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P3D V4.4 new PDK sound services

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In addition to the MANY other new features in the P3D SDK/PDK, LM introduced new Sound Services which are considerably more powerful that the FSX way of doing sound often resulting in developers going outside the SDK to work their own sounds.  This is a new feature for V4.4:

uc?id=13poSlYQDqr0rIrvpLxFptVUJo4RMM0B7

and

uc?id=16Kraaoxesydj7S0ddUa7WvPTiDnySoA5

As you can see, some very powerful options that can work in the entire virtual globe, airport, or aircraft with Position, Offset, and even cockpit attenuation with full 3D sound support.  One no longer has to do their own sound engine and provide for separate sound volume levels via a config process.  Of course this does mean a P3D V4.4+ path as this is not supported in any prior version of P3D nor in FSX/FS9.

I'm well aware that LM are in need of providing better documentation and video tutorials and code samples to make 3rd party content providers aware of the new features in the P3D SDK/PDK and how much more it can bring to the table for flight simulator users/customers.  I've pushed Adam (and before that Wes) hard to move away from .chm file to a more feature rich and search friendly file format (PDF, DOCX, etc.) and I hope LM listen.  IMHO, it's vitally important that LM help developers move away from FSX/FS9 SDK and make the process easier to learn something new and let go of old habits/workarounds.

Happy Holidays to all.

Cheers, Rob.

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Indeed, this new sound services just released with P3D 4.4 is very important and interesting as it will allow 3rd party content developers to create more powerful sounds sub systems.

Personally I got interested in providing 3D environment sounds for P3D as it is an area that hasn't been developed very well so far and I know many users are interested in having this implemented for their simulators.

This on my queue of things to deliver for the future.

Regards 

Simbol 

Edited by simbol
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Thank you Raul, it's my hope LM will bring about more content provider awareness of the SDK/PDK so the platform can be extracted for all that it offers over the FSX/FS9 SDK.

Cheers, Rob.

Edited by Guest

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48 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

IMHO, it's vitally important that LM help developers move away from FSX/FS9 SDK and make the process easier to learn something new and let go of old habits/workarounds. 

Hi and thank you for raising awareness about this new SDK feature.

Nevertheless, given the few recent polls, it seems FSX/FSX-SE is still widely used and represents a significant chunk. Whether a vendor adopts P3D4.4+ only features also means cutting a significant amount of potential revenue out, therefore limiting the capability to develop products.

Another limitation is due to customers still using an older simulator and wanting to upgrade in the future. Until they do, they won't purchase the product. However with a product working across the board, they can enjoy it right now and later altogether.

For example, our Reality XP GTN 750/650 Touch and Reality XP GNS 530/430 V2 are capable of 32 bits rendering from FS9 to P3D4! Even P3D4.4 SDK is not capable of this yet as-is (only there is a DX11 rendering path now only for VC?).

Without this kind of technology all SDK gauges are limited to 15bits colors (aka color gradient banding in 'competing' gauges or in G500 type of gauges). I've further detailed some of this in this discussion last year:

 

Eventually, even though we're chosen the hard way of offering the same level of experience from FS9 to P3D4, even from XP9 to XP11 and even more between FltSim and X-Plane, a product could be offered with different levels of sophistication depending on the simulator, a little bit like a game designed for PS4 or PS4 Pro (similarly for Xbone or XboneX), and usually this is already the case.

Mind you, this is great the platform is offering more SDK capabilities for vendors to explore, but there will always be the other side which is this cut the market in half. No wonder EA has decided Battlefield 5 for example will no longer have paid DLC so that the user base can play on the same maps.

Edited by RXP
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1 minute ago, RXP said:

Whether a vendor adopts P3D4.4+ only features also means cutting a significant amount of potential revenue out, therefore limiting the capability to develop products.

I'm not sure why you would have to cut out the potential revenue from FSX/FS9?  I don't believe the cost to run two slightly different development paths is that high ... there are still FSX/FS9 SDK similarities so you don't have to scrap all your work, only a sub-section of it and compile with P3D SDK for one path and deployment set and then compile for the FSX/FS9 SDK path and deployment.  

13 minutes ago, RXP said:

Without this kind of technology all SDK gauges are limited to 15bits colors (aka color gradient banding in 'competing' gauges or in G500 type of gauges). I've further detailed some of this in this discussion last year:

Not sure I understand you, DirectX gauges have been deprecated in V4, but you have DX11 rendering to texture or output of 3D View (Texture and Effect Render Plug-In) which will provide full accelerated support.  I'm not aware of any 15bit color limitations with this approach?

One of the challenges LM faces is the "one code path" philosophy of content providers ... as you suggest, you take the "single" hard road to a solution ... is that less time consuming than having two roads and is it more limiting to what you can offer end users?  I think most developers, at least for my circle of developers (myself include) are very used to working multiple development paths, in fact, it's why we make our code as flexible and portable as possible so that we can leverage "re-use" across different projects. 

Holding back on what can be more easily accomplished in the P3D SDK/PDK because it doesn't work in the FSX is going to forever hold a platform as "hostage" and ultimately will fail that platform as competing platforms move forward and "don't look back" ... the folks at LR seem to have minimal concern over breaking backwards compatibility (I have a host of XP11 products that no longer work as intended in XP11) which is obviously going to put more strain on developers and content providers especially when the products start to pile up.  This is not specific to you, but having talked to many content providers/developers I think many haven't actually really explored the P3D SDK/PDK (at all) and what it offers and the implications on their desire to retain FSX path ... for sure some areas will be different (no question about that), but like I eluded to earlier it's not a "start from scratch" code path.

Just my 2 cents, I'm not representing LM in any official context.

Cheers, Rob.

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2 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I'm not representing LM in any official context. 

Although It seems to be a pattern. 😉

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1 minute ago, Adrian123 said:

Although It seems to be a pattern

Not sure what that means, is it somehow relevant to the topic?

Cheers, Rob.

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1 hour ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I've pushed Adam (and before that Wes) hard to move away from .chm file to a more feature rich and search friendly file format (PDF, DOCX, etc.) and I hope LM listen.

+1


Dan Downs KCRP

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