I think Austin does what Austin does. I am not sure how much influence we have over the direction of where xplane is going. What I do know is that for all the good thing XP11 does, eye candy scenery is what going to attract people over to the MSFS. This is the thing XP11 lack so much of. The fact that I don't have to manage Terabytes of ortho just to make it look not as ugly. I personally will not stop using XP11 or P3D for that matters even when MSFS is out. It's going to take time for MSFS matures to a level where I think most user will be satisfy. That's the honest truth.

1 hour ago, fogboundturtle said:

I understand that you have an affinity for Xplane platform but everything you said about MSFS is just one bs after the other. It's impossible to take anything you say seriously. Even if you have some good points to make, they have all been erased by your blatant fanboyism.

Can we go back to reality for one second ? There is a lot of good in XP11 but the whole look of the world from the meshes, to the atmosphere , to the clouds, to the vectors all of it is like 5 years behind of where it should be. It takes so much work and different addons to even get somewhere. Flying over vanilla scenery is something I tried to avoid at all cost. It is THAT bad. If LR was smart, instead of trying to hire artist to try to craft the whole world piece by piece, they could use a similar technology where they can leverage google API and did exactly what MS did. At least get that part auto-generated by AI. That way their artist can actually focus on fixing what is missing. It's actually what Asobo is doing. They let the ai generate most of the world and artist are doing the finishing touch. 

 

Did my comment suggest otherwise? Your answer did not relate.

But to answer, x-plane *can* be better, given good artists. They can enhance the usage of OSM (or any other avilable data) just like how world2xp does. (which if im not wrong, evolved into Orbx TE products)

Ai objects look ugly, no proper materials or shading. Apply the same for orthophotos.

I prefer my open world flight simulator too look like

 

 

(And in VR ;))

 

Edited July 24, 20205 yr by mtaxp

Sorry.

Edited July 24, 20205 yr by mtaxp

1 hour ago, mtaxp said:

I prefer my open world flight simulator too look like

Damn....... maybe before we die?

30 minutes ago, tonywob said:

word not allowed....... maybe before we die?

It is already kinda possible in x-plane, you need good art and to not rely on orthophotos rather create proper materials to achieve a regional based photorealistic look. 

 

However and obviously this is less impressive than the previous one and this do to the fact that x-plane needs more features, procedual vegetation, tessellation to smooth out meshes and road curves. 

And with Vulkan, to not be affraid to push even more detail to autogen and ground textures, to scatter more random objects in villages, it's more about the art imo.

 

 

Edited July 24, 20205 yr by mtaxp

Just now, mtaxp said:

However and obviously this is less imprressive than the previous one and this do to the fact the x-plane needs more features, procedual vegetation, tessellation to smooth out meshes and road curves.

I agree that good procedural scenery generation from detailed data would beat the MFS approach and there are engines out there that can do it such as Outerra. Orthos always suffer from the same stuck in time approach as Austin has said, and Frank's approach in those mountains proves this further

14 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

It is already kinda possible in x-plane

Xplanes lack of low altitude scenery wow factor is mostly down to the lack of shader based geometry.

 limited to .obj (not that obj format isnt really awesome) and quad "forests" (which really are terrible) makes xp11 look like it does.

Its a relatively minor coding update I am 100% sure they have "saved" for xp12 (despite being old and ubiquitous now).

I am also 99% sure that this asset format (terrain shaders) are what the eastern europeans are developing with.

 

Edited July 24, 20205 yr by mSparks

8 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Xplanes lack of low altitude scenery wow factor is mostly down to the lack of shader based geometry.

 

 

Ben mentioned in a blog comment that they are looking on to something beyond obj for scenery, lol.

13 minutes ago, mSparks said:

ts a relatively minor coding update

You say it's minor, then they should do it right now. If minor win = huge gains, why not?

Just now, tonywob said:

You say it's minor, then they should do it right now. If minor win = huge gains, why not?

A small coding change and 3rd party devs could be using it next week - but to keep it consistent it needs a whole new scenery asset library (hence the army of eastern european devs)

As good a reason to bump up the version number and Laminar take some more of my money as any.

 

9 minutes ago, mSparks said:

(hence the army of eastern european devs)

You seem pretty confident about this..... Outerra is from Bratisława, as is Wiedzmiń (The witcher) from Poland, but doesn't mean they have an army of similar developers who can make the sim look like this, it just means they found cheaper 3D modellers than they could in the US..... I'll believe it when I see it

7 minutes ago, tonywob said:

You seem pretty confident about this..... Outerra is from Bratisława, as is Wiedzmiń (The witcher) from Poland, but doesn't mean they have an army of similar developers who can make the sim look like this, it just means they found cheaper 3D modellers than they could in the US..... I'll believe it when I see it

You might be right, then again hearing ben supnik's tone while describing the pictures they sent him, emphasizing how eager they were to show what the've already got when msfs2020 announced makes one to wonder.

Edited July 24, 20205 yr by mtaxp

6 hours ago, tonywob said:

You seem pretty confident about this..... Outerra is from Bratisława, as is Wiedzmiń (The witcher) from Poland, but doesn't mean they have an army of similar developers who can make the sim look like this, it just means they found cheaper 3D modellers than they could in the US..... I'll believe it when I see it

CEE education system is historically among the best in the world, and they have invested heavily in training software devs. Generally speaking they can do a better job at 1/4 the price in 1/2 the time due to the low cost of living and work ethic. 

I will be disappointed if they haven't deployed a whole battalion.

Edited July 25, 20205 yr by mSparks

12 hours ago, tonywob said:

I agree that good procedural scenery generation from detailed data would beat the MFS approach and there are engines out there that can do it such as Outerra. Orthos always suffer from the same stuck in time approach as Austin has said, and Frank's approach in those mountains proves this further

There is so much that could be derived from OSM, gas stations, shopping malls ect. but it all comes down to manpower.

On 7/23/2020 at 7:29 PM, snglecoil said:

Oh, the irony...

Remember when he declared Microsoft were essentially going to do a bait-and-switch, and never actually release MSFS on PC, instead putting it exclusively on the Xbox?

Good times.