Does anyone know why FS2020 doesn't utilize directx 12? It seems odd that a next-gen game, developed by Microsoft, didn't even use its own current-gen development system. Microsoft is even encouraging developers to use directx 12...

Seems at the very least odd, and at most oddly hypocritical 

Development started 5, 6 years ago and they probably wanted to walk a proven path.

Just now, tweekz said:

Development started 5, 6 years ago and they probably wanted to walk a proven path.

And the fact DX11 simply performs better for a majority of the GPUs on the market currently.

This is quite normal.. When DX10 and DX11 came around most developers stuck with DX9 for the same reason and it took years for DX11 to mature and become the status quo..  DX12 is quite good but its time and place will come.. 

18 minutes ago, tweekz said:

Development started 5, 6 years ago and they probably wanted to walk a proven path.

You sure of that? That would mean they were making a FSW competitor while they leased FSW the rights to make the next FlightSim,

3 hours ago, Phantoms said:

You sure of that? That would mean they were making a FSW competitor while they leased FSW the rights to make the next FlightSim,

I've read a few times that development started 5 years ago. Maybe someone else has more detailed information as I don't have a soruce at hand.

3 hours ago, Phantoms said:

That would mean they were making a FSW competitor while they leased FSW the rights to make the next FlightSim,

Given MS / Asobo’s own publicly stated timelines, that seems like a strong possibility. I’ve often wondered exactly when and how Dovetail found out about MSFS and if that was an influence on their decision to pull the plug on FSW.

4 hours ago, tweekz said:

Development started 5, 6 years ago and they probably wanted to walk a proven path.

And DX12 was also released 5 years ago already.

 

3 hours ago, styckx said:

And the fact DX11 simply performs better for a majority of the GPUs on the market currently.

I wouldn't say it does. If programmed correctly, DX12 will almost always outperform DX11. Exceptions could be some bespoke and older hardware which is not a big concern anyway. Doing it properly in DX12 is a fair bit more labor intensive, though.

Edited September 4, 20205 yr by Evros

It's because it is difficult to limit the amount of data sent to a GPU when utilising the control methods of DX12 suitable for a flight sim as opposed to a game such as a shooter or MMO.

It's okay if you have a game or sim where you can limit the amount of data, or control it fairly easily by having a set limit on a game's map or level size and content, such as a first person shooter game where you know exactly how much data the terrain is on a map and how much data all the AI enemies take up in the game etc.

But with something like MSFS, where it is streaming tons of ever-changing data as you fly along in an aeroplane which could at any moment turn in any one of 60 different second arc vectors, each of 60 different possible minute arc vectors, in turn being any of 360 different degree headings and this at pretty much any altitude from 0 to 43,000 feet, with different weather all over the place and all this over a massive draw radius, you can see why in terms of data, it would be very easy to overwhelm a GPU, and this is before you've even thought about it handling other players as well in an online session. If that kind of GPU crash occurred in the sim regularly, then there would be no recommended spec for it which MS could claim for the game (or sim if you prefer), which could not guarantee not to crash the thing. unless they put the min specs as a 24 Gb GPU, in which case they'd have sold about two copies of the thing.

You can see this potential problem in the DX12 version of Prepar3D, whereby you can easily overwhelm even a pretty good graphics card unless you back the sliders off a bit, and it will cheerfully run in DX12 if you do that, but if you whack all the sliders in P3D over to the right, unless you have a well-endowed GPU, there is a very good chance you'll bomb it because the GPU can't dump data fast enough to keep the data coming in under control, and P3D isn't running anywhere near as much data as MSFS is.

Edited September 4, 20205 yr by Chock

40 minutes ago, Chock said:

It's because it is difficult to limit the amount of data sent to a GPU when utilising the control methods of DX12 suitable for a flight sim as opposed to a game such as a shooter or MMO.

It's okay if you have a game or sim where you can limit the amount of data, or control it fairly easily by having a set limit on a game's map or level size and content, such as a first person shooter game where you know exactly how much data the terrain is on a map and how much data all the AI enemies take up in the game etc.

But with something like MSFS, where it is streaming tons of ever-changing data as you fly along in an aeroplane which could at any moment turn in any one of 60 different second arc vectors, each of 60 different possible minute arc vectors, in turn being any of 360 different degree headings and this at pretty much any altitude from 0 to 43,000 feet, with different weather all over the place and all this over a massive draw radius, you can see why in terms of data, it would be very easy to overwhelm a GPU, and this is before you've even thought about it handling other players as well in an online session. If that kind of GPU crash occurred in the sim regularly, then there would be no recommended spec for it which MS could claim for the game (or sim if you prefer), which could not guarantee not to crash the thing. unless they put the min specs as a 24 Gb GPU, in which case they'd have sold about two copies of the thing.

