What features would you like to see in P3Dv5?

[AUA425 130]

I understand everybody who wanna have a backward compatibility (I have also spend "some thousands" of bucks) BUT we can´t have the next 20 years a compatibility to an old and not really optimized product. even if the Lockheed M. can push this to the limits but it is the old MS Engine. It´s time for something new - new engine and for first time really really good weather engine and visualization and combined effects - of course beside other things that we know - but if you take XP11 with the visuals  and the speed at the same time (except the weather engine 😞 ) - LM MUST go a step forward - there are so many things:

better mesh + runway follow terrain contours  f. E.

shader generated snow and rain + accumulation - visuals on the runway and effects on the plane... f. E.

OSM coverage + better implementation of the Ortho´s f. E.

better damage model +  f. E.

etc. etc. etc......the List would be very long !

To be honest the whole buch of the updates from P3D V3 - P3D V4 have had a value of completely new product - yes it would take more time to implement this things to the new engine but someday they should be a start "button" for this - it was the same with the X-Plane and there are already some incredible addons !

Cheers

 

 

Edited March 8, 2019 by AUA425

[eslader 1,779]

I agree - backwards compatibility needs to have cutoff points. But I'm hesitant to get overly excited about an entirely new codebase. Joel Spolsky used to write a coding blog, and something he stressed that I tend to agree with is that blowing up the code to start fresh means you're also blowing up 20 years worth of bug fixes. New code = new bugs that have to be squashed, and that's resource intensive and can annoy customers.

So while I think a new codebase is needed, I also don't expect to like it at first. 😉

An advantage to a new codebase would be that they would no longer be subject to their agreement with Microsoft, and could market the thing to whoever they wanted. Only selling to the training market leaves a lot of money on the table as the "gamers" stick with FSX or go to Xplane to avoid non-compliance. I know LM doesn't care about the gaming market, but I bet if they were allowed, they wouldn't say no if the gamers threw money at them for a product they were making anyway. Opening up a new source of revenue without having to spend any more money than you were spending anyway means more money to sink into product development.

If they did go with a new codebase, most of us would probably dual-run the old and new for a long time. Just like I did when FS5 came out. 5 was really beautiful compared to 4, but for a long time there wasn't much to it as far as addons because it takes the 3rd parties time to catch up. That's patience-trying but it's also kinda good because it means we won't have to shell out tons of money at once to replace all the addons we have.

 

 

Edited March 8, 2019 by eslader

[AnkH 2,233]

For the moment the only things which are really annoying to me are: ATC and weather.

ATC is just plain word not allowed and basically the same we had 20 years ago and weather, well weather is still with the nice weather addons somehow basic. Unless there is a hurricane close by, landing with anything bigger than a Cessna is still like flying on rails.

Ah, and add a new engine to that. But that is utterly unrealistic and to be honest, it would upset me a little bit to throw away all addons I bought for P3Dv4 so far...

[DylanM 1,069]

I'm sure hoping the reason Rob has taken a hiatus from the forums is that he's now on the inside passing along our shared wishlists 😉

[ErichB 3,638]

3 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Ah, and add a new engine to that. But that is utterly unrealistic and to be honest, it would upset me a little bit to throw away all addons I bought for P3Dv4 so far..

You don't have to throw them away.  They could still be used with V4

Edited March 8, 2019 by ErichB

[AnkH 2,233]

Yeah, but I know me. If there is a new P3D with a brand new engine, I wont go back to v4 with the old engine and all its flaws. I am a graphics fetish guy, the better looking a sim or a game, the more it attracts me. So yes, I would probably dump v4 the moment a P3D with a new engine is out and running...

But: it is anyway unrealistic and not coming soon...

[Christopher Low 5,332]

My comment regarding "no changes whatsoever" was not intended to be taken too seriously. However, I would be somewhat annoyed if products that were designed to run in P3D v4 would not work properly in P3D v5. I would also not be impressed if P3D v4 compatibility was dropped as soon as P3D v5 is released.

[simbol 5,816]

Thank God Atari died!!!, otherwise ORBX TE GB would have run at about 1FPS on the simulator above and I can't even imagine how my AI Lights would have look like on the monochrome monitor

Regards,

S.

[vc10man 732]

58 minutes ago, simbol said:

You nailed it!

S.

Ditto ++!

[F737MAX 5,537]

36 minutes ago, eslader said:

[...] blowing up the code to start fresh means you're also blowing up 20 years worth of bug fixes. New code = new bugs that have to be squashed, and that's resource intensive and can annoy customers.

[...]

If they did go with a new codebase, most of us would probably dual-run the old and new for a long time. Just like I did when FS5 came out. 5 was really beautiful compared to 4, but for a long time there wasn't much to it as far as addons because it takes the 3rd parties time to catch up.

