Laminar is too quiet!

[tonywob 4,768]

Every forum has a small group of users that simply have nothing positive to say about the sim and will always put it in a bad light. I recall that mSparks was very popular over on the MFS forum with very little (if anything) positive to say about the sim, so both sides of the "team" are at it. It would be nice if we all could all get along and agree, but then the world would be such a boring place wouldn't it 🙂. 

3 hours ago, Janov said:

 I think Greazer is just a guy that is grumpy in general, other folks coming here to start a fight about X-Plane vs MSFS are probably just driven by the anguish that waning public interest

Greazer has a Youtube channel that contains many X-Plane videos (last uploaded a week ago) and seems to spend a lot of time on the X-Plane forum, so evidently he cares for, uses and seemingly enjoys X-Plane and is clearly frustrated with bugs and things that aren't getting fixed, and I think he has a right to be frustrated, whether people agree with his views or not. Whilst I think he could certainly put his views across more eloquently and less bullish, he is clearly frustrated with the developers of the sim, even though he uses the product. Some users don't mind posting bug reports to LR and posting stack traces etc... others just want to fly in the sim and just expect it to work correctly, and that I can sympathise with. 

XP 11.50 Vulkan was a good step forward for me and not forgetting that during XP11's lifetime we also got really good VR support amongst other things. LR are a small team and it's amazing what they've achieved so far. Putting it up against MFS/Asobo who have millions in budget, hardware, software services etc is futile, and anyone who is actively using and developing on MFS would realise that it's very much more geared towards gamers and xbox users (which really is not a bad thing if you want to sell products and make money). 

However, it's not all glowing praise for LR for me. There are lots of bugs/issues that are important to me that never get looked at and simply keep getting sidelined for seemingly less important/glaring issues. As a developer, mesh customisation and DSF tile limits is currently my biggest issue, and as a user, I simply can't stand how the water and trees look, which are a notable downgrade from how they looked in XP10 even. 

[Janov 2,383]

3 minutes ago, tonywob said:

However, it's not all glowing praise for LR for me.

Well said, Tony, and I 100% agree.

I am sure everyone has an area (or more) of massive frustration with X-Plane - and while I can vouch for LR not sitting on their hands, there can always be debate on what they should tackle first.

If it was my company I would get the team to clean up the thousands of outstanding bug reports first, just to "clean house" - but of course the general public doesn´t care about most of those bugs and wants new and shiny features foremost...so there are always many opinions to consider.

I think it makes a world of difference how you voice these opinions, concerns and frustration, though. If you start out with "In my opinon.." or "I am really frustrated because..." we can have a fruitful discussion, but if it´s "X-Plane is a buggy mess that will never get fixed...", things will go south and soon threads get closed 😉

I know Greazer is active in X-Plane - so maybe in his weird way he cares and wants the program to get better. But EVEN if X-Plane 11.50 would still stutter on MY system, how can I dismiss the fact that obviously the vast majority of users had nothing but praise for the move to Vulkan?

Read what he wrote:

"XP 12 is years away.  XP 11.50 Vulkan bugs are severe and need patching.  Not least of all terrible stuttering changing views or panning and random CTD's at any time."

No modifier to these statements, as in "I believe..:" or "On my system...". How does he know that XP 12 is years away? Does your installation, Tony, have severe Vulkan bugs that need patching? Do you have terrible stuttering changing views or panning and do you get random CTD´s at any time?

Someone browsing forums, deciding weather to buy XP or MSFS reading this...what kind of conclusion will he draw? ESPECIALLY if these (blatantly false) statements are not challenged by other forum users?

I am not asking to ban him, not by a long shot. But yes, there can and should be a very vocal response to BS like that.

Cheers, Jan

 

[tonywob 4,768]

1 hour ago, Janov said:

Does your installation, Tony, have severe Vulkan bugs that need patching? Do you have terrible stuttering changing views or panning and do you get random CTD´s at any time?

It's super smooth and fast for me now, however I do sometimes get the occasional CTD which I'll eventually trace back to something I've done in my scenery like a dodgy road or DDS texture (They are awfully hard to find and debug however). I do feel XP gets a lot of flack from things that aren't really its fault, like a dodgy plugin or messed up scenery, however users are non-the-wiser to this. MFS is more unstable for me at present and I seem to be getting more CTDs and crashes as forced updates come out, especially with the SDK.

On a side note, regarding the SDK, I never really appreciated just how amazing WED is for designing airports until I didn't have it anymore. Just yesterday, I was totally stunned when WED showed me the traffic routes in different colours and information and also validated everything, something you only really miss when you don't have it and I really long for that in MFS 😛. It was a very good move on LR's side to make WED so powerful, as without it the scenery gateway wouldn't exist

[BigDee 119]

Rather than complaining someone might try to install Linux solely for X-Plane, if Windows is used or vice versa.

