ATC won't be here anytime soon (and mod annoyances)

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Interestingly on my machine, clouds, heavy or light, seem to have zero impact.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

On 8/20/2018 at 5:48 PM, GCBraun said:

Hi Robert, thanks for the suggestion. I have bought AF2 and almost all of its DLC's in order to support development. Currently it is not installed, but I am looking forward to give it a go sometime in the future.

I did not mean to bash the simulator when I used the "arcade-like" expression. The problem is that, owning the Majestic Q400, the A2A C172 (or even the XP11 C172 with the REP module), I cannot find much enjoyment flying the default planes of AF2. 

I am more or less of a systems-freak. While VR performance in AF2 is great, I need an advanced plane to get any enjoyment out of my simming session. For that reason, DCS is slowly becoming my no. 1 sim. It has multiple (extremely) high-fidelity add-ons, stunning graphics, good VR performance, awesome flight-model on planes and helicopters and also the ability to blow things up when needed. For non combat-folks, a YAK-52 was just released that I still have to try...

Anyway, I do hope the best for AF2 and I will definitely keep an open eye on its progress. 

I fly and enjoy the three civil aviation planes you mention. I’ve mainly been flying the Zibo 737 and REP 172 in x-plane in recent months (along with a bunch of aerobask stuff).

Having said that, I go back to AF2 every once in a while, and it’s - this week - my favourite sim.

if you haven’t tried it recently, the July update added a load of functionality to the plane systems.

A320 MCDU now has access to all the main pages, though functionality is still quite low. Systems depth is much improved, no its not the FSL A320. I have that one, don’t ever use it, as performance is rubbish in VR and i don’t fly in pancake mode any more under any circumstances! In the AF2 A320, almost every button and knob is clickable, though many don’t yet have the underlying systems attached. The main omission is the fuel system, you can’t turn off the engines. But there’s quite a few systems to play with, and its fun checking out their impact on the ECAM.

747 has less systems working (CDU only has one page), but almost all buttons and knobs can at least be interacted with.

Q400 has quite decent systems modelling now, that one allows you to shut down/start up the airplane.

Cessna 172 AP functions accurately.

Importantly, the occulus touch implementation ismfar superior to p3d (which is not saying much), and better than x-plane for interacting with controls. This and the excellent vr performance are the main reasons that i am willing to sacrifice systems depth right now to fly this sim.

i’d absolutely love a pmdg quality boeing in AF2 - i do miss full systems for sure - but having fired up p3d VR again yesterday, i found the poor VR performance, dubious graphics and lack of touch support to be difficult to get past.

So, AF2 systems vary between planes, some are quite good now - far, far better than default FSX planes, for example - but there’s definitely still some work to be done.

the other change is the orbx netherlands and ipa s key,west addons. Both worth the money, and add a lot to the sim.

Well worth some VR time, and when I miss my “full systems” sims too much i’ll be back to p3d and x-plane for a bit!

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

On 8/16/2018 at 1:28 PM, Avidean said:

I don't think there is a system that can deliver more than double the FPS my system can so I find 600+ FPS very hard to believe.

Well.... I only reached 597, here.........

[Guest]

On 8/27/2018 at 8:41 PM, HiFlyer said:

Well.... I only reached 597, here........

Fair enough but the point was that I doubted that any system would deliver double the FPS mine could so I took a similar screen shot and at 475 or so FPS.

So in a scenario as close as I could get to yours you get 25% more FPS with your i7 8700k at 5ghz and GTX 1080ti (a cutting edge machine) compared to my 5 year old i7 4770k at 4.8ghz and GTX 980ti. So I am right to say I doubt any system would deliver double the FPS mine could. 😁

Edited August 29, 2018 by Guest

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Oh, dear.......

Well....... Honestly I took that shot over a year ago, when I had a slightly less powerful system. If you're curious, I've today taken another shot with my current system, and with the refinements that have occurred to the Aerofly engine since then. Results are topping out at over 1100 fps, and I will gladly post the picture to prove it. 😀

The point being (again) that I think the sim may have just a tad bit of headroom in there for systems complexity........ especially when you consider that during this test, the CPU(S) were as usual pretty much unused. The Aerofly graphics engine runs and is almost entirely dependant on the power of one's GPU..... And my 2080ti is confirmed........ ✈️

 

4 hours ago, Avidean said:

so I took a similar screen shot and at 475 or so FPS.

