Just now, virtuali said:

The scenery is done, we are waiting for Microsoft to publish it on the MS Marketplace ( which paused for a week to do some maintenance ), and we are also doing the final tests on our own installer, so it should be only few days away, next week at most.

Excellent news. Day one purchase for me.

1 minute ago, virtuali said:

The scenery is done, we are waiting for Microsoft to publish it on the MS Marketplace ( which paused for a week to do some maintenance ), and we are also doing the final tests on our own installer, so it should be only few days away, next week at most.

So I assume the MS Marketplace will be the only place we can get it?

Vic

2 minutes ago, vgbaron said:

So I assume the MS Marketplace will be the only place we can get it?

Sure, no. That's why I said "we are also doing the final tests on our own installer". Where to buy it will be entirely your choice, and it will will be sold on Simmarket as well.

And yes, there will be a discount for existing KORD V2 for P3D owners. Those that bought KORD V2 from our site will get a discount from our site, those that bought it on Simmarket will get it from Simmarket.

Looks insane. Nice! 

21 minutes ago, steve310002 said:

Actually, I think modelling the terminals is amazing and one of the things I am looking forward to the most in this addon's release. That might seem strange to some, but I love all these types of details. Its the next best thing to being there. And once VR comes, it will almost be like being there. 

Totally agree. Those that are used to playing the obsolete sims have different expectations. I crashed my Cessna into Tower Bridge trying to fly through it. Got out (drone camera) and wandered around the city. I really enjoyed that. I'm not risking COVID to do it in real life, so it was great fun looking around at the major landmarks of London while traffic dodged my damaged aircraft. 

I don't have any payware airports yet, but I have wandered around a few of the handcrafted ones appreciating the detail. I will certainly buy O'Hare and I'm certainly going to go inside. I really appreciate developers who go the extra mile and will absolutely support them. I think what FSDT have done here is absolutely brilliant. It also says a lot about the chronic complainers who didn't think this was possible due to the incomplete nature of the SDK documentation. Clearly clever people are able to overcome such obstacles.

 

Here's a short video I just made, showing Parallax Interior Mapping in KORD for Terminal B ( Terminal C interior is really modeled 😞
 

Would you believe there are no polygons behind those windows ? It's a bit like magic, and it's done by a specific shader material that is new to MSFS, and we were able to reduce the overall number of polygons thanks to this technique.

 

Edited September 1, 20205 yr by virtuali

5 hours ago, GSalden said:

Curious how performance will be once payware airliners like PMDG/FsLabs are being released + 100+ AI jetliner aircraft at/near the airport in bad weather ...

You'll have to wait well over year to find out for the FSL.

33 minutes ago, virtuali said:

That is, before somebody might say "meh, they just ported the P3D version". Not really, we are already using native MSFS methods when this is helping us.

Very impressive Umberto! 😉

Very nice.

Wonder what happens when approaching kord and at the 10nm mark (or whatever scenery loading radius) it starts to load and render all the beautiful textures....  

would the sim pause for few sec like the fsx-p3d versions?

 

13 minutes ago, kdfw__ said:

would the sim pause for few sec like the fsx-p3d versions?

The reason for these pauses in FSX ( and 32 bit P3D ) were due only to the need to restrict memory to save from an OOM, so most of the scenery was made with Simobjects created and destroyed on the fly. 

KORD V2 in P3D4 wasn't made like that (there's no FSX version), most of the scenery is made with standard .BGLs (except Terminal C ) and we DO NOT control its loading range so, for the most part, those pauses are gone. HOWEVER, we still had the GSX/SODE jetways to load, and this are by necessity Simobjects that we must load on demand so, for a scenery as big as KORD, with like 170+ jetways, we cannot eliminate those pauses entirely, and we cannot start loading 170+ jetways from 50 NM out, because even if we might not crash with an RAM OOM, we'll still have issues with memory ( even invisible jetways takes RAM if they are loaded ) and with P3D V5 we would risk a VRAM OOM too.

With MSFS, it's completely different. Jetways are using the default system ( even if they are the same models from GSX L2, so they obviously look much better ), and their loading is again entirely handled by the simulator, which doesn't seem to have many issue of pauses. The only thing we noticed, is when changing the Time, there's a fairly large pause, because the simulator is reloading all the AI airplanes, very similar to what happens with UT Live when changing time, but this of course happens with every airport that has many AI.

Edited September 1, 20205 yr by virtuali

Is the Coualt engine required in MSFS2020? What about GSX having to be installed?

Never did like that in P3D. My opinion.

1 hour ago, Twenty6 said:

Is the Coualt engine required in MSFS2020? What about GSX having to be installed?

SInce GSX is not there yet, it's clear GSX cannot be a requirement.

Of course, when GSX will be out, there's no way it could run *without* the Couatl engine, and expecting otherwise would be as silly as expecting one could run any Windows software written in, let's say, VC++, without having to install any VC++ redistributables ( are they always perfectly reliable and never cause any problems ? ), or a C# program without having to install .NET ( never had problems with .NET versions, ever ? ) because as explained so many times, the Couatl engine is JUST a custom Python interpreter that only makes totally safe and documented Simconnect calls to the simulator, running entirely external to it, without having any chance to crash it. 

