On 9/12/2020 at 3:00 PM, mSparks said:

ortho covering all of europe

How many terabytes worth of data is that?

 

On 9/12/2020 at 5:58 PM, mSparks said:

and ground services

https://x-plane.joanpc.com/plugins/xpgs-ground-services

Another candidate for porting to the new Python3 plugin. The NOAA script is already done: https://github.com/pbuckner/XplaneNoaaWeather

For FlyWithLua, there's TPMGS which offers a bit more variety and has a follow-me car: https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/62296-the-poor-man-ground-service-tpmgs-low-tech-services/

 

On 9/13/2020 at 4:52 PM, Greazer said:

Things like shadow jaggies cannot even be fixed because the whole code base is a complete mess trying to support so many different operating system's and different drivers etc.

What a bunch of utter [censored]. Shadow resolution has nothing to do with the available rendering APIs. Self-shadowing has worked on OpenGL forever and also works on Vulkan, be it on Windows, MacOS or Linux. That the resolution is low is a conscious decision to keep framerates up, especially when used with anti-aliasing.

Instead of ignorantly bashing Laminar for anything that does not produce IMAX-like visuals, users shouls start pulling the various aircraft control devices out of their posteriors and realize that compromises for better rendering performance have been, are and will be staples of any flightsim, lest it produces a bunch of whiny [censored] who complain that the grand looking new sim only runs at 30 FPS.

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They try to fix anything and sure enough they break other stuff. It's legacy noodle code.And in many ways it's like FSX code.

Okay, Mr. Expert, in what way is X-Plane's and FSX' code pasta-grade? Provide first-hand examples.

Spoiler: You can't and won't because you don't have the source code for either sim.

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The only way forward is to ditch the whole graphics code and start afresh with a new modern graphics engine and work that into the sim.

Oh yes, a complete change of rendering engine works extremely well for any project in advanced stages of development, with glorious examples like the long-delayed and mediocre Daikatana and the multi-million dollar scam in space produced by a fallen legend of the genre leading my personal list.

 

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However the developers are never going to do that since it is way too much work they rather keep hacking the legacy XP code they have today which is a total mess.

Two. The number of developers working on X-Plane's rendering engine is two. If you cough up, say 50 or 60 grand per year, the number could be three.

 

9 hours ago, mSparks said:

My GTX1070 sees 30-50fps in opengl with up to half second stutters

[Laughs in superior open source Linux OpenGL drivers for AMD]

Edited September 14, 20205 yr by Bjoern

On 9/12/2020 at 4:31 AM, Glenn_C said:

<START RANT>

I wish Laminar would stamp their releases correctly.

RC3 = Release Candidate 3

If that becomes the GA 'General Availability' it should update the version so it is clear that you do have the GA. So 11.50 GA or Final. Anyway it's up to them but after working  in IT for 20 years and QA for 11 years we have never released a Final build to be released to customers stamped as RC, causes too many questions from customers.

</START RANT> 

Agree.  I've thought this for a long time, too.

2 hours ago, Bjoern said:

How many terabytes worth of data is that?

lvl14 is small, each tile only comes in at ~150 to 200MB, and I've got about 500GB of scenery so far on a 2TB drive (some of which is higher level, but each lvl is 4 times the size).

Well I am spitting chips 🙈 Just passed TOC in the A319 KLAS to KSAN and Boom, Black Screen with popup, Vulkan Device loss Error!

Also noticed the laggy (micro stutter) behavior when switching between views. One issue that was supposed to be fixed in a Beta's, well looks like it is back in official 11.50.

Greazer.

7 hours ago, Greazer said:

Vulkan Device loss Error!

Happened to me once (and only once) - and that was in 11.50r3 - and I've not seen it since.

"Device loss error" is a catch all for "not there anymore", lots of causes over the beta's, I suspect that is one is related to the first time it cleans up the shaders since it never happened again. (or something similar)

7 hours ago, Greazer said:

Also noticed the laggy (micro stutter) behavior when switching between views.

sometimes, but I'm not crying about it much, because it sure as h' beats micro stutters constantly while you fly.

I've had the Vulkan Device loss error probably 50 times over the course of the Vulkan betas/RCs.  I finally submitted a ticket to LR who responded that this type of error is very hard to track down, and I agree, believe me I have tried.  They mentioned a GPU overclock might be the cause.

I have had my 2080 overclocked since the day I got it middle of 2019 and it has been perfectly stable in synthetic stress tests, numerous games, MSFS alpha/beta/release, and XP (non-Vulkan).  I removed the overclock after receiving the response from LR and have not had a device loss crash since.  YMMV.

Never had the Vulkan device error, but what I do get sometimes is the sim refusing to start up, then the next time I start it has reverted to OpenGL. Happens quite frequently and I don't know what causes it, perhaps some fail-safe. Overall though, once in flight it's solid and gives good smooth performance without hiccups

19 hours ago, mSparks said:

lvl14 is small, each tile only comes in at ~150 to 200MB, and I've got about 500GB of scenery so far on a 2TB drive (some of which is higher level, but each lvl is 4 times the size).

Well, my ZL16 Germany, Austria and Swithzerland already tallies at 190 GB, so go figure.

ZL14 would be too low res for me.

12 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

ZL14 would be too low res for me.

wouldnt really want to go that low near it.

but

the decals make it good if you do.

and I filled it in for anywhere that wasnt zl16 - mostly so it doesnt create the harsh edges when high over higher res.

Edited September 15, 20205 yr by mSparks

On 9/15/2020 at 4:28 PM, tonywob said:

Never had the Vulkan device error, but what I do get sometimes is the sim refusing to start up, then the next time I start it has reverted to OpenGL. Happens quite frequently and I don't know what causes it, perhaps some fail-safe. Overall though, once in flight it's solid and gives good smooth performance without hiccups

Plugin cause this for me, don't press anything whilst its scanning them, otherwise what you describe happens.....

On 9/15/2020 at 7:41 PM, mSparks said:

wouldnt really want to go that low near it.

but

the decals make it good if you do.

and I filled it in for anywhere that wasnt zl16 - mostly so it doesnt create the harsh edges when high over higher res.

Yeah, decals are elementary.

Well, maybe one day with an affordable 5 TB SSD or so.

4 hours ago, Bjoern said:

Yeah, decals are elementary.

Well, maybe one day with an affordable 5 TB SSD or so.

just bought a mac mini today (30fps in the c172!) and need to get an external drive for it.

omfg hdd prices have come down.

 drives now basically start at 2TB 

not ssd, but I always preferred raid anyway.

Edited September 17, 20205 yr by mSparks

On 9/15/2020 at 5:28 PM, tonywob said:

Never had the Vulkan device error, but what I do get sometimes is the sim refusing to start up, then the next time I start it has reverted to OpenGL. Happens quite frequently and I don't know what causes it, perhaps some fail-safe. Overall though, once in flight it's solid and gives good smooth performance without hiccups

Yes same here. At about every 4th startup it falls back to opengl. Installed the latest Nvidia driver but doesn't help.

5 hours ago, Mike44 said:

Yes same here. At about every 4th startup it falls back to opengl. Installed the latest Nvidia driver but doesn't help.

I used to have a similiar problem sometime in the beta run...but it cleared up for me.

Several things could be the cause, a plugin not playing nice, overclocking, etc. Hard to even guess without some solid info like the log.txt and a hardware signature.

Cheers, Jan

 

With the enormous increase in performance with Vulkan, I really don't see the need for overclocking a GPU.  But to each their own.