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7 hours ago, Janov said:

The perfect weather system in a flight simulator in my opinion would be:

  • Visually pleasing with realistic looking weather in all of it´s beauty
  • Offering a perfect rendition of "current real weather" everywhere
  • Allows setting up exact weather for training purpose
  • Offers a large-scale weather sandbox where you can move jetstreams, set pressure systems, time and season (for sun angle) and temperature gradients...and then see the effects (=weather) of that in real time.

 

Do you mean something like this?

 

 

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29 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

Do you mean something like this?

No, not at all 🙂

(just saying that to raise your bloodpressure again!)

We need a simulator that can set a certain visibility or RVR, and also show your approaches in replay - not just make pretty clouds, sorry.

We also need airports that have the correct lightings and markings, not what some guy thought would look good.

Edited by Janov
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Better looking weather with better generation would be great. (Including visible changes, e. g. snow.) As far as visuals go, right now, FS2020 is dominant by far and doing things never seen before in a sim, as far as I can tell.

Along with better visuals/generation, I'd like to see (no pun intended) environmental visibility fixes such as being able to see right through clouds, adjusted ground / night lighting intensity, and better overall environmental lighting.

 

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11 hours ago, soaring_penguin said:

The weather implementation I have most fond memories off is still the Unlimited Flight series, you could draw fronts and high and low pressure areas on the map, and see how that developed into realistic weather. CBs were implemented (but ugly as hell 😉 ).

(FU III, be it outdated today in the graphics department, is still one of my best simulators in my drawer, RIP).

Which FU was that? II or III? I certainly can't remember it from the first one.

 

 

9 hours ago, tonywob said:

After using MFS for some time, I really notice now how lifeless everything looks without proper atmospheric scattering, lighting and clouds. You can place the most stunning scenery ever made in to X-Plane, but if the atmosphere is absent it'll still lacking and lifeless.

Even the most complex weather and atmosphere rendering won't add any life if it's just you and three AI aircraft on a huge airport.


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14 hours ago, Janov said:

I look forward to better representation of the real weather as well. But the current weather system in X-Plane does everything that you need if you want to practce IFR or VFR flight. Is it pretty (as in MSFS)? Maybe not. But if you understand where X-Plane is coming from, it is understandable why it is the way it is.

We're obviously coming at this from different perspectives. In my case, as a sim bush pilot more than doing standard approaches.

I'm not talking about wanting it pretty, I'm talking about wanting it to model what real pilots deal with as dynamic, discrete weather systems. XP's current weather engine generates weather as a 2D layer with your plane at the center. It doesn't model discrete systems.

I want the thrill of ducking between and around CB's as discrete weather systems. A thunderstorm should be a 3D model, including internal vertical convection up and down, and temperature changes. You never want to intentionally enter a CB, but they should still be modeled in the sim as things to avoid.

Cold fronts and warm fronts should also be modeled as discrete systems; something you approach and fly into, not just a set of weather variables generated in a circle around your plane that moves along with you.

Basically, what's needed is a change to a full 3D weather engine instead of the current 2D "stacked pancake" system. 

Edited by Paraffin
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50 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

I want the thrill of ducking between and around CB's as discrete weather systems. A thunderstorm should be a 3D model, including internal vertical convection up and down, and temperature changes. You never want to intentionally enter a CB, but they should still be modeled in the sim as things to avoid.

I am not sure if we are flying the same X-Plane 11, but last time I tried setting the weather and storminess to a high level, I got a pattern of clouds and thunderstorms that I can duck between and around, and entering them will be very dangerous with extreme windshear and downbursts...

Additionally if you fly with real weather downloaded, the weather changes as you fly between weather stations, so if the weather is clear at your current airport, it will gradually change to cloudy if you approach the next airport (that has cloudy weather). You can even see the clouds as you approach them. So the weather is not uniformly around you with you being in the center, it does change as you fly along.

So, no, it doesn´t look as pretty as MSFS, but from a piloting perspective, everything is there.

It may be different for a bush pilot that avoids CB´s by sight - if you don´t have a weather radar or spot the lightnings this is difficult currently in X-Plane, as it does not depict CB.

Then again, flying in cloudy weather (or at night) does not allow visually avoiding CBs reliably, either.

Cheers, Jan

 

Edited by Janov
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43 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

We're obviously coming at this from different perspectives. In my case, as a sim bush pilot more than doing standard approaches.

I'm not talking about wanting it pretty, I'm talking about wanting it to model what real pilots deal with as dynamic, discrete weather systems. XP's current weather engine generates weather as a 2D layer with your plane at the center. It doesn't model discrete systems.

I want the thrill of ducking between and around CB's as discrete weather systems. A thunderstorm should be a 3D model, including internal vertical convection up and down, and temperature changes. You never want to intentionally enter a CB, but they should still be modeled in the sim as things to avoid.

Cold fronts and warm fronts should also be modeled as discrete systems; something you approach and fly into, not just a set of weather variables generated in a circle around your plane that moves along with you.

Basically, what's needed is a change to a full 3D weather engine instead of the current 2D "stacked pancake" system. 

Agreed and we should be happy right now since the mail hints for the next x-plane to include a new weather rendering engine; the data is also generated as a 3d matrix then the new rendering engine will draw it, hopefully really beautiful, Ben Supnik confirmed 3d clouds though.

I also think it'll include seasons, maybe wishfull one but they did talk a while ago how they hope to do seasons and obviously it should come with a the new weather engine and shaders etc..

