Feeling bad for Laminar and others

[Greazer 1,320]

These developers need a really good kick. To say flight sim (core sim) has been going at snails pace is a massive understatement.  These guys have been blogging about Vulkan since Mar 2016. Just a code port, nothing more, and does not actually fix any of the annoying defects and gremlins (jagged cockpit shadows, 2d clouds / cloud flickering, cardboard trees, sudden weather redraws, poor performance, bottle necked one CPU thread, long loading times etc).

[Slides 1,552]

1 hour ago, OzWhitey said:

1. Yeah, as the other poster said, not hidden in many places. You may not care about blurry scenery, but many will. I miss seeing the details on the terrain which is pretty much the whole point of ortho.

1b. MSFS fudges this for cities, placing a fake overlay on roads and residential property. Look good/great at first glance, but Starts to give things a generic look after a while.

2. Not realistic to do “region updates” on the scale that would be needed.  It’s a Bimg-based sim. And anyone who buiids ortho knows that Bing is pretty bad for a large chunk of the world.. They’re not going to replace Bing with Arc for all of Australia, which is what you’d want to do.

2b. Even if you change to an entirely google or arc based sim (not going to happen), you’d still have blurry ortho because you can’t stream ZL17 (or even close to it) with current tech.

But it's not blurry for me. I get that for people who use super high res ortho it might be blurry. But to me that's not realistic either. It looks over sharpened to me. But that's fair that you miss that.

I love the way MSFS combines many different techniques to arrive at a believable picture NEVER before seen in a flight sim. That's the future. It's not about the most high resolution ortho. It's about lighting effects, ground textures, autogen, photogrammetry, shaders, screen space reflections, screen space ambient occlusion, upscaling, temporal anti aliasing etc.

That's the point. It's no longer a you know what measuring context about who has the highest resolution ortho. That obsession in the civilian flight sim community is weird to anyone outside of it as it ignores all of the graphics advancements of the last few years. For flight sims to evolve, some of you will have to grow with the pace of graphics development in the rest of the industry. Or you will be stuck in 2000s with your X-Plane and P3D and building Orthos. 

MSFS has already proven that it's combination of Ortho plus modern graphics techniques gives you the most believable looking sim ever produced. That is indisputable. You are of course free to use a magnifying glass to look at ground textures and only ground textures but I suspect the rest of the flight sim community will leave you behind.

[mtaxp 666]

7 minutes ago, Agrajag said:

That wasn't sarcasm. First, you don't know what's in the SDK for this program as it's not out yet. Second, when someone starts producing scenery that meets this level you speak of, drop back in and let us know. Third, I'm not holding my breath given that third-party developers and X-Plane go together like bread and socks. And I'm a fan. I just happen to also be a realist.

That was an attempt to just dust off a legitimate comment in a discussion that probably did not suite your opinion.

If you have no knowledge in this and nothing to say, dont push you self to comment to me.

Procedural scenery is very much a thing and can look way better than msfs as it is right now in other industry engines and AAA games that have tech that can and should be adapted to a "next gen flight simulator".

[ShawnG 1,823]

11 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

Already, Much powerful tools than anything msfs has to offer when it comes to scenery and making a living virual world. 

ok, but msfs actually has what you are claiming XP's tools enable you to have.  is it an Ikea sim? has Austin just not properly applied his Allen wrench?

 

XP has the classic hallmarks of the vanity project.  Because Austin has already declared that it is the best and most wonderful sim ever, he cannot then go and implement features that other sims have that his do not.  Doing that would undermine the Proclamations of Awesomeness he previously has given ad nauseum.  So the strategy then becomes claiming that the features that XP does not have are in fact not necessary, or stupid.  So, Austin will not lower himself to "chase" microsoft, and thus XP will continue to lag.  Whereas MS, as a faceless corporation, if they feel they are lacking in some way, do not have a person's ego on the line, so is more receptive to improvements in weak areas.  (of course, bad version is they bail if it isn't going well, see:Microsoft flight)

[Slides 1,552]

4 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

Procedural scenery is very much a thing and can look way better than msfs as it is right now in other industry engines and AAA games that have tech that can and should be adapted to a "next gen flight simulator".

Oh is that going to be the X-Plane defense going forward? It CAN be done better than MSFS in games that render a fraction of open world that MSFS does?

[OzWhitey 3,353]

7 minutes ago, Slides said:

But it's not blurry for me. I get that for people who use super high res ortho it might be blurry. But to me that's not realistic either. It looks over sharpened to me. But that's fair that you miss that.

I love the way MSFS combines many different techniques to arrive at a believable picture NEVER before seen in a flight sim. That's the future. It's not about the most high resolution ortho. It's about lighting effects, ground textures, autogen, photogrammetry, shaders, screen space reflections, screen space ambient occlusion, upscaling, temporal anti aliasing etc.