Picture? 🙂

[Guest]

4 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

The point being (again) that I think the sim may have just a tad bit of headroom in there for systems complexity........ especially when you consider that during this test, the CPU(S) were as usual pretty much unused. The Aerofly graphics engine runs and is almost entirely dependant on the power of one's GPU..... And my 2080ti is confirmed........ ✈️

 

The nice thing is that even with extremely dense scenery, like TrueEarth Netherlands, fps stil stays high. Not >1000 of course, but >100 is high enough already. There still are things that have to be added that will depend on the GPU, like clouds (including shadows), traffic, 'real' roads, water, but even then I think it will be hard to let fps drop below 60 (which should be the absolute minimum for AFS2 imho). Things like deeper aircraft systems, the weather engine, etc. will most likely mainly or only depend on the CPU. Add to that the fact that new GPU's are coming and the future is looking good!

I am curious to see what the 2080ti will do with fps in AFS2! How much more headroom will that give? I am also curious to see if IPACS will ever support the new options that card offer (raytracing and that new AA method).

[Guest]

12 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Results are topping out at over 1100 fps

Similar scene with approximately the same zoom 1/5 terrain 4/5 sky with sun and no clouds, I saw up to 850 fps. Anyway despite this, the point is that by the time FS2 gets to where P3D is now is 10 years away. And 10 years from now P3D will have advanced another 10 years. Not knocking FS2 but it will never catch up on P3D and given the way FPS takes a huge dive once clouds are added I doubt if the hits by adding road traffic dynamic water bodies, autogen,  AI traffic and ATC, Real weather, etc. etc. etc. will be any smaller. Once all the bells and whistles are added I am sure that FPS will be down to 60's

[HiFlyer 9,359]

1 hour ago, Avidean said:

Similar scene with approximately the same zoom 1/5 terrain 4/5 sky with sun and no clouds, I saw up to 850 fps.

Still no screenies supporting this? 🤔

Cause I have a pretty good system. I even test upcoming sceneries, and I've never seen anything close to that despite some serious effort on my part, so it would be great to know your settings, flying area and etc.....

1 hour ago, Avidean said:

Once all the bells and whistles are added I am sure that FPS will be down to 60's

And I'm pretty sure you're wrong, which generally means stalemate. 😃

As always though, I'm perfectly willing to come back to this in a few years and check how it all turned out. In the meantime, we have speculation, based on experience with an entirely different engine, and generally from people who have not been there to see that Aerofly has actually gotten faster over time, rather than the opposite....

It's scary to think how fast it will be on a 2080 and how much headroom that might leave for...... stuff.

In the meanwhile, in reply to you, I've moved to a more testable and populated area: The Netherlands and Rotterdam, with full clouds, trees etc with FPS closing in on 370/400

If you have the Netherlands scenery, I Invite you to post an equivalent screenshot with your frames, to backup your assertions as to what you are currently be capable of achieving.

In the meanwhile, my point is that much as some are loathe to accept it, Ipacs has created a formidable engine with no real reason to think its not fully capable of anything we've become accustomed to, and at framerates we very definitely are NOT accustomed to.

 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Avidean said:

given the way FPS takes a huge dive once clouds are added I doubt if the hits by adding road traffic dynamic water bodies, autogen,  AI traffic and ATC, Real weather, etc. etc. etc. will be any smaller.

You are thinking as if AFS2 is a spin off from P3D. It isn't. You can't say 'clouds bring fps in P3D down by 10 fps and so clouds will also bring fps in AFS2 down by 10 fps'. (That 10 fps is just an example.) AFS2 is a completely different sim and all future DLC/addons will also be completely different.

The only thing you and I and we all can do is wait and see. I don't care at ALL who is wrong and who is right when it comes to predicting future loss of perfomance and arguing about it is really useless (though fun 😉 ). All I care about is actual loss (or not) of performance in the future. If AFS2 ever releases ATC or a weather engine we will be able to tell how much it hurts performance. Until then it's all speculation. So far the first test, TrueEarth Netherlands, went really well and promising. Let's wait and see what the next test results in.

