X-Plane Developer Q&A

[Murmur 3,940]

 

[lorenzog89 96]

• Vulkan: End of year window is going to be a very tight deadline; great for increasing CPU usage and reducing stuttering; addons that draw in 3D (not objects) will need to be adjusted for Vulkan (planes, scenery and 2D addons should just work); Vulkan does not use the current .glsl shaders
• 11.30: New shaders that will work with Vulkan; private alpha should be released this week; cloud transparency bug fixed last night; jet engine wind milling to be improved
• SLI/Crossfire: Unlikely to ever be supported as it's just a waste of time; not very effective; hard to get it working
• Particle system: Windshield effects unlikely to be modelled without 3rd part hack (because they aren't really particles in a 3D sense, so hard to add); scenery support is on the roadmap, but may not ship in 11.30
• ATC system: VFR and real-world procedures biggest requests; will be an ever-evolving thing; work has begun by re-doing the voice system, which has unearthed a lot of unknown bugs; will use Text-To-Speech to do voice, then post-process it in FMOD -> faster to code; bugs will then be fixed and also flying into mountains
• Scenery: To have FMOD and particle system eventually; to become compatible with things such as IVAP
• Seasonal textures: Likely never going to happen (it's just too time-consuming)
• Night lighting range: Still unknown due to performance issues
• Citation X: Discussed, nothing new mentioned
• Sea planes: Austin (Founder and King) will get seaplane rating soon, then he'll get the data he needs
• Brown tiles bug: [A bit like the XPLM bug] Hard to reproduce, but DO FILE MORE BUG REPORTS IF YOU GET THEM
• Water: To be improved at some point
• Tail dragger ground handling: Now better in 11.30 due to better aerodynamics
• World Editor (WED): Next version to include OpenStreetMap and other data
• Mobile: Update this autumn; aircraft will be improved, but much the same as desktop: time-consuming

[Murmur 3,940]

41 minutes ago, Lorenzog said:

• Citation X: Discussed, nothing new mentioned

If I understood that correctly, they said that improving it to XP11 quality standards was more work than rebulting it from scratch, so we will never see it, as far as I understood.

 

[Paraffin 2,197]

1 hour ago, Lorenzog said:

• Vulkan: End of year window is going to be a very tight deadline; great for increasing CPU usage and reducing stuttering; addons that draw in 3D (not objects) will need to be adjusted for Vulkan (planes, scenery and 2D addons should just work); Vulkan does not use the current .glsl shaders

This may be why we're not seeing any major new weather add-ons lately. Waiting on Vulkan most likely, so they don't have to be completely re-written.

It's a little disappointing to hear nothing mentioned about internal weather improvements, which implies they're leaving everything to add-on developers for the v11 cycle. I guess we'll need to wait for v12 before we see any major improvements like full 3D system modeling, updrafts and downdrafts, realistic CBs, etc. that probably can't be done with add-ons (or we'd see it already).

Quote

 

• Seasonal textures: Likely never going to happen (it's just too time-consuming)

 

Well, that's disappointing too, but I suppose good news for add-on developers.

[Sticky 267]

4 hours ago, Lorenzog said:

• Seasonal textures: Likely never going to happen (it's just too time-consuming) 

That literally blows my mind. How could something so critical to the experience be ignored... While having laser like focus on seemingly ultra specialized aerodynamic minutia. 

[Murmur 3,940]

5 hours ago, Paraffin said:

I guess we'll need to wait for v12 before we see any major improvements like full 3D system modeling, updrafts and downdrafts, realistic CBs, etc. that probably can't be done with add-ons (or we'd see it already).

I've become more pessimistic than you. I'm not sure we'll see a revised weather system even in v12. Of course I will be glad to be proven wrong.

2 hours ago, Sticky said:

That literally blows my mind. How could something so critical to the experience be ignored...

Same here. I might be wrong, but I have the feeling that Ben & C. have made a wrong assessment on how seasons are done in a flight sim (e.g. in FSX). It's not necessary to do a manual re-drawing of all of the thousands of textures. Instead, the "base" textures (summer, in XP case) are modified in color/hue/saturation to approximate how the terrain looks in different seasons. This of course would be then automated using any image editing software to modify them in batches. Of course, some tuning or tweaking would be necessary to perfect the results, but the needed man-power and time should be much less than what I think those at LR estimate. Some time ago, I even did some experiments using that technique, and I got very nice results (maybe I could post some images). Of course implementing seasons would require more than just modifying terrain textures, like coding start and end season dates depending on world location, changing trees and shrubs textures, etc. Yes, they talked about procedural seasons and snow, but now I wonder how far in the future that will be. Meanwhile, the lack of seasons seems to be one of the big things that users miss in XP.

