Edmund Earle takes a look at the sim: Under the microscope.

 

Edited August 10, 20205 yr by HiFlyer

Oh look, someone commented on the clouds, seeing the same things I am. 

Hook

Good and objective analysis I think and thanks for sharing, this provides genuine feedback for further development and improvement by MS & Asobo. I like the way you finished the review saying you were looking forward to release on the 18th .

Yep, I caught that vid earlier. Good analysis and non-judgemental. I like the way he doesn't get hysterical and reminds us it is work-in-progress.

I liked it too. I was a bit scared because of the footnote saying watch on your own risk - once you see these flaws you cannot un-see them 😄 

However, nothing was said in this video that I hadn't already noticed from the leaks and other video material. I guess the cloud things could be an issue, but I haven't really noticed anything glaringly wrong when seeing the countless videos so far. 

Then again I haven't really seen much for jetliners overflying overcast layers and seeing repeating patterns. Actually, I've been thinking to myself thank god for none of those repeating patterns when seeing the videos. So we shall see when we get there 🙂

None of the stuff he talked about bothers me.  I've never even noticed the ambient occlusion problem.  

The clouds will look pretty good unless you're used to studying clouds closely, I think.  I was surprised by the shots of the clouds in Red Dead Redemption, which looked pretty good.

One thing he did was illustrate how some of the problems could be fixed.  

Hook

These aren't show stoppers. If asobo is being truthful with us about this being a living piece of software then I would hope they would improve things.

 

Very well-made video, providing solutions to the issues without sounding like a complaint. The ambient occlusion and cloud lighting are probably what could be fixed right now. The AI stuff should improve over time but could take several years until those specific issues can be mitigated, and as for improving cloud detail and coarseness, that will probably take a lot more graphics power to achieve. But with Asobo already planning to introduce even higher graphics settings, we just need to wait for the hardware to catch up.

I'm wondering what could be done to improve the appearance of cirrus clouds right now though. Perhaps using 2D textures for higher distances, that smoothly transform to volumetric at higher altitudes?

Well I am glad he did not do one for P3D out of the box, it would be 12 hours long, talk about nick picking....dear me.

Tiling on the clouds he wants to see EA Beta in P3Dv5 lol, comparing Red dead redemption is a joke, that world is a fraction of the size.....

Sorry I thought that vid was terrible and for years we have turn off traffic as its a FPS killer I can cope with a few hick ups for the gain of having good looking traffic.

The only point I agreed with was the appearance of cirrus clouds.

Edited August 10, 20205 yr by Nyxx

Hey @Janov! That's what I meant when I said that most MSFSers (and there are some die hard fans in the comments) actually do criticize the bad aspects! 😉

I am sorry for those XP looks doodoo comments, but most of us don't mean it in a bad way towards XP.

Very nice insight into the cloud funkiness that people have been trying to articulate. Don't get me wrong, I'm super stoked by the clouds, but this clearly shows not only what could be improved...and more importantly, how it could be improved as the product moves forward.

Nice to see some constructive criticism.  The road traffic looks similar to the original FSX implementation of the same, I wonder if this code took any re-engineering on the journey to 2020.

16 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

Well I am glad he did not do one for P3D out of the box, it would be 12 hours long, talk about nick picking....dear me.

Good one! Good point worth emphasizing - this is out of the box! For me, the leap in realism, so out ways any of the minor shortcomings that have been mentioned since the announcement back in 2019.  Can’t wait to jump in the left seat, push the throttle forward and lift off from runways that I have only dreamed of visiting by watching YouTube videos!

Valid points but the guy responsible for optimization at Asobo is probably cringing at the video. You can't have all of that and still get playable fps on most hardware.

10 minutes ago, Slides said:

Valid points but the guy responsible for optimization at Asobo is probably cringing at the video. You can't have all of that and still get playable fps on most hardware.

The only thing that would require considerably more graphical power is probably the amount of voxels to draw the clouds. The rest seems to be a matter of tweaking what has already implemented, and the AI maturing. Not that such a process wouldn't take a lot of time though.

But Asobo probably already know what needs to be improved and I'm confident they will do so in time. They've worked so hard in taking care of so many details that previous simulators would never dream of, they likely won't just let those things slide.