But it seems like complaining repeadetly is a more comfortable solution for someone in here. At least it`s entertaining.

[mSparks 2,086]

5 hours ago, tonywob said:

I recall that mSparks was very popular over on the MFS forum with very little (if anything) positive to say about the sim

heh.. yeah "popular".

I was excited when they announced it.

I just got incredibly and increasingly frustrated with all the:

"Default planes will be pmdg quality."

"Default scenery will destroy xplane"

"flight model will be better than xplane"

"Laminar have done nothing since before fsx was released"

Absolute utter nonsense that was being propagated before release (by both users and MS/Asobo alike).

I did try and find something positive to say, I just didnt.

Dont have much to say about it now, not an "I told you so" kinda guy (most of the time I end up being unhappy when I am right, this was just another one of those times) and hopefully everyone who wasted a couple of hundred dollars on the hype train will learn for next time.

There's always a next time with that bunch of bandits.

____

Re stutter.

hidden in the comments of "stuff we are working on"

Quote

Sidney Just says:

November 13, 2020 at 3:19 am

We have CLI flags to work around these stutters at the expense of additional VRAM, namely --gfx_dsf_in_vram and --gfx_obj_in_vram. The underlying problem here is VRAM management and large (U)HD meshes, which have to live somewhere. For most users, even those with 8 Gb GPUs, it’s impossible to keep super high resolution meshes together with everything else in VRAM. You can easily blow 3+ Gb on just the mesh data, nothing else. To deal with this, X-Plane will simply not upload the non visible DSF meshes to VRAM and instead keeping them in system memory. When you look at a DSF that wasn’t visible before, we asynchronously upload it to VRAM and just draw the mesh out of system memory, which means the GPU has to fetch the data from there to draw. This isn’t ideal and leads to those stutters, if you suddenly look at 200mb+ of new mesh data, it’ll have to be transferred just in time for the frame. Which means that the GPU frame time will go up. The current scenery engine just can’t do any better in these situation, it’s either rendering just in time (meaning stutters), blowing up VRAM budget (blurry textures, or out of memory if your card doesn’t have enough VRAM) or just not rendering anything at all (pop in as you pan around). None of these solutions are any good.

We have some long term plans on how to deal with this in the future. There just wasn’t any time in the already way too behind 11.50 time table to fully solve this issue.

 

Edited November 14, 2020 by mSparks

[Paraffin 2,197]

15 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

Newbies (particularly those who have not yet purchased XP and its life support system of addons) looking for information on X-plane should be made aware of the longstanding issues (like stuttering) that Vulkan has not completely addressed. That is the information that a newbie needs before investing in a sim that has not improved much over the years.

Let's be clear about this. You may be experiencing stuttering as a longstanding issue you're seeing, and it's fine to complain about it and look for solutions.

On the other hand, I am experiencing no stuttering at all on my system. In fact, didn't experience it even on OpenGL before Vulkan once I built my current system. I'm not the only one seeing smooth frame rate performance with no stuttering issues in X-Plane.

It's misleading and false to generalize from one's own experience, and claim that everyone else is seeing the same thing. 

Also, for what it's worth, I have spent plenty of time on this forum criticizing X-Plane. In particular, the laughably simplistic weather system, the slate blue water color that's the same all over the planet, and the lack of regionalized autogen buildings. I'm an equal opportunity critic when it comes to flight sims. I enjoy what XP and MSFS both have to offer that's good, and will criticize the flaws as I see them.

One thing won't do however, is complain about something that's likely to be due to my own system setup, and not something everyone else is seeing.

[FlyBaby 659]

On 11/11/2020 at 6:35 PM, GoranM said:

Is someone paying you to say the same stuff over...and over...and over...and over again?

 

On 11/11/2020 at 10:23 PM, GoranM said:

Oh, I see.  

Ok, it makes sense.  You keep repeating yourself, constantly, thinking your opinion, and yours alone, is the one we all will heed, and your voice will impact the entire flight sim community.

Or maybe you just like to complain.

 

12 hours ago, GoranM said:

Well, DUH!!!

 It's an X-Plane forum for X-Plane enthusiasts.  Didn't you read the section you were in before posting??

 

Take a deep breath buddy, its just an outdated sim...there is a difference between an enthusiast and someone who just can't face the facts. How you and @Murmur try to police the X-plane forum is both hilarious and waste of "your" time.

[FlyBaby 659]

7 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

Let's be clear about this. You may be experiencing stuttering as a longstanding issue you're seeing, and it's fine to complain about it and look for solutions.

On the other hand, I am experiencing no stuttering at all on my system. In fact, didn't experience it even on OpenGL before Vulkan once I built my current system. I'm not the only one seeing smooth frame rate performance with no stuttering issues in X-Plane.

