Interview With Orbx’ John Venema

[HiFlyer 9,358]

Thought some might be interested.

https://fselite.net/originals/fselite-original-interview-with-orbx-john-venema/

[edpatino 1,964]

Quoting from the interview:

"AFS2 has so much excess framerate bandwidth that adding new systems won’t diminish its performance as we move forward. We have TrueEarth Netherlands coming out for AFS2 in the next week or so, followed by the UK, Pacific Northwest, Germany and perhaps many more. We previewed Palm Springs airport at FSExpo in June running at 200fps on a laptop with full PeopleFlow2 support – What a sim!".

Being ORBX a leader in scenery development, their conclusions about Aerofly FS 2 are very interesting.

Cheers, Ed

 

[vgbaron 3,586]

Not to knock AFS2 because I do believe it's an up and coming sim but in many ways it's like comparing apples and oranges. In addition to a new graphics engine you are looking at a relatively small "world" compared to P3D. If they can maintain that high bandwidth with a fully populated sim, now THAT would be something to crow about. I believe they will but I also believe it will take several years.

Something to look forward to.

Vic

[edpatino 1,964]

10 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

Not to knock AFS2 because I do believe it's an up and coming sim but in many ways it's like comparing apples and oranges. In addition to a new graphics engine you are looking at a relatively small "world" compared to P3D. If they can maintain that high bandwidth with a fully populated sim, now THAT would be something to crow about. I believe they will but I also believe it will take several years.

Something to look forward to.

Vic

Sorry to disagree with the comparison to P3D, but that's life, everyone has right to express his opinions.

Cheers, Ed

 

Edited July 16, 2018 by edpatino

[Victoroos 205]

af2 misses aircraft..isn't it?

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

AFS2 is geared towards photographic scenery and when you add simple polygon buildings with photographic images on those buildings, yes you can easily hit 200 fps on a fairly good laptop with a simple aircraft. P3D with all its scenery layers and autogen and 3D Models, ATC and AI Aircraft etc, it is a hog by comparison, but P3D is better at simulating complex aircraft systems

As soon as AFS2 gets as complex it will be much slower as well. If you strip P3D down to the bare minimum you can get over 200 fps as well

Edited July 16, 2018 by Matthew Kane

[Christopher Low 5,352]

I doubt it is quite as simple as that, Matthew.

[scianoir 610]

As the visual centre in the brain cannot, as I understand it, discern any difference in frame rates above about 30fps, I often wonder why the pre-occupation with frame rates! For this reason, as a rule, I don't routinely measure fps if everything looks smooth.

But I guess demonstrating that very high frame rates are achievable on AFS2 (or any other platform) shows that it at least has plenty of performance available in reserve when all the heavy stuff gets added.

Bill

[GHarrall 494]

3 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

AFS2 is geared towards photographic scenery and when you add simple polygon buildings with photographic images on those buildings, yes you can easily hit 200 fps on a fairly good laptop with a simple aircraft. P3D with all its scenery layers and autogen and 3D Models, ATC and AI Aircraft etc, it is a hog by comparison, but P3D is better at simulating complex aircraft systems

As soon as AFS2 gets as complex it will be much slower as well. If you strip P3D down to the bare minimum you can get over 200 fps as well

Have you tried it? The buildings in AFS2 certainly aren't simple polygons with photo images on them. Also, the Dash 8 400 that is supplied as a free, default aircraft is very well detailed. I was shocked at just how good it is. Its not quite the MJC q400 but as a stock aircraft you would be surprised with what it can do.

I keep hearing that it will slow down as the complexity ramps up. I have yet to see any evidence of this being the case. So perhaps we get 100 FPS instead of 200?? :))

Also, I have never seen P3D hit 200 FPS no matter what settings you turn down.

[Murmur 3,941]

1 minute ago, scianoir said:

As the visual centre in the brain cannot, as I understand it, discern any difference in frame rates above about 30fps

That's absolutely false. Try setting 30 fps locked or unlimited fps on a 120 Hz monitor (or even a 60 Hz monitor) and you'll see a great difference in smoothness (of course the flight sim should be set to provide 120/60 fps if you do that experiment).

I've even seen instances in which people are able to tell the difference between 120 or 144 fps.

[GHarrall 494]

9 minutes ago, scianoir said:

As the visual centre in the brain cannot, as I understand it, discern any difference in frame rates above about 30fps, I often wonder why the pre-occupation with frame rates! For this reason, as a rule, I don't routinely measure fps if everything looks smooth.

But I guess demonstrating that very high frame rates are achievable on AFS2 (or any other platform) shows that it at least has plenty of performance available in reserve when all the heavy stuff gets added.

Bill

Ah that old chestnut again. No, this is not true. In computer generated images there is no motion blur between frames. This plays a huge part and is why when it comes to computer games / simulators the eye can easily discern between 30 FPS, 60 FPS etc.

http://ca.ign.com/articles/2014/11/05/understanding-frame-rate-and-its-importance

Edited July 16, 2018 by GHarrall

[scianoir 610]

I guess my eyes must be aging more rapidly than I thought then!

Bill

[HiFlyer 9,358]

4 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

As soon as AFS2 gets as complex it will be much slower as well. If you strip P3D down to the bare minimum you can get over 200 fps as well

Every once in a while I see this put forward.... but the only actual evidence for it seems to be our experience of the behavior of older sims.

Interested however, I did take up the challenge and loaded up the Piper Cub in P3D, after having turned off absolutely everything that could be turned off. I also set my monitor to its max 165hz and took a quick flight over Orbx EHRD.

Slightly surprised, I did indeed hit spikes up to 170 fps

Unfortunately, there was essentially nothing (a few fuel silos in the distance) in sight.

Aerofly can do a bit better than that. In fact here is a picture of me taken long ago, putt-putting along at about 600fps (lower left corner) in similar "not much onscreen" circumstances.

I'm a bit startled this seems to be heading towards a sim vs sim thing, but I'm kinda hoping this is just a sign of simulation entering a period of adjustment to new possabilities.

In fact, I suspect as time goes by and more and more is added to Aerofly, (hopefully with nothing near the predicted precipitous FPS drop) this particular argument about achievable framerate will (gradually) give ground until everyone's completely forgotten about it because they're too busy enjoying themselves.

[Murmur 3,941]

Fact is AFS2 engine is still missing several visual features, namely terrain self-shadowing (producing flat and unrealistic terrain lighting when the sun is low), water effects (water in AFS2 is a texture), global lighting (not even landing lights), atmospheric scattering, etc.

None of them can be deactivated in other sims (and most of them have been there for something like 15 years, whereas AFS2 is missing them). So a 100% comparison cannot be still made.

Neverthless, I think IPACS have always had performance has their first priority, so I think it will keep (all or at least part) of its performance advantage. I'm not predicting a precipituous FPS drop, just noticing that a truly 100% comparison cannot be made for now.

Interesting to note that Rob Ainscough (in a post in the video forum) said that before Vulkan, he had 45-60 FPS in AFS2 with everything maxed (I assume with some add-on scenery)...

[HiFlyer 9,358]

3 minutes ago, Murmur said:

45-60 FPS in AFS2 with everything maxed (I assume with some add-on scenery)

Doesn't he tend to keep his frame-rates locked? I noticed in his test, he tried to lock to 60, and it wouldn't.