56 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

Where exactly is this airfield ?

southwest of LYBE, Dobanovci heliport

 

56 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

Are you using Blender ?

Nothing that fancy. JSOM patch for Ortho4xp to add the terrain features, drag and drop assets from other sceneries  into wed to get it about right.

56 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

But at least deal with the current issues of it. 

TBH, I really dislike this kind of comment.

"ITs broken fix it"

"whats broken"

"stuff"

"did you switch it off and on again"

"yes"

"arrive two hours later, find it had been running for 60 hours and everything is fine after a restart"

____

It definitely does do what it is designed to - and that isn't look like Ace Combat 7 or fight combat like DCS.

I have put a lot of time into different weather scenarios since XP11.10 - my only real complaint is there is no way to tell visually 30kt winds from a nearby CB on a clear day, and a beautiful calm sunny afternoon, whenever I brought this up on the org I got told it isn't a real issue and to shut up and go back to FSX......

So, tbh, I don't think Laminar have any true idea what people are actually asking for, they prioritise what the commercial licence guys ask for (and have direct contact with them), and "fluffy volumetric clouds" are not even an option when performance is already questionable.

 

Edited June 29, 20205 yr by mSparks

8 minutes ago, mSparks said:

"fluffy volumetric clouds" are not even an option when performance is already questionable.

According to Sid, these should be obtainable without much performance hit using new 2080 + GPU's. He basically said, why cant we have good looking? And that old billboard clouds hurt FPS more than the new Volumetric designed ones.

I tend to agree after trying out Truesky.

 

 

This is actually what he said:-

 

Also, anyone who thinks more eye candy = worse performance needs to realize that most modern effects play towards the strength of GPUs. Take clouds for example, billboards were all the rage back in the day (if it wasn't just a simple skycube altogether) because there wasn't a whole lot of computational power. That approach just doesn't scale on modern hardware because it's bottlenecked by the ROP and memory bandwidth, especially as resolutions keep increasing. Instead, volumetric clouds are much faster because they depend mostly on ALU. That's not to say that volumetric clouds are either trivial or foolproof, but it's a myth that good looking == bad performance. X-Plane can look good, can run well AND be a good flight simulator. Sure, it'd be cool if we had another graphics programmer on the team (again, sent your resume hint hint) and progress could of course always be faster.

For what it's worth, our goal is definitely to have X-Plane run fast and look good. We are not optimizing for 30 FPS, instead we want to run at native VR perf. Are we there yet? Of course not! I personally believe that 11.50 is a huge leap forward, but I also sunk multiple years of my life into it. But that doesn't mean that 11.50 is the be all end all and X-Plane will receive no further updates ever again.

9 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Are we there yet? Of course not!

^^

Getting #### close though

Edited June 29, 20205 yr by mSparks

18 minutes ago, mSparks said:

southwest of LYBE, Dobanovci heliport

 

Nothing that fancy. JSOM patch for Ortho4xp to add the terrain features, drag and drop assets from other sceneries  into wed to get it about right.

TBH, I really dislike this kind of comment.

"ITs broken fix it"

"whats broken"

"stuff"

"did you switch it off and on again"

"yes"

"arrive two hours later, find it had been running for 60 hours and everything is fine after a restart"

____

It definitely does do what it is designed to - and that isn't look like Ace Combat 7 or fight combat like DCS.

I have put a lot of time into different weather scenarios since XP11.10 - my only real complaint is there is no way to tell visually 30kt winds from a nearby CB on a clear day, and a beautiful calm sunny afternoon, whenever I brought this up on the org I got told it isn't a real issue and to shut up and go back to FSX......

So, tbh, I don't think Laminar have any true idea what people are actually asking for, they prioritise what the commercial licence guys ask for (and have direct contact with them), and "fluffy volumetric clouds" are not even an option when performance is already questionable.

 

People are going to ask things to be fixed ,  else they will never get fixed, one user  complains of shimmering trees since XP10.  I also complain but i let it go.

