VULKAN for Prepar3D v5?

[HiFlyer 9,338]

3 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Hi Dave,

What these Aerofly FS2 videos are demonstrating is excellent performance along with apparent significant overhead of available resources. We don’t need our flight simulators to be running at 120fps. A fresh installation of Prepar3D runs quite quickly at the default situation, but that soon changes as we start to pile on those high quality extras!  I imagine the team behind AF2 are feeling pretty confident about their sim being able to accommodate all those essential Addons without an unacceptable impact on performance.

Regards,

Mike

OpenGL and Vulkan are great for cross-platform capability. Like X-plane, Aerofly is on multiple platforms (tablets, etc) so Vulkan is an obvious step. A less obvious step is that it could provide even more headroom to add the special effects we all like, without compromising the current 2D and VR performance. (this is important!!!)

So essentially same framerates... More stuff (maybe)

Just as much as DCS and X-Plane, Ipacs is looking at the future, and for some, that future definitely includes Vulkan.

With its DX lineage however, its hard to imagine the work that would be required to take P3D down the road to Vulkan. 🤔

I would expect DX12 before I would expect that.

[SteveW 1,792]

Vulcan is just an API that utilises the GPU in a more advanced way, a GPU developed for DX12. The API won't be so hard to introduce, possibly makes some parts of P3D easier to do.

A move to push heavy addons away from the dll overhead and on to separate cores is needed. FSX was built that way so there should be some milage in improving P3D there.

[SteveW 1,792]

29 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Lots of certainties in this thread. 😂 Rob had a vastly better performance in AFS2 Vulkan beta compared to OpenGL (45-60 fps vs 90-200 fps). "End of story"???

 

Lots of certainties in that thread. OpenGL vs Vulcan - no chance.

[TechguyMaxC 516]

36 minutes ago, Cruachan said:

Like the development of a new engine, perhaps? If the current engine is struggling under the load all we can really hope for are further optimisations unless, of course, something else is in the works.

Regards,

Mike

In all likelihood, an entirely new, from-the-ground-up engine would be necessary to take advantage of new levels of parallelism brought about by advances in modern CPU and GPU hardware.  Chances of this happening are quite low, IMHO.

[SteveW 1,792]

When I was testing the FSPS FFTF product I was posting graphs showing near 200fps. P3D is not "bad". But we want to include models with what amount to essentially an over-facet-count that's going to improve just by using a bigger GPU. Open-GL is too old to be based on current hardware and improvements to that would amount to become Vulcan etc. which are coming because the GPUs are better due to the road to DX12 and beyond. I think cross platform is coming from MS too but not sure on that.

[Murmur 3,941]

I personally support SteveW and TechguyMaxC predictions, i.e. future P3D versions keeping on using DX11 and not using a deeply rewritten rendering engine. 👍

[SteveW 1,792]

All this GPU stuff is forgetting that if code has to be re-done it is hard work. Whether or not new API can be utilised or is worth it may have a larger basis in time and cost. Changing stuff under the hood other than graphics handling in P3D is going to be bad news for that programmer. Or maybe not, programmers like a challenge.

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

MacOS and Linux gamers will always be a small percentage of the total market. On the other hand...

https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/graphics/

[Cruachan 705]

14 hours ago, TechguyMaxC said:

In all likelihood, an entirely new, from-the-ground-up engine would be necessary to take advantage of new levels of parallelism brought about by advances in modern CPU and GPU hardware.  Chances of this happening are quite low, IMHO.

And yet......after six cups of coffee, chocolate biscuits (with promises of more!) and several intense brain-storming group sessions, who knows what might happen. Fingers crossed!

Regards,

Mike

[charlie130 196]

1 hour ago, Cruachan said:

And yet......after six cups of coffee, chocolate biscuits (with promises of more!) and several intense brain-storming group sessions, who knows what might happen. Fingers crossed!

Regards,

Mike

As well as the refreshments, we need someone with a few quid and a love of Flight Simulation.......Mr Musk and a wad of cash to invest in a new coded flight sim engine? 

The talent is out there, but everything's profit driven nowadays. So we need to remove the need for profit?

Optimistically, 

David

[Cruachan 705]

A thought occurs to me: are there any cutting-edge engines in existence now that could be licensed and adapted for use in a flight simulation environment....or, as I suspect, is that a complete non-starter?

Mike

[SmokeDiddy 262]

This has been a very interesting read regardless of the speculation.  It's too bad we cannot get into the mind of those at LM to know what they're thinking.  XP is getting much more love over there with 3PP and updates to the sim coming quickly and LR has told us where they're headed.  I do not see a slow down for XP, but one has to consider the future of P3D.  I mean it's pretty good as it is today, but at some point, hardware or OS will force them to either change or shut it down.  So, in my eyes, until they share what the future looks like and we can be assured our investments are safe, I'm just hesitant to invest any significant amount of money for add-ons or hardware for P3D.  Then again, I'm old so I must stay within my budget too.

[ErichB 3,637]

18 minutes ago, SmokeDiddy said:

I do not see a slow down for XP, but one has to consider the future of P3D.  I mean it's pretty good as it is today, but at some point, hardware or OS will force them to either change or shut it down.

In the interview which they gave to FSElite, Adam Breed said enough to indicate that there was a long term future for P3D.  What is annoying is that we don't really know what future contains, or the timing of any new developments.  Lot's of 'maybe's' but very few certainties

[G-RFRY 1,705]

48 minutes ago, SmokeDiddy said:

This has been a very interesting read regardless of the speculation.  It's too bad we cannot get into the mind of those at LM to know what they're thinking.  XP is getting much more love over there with 3PP and updates to the sim coming quickly and LR has told us where they're headed.  I do not see a slow down for XP, but one has to consider the future of P3D.  I mean it's pretty good as it is today, but at some point, hardware or OS will force them to either change or shut it down.  So, in my eyes, until they share what the future looks like and we can be assured our investments are safe, I'm just hesitant to invest any significant amount of money for add-ons or hardware for P3D.  Then again, I'm old so I must stay within my budget too.

The chances of P3D LM shutting are about the same Microsoft shutting down.

[SmokeDiddy 262]

2 hours ago, rjfry said:

The chances of P3D LM shutting are about the same Microsoft shutting down.

But MS did shutdown MSFS even with a monster user base.  Nevertheless, they will have to get on the porch with the big dogs and change or stay mired up in the mud.  Only IMO.