GSX is written entirely in Python, and it talks with the sim using Simconnect so, it obviously need a Python interpreter that can talk to the sim. That's exactly what the Couatl engine is. And this is precisely why it should be reasonably easy to bring GSX to MSFS, *thanks* to the Couatl engine, which does almost all the work, without worrying too much which simulator is talking to, as long as it uses Simconnect, and as long Simconnect is complete, which is exactly what is missing right now in the MSFS SDK.

 

Quote

Never did like that in P3D. My opinion.

There are so many reasons why GSX and the Couatl engine are a requirement in the P3D version, that I don't even know where to start:

- The P3D version required GSX, because with GSX it could use the better GSX L2/SODE jetways, which were perfectly integrated with it. Yes, you could say "other developers used just SODE for jetways, without requiring GSX", but when you only use SODE, you are missing several features that work only with GSX, for example the fact GSX sends ITS own airplane configuration to SODE, which is customized for each airplane, so it's usually more precise. And, GSX has the concept of separating the parking AFCAD center from the airplane Stop position, so it's able to stop airplanes with their doors always in the same position, which increase the chances of jetways solving correctly.

- The P3D version required GSX, because with GSX came a complete full customization, with custom pushback routes an almost every single parking spot and with service vehicles placed in the best possible location at every parking, with all Stop position carefully programmed one by one.

- The P3D version required both Couatl and the Addon Manager because with DX11 Render to Texture, we had things like working Active Panels, showing the AI flight number, ETD, and even the progress of GSX servicing, so you didn't had to check the GSX menu to know how boarding was progressing, you simply looked at the Gate Panel. And we had working monitors showing Departure/Arrivals, synchronized with the actual AI inside the terminal interiors. NO other scenery, on any platform, does anything like that. The Couatl engine handles the logic, which is written in Python, the Addon Manager handles the DX11 rendering, which is only possible with the P3D4 PDK. We don't know yet if something like this is possible with MSFS, but it will surely require *SOME* kind of software module.

- The P3D version required Couatl, because with it, we could use our custom collision system, which works also as a much better LOD manager so, instead of just checking for a radius around the object, like a standard LOD, we can create polygonal perimeters, to be way more precise in controlling how objects disappear in the distance, which was working very well considering how wildly different in width vs size a typical terminal at KORD is ( standard LOD works best with square objects ), and this made the object pop-up less visible without killing the fps. The MSFS version uses standard LOD so, we had to increase the range, so we are not as efficient as we could be in removing uneeded stuff.

- The P3D version required Couatl, because with it, we could control very precisely how many Dynamic lights we show at any given time, because DL in P3D can be very heavy on fps, after you reach a certain number of lights, which on an huge airport like this, is reached very early, and if we didn't had Couatl, the airport would be too dark at night, since we don't use baked lightmaps, it's all true Dynamic Lights. Fortunately, MSFS uses Deferred Rendering, so it will take A LOT more lights before you see a drop in fps, so we don't need this so much as we needed in P3D.

- The P3D version required Couatl and GSX, because it came with working Docking systems, perfectly integrated with the whole GSX parking method. The MSFS version doesn't have any docking system, you'll have to use the default Marshaller.

So no, the MSFS version of KORD V2 won't require GSX ( there's no GSX yet ) and won't require Couatl as well, and because of this, from a purely functional point of view, we could say it's a less featured version. And will be shown in the purchase price, which will be quite a bit lower than the P3D version.

EDIT ( sometimes I forget how many features we have... ))

- The P3D version required Couatl and GSX, because we had animated passengers walking around inside terminals along paths which we could specify parameters, like the kind of people walking through it ( passengers, pilots, crew ), the path density, and they could even climb/descend stairs or elevators if required. Again, the logic controlling all of this is written as Python scripts, so they run inside the Couatl engine ( on their own thread, without stalling the sim, since Couatl doesn't run in the same process as the simulator ) and they use the GSX L2 collection of animated passengers. The MSFS version doesn't have any animated passengers. We *think* we could possibly do them using the new Mission system, but it hasn't been documented yet in the SDK, and the tool to write missions hasn't been released yet.

Edited September 2, 20205 yr by virtuali

8 hours ago, virtuali said:

 

For me personally the premium default airports look good enough and I just rather purchase sceneries that are not part of that package. I need to save for that 3090 after all...

With that being said, of course your version looks better and I hope you sell a lot of those...

 

12 hours ago, GSalden said:

Curious how performance will be once payware airliners like PMDG/FsLabs are being released + 100+ AI jetliner aircraft at/near the airport in bad weather ...

Yes, it was always Ultimate Traffic that brought FSX to it's knees on my system. Complex AC the same.

13 hours ago, skully said:

Brenda isn't wearing a mask, 

Totally unrealistic.

No buy.

LOL