[Murmur 3,941]

24 minutes ago, J van E said:

If AFS2 ever releases ATC or a weather engine we will be able to tell how much it hurts performance. Until then it's all speculation. So far the first test, TrueEarth Netherlands, went really well and promising. Let's wait and see what the next test results in.

Good post. Although, differently from others, I don't think things like ATC, AI, complex aircraft systems, etc. will be very significant as a performance test. They're all done on the CPU.

In my opinion, the real proof will be when (or I should say "if") the many missing visual effects will be added. Not only atmo scattering (that should not have a significant impact on performance), but things like real water modeling, a real night lighting engine, complex weather, terrain shadows, etc. Those are the things that the competitor sims have had for more than a decade.

 

Edited August 29, 2018 by Murmur

[HiFlyer 9,359]

39 minutes ago, Murmur said:

In my opinion, the real proof will be when (or I should say "if") the many missing visual effects will be added. Not only atmo scattering (that should not have a significant impact on performance), but things like real water modeling, a real night lighting engine, complex weather, terrain shadows, etc. Those are the things that the competitor sims have had for more than a decade.

I would agree that that will be a better test. but even then, how much does that cost in our current sims? 100fps?

Lets go hog wild and say all that it will cost Aerofly 300fps altogether. Why so high? Pessimism: despite the fact that we see sims like DCS and engines like Outerra handle most of that without nearly that large a hit, and that even in legacy sims, it probably costs about only 100fps at max.

(I suspect less, otherwise my frames would skyrocket when I turn them off)

That still leaves the sim with plenty of room to spare, especially on the 32 CPU core, Nvidia RTXXX 4080 I will probably rocking by the time some of that arrives......... 😋

[Guest]

15 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I would agree that that will be a better test. but even then, how much does that cost in our current sims? 100fps?

Er... I get around 135 fps over Miami, similar over Rotterdam. 135 minus 100 is 35... I don't want AFS2 ever to go lower than 60 with ALL options enabled. ;)

[HiFlyer 9,359]

1 hour ago, J van E said:

Er... I get around 135 fps over Miami, similar over Rotterdam. 135 minus 100 is 35... I don't want AFS2 ever to go lower than 60 with ALL options enabled. 😉

😋 I get...... a bit higher. Above Rotterdam, with all settings maxed I easily stay at about 250 to 300 fps. (Slower in Vulkan)

I could gain another 100fps (as shown in my picture above simply by turning shadows down or off)

So I consider I have that 100fps to spare, and that's before the 2080ti.

I chose the 2080ti rather than simply the 2080 for the very reason that while the 2080 would be an improvement, the 2080ti will rocket Aerofly and hopefully X-plane to the moon.

I'm hoping for an extra 100fps at least (in aerofly) and full 2.0 supersampling in VR\

The new graphics cards all have a new VR hmd connecter, and I think its there for a reason. I'm kind of suspecting some new VR headsets will be hitting the ground, sooner rather than later, and I want to be ready.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

😋 I get...... a bit higher. Above Rotterdam, with all settings maxed I easily stay at about 250 to 300 fps. (Slower in Vulkan)

Wow... I need a new computer! 😉 But yes, if you have 250 now with current hardware then the future is looking bright indeed. LOTS of headroom there! You could even lose 50% and still have nothing to worry about!

[jarsky 12]

Forgive me if I sound a bit naïve here, but how does Aerofly FS 2 achieve such astounding frame rates? I am accustomed to thinking of fps in double figures, perhaps triple figures in exceptionally rare circumstances. But 500fps, 600fps, >1000fps - just how?! Really, I am flabbergasted. (Although, does the human eye not capture >60fps? Either way, I see the benefits in terms of headroom and better performance than what we are used to achieving.)

Secondly, I read about Aerofly FS 2 lacking a weather engine - just clear and a basic blue sky + clouds setting presently. Do you think trueSKY will provide something special? Would people here want that? Just curious.