It's misleading and false to generalize from one's own experience, and claim that everyone else is seeing the same thing. 

Also, for what it's worth, I have spent plenty of time on this forum criticizing X-Plane. In particular, the laughably simplistic weather system, the slate blue water color that's the same all over the planet, and the lack of regionalized autogen buildings. I'm an equal opportunity critic when it comes to flight sims. I enjoy what XP and MSFS both have to offer that's good, and will criticize the flaws as I see them.

One thing won't do however, is complain about something that's likely to be due to my own system setup, and not something everyone else is seeing.

Well put...

But let's be clear, its not just me experiencing the issues and there are several folk on the org site experiencing the same issue as well.

There is nothing misleading or false about "stutters" that have plagued every sim platform. However, when folk try to minimalize issue that people have...particularly the same issue that Vulkan was suppose to address....it gives a false and misleading impression that the issue has been fixed.

So, maybe you don't have the issue, but others apparently do. So we are back to hypocrisy that I mentioned earlier.

[mSparks 2,086]

44 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

There is nothing misleading or false about "stutters" that have plagued every sim platform.

But lets be even clearer.

If you choose to run heavy simulation on windows you lose all rights to complain about performance and stuttering to anyone but the windows testing team.

Because its a windows specific problem.

Only you can't, because Microsoft fired them all.

At least that is something else Laminar is finally not being so quiet about:

https://developer.x-plane.com/2020/11/arm-macs/

Edited November 14, 2020 by mSparks

[BigDee 119]

GTX 960 2GB VRAM and a 1700X. When using a medium to high graphics quality, there is no stuttering at all. If I changed to high settings, fps dropped and I had stuttering.

But I don`t see any sense to complain about this. Since the day I used a Voodoo2 those problems were apparent. It`s about tweaking the parameters. Also there was no Internet at that time, nobody could complain and annoy others every time, you know?

What about analyzing performance, RAM usage, VRAM usage, workload CPU and GPU? If it is not programmed the right way, (I doubt it btw.), than the best solution is really to complain once in a month here in the forum.

I use a resolution of 1280x1024 and am fully happy with the performance. "Outdating sim". Considering the simulation aspect, it can be difficult to become in such a short time outdated. Just a proof of point that some postings are irrelevant in here.

[mjrhealth 820]

I guess people fail ti realize Xplane is a "flight Sim". A pilots head is in the cockpit scanning instruments, and outside when doing turns to make sure he doesnt bump into someone. I came to xplane from FSX and biggest thing for me was flight model. Yes there are things i8d like, Fling in Hawaii should be lots of trees and green not flat, but that is really it for me, but I do wish we could have new hangers towers for airports, planes do spend a lot of time in them and for them its part of the training, navigating around them. Did have stutters during some of teh builds, one or too and one crash, but than i dont have a sim filled with garbage.

[Murmur 3,941]

6 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

 

 

Take a deep breath buddy, its just an outdated sim...there is a difference between an enthusiast and someone who just can't face the facts. How you and @Murmur try to police the X-plane forum is both hilarious and waste of "your" time.

Shut The Flaps Up, troll.

[GoranM 3,762]

6 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

 

 

Take a deep breath buddy, its just an outdated sim...there is a difference between an enthusiast and someone who just can't face the facts. How you and @Murmur try to police the X-plane forum is both hilarious and waste of "your" time.

Take a deep breath?  

Whenever I see you or Greazer in here, I let out a slight chuckle, and a "here we go.  Let's have a laugh at what they have to say now."

I have to say, the "XP12 is years away..."  comment gave me the biggest laugh.  I called up another dev on Skype and showed him the post, and he laughed so hard, he just about spat out his coffee.

Edited November 14, 2020 by GoranM

[mSparks 2,086]

11 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Take a deep breath?  

Whenever I see you or Greazer in here, I let out a slight chuckle, and a "here we go.  Let's have a laugh at what they have to say now."

I have to say, the "XP12 is years away..."  comment gave me the biggest laugh.  I called up another dev on Skype and showed him the post, and he laughed so hard, he just about spat out his coffee.

I wouldn't expect XP12 to be replacing XP11 until at least late 2021/22?

Like, I hope I can try/buy it sooner than that, but it was like 2 years between XP11's initial release before it was markedly better than XP10

[mjrhealth 820]

41 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Take a deep breath?  

Whenever I see you or Greazer in here, I let out a slight chuckle, and a "here we go.  Let's have a laugh at what they have to say now."

I have to say, the "XP12 is years away..."  comment gave me the biggest laugh.  I called up another dev on Skype and showed him the post, and he laughed so hard, he just about spat out his coffee.

Makes me realise how much better my life must be.