Poll: Most wanted feature enhancement for P3D v5

[HighTowers 1,434]

I agree revamped ATC baked in would be great, but given LMs focused primary goals and customers, being corporate and military, each customer of that type can have their own private network and dedicated controllers in communication. The only ones who want full ATC are we hobbyists and simulator addicts. So while its on the list, its low priority, and if anything was done, it would be rather limited. 

I voted on new terrain engine. I think the overall look has been the same for over a decade now, and perhaps is one reason why there is a bottleneck in performance, is the limiting old tired terrain engine.   We have talented scenery developers , but all that beautiful work gets caked on to the old terrain engine framework, probably with many limitations vs what could be done today.  Modern engine with modern hardware, would makes things a whole lot more efficient.  

What needs to be done IMO is LM not to worry about compatibility for the next major version.  Nevermind about all the people crying that their stuff wont be compatible.  Making the next big step is necessary to have big changes that really make a difference.  Eventually devs would catch up and in the meantime we still would have older stuff to fly on previous version(s).   You want all these things, yet so many insist on maintaining compatibility.  Well if thats the case, then there wont be much improvement at all with old underlying limiting foundations. 

As for performance and thread optimization.... I think this shouldnt need to be a requested feature. This is something I am sure that LM works on every revision just by default. Major and point releases.  There will always always be room for improvement in that category and optimizing performance and hardware efficiency use will constantly be reanalyzed for improvements. 

[ErichB 3,643]

7 minutes ago, HighTowers said:

I voted on new terrain engine. I think the overall look has been the same for over a decade now, and perhaps is one reason why there is a bottleneck in performance, is the limiting old tired terrain engine.   We have talented scenery developers , but all that beautiful work gets caked on to the old terrain engine framework, probably with many limitations vs what could be done today.  Modern engine with modern hardware, would makes things a whole lot more efficient.  

Didn't MSFlight have a new terrain engine - or was it just different textures? I didn't ever buy MSFlight, but the default terrain from screenshots did seem improved(more refined) and I remember people saying what a game changer it all was.  Although that was a long time ago now...

 

[NZ255 309]

What's the issue with the terrain system?

The terrain system for developers vs X-Plane is a lot better imo. It allows you to mix and match layers as big or as small as you want.
X-Plane makes you work with a massive 1x1 arc degree tile (size varies where you are in the world, but I'm working on one that's 85x110 km) and if you want to make a change, you have to provide all the data. Aerial, mesh, roads, coastlines, etc). It's a lot easier with Ortho4XP but you still need to edit massive sections of the world. I feel sorry for you if your airport happens to straddle two arc tiles 🙂

Whereas in P3D you can just make a high res aerial that covers inside the airport fence.
Or compile a piece of mesh that you can place without affecting the default imagery, road, autogen, etc.

I think the cliffs could be done better (shear cliffs) but I'm not sure how you'd do that as currently imagery is 'draped' over the mesh.

 

Edited October 4, 2018 by NZ255

[HighTowers 1,434]

On 10/4/2018 at 10:19 AM, ErichB said:

Didn't MSFlight have a new terrain engine - or was it just different textures? I didn't ever buy MSFlight, but the default terrain from screenshots did seem improved(more refined) and I remember people saying what a game changer it all was.  Although that was a long time ago now...

 

That was quite a while ago so cant exacly remember, but looking at videos, I dont see too much difference. What scenery devs put out today looks better. But what they put out today still looks antiquated relative would could be from a more modern terrain engine IMHO.

[G-RFRY 1,712]

The problem is the GPU optimization we are fast approaching the stage were the GPU costing as much as a 12month old gaming PC, with the next refresh likely die shrink which is what Nvidia was hopping for the 2080 the cost will be like having a Ferrari in your garage but stuck in first gear. 

[Delta111 29]

Hot keys for views and right click mouse to move about the view....Sorry if mentioned before...Stopped using the flight sim because it does not have these options...BUILT IN....