Austin Interview on Threshold

[Airfighter 150]

2 hours ago, Paraffin said:

Regarding XP11 Vulkan -- I wasn't referring to the current cycle, but what developers will need to do going forward as XP12, XP13 etc. will inevitably involve changes to the underlying systems that may break backwards compatibility. Austin doesn't stop moving. 

That aside, developers need to give customers a reason to buy new updated versions  of their models anyway. They don't make any money on XP11 models they've already sold.

That's the beauty of X-plane. Continuously evolving. Yes sometimes may require some flight model re-tweaks, but towards the right direction, or some visual improvements (like PBR materials in X-Plane 11), but this is not off from what should be expected from a product. If a developer want a product to be sold, let's say, for 10 years, should sometime around the products mid-life to do a major update. This is logical and must be expected. 

I don't want to talk about developers, but for us (LES) and the store we are working with exclusively (X-Aviation), it is policy not to charge existing customers for compatibility tweaks, but only for overhauled products (new 3D, new systems, etc), and even then, existing customers have the opportunity to upgrade with a very generous discount. 

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Linux and hardware not really obtainable for consumers and limited accelerated support .

I think you miss my point.

Nearly all the studios have been using linux and hardware raytracing for more than a decade (main use of NVs best selling Tesla card). Its been 'in" every major game title and movie since then. consumers were never NVs main clients. Its the render farms which are all Linux (which is why NVs Linux vulkan driver is generally better than its windows one).

Hardware raytrace was battle tested, tweaked and tuned there and bundled straight into vulkan (NV at least). DXR is microsoft and XBOX studios plus AMD GPUs trying to catch up with a decade of hardcore research and development they only just woke up to.

 

Edited June 25, 2020 by mSparks

[tonywob 4,768]

On 6/25/2020 at 1:04 PM, Airfighter said:

And I leave you with this. Does MSFS has fantastic clouds? Yes sure. Can anyone else do it? Yes sure, should the norm from now on...

Now that's impressive 🙂

[RXP 2,338]

On 6/25/2020 at 7:12 PM, mSparks said:

Nearly all the studios have been using linux and hardware raytracing for more than a decade

Hi,

Unless I'm mistaken, the charts you're showing are about a totally different technology: it is the NVidia Cuda Ray Tracing engine.

What RTX is about is specific silicon on the Video Card doing just one thing (to keep it simple): ray casting.

When using a RTX card in most games you're only using a fraction of the silicon power available because games are not exploiting the rest.

RTX cards have 3 types of silicon: the rendering stuff as usual (which shader related silicon is available to 'compute' via Cuda), the ray tracing silicon just for ray-casting, the AI silicon just for AI stuff.

Take a RTX game like BF-V and you are suddenly using additional silicon from your card which was dormant before in order to render much better visuals using ray tracing.

Take a DLSS2 game like Monster Hunter and you are suddenly using additional silicon from your card to render as-good-as 4K visuals with as-much-as 1K rendering power, using the AI silicon to 'create' missing pixels intelligently.

This is much more than just doing ray tracing for the last 12 years (I've been doing ray tracing with POV on an Amiga 500 a long time ago).

Edited June 27, 2020 by RXP

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, RXP said:

the charts you're showing are about a totally different technology: it is the NVidia Cuda Ray Tracing engine.

Its all the same math, you dont need RT cores to run raytrace, the question is can you run it fast enough for realtime.

In that benchmark, if they were rendering a 53.89 second animation, only ubuntu with a 2080Ti has the performance needed to run at that resolution.

If you are on a 10xx series nvidia or better you can see whats really going on at

https://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/1089130/

Edited June 27, 2020 by mSparks

[snglecoil 1,828]

I'm interested to see what sort of next gen scenery Austin has planned. As impressed as I am with the visual advancement in MSFS, competition is a good thing.

If I were a 3rd party dev focused on the retail side of X-plane, however, I would cringe at Austin's complete apathy toward the 3rd party development efforts for his own sim. I love his passion for getting the physics "just right", but let's be honest. 85% of simmers couldn't care less, and 14% of the rest who do care, wouldn't know the difference. If MSFS embraces 3rd party developers and provides a compelling market place in which to profit from their work, it's not hard to predict what is going to happen. That is still a big "if" right now, though. I guess we will find out soon enough.