I agree. This is why I think legacy compatibility will still exist in P3D v5.

Writing swathes of new code is time-consuming and doesn't come with the benefit of over a decade of customer bug reports to ensure a stable working base sim.

A lot of third party devs have gone through a costly process of making their products work in 64-bit. Some have charged, some haven't, who knows if they made healthy profits or not from that exercise. I can't see many of them willing to start from nearly scratch to make their current ranges ready for any new engines that have no backward compatibility, when maintaining the P3D status quo brings in a steady stream of income.
Also, how many simmers are ready to spend vast amounts on replacing what they have, twice in the space of 3 or so years? We see many simmers continue to complain about FSX add-on development drying up and others choosing to move to the 'cheaper' XP11 platform.
 

8 minutes ago, simbol said:

Thank God Atari died!!!, otherwise ORBX TE GB would have run at about 1FPS on the simulator above and I can't even imagine how my AI Lights would have look like on the monochrome monitor

Your strobes would have looked like this:
10101010 for Boeings
110110110 for Airbuses  😄

Edited March 8, 2019 by F737NG

[Ident 198]

Id be happy with P3Dv4 being the end of the FSX legacy and develop v5 as one that does not focus on backward compatibility. Work with 3rd party developers to try and allow them to be ready for any changes needed to code for the new platform and provide feedback to areas they feel they would like to see improvements.

Huge advancements in VR.

The ability to pick SIDs and STARs and parking gates when creating a flight plan.

The ability to load up local time when starting at an airport.

Improvements in weather

Allow ambient sounds in Avatar mode like footsteps, birds, etc

GSX, SODE and addons of that kind incorporated into the sim.

Pilot Controlled Lighting

Joystick assignments for the ability to ident for uses like PilotEdge and VATSIM etc

 

 

[DellyPilot 109]

16 minutes ago, simbol said:

Thank God Atari died!!!, otherwise ORBX TE GB would have run at about 1FPS on the simulator above and I can't even imagine how my AI Lights would have look like on the monochrome monitor

Regards,

S.

1FPH

[simbol 5,816]

How much things have changed...

------------------
Lot's of people say, oh I have invested so much on FSX add-on's, etc. etc. I can't afford to lose them, etc. then they move to XP11 were all the add-on's don't work anyway.. 

I will put this as a simple question:

Does people that develop for XP11 use the SDK of XP10 or XP9????

Then why on earth people developing for P3D 4.4 cannot use the SDK for P3D 4.4? Some people are still using FS9 SDK tools for P3D...

As user and developer (I am both!) I am not opposed if LM proceed to enforce SDK compliance, so if you want to develop for P3D 4.4 the relevant SDK must be used, same for future versions.

S.

 

[DellyPilot 109]

I thought I would share my thoughts here too. I posted them over on LM forums too.

Having just attempted to build the fastest Prepar3D sim possible I have been taken to the edge of what the engine can do. I think this reveals some of its limitations (and amazing strengths).

Here are some of the things I would like the dev team to take a look at and where I think the sim is falling behind against XP.

1. Texture and Scenery loading
The AutoGen / BGL texture loading algorithm is ancient and although an impressive increase in autogen density has been achieved the same old texture loading issues are here. 
Even on the fastest PC you will often experience blurries or even worse autogen failing to keep up and popping in. If you go far enough (unlocked frames) eventually the autogen will not be able to keep up. 

Pausing the sim, you will observe the engine loading/drawing the textures/autogen on the path behind the plane. The engine is not clever, and not optimised around the viewport direction or the ac position meaning if you are on a long flight and the scenery hasn't kept up when you come back you may have to wait 15 minutes for the scenery to 'unpack' (decompress) all the BGLs that the plane has flown over.

This may seem like a niche issue but it really at the core of the bottlenecking the current engine creates on the fastest hardware. I believe (but could be way off) the fact that BGLs hold compressed scenery (and textures) means a very large amount of compute power is needed just to unpack scenery. As scenery gets more detailed the compute power needed per frame goes through the roof. 

On my I9-9900K can see all 16 thread cores at 100% when I am just flying at 300kts across Orbx TE GB. TE GB would be a very good scenery for LM to use to attempt to optimise the scenery loading (blurries) and texture loading (stutters). It perfectly demonstrates where the engine is not being efficient with the hardware. I would love to understand where this regular stuttering comes from. TE GB is the kind of product that we will see more of in the future so Prepar V5 should be optimised for it.

