strong feeling that LM is on the same page as you.. and indeed I have strong feelings that it will be very likely what we will start seeing from V5 and beyond..

S.