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, snglecoil said:

If I were a 3rd party dev focused on the retail side of X-plane, however, I would cringe at Austin's complete apathy toward the 3rd party development efforts for his own sim.

Understandable though, third party devs are a long way from X-planes core business.

Plus he is macos exclusively, so, when the vast majority of the 3rd party devs are windows only, he can surely be excused for having as much interest in what they want as they do in what he wants.

Ben Supnik is the desktop lead, - very responsive to third party dev, for 11.50 they even have a slack group for the established devs to feedback directly (and a whole other support network for customers on the commercial licence aiui).

 

 

[mp15 138]

22 hours ago, snglecoil said:

 

If I were a 3rd party dev focused on the retail side of X-plane, however, I would cringe at Austin's complete apathy toward the 3rd party development efforts for his own sim. I love his passion for getting the physics "just right", but let's be honest. 85% of simmers couldn't care less, and 14% of the rest who do care, wouldn't know the difference. 

where is the apathy you mention?

i think physics are very important because it also manifest in the navigation grid. I'm not a pilot and for me is all about dynamics, but yeah i also need eye candy scenery for flying motivational persuation.

[tonywob 4,768]

7 hours ago, mp15 said:

where is the apathy you mention?

Austin has mentioned that he doesn't use any third-party products and is mostly unaware of what is out there. I remember seeing a video of him using xEnviro for the first time and being totally unaware of cloud/atmospheric products.

He did at least mention the name "Orbx" during the interview, which was at least something. 

This could either be considered a good thing, or a bad thing.. Either he simply thinks the sim is so good that addons aren't needed, or rather as I presumed earlier, he doesn't use the sim in the same way the majority of us do 🙂

[Humpty 751]

18 minutes ago, tonywob said:

 he doesn't use the sim in the same way the majority of us do 🙂

He wants us to use it the way he wants. That's the reason i quit flight simulation now.

[mjrhealth 820]

6 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

He wants us to use it the way he wants. That's the reason i quit flight simulation now.

No He doesnt why do you think there is so much freeware out there you can do what you like with the core, there are even 2 freeware updates of xplane default planes, You could never do that with MS, Xplane has never being better. Just like ATC fixed .

[Humpty 751]

8 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

No He doesnt why do you think there is so much freeware out there you can do what you like with the core, there are even 2 freeware updates of xplane default planes, You could never do that with MS, Xplane has never being better. Just like ATC fixed .

Yes amazing freeware but that  won't make me to stick to it , as for me more important is the Wx / Lighting. For scenery i can make my own and i have made Mumbai City (WIP but i am not going to do it now)

 Don't even touch a tube in XP and never did in FSX and it's earlier versions. Only GA / Helis.

There are too many backlogs with XP  they are not bothered , the main component for flying is the atmos / Wx /Air they are not ready to fix , going with Xenviro is an option but an expensive one and only 3 layers.  

  I am done waiting on updates and changes. They never happen. or take too long in the case of LR. 

 

 

[mSparks 2,086]

17 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

For scenery i can make my own and i have made Mumbai City

I really enjoyed my forays in scenery tweaking.

made my home port look better than I ever could in any other engine.

17 minutes ago, HumptyDumpty said:

the main component for flying is the atmos / Wx /Air they are not ready to fix

presumably because getting it realistic is no simple task.

Sure, making some clouds that look pretty is easy enough. 

However simulating the weather with any realism is the job of the worlds largest super computers (when they aren't designing the latest iteration of nuclear weapons or simulating advanced medicines)

Edited June 29, 2020 by mSparks

[MagentaChild 226]

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.

 

[Humpty 751]

4 minutes ago, mSparks said:

I really enjoyed my forays in scenery tweaking.

made my home port look better than I ever could in any other engine.

presumably because getting it realistic is no simple task.

Sure, making some clouds that look pretty is easy enough. 

However simulating the weather with any realism is the job of the worlds largest super computers (when they aren't designing the latest iteration of nuclear weapons or simulating advanced medicines)

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.