December 12th, 2019 - Development/Insider Update

[Noooch 1,084]

1 hour ago, FDEdev said:

That was a rather disappointing update. I didn't see anything about the mentioned SDK update and I know at least three big add-on companies where nobody in their team made it into TA1.

Since only the info about the TA2 participation will be sent in January it looks like this will happen earliest in February. That's a rather long time with constantly further decreasing FSX/P3D sales and still zero information about how to develop anything for the new sim.  

According to them, SDK will be ready by the end of 2019

[jcomm 6,005]

I wonder if they do have a true aerodynamicist in their team, just as ED and 1C / 777, have… ?

These teams always include "pilots", which is great of course… But I am pilot too, for many years, a simmer, an IT guy ( old as word not allowed ), and I don't even still understand everything about pure "simple" good-old MSFS fdm...

I read the news with enjoyment and good expectations of course, but while the looks are GREAT, I wonder how the feels will be...

Also my fear is that inducing this stagnation point in the market is killing the business for many. 

Not liking it either Bernt...

Edited December 13, 2019 by jcomm

[Noodle 626]

All due respect, since you're reasonable and respectable developers, but as a user I feel compelled to state my point of view which is: I'm not interested in reading any more bellyaching from third party developers about their business woes. It is not my problem, guys.

Does Avsim have a private 3PD forum where you guys can go to commiserate with each other?

Interaction between users and devs is good, and the dev's perspective is often appreciated. But I am not your audience for whatever this is.

I say that with no malice whatsoever.

[alphawill 7]

... top picture ... who is the pilot ...?
best regards
Sir Wilfrid

 

 

[nikita 241]

29 minutes ago, alphawill said:

... top picture ... who is the pilot ...?
best regards
Sir Wilfrid

 

 

It's our boy Lionel, the one of the first Discovery Series video.

 

7 hours ago, espent said:

This is a 100% crop from the the same picture. Seems like they still got some job to do with the auto generated trees. I do not know of course how this looks like in-flight.

Eh, i'm not concerned about that. As you mentioned it's a 100% zoom crop, if you look at the normal image unzoomed (which is what you'd actually see in-game) you don't notice the lack of detail at all. Lack of detail which is most likely intentional because rendering full detail trees at that sort of distance and of such small size on the screen would just be a waste of resources.

Just take another look at the screenshot without zooming. You instantly notice that there's trees there, but you don't notice at all that they're low detail, or at least i don't.

[alphawill 7]

... and how does Lionel get on the plane?
Can we maybe create a pilot in our own image?

Greetings Will
 

Google translater

[simtom 496]

24 minutes ago, nikita said:

You instantly notice that there's trees there, but you don't notice at all that they're low detail, or at least i don't.

Yep, those are probably the different LOD's at work.

5 minutes ago, alphawill said:

... and how does Lionel get on the plane?
Can we maybe create a pilot in our own image?

It was Photoshopped, also notice that he's dropping Tech Alpha 1 invites from the bottom of the aircraft 😀

[2reds2whites 827]

8 hours ago, espent said:

This is a 100% crop from the the same picture. Seems like they still got some job to do with the auto generated trees. I do not know of course how this looks like in-flight.

 

They don't have to do any work at all on the auto-generated trees. 

You're looking at an 8k image in 100% zoom. 

To replicate this view 1:1 on your computer screen, the maths tells us you'd need something like a 74 inch monitor on your computer desk.

Edited December 13, 2019 by 2reds2whites

[aleex 551]

5 hours ago, FDEdev said:

That was a rather disappointing update. I didn't see anything about the mentioned SDK update and I know at least three big add-on companies where nobody in their team made it into TA1.

Since only the info about the TA2 participation will be sent in January it looks like this will happen earliest in February. That's a rather long time with constantly further decreasing FSX/P3D sales and still zero information about how to develop anything for the new sim.  

I don’t see it as a disappointment update. SDK info will come later. But I think it’s more important to have a solid sim base that developing and SDK that might be useless in a few months or weeks. 

 

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

8 hours ago, espent said:

This is a 100% crop from the the same picture. Seems like they still got some job to do with the auto generated trees. I do not know of course how this looks like in-flight.

It's important to note that this is a 100% crop from an 8K screenshot, and that LOD systems don't take the rendering resolution into account. View the entire picture in full screen, and that's how it will look like in-game on your monitor.

5 hours ago, FDEdev said:

That was a rather disappointing update. I didn't see anything about the mentioned SDK update and I know at least three big add-on companies where nobody in their team made it into TA1.

There was no SDK update on the roadmap for yesterday's update. That is coming on 19 December. Next SDK updates are also scheduled for late January and late February. You can check out the most recent version of the roadmap in my original post.

As for the Tech Alpha 1, I think it's evident that only a small amount of interested testers made it in, and that they're planning to expand with future Tech Alpha builds. They can't handle everyone at once. As evidenced by the forum stats, the post count is increasing rapidly, and that is a lot of information to digest, either by testers or developers. Just be patient.

[ArchStanton 156]

https://cdn.microsoftstudios.com/fsi/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Inverted-1.jpg

This is Porto, Portugal

Edited December 13, 2019 by ArchStanton

[Sethos 4,538]

I'm surprised at the desperate and nitpicky nature of zooming in on an 8k picture and then dissecting every pixel, expecting perfection. No game in history doesn't have LOD switching and whatnot at those ranges that doesn't stand up to scrutiny at 8k zoom. That's how you actually get them to not run at 12FPS and stutter all day long. 

[siggy 154]

1 hour ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

There was no SDK update on the roadmap for yesterday's update.

The SDK, isn't that only available to those who are testing one of the alphas? So any update updates the SDK they currently can have a look at, not us mere mortals :-).

[Sethos 4,538]

2 minutes ago, siggy said:

The SDK, isn't that only available to those who are testing one of the alphas? So any update updates the SDK they currently can have a look at, not us mere mortals :-).

No, the SDK testing is different from the technical alpha. Not sure if they will offer it publicly or to select developers. 

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

Here's what they said in the latest SDK update:

Quote

The team is making good progress on the SDK development. While still in the early stages, the plan is to provide an initial version of the SDK to the 3rd party developer community before the end of the year. Our goal has been to involve 3rd parties early in the development process, and to give them the ability to influence our priorities and how we author the SDK. After the first wave of initial 3rd party developer visits onsite with the team, we’ve been incredibly excited by the optimism and feedback we’ve received thus far. These same tools will be provided to the community in effort to ensure the tools we use to create content, tools that undergo constant testing in our production environment, are shared with all our creators. Initially, the SDK will offer the ability to author planes, sceneries and custom missions. For those with a preference for using FSX tools, SimConnect will be supported. We will also support additional modern standards like HTML for UI and glTF for 3D models.

FDEdev talked about a "mentioned SDK update", and that is coming next week. According to the previous update, they are involving more and more third-party developers in waves (reminds you of anything?), and I'm not sure if it is actually tied to the Tech Alpha.

But next week we are indeed getting a public SDK update, like the one I quoted. We'll probably learn more about its release status then.