11 minutes ago, tonywob said:

At first sight, I honestly thought it was an MFS shot. Mainly it's the clouds and the lighting a bit dull that give it away.

Not surprising, those elements play a lot of importance in the visual pleasure of a sim. And then of course XP needs better vegetation and a lot more visual clutter.

But you need extremely efficient performance to have dense visual clutter, and IIRC Ben himself mentioned that (i.e. lots of 3D objects) is the direction they planned to go.

17 minutes ago, mSparks said:

In case anyone misunderstands you (I did on first reading) xp scenery is a lot more than 80gb for the world.

my XP scenery folder takes up about 1.5TB

A full install of X-Plane 11 with just the default scenery takes up 74GB. This is what I was referring to when comparing default scenery to scenery streamed from Bing maps on MFS

19 minutes ago, mSparks said:

size doesnt mean much.

when most of those "petabytes" is generating this total garbage

vs a few hundred megabytes for this..

The garbage you are referring to is mostly the computer generated geometry (English town scenery) and this is not 2 Petabyte but rather 150GB. This cg scenery does look one generation ahead and better.

Some of the 2 PB data creates stunning visuals, but sometimes (like New York) it does look like Google Earth with shading effects.

I think it`s better to see things unprejudiced, MSFS is far better in close views out of the box. But X-Plane get`s stunning visuals with the right add-ons.

 

Honestly in my opinion I`m not sure if millions of players creating streaming data each one GBs every day is a good idea. It`s like Sony saves the planet by using environment friendly materials for the Play Station 5.

 

 

2 hours ago, BigDee said:

 

Honestly in my opinion I`m not sure if millions of players creating streaming data each one GBs every day is a good idea. It`s like Sony saves the planet by using environment friendly materials for the Play Station 5.

 

 

You do realize that there are millions of people streaming internet TV / Movies (some in 4k) "all day"...Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, Amazon Prime....and the list goes on.

How much data do you think that takes...per hour?

15 hours ago, Murmur said:

The focus of XP towards smoothness and performance (Vulkan) for future development could be a good call by LM. Although I admit it's way too early to judge... MFS is basically still a beta, and in theory a year from now could be perfectly smooth.

On the other hand, I think it's a given that the new competitive landscape renders even more urgent improvements in lighting, scenery and weather for XP.

Yes, it's the micro stutters and object/texture pop-in that bothered me the most in the Alpha. Either Asobo hasn't got a handle on it yet, or they're assuming faster hardware in the future might solve it. But that's certainly not guaranteed. Some software problems can't be solved by hardware upgrades. Right now, a smooth "liquid" flight experience with no interruption or visual artifacts is X-Plane's ace in the hole. 

On the second paragraph, I agree this isn't license for XP to ignore the most desperately needed improvements in weather and lighting at least.

 

4 hours ago, mSparks said:

tbh, from a flight simulation perspective, is there really that much difference between the msfs and xp orthophoto?

Yes, there is. The difference in areas where MS can use photogrammetry data allows far more realistic depiction of buildings. It makes a huge difference when you see photo-based textures on the sides and roofs of buildings instead of bare OSM-based 3D object data.

Where that photogrammetry isn't available, it's more comparable in visual quality to XP ortho-based terrain. However, you don't have to store any of it on your hard drive, and you don't have to pay extra for it over the base price of the sim. That in itself is another huge difference.

Edited August 18, 20205 yr by Paraffin

3 hours ago, Paraffin said:

It makes a huge difference when you see photo-based textures on the sides and roofs of buildings

Well, heres the review we've all been waiting for.

I really dont agree with it making a huge difference, there is literally nothing in that vid except say st barts that i havent been seeing in xp for the last 2 years.

biggest difference I see in the graphics is ms has specular on by default on the terrain (ace combat 7 did that first).

OTOH, tonywob was right, I am surprised at the perf, I was really expecting a lot worse. Still dont think VR will be achievable, but that is much more stable than I expected, and getting XP from default to hero does require more time investment (but thats a good chunk of the fun imho)

Hey I'm happy for you guys wanting to stay with XP11.  It's a dang good simulator.  I still have my copy with numerous addons installed.  I'm also really happy with the vanilla MSFS install!  I could see myself using XP11 for IFR flights on PilotEdge and MSFS for VFR and maybe some basic IFR flights.

35 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

Hey I'm happy for you guys wanting to stay with XP11.  It's a dang good simulator.  I still have my copy with numerous addons installed.  I'm also really happy with the vanilla MSFS install!  I could see myself using XP11 for IFR flights on PilotEdge and MSFS for VFR and maybe some basic IFR flights.

The sim shines in rural non city areas where the data is good. The performance and visuals of photogrammetry is where it falls apart. Popping autogen, low LOD, Block trees morphing into autogen trees in the foreground, etc....

Have you tried a VFR flight and then tried loading procedure in the GPS in Socal? It's unusable unless you preload it in the main menu. + trying to manipulate the nobs on the avionics is nightmare. 

You can always disable photogrammetry and still get the nice underlying photo scenery with AG.  I've done this in the alpha a few times. 

I don't expect theses default acft to load procedures (in flight)....  I was able to sort of load one in the king air but it deleted my en route waypoints when I did.  I'm doing a C700 flight now via the flight planner screen and I am able to DTO a new fix.  But yeah that doesnt really help for vatsim or PE

32 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

You can always disable photogrammetry and still get the nice underlying photo scenery with AG.  I've done this in the alpha a few times. 

I don't expect theses default acft to load procedures (in flight)....  I was able to sort of load one in the king air but it deleted my en route waypoints when I did.  I'm doing a C700 flight now via the flight planner screen and I am able to DTO a new fix.  But yeah that doesnt really help for vatsim or PE

I am having much better experience now, there is Vsync bug that was destroying my performance. Now I crank some of the sliders!

 

21 hours ago, tonywob said:

You simply can't compare the scenery between the two, one is using "petabytes" of data and insane amounts of hardware to generate, the other fits the planet in around 80GB and uses the same generic repeating textures.

You absolutely can create highly detailed scenery in X-Plane: e.g. Here is an example shot that shows ZL17 orthos with per tree accuracy data (Trees and buildings height and colour matched) over a fairly boring area 🙂

 

However the limit is the sizes needed to store this locally on a users computer. A one degree tile at this level of detail can come in at around 10-12GB. Start bringing that up to country size levels and it becomes an issue. XP could start compressing this sort of data and make it more manageable, but since Austin doesn't like ortho imagery, I don't think it will happen anytime soon 🙂

 

 

Hi Tony,

Sorry to hijack the thread with a quick question.

Are you still going to create & release ORBX TE FL for P3D v4?

I tried MSFS2020 and I'm sticking with P3D v4 & XP for at least a few more years.

Jose

15 minutes ago, DJJose said:

Are you still going to create & release ORBX TE FL for P3D v4?

Yes, they're still being done

2 hours ago, DJJose said:

I tried MSFS2020 and I'm sticking with P3D v4 & XP for at least a few more years.

Can you expand on that? 🙂

28 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Can you expand on that? 🙂

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/580777-we-have-been-through-this-before/