You can see this potential problem in the DX12 version of Prepar3D, whereby you can easily overwhelm even a pretty good graphics card unless you back the sliders off a bit, and it will cheerfully run in DX12 if you do that, but if you whack all the sliders in P3D over to the right, unless you have a well-endowed GPU, there is a very good chance you'll bomb it because the GPU can't dump data fast enough to keep the data coming in under control, and P3D isn't running anywhere near as much data as MSFS is.

One being bottle-necked by the IPC and Ghz of ones processor. Everyone is. DX11 is limited in it’s multi-threading capability and generates too many draw calls that exceed any CPU in existence today. Even if it scaled to other threads, the main-thread is really the cause of your lower GPU usage. It is the case in P3D, XP11 and FSX. This has always been the #1 reason why frames are always lower in flight sims. You would think that P3D, as being a DX12 application, would fair better but the legacy ESP engine code is still way to single threaded focus. It’s very easy to see. Load a PMDG 777 in P3D. The frame will vary to 40-50FPS. Pause the sim and your frame will jump by almost 80%. This is because simulation code and draw calls are on the same thread and limited your CPU to drive your GPU.

This is not rocket science. Asobo needs to port their engine to a proper DX12 engine. (not like LM did) and implement DLSS. This is the only way we will ever get 60 fps in this sim. A RTX 3000 series will not help anyone. We need overall lower draw calls combined with spreading the load across enough threads that it doesn’t bottleneck the GPU. When you increase the render scale, all you are doing in loading higher resolution to your GPU (just like DSR), it doesn’t provide you more frames.

 

Direct X 11 isn't as efficient.

Chock, so what you're saying is, although I can run P3Dv4.5 with almost all sliders maxed, if I went to v5 I'd have to back off my sliders... JUST because they went with DX12?

Asobo has implemented some of the features of DX12, like ray tracing, in other software and it seems to work.  Is there really that much advantage to going to full DX12 for MSFS?  There may be good reasons why Microsoft and Asobo chose DX11.

Hook

1 minute ago, LHookins said:

Chock, so what you're saying is, although I can run P3Dv4.5 with almost all sliders maxed, if I went to v5 I'd have to back off my sliders... JUST because they went with DX12?

Asobo has implemented some of the features of DX12, like ray tracing, in other software and it seems to work.  Is there really that much advantage to going to full DX12 for MSFS?  There may be good reasons why Microsoft and Asobo chose DX11.

Hook

Ray tracing has not been implemented yet in MSFS.

2 minutes ago, udidwht said:

Ray tracing has not been implemented yet in MSFS.

Not true ray tracing like you'd get with DX12, but in one of the videos Asobo said they'd implemented a version of it for MSFS.  Let's not get into semantics here, if it looks like ray tracing and acts like ray tracing, then you might as well call it ray tracing, even if it is emulated.

Hook

1 minute ago, LHookins said:

Not true ray tracing like you'd get with DX12, but in one of the videos Asobo said they'd implemented a version of it for MSFS.  Let's not get into semantics here, if it looks like ray tracing and acts like ray tracing, then you might as well call it ray tracing, even if it is emulated.

Hook

2 methods with similar results = 2 different methods.

1 minute ago, LHookins said:

Chock, so what you're saying is, although I can run P3Dv4.5 with almost all sliders maxed, if I went to v5 I'd have to back off my sliders... JUST because they went with DX12?

yes, I had to do exactly this with p3dv5.  all sliders to the right, my system sings and runs p3dv5 without a hitch or stutter, and then I crash because the 7.1 gigs available from my 8gig video card are full.

until they find a solution for that stuff, keep dx12 away IMO.

7 hours ago, Evros said:

And DX12 was also released 5 years ago already.

 

I wouldn't say it does. If programmed correctly, DX12 will almost always outperform DX11. Exceptions could be some bespoke and older hardware which is not a big concern anyway. Doing it properly in DX12 is a fair bit more labor intensive, though.

I agree, look at P3D: a solid 25% avg increase.

To avoid crashes wouldn't be sufficient to limit the graphics sliders depending on the VRAM and other system resources?

 

Edited September 5, 20205 yr by MrFuzzy