I haven't seen much discussion recently here about Aerofly FS2 and how great their performance is for VR - both in terms of smooth frame rates and image clarity. Even in medium complexity areas like ORBX Monterrey, single HD monitor performance is over 300 FPS - so getting 90 fps in VR is easy - and when you really crank up SteamVR SuperSampling to maybe 200% (or Aerofly FS2 internal multiplier to 1.5 or so ), you can read the Q400 instrument panel including the CDU without leaning in and at the same time have a very fluid, non stuttering image with SteamVR reprojection at 45 fps. I also have P3D, DCS, IL-2, Combat Patrol 2 (under slow development ), and enjoy them all but I really like the VR performance of FS2. It lets you see what is possible (even with gen1.5 resolution of 1600x1440 or so) for the future of VR and CPU/GPU hardware in the flight simulation arena.

Yes it is nice, isn't it? 😀

 

Vulkan makes wonders, anxious for the day that Laminar makes it in X-Plane.

4 hours ago, dmarques69 said:

Vulkan makes wonders, anxious for the day that Laminar makes it in X-Plane.

I'm really hopeful that Vulkan makes a difference in X-Plane when it comes to VR.

1 hour ago, mwilk said:

I'm really hopeful that Vulkan makes a difference in X-Plane when it comes to VR.

Me to, been only flying in monitor because airliners and VR are not there at the moment in performance for me.

 

And that's the thing, of course. After fighting with my other sims to get acceptable clarity and smoothness even at lower settings, it's nice to jump back into a nice VR session in Aerofly at max settings over someplace like Orbx Netherlands and just......... luxuriate in just flying without a care in the world and not a tweak in sight.

Yeah, excellent graphics snd smoothness. The best VR performance out there. Regretfully the AFS2 world is still too quiet, no traffic, no ATC, no winds and true weather, no rain, no water effects. Some day...!

Cheers, Ed

52 minutes ago, edpatino said:

Yeah, excellent graphics snd smoothness. The best VR performance out there. Regretfully the AFS2 world is still too quiet, no traffic, no ATC, no winds and true weather, no rain, no water effects. Some day...!

Cheers, Ed

Then the question is, is the lack of some of those things like traffic and water effects the reason why it's so smooth?

2 minutes ago, mwilk said:

Then the question is, is the lack of some of those things like traffic and water effects the reason why it's so smooth?

No, because those things are actually not particularly computationally intensive.
There's actually a demo add-on that adds some traffic (check the forums) and it has near zero impact on frame rate.

It's smooth because it's been written like a modern game, to distribute as much work on to the GPU as possible, and use every CPU core where the CPU has to work.

Unfortunately, Vulkan wont give the performance boost to X-Plane that some are hoping for. If you profile an X-Plane session you can see the CPU is the obvious bottleneck.
Making mostly single threaded code run on multiple cores is one of the most complex tasks in software. For Laminar there's probably no quick fixes other than a completely overhauled v2 rendering engine.

(I wish that wasn't the case btw. I'd love to play X-Plane at 90fps in VR).

29 minutes ago, mwilk said:

Then the question is, is the lack of some of those things like traffic and water effects the reason why it's so smooth?

IMHO, the clouds systems, when representing heavy weather conditions like several cloud layers, high cloud density and rain, simultaneously, will have a noticeable impact on FPS. I'm not sure about water bodies (sea, rivers, etc.), but it'll probably have a medium impact.

The point is if at some point in time those new and heavily requested features will be added to AFS2 (as well as others, not mentioned before, related to aircraft systems, for instance).

So far, IPACS has been very reluctant to present to the public a roadmap for AFS2, and they've already said the AFS2 development is on a different path if compared to sims like P3D or X-Plane.

Would that mean that those features will not be necessarily ever implemented?. You guess!.

Cheers, Ed

9 minutes ago, Flamingpie said:

My guess: I doubt it. Really. And unfortunately. IPACS said they won't be working on a weather engine before they've finished ATC and since ATC is taking them years already now (and still no sign of a release or even a preview (which has been promised TWO YEARS ago!) I don't expect to see a weather engine in AFS2 with a year or two. Or three. Or four. And by that time 'everyone' may be flying in MSFS already. Or Deadstick. I don't know if I can stand a 'weatherless' AFS2 any longer when Deadstick and/or MSFS have been released. I am mainly hanging on to AFS2 because P3D and XP are too problematic to set up and have awful performance. 

