4 minutes ago, airlinejets said:

So, which are you, a path breaker or an illusion breaker? Pick one, you can't be both.

please don't break my legs...😆

rest assured. I am a pacifist.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by ajaybala

9 hours ago, mazex said:

I really am feeling bad about the teams at Laminar and Lockheed that for many years has kept this hobby alive. Lockheed has some other sources of income so not so much for them naturally.

Sure - they have known this for a year, but I think that many of us after actually having tried MSFS realize that it really is game over for them. For a year or two before complex aircraft are migrated they have a role to fill. But no third party developer will put down money on new complex content for P3D or XP unless it's easy to migrate from new MSFS models. I sure would stop any such ideas if I was on the board of those companies.

The DCS and IL2 teams are naturally are a bit shaky as well, even though they might actually benefit from this new interest in flight sims in my opinion as there is no air combat in MSFS (yet - CFS4 anyone?). A newsletter this week from 1C Game Studios (that makes theIL2 Great Battles series) makes it very clear that they know where we are this week 🙂

 

 

I’m still flying XP11 and P3Dv5, no plans to stop using either.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by OzWhitey

4 hours ago, snglecoil said:

Uh...you do know what “LM” stands for, right?

Yeah. They're not game developers. 

Someone once asked what Lockheed Martin's and Laminar Research's first thoughts were upon hearing about MSFS.  This was my response:

LM:  "We can do it better.  Get Google on the phone."
Austin: "I wonder which airplane I should buy next."

Hook

4 hours ago, Kendig said:

For many of us, flight dynamics rules the day.

Then you should be deleting all civilian flight sims 🙂

3 hours ago, SceneryFX said:

Xplane 11

Where MSFS really does a great job is reducing differences between tiles like you have in the top right corner. Not talking about those numbers lol. 😄 At least in my area, with fields, MSFS looks lightyears better than my Google ortho imagery in XP although Google imagery has better resolution.

By analyzing the images and placing texture masks and 3D grass / trees this really results in an awesome experience. Must be especially great once VR is out.

You are right with the resolution tho. That is a little downside, but honestly, with all the generic objects on top, you don't even notice much of it in game.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by tweekz

6 minutes ago, tweekz said:

Where MSFS really does a great job is reducing differences between tiles like you have in the top right corner. Not talking about those numbers lol. 😄 At least in my area, with fields, my Google ortho imagery looks lightyears worse than the scenery in MSFS.

By analyzing the images and placing texture masks and 3D grass / trees this really results in an awesome experience. Must be especially great once VR is out.

That tile is because the corrected area was unfinished, which is also why you still see #'s on tiles (due to it being in the process of being corrected). After I finish, there are no bad tiles. There are plenty of bad tiles in MSFS worse. Even the Portland area has completely mismatched tiles in both color and contrast, SLC airport is another, etc...

That said there are long stretches in some areas where MSFS does not get mismatched tiles, but that's just plain luck from Bing mostly, some of it they hand corrected.

I do not believe there is any automatic contrast algorithm in the game, but I do believe they ran it through some semi-automatic manual process, in which they didn't have time to do all of them.

 

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by SceneryFX

6 minutes ago, Slides said:

Then you should be deleting all civilian flight sims 🙂

An argument taken to an extreme, but not without merit..🍻

9 hours ago, Adrian123 said:

IMO, MSFS graphics accomplished in 1yr what Xplane has been trying to accomplish in 20+yrs of development. The strong will adapt and survive. I feel bad for Blockbuster and the touch tone phone. 😉

I feel sorry for the BlackBerry - NOT!

bs

1 minute ago, SceneryFX said:

That tile is because the corrected area was unfinished, after I finish there are no bad tiles. There are plenty of bad tiles in MSFS worse than that, I assure you. Even the Portland area has completely mismatched tiles in both color and contrast, SLC airport is another, etc...

That said there are long stretches in some areas where MSFS does not get mismatched tiles, but that's just plain luck from Bing mostly, some of it they hand corrected.

That screenshot looks like it does because of the intense color in that area makes it stick out more.

What is important to me, is to not spend hours color correcting tiles by hand. For example if I decide I want to fly to a new location, I don't want to spend time downloading ortho or maybe even color correcting.

Plus the 3D grass does so much immersion wise. Also the 3D tree and building patterns. It's just so immersive.

5 hours ago, Kendig said:

Short version: X-Plane will be fine. For many of us, flight dynamics rules the day.

MSFS flight dynamics will be at least on par. The foundation is great. Some things to fix. Especially on the specific flight models of the defaults.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by tweekz

Well there are too many areas still with bad tiles, way too many. Plus I want higher res mountains. I just hope the SDK lets me do what I need so I can add some 60cm imagery to the game.

Right now, I feel Xplane has the superior graphics when using 60cm compared to most areas in MSFS, excluding Seattle and a few others.

Plus you can beat much of the Bing imagery in MSFS by just downloading the Bing imagery in Xplane  at a higher resolution than what MSFS allows.

I agree about the buildings and trees, Xplane needs to work on that.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by SceneryFX

2 minutes ago, SceneryFX said:

Well there are too many areas still with bad tiles, way too many. Plus I want higher res mountains. I just hope the SDK lets me do what I need so I can add some 60cm imagery to the game.

Right now, I feel Xplane has the superior graphics when using 60cm compared to most areas in MSFS, excluding Seattle and a few others.

Yeah, everyone has different priorities. That's fine.

I love mfs2020 don't get me wrong but when x12 comes out I'll be one of the first to buy. All I want is better cloads and a lot better autogen and stock scenery. Give me eyecandy. I'm not bothered about multiplayer or stock aircraft. It's always better to have choice of games 

 

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Colemanuk82

1 minute ago, SceneryFX said:

Well there are too many areas still with bad tiles, way too many. Plus I want higher res mountains.

That's another issue I haven't heard much about post-release. It was a topic back in the Alpha -- mountains with what appeared to be too low a mesh resolution.

You'd get areas like ridge lines that should be sharply detailed, but instead they're smoothed over and lumpy instead of sharp. Sometimes it would be masked by details in the ortho overlay, but the actual 3D mesh underneath was soft.

Maybe I'm spoiled by running the optional  HD and UHD terrain mesh in XP, but it's one of the first things I noticed when looking at mountains in the Alpha. I haven't flown the release version yet, so maybe some work has been done on that.