Feeling bad for Laminar and others

[Slides 1,552]

33 minutes ago, SirDan said:

Out of the box day 6 , hands down this is the most amazing looking Sim over all that I have ever seen. Needs work ? Day 6 of release!!! 

It really is something else. No amount of gigabytes of Ortho will make XP and P3D look as god. They simply slept on the core rendering engine and graphics tech and they're going to pay for it heavily.

[OzWhitey 3,353]

7 hours ago, Slides said:

@OzWhitey Except for the first screenshot (no idea what's going on there, likely a bug), the other two still look more realistic than anything in any other sim. You're conflating two issues together - errors in the scenery vs realistic looking environments. I actually can't tell what's even wrong in your second screenshot. Maybe because I come from the DCS ecosystem, I don't recognize it. To me it looks amazing. 

Shot 1: Not a bug, just how it's built. The way that seaplanes in MSFS interact with the ocean is totally "non-believable". They just sit in place, and the wave goes over them. That's what the inside of any wave looks like. After it passes, they just kind of hang in the air.

Shot 2: I mainly snapped it for the lulz of the "20,000 feet above your assigned altitude". Seriously, who at Asobo thinks that is a thing?? But is also shows the muddy landscape that you see from altitude. You're always saying how great MSFS is compared with other sims - I've literally never seen anything but praise from you - and now I find out you fly DCS but don't actually know what P3D looks like?? Dodgy ATC aside, this shot doesn't look "amazing", it's also not "terrible", I'd just rate it as "meh".

Shot 3: I've been flying DCS since 2011. There has not been a single time when I've been setting up an attack run on the Kuznetsov and I've thought to myself - "Hey, that carrier looks even better with a couple of trees growing out of the deck!" 🙂

 

[Slides 1,552]

7 minutes ago, OzWhitey said:

Shot 1: Not a bug, just how it's built. The way that seaplanes in MSFS interact with the ocean is totally "non-believable". They just sit in place, and the wave goes over them. That's what the inside of any wave looks like. After it passes, they just kind of hang in the air.

Shot 2: I mainly snapped it for the lulz of the "20,000 feet above your assigned altitude". Seriously, who at Asobo thinks that is a thing?? But is also shows the muddy landscape that you see from altitude. You're always saying how great MSFS is compared with other sims - I've literally never seen anything but praise from you - and now I find out you fly DCS but don't actually know what P3D looks like?? Dodgy ATC aside, this shot doesn't look "amazing", it's also not "terrible", I'd just rate it as "meh".

Shot 3: I've been flying DCS since 2011. There has not been a single time when I've been setting up an attack run on the Kuznetsov and I've thought to myself - "Hey, that carrier looks even better with a couple of trees growing out of the deck!" 🙂

 

1. You just described what a bug is. Or call it feature incomplete. But what that does that have to do with scenery? Why did you bring this up? It's a particle effect.

2. Huh? i honestly don't know what your rant is about. That screenshot looks perfectly fine. Why would I know or care what P3D looks like? It's a small niche sim that I didn't even know existed until a few months ago. It means nothing to me.

3. Ok? You do know that DCS maps are far smaller and all handcrafted right? Why are you comparing the entire world to DCS maps? The Syria map just came out. If I saw trees in wrong places, I would ask ED for my money back because I paid $40 for just the Syria map. Meanwhile, I paid $60 for the entire world in MSFS. Do you understand the difference? You're all over the place here.

Edited August 23, 2020 by Slides

[edpatino 1,964]

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

P3D will grow too. XP has its cellphone version. 
They will all reside next to eachother.

Agreed!. I'm waiting a bit before buying MFS. Seems to me it needs some more baking 😆

Cheers, Ed

[GSalden 4,656]

12 minutes ago, Slides said:

 

I don't know.  it's a loss of revenue for P3D and X-Plane. For them it's a business. 

I don’t think so regarding P3D. As I have never looked into XP I cannot command on that.

P3D is used in LM professional flightsims and those license prices cannot be compared to single user license prices.

Even the P3D Pro edition is $ 2.500 for 1 license. 
 
And imho the main target for MS is the XBox platform. That we have a pc version is good for us, but there are more people playing games on XBox/PS than there are people playing on pc’s.