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The main issue with XP weather system is not that it's 2D (as Janov said, it's actually 3D although it lacks some things like fog banks, visibility fronts, etc.).

The main issue is that it's static in space and time, i.e. weather doesn't move and doesn't evolve. My hunch is that a dynamic weather system is an order of magnitude more complex to code.

Maybe I'd put the lack of a dynamic weather system as the most important thing missing, more than seasons, better AI/ATC, etc.

Hopefully for XP12...

 

 

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As important as weather is scenery. Unless XP12 will have some sort of similar scenery to FS2020 it will lose a lot of users. Unlike P3D it will survive anyway.

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The scenery in FS2020 is, in many places, 5-8 year old Bing data.  I can create ortho from google maps for X-Plane that is far more current.  People are forgetting that FS2020 is using simple, and from what I have seen, non-adjustable zoom level data.  Not to mention the 7GB/hour data downloads for that ortho, which will cripple many peoples internet if they're on capped plans.  And if they're throttled back, which some ISP's do, they'll be downloading at 56kbps for the rest of the month.  I doubt that'll even be possible for the amount of data needed.

I know, I know.  Cached scenery.  But you can't cache the whole world.  For all FS2020's pluses, there are still many negatives, which I will not go into, as it will turn into another MSFS vs X-Plane debate.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Mike44 said:

Unless XP12 will have some sort of similar scenery to FS2020 it will lose a lot of users

I don't think LR should just try to copy what MS has done in regards to scenery, but rather look at it with a different approach.. Many users like orthos + autogen and can already do this in XP, but orthos have problems that can also clearly be seen in most MFS videos as well:

  • Baked shadows and clouds... Clearly can be seen in mountain videos, and despite what Youtubers may tell you, the AI has not removed these and is no magic pill
  • Not dynamic... Light never reacts correctly with the ground meaning it's fairly static. Grass should reflect light differently than asphalt, etc.
  • Varying quality... Imagery is inconsistent. Sometimes the trees are coloured a lime green colour and then suddenly change seasons.... etc..
  • As Austin eluded to, you can still see squashed cars, roofs etc all frozen in time in a flattened world.
  • Expensive and subject to availability...

For now, orthos + autogen is seen as the best way to move forward and clearly populaar, but I'd say going down the procedural route would possibly give the sim a leg up in this department. Have a look at the worlds created by Unigine or Outerra to see how good such a world can look. Since everything is procedural, there are no baked shadows, lighting issues, inconsistent season changes etc...

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59 minutes ago, tonywob said:

For now, orthos + autogen is seen as the best way to move forward and clearly populaar, but I'd say going down the procedural route would possibly give the sim a leg up in this department. Have a look at the worlds created by Unigine or Outerra to see how good such a world can look. Since everything is procedural, there are no baked shadows, lighting issues, inconsistent season changes etc...

 
A perfect way to show how it can look both amazing but so inconsistent and lifeless so it gives up the illusion.
Even fsx then was better in this kind of stuff.
Edited by mtaxp

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The weather still off/on  on reload after all this years and versions is what I dislike the most. 

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On 8/4/2020 at 1:57 AM, Janov said:

I think he was probably meaning "technical" - as in too complex to set up?

Yeah. Its like to get anything remotely looking realistic you need to download a bunch of ortho. The weather system. The camera system. It got better with XP11 but it just seems to be like a car you keep having to tune to get it working. 


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16 hours ago, mtaxp said:

Agreed and we should be happy right now since the mail hints for the next x-plane to include a new weather rendering engine; the data is also generated as a 3d matrix then the new rendering engine will draw it, hopefully really beautiful, Ben Supnik confirmed 3d clouds though.

I also think it'll include seasons, maybe wishfull one but they did talk a while ago how they hope to do seasons and obviously it should come with a the new weather engine and shaders etc..

Even if there aren't full seasonal changes in the terrain, it would be a major step forward if XP12 just includes an ephemeris for sun and moon.

One reason some of the screen shots of the new MSFS look so impressive is that you get realistic low sun angles in the daytime at lower and higher latitudes, instead of XP's constant overhead sun track no matter the date or location. I didn't know how much I missed that subtle bit of realism and immersion until I flew the MSFS Alpha. 

 

4 hours ago, tonywob said:

For now, orthos + autogen is seen as the best way to move forward and clearly populaar, but I'd say going down the procedural route would possibly give the sim a leg up in this department. Have a look at the worlds created by Unigine or Outerra to see how good such a world can look. Since everything is procedural, there are no baked shadows, lighting issues, inconsistent season changes etc...

Yeah, as you know, I've complained before about things like the Orbx TE Washington scenery being so brown everywhere, because it's using satellite imagery taken in mid-Summer with the fewest clouds, when everything dries out. But that's only two months of the year! The rest of the year the ground should look green, everywhere. A procedural terrain system could look more realistic if the data is available.

Same thing with coastal and river water colors. In places like the Caribbean and South Pacific, we should see turquoise water in shallow areas. Alpine mountain streams should be clear blue, the Amazon river should be brown, and so on.

In XP the water is that boring slate blue color everywhere in the world. MSFS can look stunning in a few areas where it uses photo imagery for shallow water, but it's only in a few areas, and often not where you'd really expect to see it. Procedural terrain using bathymetric data could, in theory, make this possible. 

Edited by Paraffin

X-Plane and Microsoft Flight Simulator on Windows 10 
i7 6700 4.0 GHz, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1660 ti, 1920x1200 monitor

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