Was just watching Frooglesim news on YT.

First news was about DCS aircraft carrier addon.

I am shocked how good people animation they have done, and i have compared that to ground service addons we have.

Difference is beyond comparison.

Wondering if P3D has some limitations, or is it just a matter of skills to create realistic looking people ?

Edited January 22, 20206 yr by Beardyman

I'd hazard a guess that the quality of the people animations in P3D is limited by the application rather than the skills of the developers.

 

1 hour ago, Avidean said:

I'd hazard a guess that the quality of the people animations in P3D is limited by the application rather than the skills of the developers.

DCS is based on ESP, right?

1 minute ago, Mace said:

DCS is based on ESP, right?

That's the first time I have ever heard that and to be honest I doubt it.

Maybe someone in the know can comment on that.

1 minute ago, Avidean said:

That's the first time I have ever heard that and to be honest I doubt it.

Maybe someone in the know can comment on that.

Well, I heard that here, so...

I'd definitely like to know, too.

2 hours ago, Mace said:

 

DCS is based on ESP, right?

No.

4 hours ago, Mace said:

DCS is based on ESP, right?

No sir.

 

Airports in DCS 10,000 or 20,000 world scenery detail I don't have it ????

4 hours ago, Mace said:

Well, I heard that here, so...

If I had a nickel for every time...  it's just the way it is. 

 

If with "ground services we have", are you referring to GSX ? If yes, have you checked the new animations, which only appear in P3D 4.4+ ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVOw0SR5Bf0&t=4m28s

At 4:28 it's an example of an animation made with the P3D 4 SDK, which allows more realistic animation, because a skeleton it's not limited to just 22 bones like in FSX.

We are progressively replacing all our animations in every update, the Catering guy, all the drivers, the Fuel crew and the Marshaller have all been remade now, The ones still left to upgrade are the guy that loads bags manually, and the Pushback operator but, of course, since we are going to remake the whole Pushback sooner or later and want to be sure we'll be compatible AND exploiting new capabilities for the upcoming new flight Simulator(s), we decided to take more time to do it right.

In general, the FSX/P3D engine doesn't help much because, even if in P3D4 we have better skeletons, the simulator engine wasn't really made for human animations, it was more optimized for airplanes ( linking airplane variables to animations ), and one of the things it's missing it's a way to automatically transition and blend through animations, something that other graphic engines more character-oriented like Unreal/Unity have.

To overcome this, we had to write a custom animation player which does transitions, partial clip playing, and this has some performance cost, because we must be careful not to play too many things at the same time, otherwise the sim would be spammed by getting to many commands at once, so blending between clips is not supported, which makes it more difficult to create animations that don't "skip" from a state to another, but we managed to keep them to a minimum, but this result in animations that are more difficult to update or transfer between characters.

FSX/P3D doesn't also have any IK (Inverse Kinematics) system, except for Jetways (which was bugged to the point it was replaced by SODE), and this also makes almost impossible to do realistic behaviors, like somebody pushing/pulling something, and having his hands locked into the thing he's acting on, with the arms and the rest of the body reacting automatically to it. This would require an IK system which is not there, so we have to find ways to simulate this with pre-recalculated animation which are not as flexible as they could.

Right now, we are waiting to see news about the next Flight Simulator SDK, and if it would include such system, which would increase realism a lot, and possibly make it simpler to do human animations. If it will, we'll save quite a bit of work/time to do better animation in it, but if it will not, I'd guess we'll probably have to bite the bullet, and write a custom IK system ourselves, because it would be really useful for doing certain animations we just can't right now.

Edited January 23, 20206 yr by virtuali

Umberto, thanks a lot for ur detailed explanation - now 'people issue' is clear

The new GSX v2 refueling guys etc are great.

DCS is an altogether different thing. You don't need all the world to play in as what you get is more than enough, its stunning. The aircraft are on a level P3D can only dream of. Horses for courses ofc.

I am really wondering why P3D, as a professional education sim has the need for animatedly people, animals etc..

Entertainment software like FSX / FSX-SE that I understand ...

What is next : roses and daffodils ? 🌺

Edited January 23, 20206 yr by GSalden

30 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I am really wondering why P3D, as a professional education sim has the need for animatedly people, animals etc..

Entertainment software like FSX / FSX-SE that I understand ...

What is next : roses and daffodils ? 🌺

Because P3D is not limited to just flight. 

Quote

Prepar3D (pronounced “prepared”) is a visual simulation platform that allows users to create training scenarios across aviation, maritime, and ground domains. Users can train anywhere in the virtual world, from underwater to sub orbital space.

If your use case is a simulation of growing roses and daffodils, P3D can do that. With a little help from a systems integration company of course.

Best regards

 

Edited January 23, 20206 yr by Lorby_SI

"I am really wondering why P3D, as a professional education sim has the need for animatedly people, animals etc.."

Well, Gerard, if it were only being used under the strictest licence terms and conditions, that would be valid. 

But, as you well know, probably 95% of the people here are not using it for that purpose.