15 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Are you a programmer?  Have you coded any flight simulators?  Doctors haven't found cures for cancer and the common cold, perhaps it's just old thinking? 😉

 These are some of the books I typically read to "help my thinking", however they haven't magically increased the FPS in P3D, but I'll keep thinking about 🙂

 

Cheers, Rob.

I'm sorry, but you seem awfully close minded for somebody who seems pretty well researched on the topic. 

I'm willing to learn though. What is it about flight simulation that in your mind makes it so much different to tune for compared to other games? Though although admittedly not at the scale of a whole globe, games like Halo, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed and GTA5 have their own set of challenges to consider. Why can GTA5, for example, play well on the PC with it's HUGE level of open world detail but flight simulator can't?

You seem to be hell bent on saying that it's literally impossible for flight simulators (which at the end of the day are a GAME just like everything else) to have good performance which seems completely off base to me.

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by A330-300

49 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

If you folks are looking for high FPS in P3D or XP to be similar to Forza, then the easiest way to get your 60-120 FPS desires is to make the P3D/XP LOD the same as Forza ... which is the lowest setting possible on the graphics options.  Then you'll at least have a similar rendering distance that you would see in Forza (about 2nm).  However Forza still doesn't load the entire globe/planet like P3D does as it has to have a variable horizon as far as the eye/haze allows in all directions.

I think many commercial content providers would love to see ONE platform that does it all, it would make our lives easier as we wouldn't need to learn several different SDKs (FSX, P3D, XP, AF2, DCS) in order to provide content.  So we have far more vested interested in seeing MS make 2020 a huge success.  BUT, to ignore what DTG and MS has attempted to do to content providers in the past is foolish and has NOTHING to do with being optimistic or pessimistic ... it's the reality MS and DTG created, and not one of commercial content providers.

 

@Rob_Ainscough Care to educate as to why Flight Sims cannot be designed for performance like we see in AAA games, please? The whole World isn't rendered at the same time, possibly a 90 square mile area is visible at any given time in the user's viewpoint.

I get that there is pre-loading of the scenery beyond the horizon, but other games with large areas seem to cope rather well.
 

16 minutes ago, A330-300 said:

...saying that it's literally impossible for flight simulators to have good performance which seems completely off base to me.

I agree, it seems to be that the way the world is calculated and rendered is poor, rather than consumer flight sims being complex. 

Someone pointed out in another thread that a professional racing simulator required multiple computers to calculate the aerodynamics, wear and tear on tyres, etc. before even getting to the visuals and track conditions. 
Project Cars and other similar racing sims don't go that level, consumer Flight Sims don't either.
 

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by F737NG

52 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Are you a programmer?  Have you coded any flight simulators?  Doctors haven't found cures for cancer and the common cold, perhaps it's just old thinking?

Umm, we have made insane advancements in the treatment of Cancer.  Actually, thinking that cancer is something that can be "cured" is "old thinking", you can't cure the mutation of cells by the human body, but we are getting a lot better at managing the disease, especially with cancers that affect young people.  Obviously, it's way off topic for flight sim to go down that path, but to your analogy, if you treat someone with methodologies that are 10 years old it would be sad.

I am sure the video game industry has evolved enough that we can do much much better when creating global simulators.

But i should say I do agree that many people are making it seem to simple. The gaming industry is not just make it in 2019 and all performance problems will be solved and everyone on a laptop can push 60 FPS with max settings and autogen to the horizon.

 

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by TravelRunner404

@jpc55, you have edited your post to make it appear your comments were mine.

To respond to your post the base simulator of Flight was only “the big island of Hawaii” so anywhere else you flew would have cost extra. That’s probably why it bombed. No further comment from me about Flight as it’s not relevant to the topic.

25 minutes ago, A330-300 said:

 

I'm willing to learn though. What is it about flight simulation that in your mind makes it so much different to tune for compared to other games? Though although admittedly may not be at the scale of a whole globe, games like Halo, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed and GTA5 have their own set of challenges to consider. Why can GTA5, for example, play well on the PC with it's HUGE level of detail but flight simulator can't?

First the number of optimizations that yon use. The problem with a flight simulator is the possibe speed of object. You can be in a helicopter which stands in the air in evey possible height or it can be an imageniary olane with multiple time the speed of sound. The wide range of heights the possible viewi9ng d8istance of 200 nm. You have no idea how many optimizations that these games use are killed by these demands. If you then add user configurable surroundings other planes and plugins you have a real nightmare on your table..The big peoblems that you really have, you can't predict what the user will demand. All loading has to be done in the background and so on.