M not saying it does not do what its meant to do , I have no real flight experience but there are issues with it like turbulence , even i never thought there was until someone pointed it out and i tried it myself .  At least give me a good day light it looks dull without Xvision (now don't say change the settings in the monitor ). i don't care for seasons or even ATC , i can hook up to vatsim.

 This Volumetric thing i can never understand nor i understand it still  , as i said i am not talking about just the clouds. Open up the layers now that you are on vulkan , let developers like Xenviro make the most of it.

All i am saying is that the wx / atmos are the main components of a flight , get that thing done and then move on.  Yes now i want very good looking realistic clouds , i want to see an Anvil i want virga effects i want this and that ,  list will go on. But they have to reach at the first step which imo is never going to happen. So sims are done for me.

P.S.  You should try blender.

14 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

This Volumetric thing i can never understand nor i understand it still 

14 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

P.S.  You should try blender.

I have blender, but art just isn't something I'm any good at. Leave stuff like that to people who know what they are doing. (Like the "Eastern European" crowd that can do magic even with last gen graphics APIs like DX11) 

14 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

but there are issues with it like turbulence

Turblence is a real phemonina, CB the biggest source, there is no CB visualisation in XP11 (but it is simulated)

At least wake turbulence went in recently. not sure about microbursts

 

Edited June 29, 20205 yr by mSparks

2 hours ago, MagentaChild said:

About that shiny XP12 with new weather system, cloud depiction, fancy lighting, no stutters, shiny Witcher 3 graphics all around the globe, RTX, revamped ATC: when is it coming out? This decade?

Because in my reality, they are trying since 1,5 years to get Vulkan out the door. 

Don't get me wrong: I like Ben and Sidney a lot and appreciate their work as much as y'all do. But that is one part of the problem: I know all the guys working on XP because there are so few of them. I just don't see how their limited staff could possibly produce sth. that's up to the expectations set by that other sim in a reasonable timeframe. X-Plane is basically two devs with a supporting cast. It's amazing what they have achieved with these limited resources, but it's simply not enough to compete on the tech front. I can see them carving out and cultivating a niche - for instance heli simming which is a lot of fun in XP and isnt even mentioned for MSFS. But for a general flight sim public, they simply won't be able to compete.

 

It isnt always teh best looking horse that wins teh race,

2 hours ago, HumptyDumpty said:

Looks nice. Where exactly is this airfield ? Are you using Blender ?

 Yes i never said programming weather is an easy job or i want a 100% perfect weather.  It's not just about how the clouds look (ofc i want them nice and tasty looking) there are other factors too . 

  But at least deal with the current issues of it.  It being a sim it will never be real or perfect but ignoring stuff that should be a priority is a big put off for me.

   

It becomes an issue when all you look for is the "best" because  that line will always move, and once you get on that bandwagon it never stops. And it will"never" reflect the real world since even the weather people cant predict the weather with any great accuarcy, one mentioned a week is the best they can do, if they are lucky, than we will want tides and butterflies ....

1 minute ago, mjrhealth said:

It becomes an issue when all you look for is the "best" because  that line will always move, and once you get on that bandwagon it never stops...

There may be some of that.

I'd say that is the case with the clouds - I find what they look like an issue, because I know what they really should look like. I remember the exact moment they really became an issue,

it was reading this post.

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/168657-ace-combat-7-weather-shows-x-plane-what-its-missing/

before that my reports were more like (Nov 2018)

However, this:

5 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

And it will"never" reflect the real world since even the weather people cant predict the weather with any great accuarcy, one mentioned a week is the best they can do,

yes, the further you go out in time the more likely you are to be wrong.

But short term predictions (e.g. the next 4 hours) you can predict the weather, in all aspects to a very high level of accuracy, doing so yourself makes up a not insignificant portion of pilot ground school (meteorology component - reading and interpreting METARs and TAFs), not least because with VFR your life depends on getting it right.

Its like throwing a ball - the further you throw the less likely you are to hit the target, but the more you practice the better you get at it.

 

39 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

2.  Let go of IOS/OSX/Linux ... even more relevant now that Apple are going to drop Intel and go back to their own processors  ... multi platform is a good idea for larger development teams, not for LR dev team size

Surely the other way around. There are a lot more reasons to drop windows in favour of mac/linux/android (which are 99% identical to each other) than keep windows.