2. Ability to always maintain smooth FPS - why is the engine not tweaking for us?
Linked to point 1, the engine should be able to delay or sensibly throw out expensive rendering jobs to ensure consistent FPS (smoothness). I would like to fly from a low density scenery into London and see consistent FPS (whatever I chose) and let the engine sort out what density or LOD to achieve that. Currently I have to have 4 GFX profiles. What?!

This is quite standard in today's games, usually called Target FPS, Level of Detail or Density could be dynamically adjusted to maintain a desired FPS. 
One of the biggest bug bears for many users is the problems in the engine related to Locked FPS / V-Sync and smoothness. On a top end machine significant stuttering can occur even when the framerate is reaching 70FPS! 

It looks like 1 CORE is bottlenecking, it would be great to understand this in more detail but I guess that there are some key jobs that cannot be split across cores. Flying around in a circle (with a complex airport and high res scenery) is the best way to see these stutters so it seems that even though my VRAM is not full the engine is unloading and re-loading lots of textures. Why? This also explains the black texture issue on an airport when you switch views. Please could this part of the engine be fixed?
Again Orbx True Earth GB is a great example (hopefully ORBX have raised these issues with LM, I know they have worked together on the 6% Terrain load bug in P3Dv4.5).

To summarise smoothness is absolutely key to everything, a house 10 miles away being rendered 400ms later is ok dropping 5FPS on final approach is not.

GFX areas I would like to see addressed:

• Ability to run unlocked without blowing up the autogen or texture loader (Dynamic Fiber time fraction)

• Ability to dynamically target a FPS while changing LOD/Density

• Ability to fade in newly rendered autogen/scenery rather than pop

• Proper volumetric clouds. Will not happen but maybe one day

• Real support for PBR materials, shaders need to be extended too, look at TomatoShade, the fresnel stuff makes a huge difference and adding this to the core product would not be difficult

• Engine and tarmac shimmer effects

• Sea effects seem worse than FSX, too dark below the plane, no ability to see white chop from 5000ft

• Better ability to draw clouds behind the camera that will change lighting on the AC. This is the famous bug where if you use Cloud Shadows and rotate the camera suddenly the plane flickers from dark to light because the clouds are not drawn when behind the camera (optimisation). This ruins immersion and makes for some horrible effects at dusk/dawn.

3. Support for uncompressed BGLs
As storage increasingly gets cheaper, I think a performance improvement could be made if we could un-compress BGLs ahead of sim time (like XP does apparently) perhaps giving my PC more CPU power to do other stuff. This could be optional per region. 

4. Totally rebuild the UI
The UI is pretty bad. It needs to be re-imagined. Here is just a small list of things that are infuriating:

• Allow me to maximise the settings window! The ListBox with planes in it is only a few high (when details are shown), I cannot maximise or make use of my HDPI display

• Shortcut for Graphics/Settings (why can't I do this)

• Much preferred the old plane images in FSX so I can quickly see the plane from a grid

• Save my frequent last planes, locations, weather, scenarios, flight plans. Annoying that I always have to type in the name of the airport every single time. Likewise finding the plane I want each time is ridiculous

• Moving to a new location should not cause the whole graphical engine to restart from scratch. It should be like slewing, ok pause it while it catches up but given how long it can take to load from scratch this is very frustrating

• All settings that do not need a full rebuild should be overlayed and should affect the image. E.g Shadow distance/lighting/bloom, let me fiddle with these and see in realtime what they do

• The clipping modes are bugged out. In the VC any objects outside the cockpit (like jetways) get culled when they come too close

• The Key Assignments page. Why oh why can I not search for a KEY! What does A do... no idea and no way to find it. Can I sort by Key, nope. Annoying. Use of proper windows or even a 3rd party WPF control set would fix all of this

• The map is astonishingly bad even for 1990s. How about 'Drag to move' (2000s) and pinch to zoom (2010s)

5. Stop support for ALL 32bit addons Just remove all the 32 bit code and support, kill everything pre 4.4!

6. Working VR This really will be great when it finally comes.

7. Better perf tuning and debugging tools/info - perhaps this is here already but I would love to be able to run P3D in debug to see where stutters are coming from and understand what settings I need to reduce. At the moment it takes too long to tweak and understand whats going on.
 

Edited March 8, 2019 by DellyPilot
clarity

[eslader 1,779]

3 minutes ago, Ident said:

The ability to pick SIDs and STARs and parking gates when creating a flight plan.

Pilot Controlled Lighting 

Those two would be really great.

I'd also like to see avatar mode either made relevant or dropped. Walking around slowly seems to have little purpose right now. Why can't avatar mode be used to perform a walkaround as part of the preflight? Heck, if you wanted to be really ambitious (and this would require a new codebase because it would be edging toward "gaming" elements) you could have simmer-owned hangars which store their airplanes.