 

[strider1 575]

6 hours ago, Murmur said:

I've become more pessimistic than you. I'm not sure we'll see a revised weather system even in v12. Of course I will be glad to be proven wrong.

Same here. I might be wrong, but I have the feeling that Ben & C. have made a wrong assessment on how seasons are done in a flight sim (e.g. in FSX). It's not necessary to do a manual re-drawing of all of the thousands of textures. Instead, the "base" textures (summer, in XP case) are modified in color/hue/saturation to approximate how the terrain looks in different seasons. This of course would be then automated using any image editing software to modify them in batches. Of course, some tuning or tweaking would be necessary to perfect the results, but the needed man-power and time should be much less than what I think those at LR estimate. Some time ago, I even did some experiments using that technique, and I got very nice results (maybe I could post some images). Of course implementing seasons would require more than just modifying terrain textures, like coding start and end season dates depending on world location, changing trees and shrubs textures, etc. Yes, they talked about procedural seasons and snow, but now I wonder how far in the future that will be. Meanwhile, the lack of seasons seems to be one of the big things that users miss in XP.

 

Lets quit beating the dead dog over seasons for v11! They have their priorities and the reasons behind it! I think v12 will bring a new weather engine, procedural seasons, new 3D water, new trees, and windshield effects!  

[Murmur 3,940]

1 hour ago, strider1 said:

Lets quit beating the dead dog over seasons for v11! They have their priorities and the reasons behind it! I think v12 will bring a new weather engine, procedural seasons, new 3D water, new trees, and windshield effects!  

If v12 will have all of that I will be pleasantly surprised. We'll see if that is the case. Many users were expecting seasons and new weather in v10.

[steve310002 1,198]

It is a bit disappointing alright. I was hoping for some improvements at least with the weather. It seems like not much else is planned for the V11 lifecycle in terms of major changes beyond Vulcan and tweaking of aerodynamics. At this stage it feels like they are more laying the ground work for X-Plane 12 where hopefully we will see some of the features we are crying out for. I guess at some point it does not make good business sense to give us too much more in X-Plane 11 especially from a eye candy point of view and AI/ATC point of view. Otherwise what would be the selling point of X-Plane 12? I hope we don't have to wait too many more years for X-Plane 12 and that it has these things (which it may not). Then again its only a year and 9 months since X-Plane 11 was released (Dec 6. 2016) so we may be left waiting sometime.

[Colonel X 1,428]

X-Plane n is always laying the groundwork for X-Plane n+1... (that is a key to winning).

Personally I don't care about seasons (hate snow in real life, too), but very much about the weather. I think it's a bit unfair to blame Laminar here though - didn't you all notice the improvements to weather in 11? I mean it was a silent upgrade (no headline feature for 11), but it has become a lot better. The cloud art and especially the performance. Fire up XP10 and compare - they are worlds apart. Actually, I think the performance is so good at this point that Laminar could easily allow 3D clouds to be drawn further out ("enlarging the disc") - combine that with better cloud art (X-Vision goes a long way here even though I still despise the 2D clouds on the horizon, namely ring 4 and 5 of the disc) and that's all you need I suppose (well, soft real weather transitions would be cool, too). My point, a few minor tweaks to the current weather engine and it would be super good - all that without the weather engine being an official X-Plane 11 feature at all. 

Oh yeah and my favorite part of the video (Part II) is when Austin is falling asleep! I mean on a live webcast. Anybody else only sees Will Ferrell when Austin is on screen?

 

Edited August 16, 2018 by Colonel X

[Janov 2,383]

I think we have gotten some solid updates and improvements in the 11 run, and with Vulcan slated to be in 11, I don´t think its fair to expect another major improvement like weather, seasons or ATC.

We get a new X-Plane version every few years, which provides the necessary cashflow for the company to keep hiring and paying good developers. Everyone likes freebies, but to my knowledge there is no software suite out on this planet that gets free support indefinitely.

Jan

[mike4 3]

Flightgear?

I agree they must be busy with Vulkan so they had to postpone seasonal textures etc. I can't imagine that they won't come up with shaders for such in some years. I also hope my Samsung Odyssey controllers get fixed while waiting for VR/Vulkan on Linux.

 

[Humpty 751]

Just want Vulkan with the new FD changes especially rotory. The current Wx engine is not too bad but does have some glitches.

I thought the seasonal changes can be done with the shaders  ?

[Jude Bradley 659]

I'm happy with Vulcan. (Star Trek fan),

[ryanbatc 12,770]

17 hours ago, Sticky said:

That literally blows my mind. How could something so critical to the experience be ignored... While having laser like focus on seemingly ultra specialized aerodynamic minutia. 

Agreed.  Lack of seasons is extremely frustrating.