That's the point. It's no longer a you know what measuring context about who has the highest resolution ortho. That obsession in the civilian flight sim community is weird to anyone outside of it as it ignores all of the graphics advancements of the last few years. For flight sims to evolve, some of you will have to grow with the pace of graphics development in the rest of the industry. Or you will be stuck in 2000s with your X-Plane and P3D and building Orthos. 

MSFS has already proven that it's combination of Ortho plus modern graphics techniques gives you the most believable looking sim ever produced. That is indisputable. You are of course free to use a magnifying glass to look at ground textures and only ground textures but I suspect the rest of the flight sim community will leave you behind.

Well, whilst I agree with a lot of what you wrote, I would disagree that it is “indisputable” that MSFS is the most believable looking sim ever produced, because I am right here disputing that!

I would agree that it is the most “superficially pretty with no work required from the user” sim ever produced, but that’s quite a different thing.

The clouds are far from “most believable”, they’re exciting-looking, interesting but also look very fake/cartoon-like. Truesky from most altitudes is far more believable.

I’d also say that overall, it’s not a very “believable” sim. Far too many immersion-breaking features - have you ever actually looked at what the traffic is doing? What on earth are those drivers think? And don’t get me started on the kamikaze service vehicle drivers at the airports.
 

So pretty, yes. And fun, yes.

But believable “Generic 223, you are 20,000 feet above your assigned altitude.” 🙂

I also don’t believe that Southhampton has trees in the oceans and on its ships, but I’ll defer to the locals on that one!

 

 

[Slides 1,552]

1 hour ago, yidahoo said:

Simple fact, Austin has never given up on X-Plane. Microsoft have given up twice on Flight Simulator, more if you include combat flight simulator. Its the difference between passion and profit. 

Sometimes you strike gold and get people who are both passionate but can also deliver profits (Asobo). 

[Slides 1,552]

3 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I would disagree that it is “indisputable” that MSFS is the most believable looking sim ever produced, because I am right here disputing that!

It's the most visually believable flight sim every created. To the point that even non simmers were in awe of its real world graphics. To the point that it is easy to confuse real life pictures with in sim screenshots. No one has been awed by any other flight sim prior to this from a visual standpoint. 

[yidahoo 365]

5 minutes ago, Slides said:

Sometimes you strike gold and get people who are both passionate but can also deliver profits (Asobo). 

As passionate as Asobo are, they are not pulling the purse strings on this. The money comes from Microsoft and if it doesn’t start coming back, they may well pull the plug. They have history in that

[mtaxp 666]

13 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

ok, but msfs actually has what you are claiming XP's tools enable you to have.  

MSFS uses photogrammetry and autogen which is placed on orthos that are plauged with artifacts.

It is possible to replicate in x-plane, but i think orthos are immersion killers. And photogrammetry is ugly.

Im talking about full procedural approach.

Edited August 23, 2020 by mtaxp

[ShawnG 1,823]

2 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

I’d also say that overall, it’s not a very “believable” sim. Far too many immersion-breaking features - have you ever actually looked at what the traffic is doing? What on earth are those drivers think? And don’t get me started on the kamikaze service vehicle drivers at the airports.
 

have you ever looked at what the traffic is doing in p3d?  ooooohh yeah, you couldn't turn road traffic on in p3d/fsx because it becomes a slideshow, forgot.

 

but if you did, you'd see the same deal.

I've never found it particularly enlightening to stare intently at the individual components of any FS scenery, in p3d days you would just be wondering why the autogen buildings don't match up with the vector roads, or why a van is driving up and down the same street over and over.  It's meant to be enjoyed on a macro level, not a micro.  MSFS is better in this regard but still not meant to be dissected in detail.

[Slides 1,552]

1 minute ago, yidahoo said:

As passionate as Asobo are, they are not pulling the purse strings on this. The money comes from Microsoft and if it doesn’t start coming back, they may well pull the plug. They have history in that

That's true and will always be. Which is why the graphical leap ahead is so much more important. It can attract new people or old people (like me) who have drifted away back into it.

[Slides 1,552]

1 minute ago, mtaxp said:

MSFS uses photogrammetry and autogen which is placed on orthos that are plauged with artifacts.

It is possible to replicate in x-plane, but i think orthos are immersion killers.

Im talking about full procedural approach.

Austin, is that you? You X-Plane guys are still in denial when the proof is right in front of your eyes. It's really something to behold. 

[mtaxp 666]

13 minutes ago, Slides said:

Oh is that going to be the X-Plane defense going forward? It CAN be done better than MSFS in games that render a fraction of open world that MSFS does?

No, there are other engines which can render the planet in procedural manner, surprise.

[mtaxp 666]

Just now, Slides said:

Austin, is that you? You X-Plane guys are still in denial when the proof is right in front of your eyes. It's really something to behold. 

Ok, if you dont like my comments you can hide them/ignore them, this is what im gonna do with you from now on

Your sarcasm aint tolerated by me obviously you have no intention on expressing valid opinions on what I said, really could not care less about random folks on network.