Every optimization brings its own constraints.Since these simulators have so many things that a user or 3rd Party Designer can change there is a really huge number of algorithms you must not use. Every game has its tiny secrets that a normal user won't recognize but the programmer needs them.

You play in reality so you can't use many tricks that game designers can use with their fantasy planets.

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by Longranger

38 minutes ago, A330-300 said:

You seem to be hell bent on saying that it's literally impossible for flight simulators (which at the end of the day are a GAME just like everything else) to have good performance which seems completely off base to me.

On this statement I reallly agree. Everybody that has played for exaple DCS with one of the high end modules knows, that even remotely modern software architecture delivers completely different performance than the seriously outdated engine used in FSX back then. No wonder at all, just utilization of modern hardware.

The systems depth in DCS is very high, so the argument of "arcadey game" is a fallacy. Modern Hardware can do wonders if utilized at least somewhat to it´s potential.

What we finally will get with FS2020 only the future can show. It could be a total non-starter or the new king of the hill, we´ll see.

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by laminator
added Link to DCS-video

Does p3d (etc) really model the whole globe at once? I find that a bit unbelievable. 

Havent read all of this thread but I don’t think there can be any argument that simply developing a game specifically for modern hardware and using all of the knowledge and expertise built up over the last 13 years is going to have a massive impact in how the new game runs. Sorry, sim. 

Apart from anything else, I’d imagine optimising the entire thing from the ground up to work better with modern GPUs is going to have a huge impact, and may free up a lot of cpu resources for more complicated simulations? If iracing tried to run in the same way as fsx it’d be a disaster. 

2 minutes ago, laminator said:

On this statement I reallly agree. Everybody that has played for exaple DCS with one of the high end modules knows,

DCS is in fract a simulator that doesn't6 follow the rules of real worldwide simulators. You have a map. &This is something that the other woldwide simulators don't have, And who tries to compare it with FSX. FSX doesn't really know what a GPU nowadays is..

2 minutes ago, Longranger said:

DCS is in fract a simulator that doesn't6 follow the rules of real worldwide simulators. You have a map. &This is something that the other woldwide simulators don't have, And who tries to compare it with FSX. FSX doesn't really know what a GPU nowadays is..

If Map or whole world isn´t the question. Both variants don´t have the whole world loaded at any time, just the junk of it that is currently needed.

I agree on the point of GPU and FSX, but nevertheless is the architecture of the rendering pipeline in P3d still restricted by descisions made 20 years ago, based on the technology that was availible back then.

To state that a simulation engine optimized for todays hardware will not outperform a solution based on antiquated technology that only partially utilizes modern hardware is simply false.

3 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Yes it does, just zoom out or setup a camera in almost Orbit and then do time preview ... also one reason why it takes a long time to load and the more add-ons there are the longer the load.

Interesting.  Is that really necessary and the best way?  I mean, according to quantum physics, God (or choice of diety/computer simulation manager/etc) doesn't even render the whole planet at once,  only at the point of observation 🙂

11 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Improvements to performance and visual quality has been happening in P3D and XP, one would have to be blind to not notice them.

hmm

May well be, but they still don't look like that trailer did

2 hours ago, A330-300 said:

But the information they gave us is promising.

It certainly is! And I'm choosing to fall on the optimistic side, while acknowledging that I have no rational basis for that choice. The information they gave us, after all, was given to us by marketers, and very few people have a more florid imagination than marketers. 😉

I remember Gran Turismo being marketed as an incredibly realistic racing experience. Then I bought it and, just to see the awesome crash modeling in this hyper-real sim they just sold me, ran a Veyron into the wall at 250mph. And bounced off and kept going. There's all sorts of hype about "simulation" in the gaming industry that just doesn't pan out when the rubber hits the road.

 

That said, MS has done it right in the past, and I *choose* to be cautiously optimistic that they have decided to do it again.

 

@Ray Proudfoot  It has been years since I've done posting, so I real rusty at it!

I started to edit my post to add more info; then changed my mind. All I was trying to do was inform you about Flight. My only expense in FLIGHT was the purchased of was the rest of Hawaii, the Carbon Cub Deluxe, and I think the Maul. Everything else was acquired FREE "with great appreciation to STONELANCE"!

My best to all!

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by jpc55

Some people will probably limit fps to 10 in the new sim as anything above is impossible and witchery is not allowed

@Rob_Ainscough

So let's flip this to the positive a bit..

Surely there are some technical things a new MSFS could do when starting from scratch in 2019 that would be better in comparison to legacy decisions that are still dealt with today in P3D, right?

What are some things about say P3D that you'd change if you could, from the ground up, that maybe MSFS might be able to take advantage of since they are starting anew here (we think they are - but let's assume that's the case for the sake of discussion).

Edited June 25, 20196 yr by irrics