Yeah, I mostly agree in everything you say. It's certainly true that a lot of brainpower is needed to maintain a sound installation of P3D and XP.

MSFS2020 will probably keep us busy next year when it comes out!.

Cheers, Ed

48 minutes ago, Flamingpie said:

Imho Vulkan isn't the reason AFS2 performs so well: I've used AFS2 a few years before Vulkan had been implemented and performance was just as good. Vulkan added just a few fps on my PC: it didn't suddenly double fps. And it certainly won't do miracles in XP.

 

Well your probably wrong, i had Aerofly before the Vulkan update and i issued a refund on steam because the performance was not there, in VR reprojection was always kicking in, and i didnt had near the frames the OP is reporting, and i had a more powerful system that the OP as, anyway i don't own AF now so i cant make a direct comparing, that why i used the term probably.

Edited August 8, 20196 yr by dmarques69

3 hours ago, Flamingpie said:

Concerning the aircraft systems: a few aircraft already have been updated with a lot more system depth and it had absolutely zero impact on performance so I don't expect any problems there.

An important point, and one often ignored in favor of speculating on FPS losses that so far have failed to appear. another has been the assertion that road traffic would surely cause a drop commiserate with (place name of sim here) but in fact a road traffic test was implemented with zero apparent effect.

2 hours ago, dmarques69 said:

Well your probably wrong, i had Aerofly before the Vulkan update and i issued a refund on steam because the performance was not there, in VR reprojection was always kicking in, and i didnt had near the frames the OP is reporting, and i had a more powerful system that the OP as, anyway i don't own AF now so i cant make a direct comparing, that why i used the term probably.

My performance has always been at 120 fps and above, even when I had a much weaker system. ( I can show you a years old pic of me at nearly 700fps)

Currently with my 2080ti the difference in performance between Aerofly Vulcan and regular is minimal.

My guess as a user (and since he is also a programmer that has dug into the innards of aerofly) is that Nickhod is very probably right.

3 hours ago, Flamingpie said:

My guess: I doubt it. Really. And unfortunately. IPACS said they won't be working on a weather engine before they've finished ATC and since ATC is taking them years already now (and still no sign of a release or even a preview (which has been promised TWO YEARS ago!) I don't expect to see a weather engine in AFS2 with a year or two. Or three.

The problem is that even when the promised items arrive they are:

A) Usually unacknowledged or ever again spoken of by the person(s) predicting they/it would never arrive, and:

B) More predictions appear about the non-arrival of some other feature, until that thing appears, at which time we rinse and repeat.

(Copter never coming, Gps never coming, Night lighting never coming, Fms never coming, Third parties never coming, freeware never coming.... etc)

Through it all I just keep flying. And loving the sim in VR.

9 hours ago, nickhod said:

Unfortunately, Vulkan wont give the performance boost to X-Plane that some are hoping for. If you profile an X-Plane session you can see the CPU is the obvious bottleneck.

For the record, XP devs said that Vulkan will make it much easier for them to make the engine really multithread friendly. Won't happen from night to day though.

Regarding Aerofly engine, remember that it lacks terrain shadowing, water reflections, and above all dynamic lighting. None of them can be completely disabled in XP. But Aerofly engine seems to have an advantage in performance, even if we account for all of these things lacking.

 

Edited August 8, 20196 yr by Murmur

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

Regarding Aerofly engine, remember that it lacks terrain shadowing, water reflections, and above all dynamic lighting. None of them can be completely disabled in XP. But Aerofly engine seems to have an advantage in performance, even if we account for all of these things lacking.

I keep pretty firmly in mind that DCS has pretty much all of that tasty stuff and is still much faster than our commercial sims, the point to me being that as Nickhod says these features are not inexorably deadly FPS killers in a truly modern sim.

In DCS I in fact enjoy very much flying over the very "X-planey" looking Nevada at high speed in both 2D and VR, smooth as butter, with reflective water, moving cars and trains, aircraft ai, dynamic lighting and pretty much all those things people keep hinting will slow down Aerofly so significantly....... 🤔