Only reason to keep it around really is so windows users can try the demo. 

2.5 billion linux devices used every day, vs ~100million windows 10 pcs, most of which are laptops with intel GPUs. Laminar are one of only a handful of developers that think windows is worth the effort (and even then only takes ~60% of their desktop users).

Edited June 29, 20205 yr by mSparks

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

2.  Let go of IOS/OSX/Linux ... even more relevant now that Apple are going to drop Intel and go back to their own processors  ... multi platform is a good idea for larger development teams, not for LR dev team size

Windows is the odd one out in the production chain, considering Laminar writes XP on iOS and Linux.

Also, why do you want to rob me of a nearly perfectly fine Linux-based flight simulator?! Am I nothing of a roadblock on the way to an utterly unproductive head-to-head in the Windows market?!

36 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Cross platform development is more time consuming.  There are ALWAYS exceptions in code and library references that will need to be adjusted changed and further more, design needs to restrict itself to constructs that are cross platform or maintain separate paths (either approach takes time).  This is not "easy", it takes time and planning and has restrictions.  And yes I have discussed with the Ben S. several years ago and Ben did downplay the "adjustments" needed which I frankly didn't believe given my own experience and I would dare suggest history is on my side, where are all the features?

agreed, they should drop windows, which uses completely different file system, apis and debug than linux and macos/iphone/android

36 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

1.  Don't spend the limited development resources on the 16% audience vs. the 80% audience

http://dashboard.x-plane.com/

linux would be a lot higher, but disabled stat collection is the norm. This time I tried to enable stat collection, however they use google analytics, which is of course blocked at the gateway.

36 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

2.  Apple shifting to ARM for all it's product line

So, with android and iphone already on arm, another reason they should drop windows.

36 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

4.  Hardware and more important drivers for Windows platforms

agreed, windows drivers and microsoft killing them every few years makes it not worth supporting they should drop windows

36 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I found Linux flavors to be too much work

I've been exclusively red hat / centos and fedora for ~10 years now. Only reason I switch on the windows laptop is to convert excel models that get emailed me into libreoffice. I could use wine, but 

from a dev pov, mac and linux (don't forget android is a linux kernel) are almost identical, since they are all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX

windows is the odd one out, so given the time it takes, the tiny amount and falling revenue windows users bring in in 2020 and the substandard performance you get out of the terrible windows scheduler, I agree, they should drop windows.

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against windows users, sometimes easy is better, but I'm pretty sure they know their killer market will be something like the occulus go once they iron out the bugs and get to native VR perf levels. (and whatever the competitor is that Apple is due to launch soon)

You can already fly xplane with a yolk and pedals on android - its just not quite ready yet.

I don't actually understand why so many buy a top notch PC just for xplane - and then install windows on it. Its like buying a Ferrari and then fitting a VW golf engine in it and replacing the leather seats with latex.

Edited June 29, 20205 yr by mSparks

i offered volumetric clouds to LR, didnt get a response.

6 hours ago, mSparks said:

I don't actually understand why so many buy a top notch PC just for xplane - and then install windows on it. Its like buying a Ferrari and then fitting a VW golf engine in it and replacing the leather seats with latex.

I'm on my third PC build since switching to X-Plane, and on each one I got significantly better performance using Windows compared to Linux with the official Nvidia drivers. I really would like to use Linux exclusively, but I always keep a Windows drive for X-Plane and some other software.

1 hour ago, Airboeing said:

and on each one I got significantly better performance using Windows compared to Linux with the official Nvidia drivers.

high performance instead of (default) powersave power profiles set on the cpu and gpu?

One thing I think puts a lot of people off is how clunky gnome is, which often the default window manager, long term windows users would much prefer kde imho, which is more like a windows 7 interface.

Mac users should also use kde and set it up like macos (someone should show this Austin...)

I cant stand the windows 10 ui, and microsoft still havent really gotten to grips with why people use desktop computers for anything other than word processing and web browsing.

Edited June 30, 20205 yr by mSparks