We, the “diehard” flightsimmers are just extra. And good for alpha/beta testing.

Just enjoy your Sim ✈️ and make nice flights ....

[Slides 1,552]

1 minute ago, GSalden said:

P3D is used in LM professional flightsims and those license prices cannot be compared to single user license prices.

Even the P3D Pro edition is $ 2.500 for 1 license. 

This is true but they have been catering to individual simmers and their demands for a long time. They wouldn't do this if there was no revenue in that market. It's not just a drop in the bucket. 

[airlinejets 709]

4 minutes ago, Slides said:

No amount of gigabytes of Ortho will make XP and P3D look as god

That's not quite true. We were using the very same imagery as MSFS from Bing in X-Plane. We in fact had much better terrain DEM than Asobo is using (upgrade coming I guess). The real problem was storage and work required to color correct (if you were inclined to do so).

 

 

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

For gaming in general, Mobile devices have the most market share depending how you count market share, PC's and Consoles are almost the same, with some studies claiming PC's have more and others saying consoles have more. However, the Xbox by itself is not a bigger gaming market than PC's, only if you count Xbox + other consoles does it even come close.

As far as improving graphics, there have been only incremental changes to graphics in all the other sims, other than Xplane's major releases after v8, but even for them the biggest difference was third parties getting involved.

It is VERY unusual for games to get major graphics overhauls unless it is being sold as a completely new version, sure it has happened a few times in the past, but not often. It would be a very unusual business decision.

So to say the graphics will improve, maybe some, maybe they will, maybe they won't.

Unlike everyone else in this thread, the batteries in my Crystal Ball ran out of juice a long time ago.

Edited August 23, 2020 by SceneryFX

[Slides 1,552]

2 minutes ago, airlinejets said:

That's not quite true. We were using the very same imagery as MSFS from Bing in X-Plane. We in fact had much better terrain DEM than Asobo is using (upgrade coming I guess). The real problem was storage and work required to color correct (if you were inclined to do so).

 

 

It still looked like a cartoon though. The lighting just was never right. It's not just about the Ortho. That much is clear.

[wyman_hd 232]

4 minutes ago, airlinejets said:

That's not quite true. We were using the very same imagery as MSFS from Bing in X-Plane. We in fact had much better terrain DEM than Asobo is using (upgrade coming I guess). The real problem was storage and work required to color correct (if you were inclined to do so).

While the Ortho scenery might be as good, the 3D Buildings is something to consider. At least in the United States region, MSFS does have custom buildings not autogen ones. I saw my own house! But unfortunately when I crossed into Canada the buildings were not as high of detail and just looked like autogen. I think the US was the only region that got this kind of treatment, even though I'm pretty sure most of the EU and some parts of Asia could've also gotten this sort of treatment as well.

Edited August 23, 2020 by arwasairl

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

It's totally random based on the aerial imagery, but some airports have pretty bad autogen, worse than XP 11 airports. The best in MSFS is way better than the other sims, but the average buildings at smaller airports are nothing to write home about in many cases.

 

[airlinejets 709]

Just now, Slides said:

It still looked like a cartoon though. The lighting just was never right. It's not just about the Ortho. That much is clear.

One of the places where MSF is clearly ahead, is in it's lighting engine. Even that can still be made significantly better, as I'm sure they know.

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

The lightning bolts look really bad if you are too close, but I guess if you are taking about the effect of the area brightening after a strike. It was # 2 on my list of things that need to be fixed.

 

Edited August 23, 2020 by SceneryFX

[Slides 1,552]

1 minute ago, airlinejets said:

One of the places where MSF is clearly ahead, is in it's lighting engine. Even that can still be made significantly better, as I'm sure they know.

Yes, and that's really the main point. It's not about who has the higher res Ortho anymore. It's who integrates all modern graphics tech together the best. And we know who won that.

We should be talking about ray tracing. Ortho is old news and a solved problem for the most part. 

[Slides 1,552]

16 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

The lightning bolts look really bad if you are too close, but I guess if you are taking about the effect of the area brightening after a strike. It was # 2 on my list of things that need to be fixed.

 

Asobo will be advancing to DX12 and ray tracing while X-Plane will be stuck figuring out lightning. 👍

Edited August 23, 2020 by Slides