For me both visuals and flight models/physics are important.

In several visuals aspects (lighting, weather, some scenery features, environmental effects, etc.) XP11 is lagging behind. However it is promising that all of these aspects have been hinted as prioritary improvements for XP12.

Many of them, while not strictly necessary for a simulation purpose, I think are essential to bring realism and immersiveness. I also find annoying some secondary issues, like the fact that the sun position and ambient lighting at twilight do not match the real world. I see them as a sign of poor quality that should not be there in a flight simulator.

However many other things are excellent. One of the things that keeps me using X-Plane is the excellent performance AND smoothness for a given visual quality. For me, choppy performance at low settings, maybe with a low refresh rate of gauges (...), are possibly even more immersion killing that poor visuals or flight model flaws. But I reckon that most simmers do not care about that, coming from decades of 20ish-fps and stuttering avionics.

The other thing is the nice flight model of default aircraft and the excellent flight model of helicopters, with which I'm having a lot of fun.

 

6 minutes ago, Murmur said:

However it is promising that all of these aspects have been hinted as prioritary improvements for XP12.

I agree that this is the area that X-Plane can make the biggest advances.

The realistic aviation part - while certainly not perfect - is already very good.

The visual aspect (while in my opinion sufficient for all aspects of training to fly) will be the focus for the next version of X-Plane. I think there are still considerable gains in performance to be had after the switch to Vulkan - especially moving some rendering tasks to other CPU cores.

Other than multicore, X-Plane 11 already has all the technology in place to achieve great visuals. But right now it is still using really old and simplistic art assets. Having trees and textures like these was necessary 15 years ago - for performance reasons. Nowadays technology allows better artwork with no performance penalty (GPU´s are incredibly powerful), so it is pretty much just a matter of updating the artwork.

We won´t get streaming "real world" scenery, neither photogrammetry nor orthophotos - it is important to get that message across and accepted, otherwise there will be huge disappointment "but, but, but...I still can´t see my house! 😭"

Jan

 

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

In several visuals aspects (lighting, weather, some scenery features, environmental effects, etc.) XP11 is lagging behind.

OTOH, I think LR are going to have quite the challenge besting what can already be achieved with a little extra freeware.

Edited January 10, 20215 yr by mSparks

2 hours ago, mSparks said:

OTOH, I think LR are going to have quite the challenge besting what can already be achieved with a little extra freeware.

That's quite good looking. But it's not only snow, it's all the rest that must be brought up to more modern standards.

In any case, I don't think that photogrammetry and orthophotos are necessary in order to have a realistic and good looking scenery. Provided that all the other elements (vegetation, buildings, lighting, weather, etc.) are up to the task.

1 minute ago, Murmur said:

it's all the rest that must be brought up to more modern standards.

This shot from one of the ppl on Discord

Triggered lots of people with who thought MSFS had a monopoly on decent looks.

There are a fair few things that I think can make it better, but nothing as of 11.51 that can't be fairly easily updated now with freeware/payware that yells at me "gimme XP12 now"

But it also highlights the fundamental issue with XP11 -> XP12 - the vast majority of the smallish clique of XP11 customers haven't yet even begun to tap into what it is actually capable of, and most don't have the hardware even if they thought about it.

So there is a good chance "even more choice for even more powerful hardware" isn't going to make many waves.

 

 

That's decent but visually still not as good as most MFS shots. Moreover it would be ideal if such visuals (or better) would be provided by default. Good thing is that for XP12, LR is focusing on improving most of the visual shortcomings of XP11.

And XP in my opinion remains still ahead both in performance and flight models. Stuttering gauges/scenery ruin all the immersion for me.

 

Edited January 10, 20215 yr by Murmur

56 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Moreover it would be ideal if such visuals (or better) would be provided by default.

which is the dilemma, because the only things not default visuals there require graphics language support macs do not have.

 

Edited January 11, 20215 yr by mSparks

On 1/9/2021 at 6:10 PM, GoranM said:

I mean, I've seen some really unusual requests from people to have specific visuals implemented into a flight sim, but correctly modelled and positioned terminal building piping?

The main point is, XP and scenery designer needs to be a heck of a lot smarter and intuitive and not float or sink 3d. In the case of buildings the terrain need to form around the base of the building so it looks proper. Their engine needs to draw realistic grass where the textures are green, and dirt/rocks where is is brown. They need to have proper trees that move in the wind direction, but, support the old trees and not kill every addon airport that was developed so far. And of course the HDR needs a total revamp because compared to the other sim it doesn't stack up.   

37 minutes ago, Greazer said:

because compared to the other sim it doesn't stack up.   

All those things you just listed, are why

Instead of

or

Remind me why they are needed again.....

Edited January 11, 20215 yr by mSparks

And, the Moon !

Lots of your requests for scenery are mostly about 2 steps in the pipe-line called tessellation and geometry/compute shaders.

tessellation to create more polygons (triangles actually) out of existing to make curves and meshes more detailed on the fly, this will immediately make roads, forests, topography and 3d waves look much better.

it looks they already use this for BTS development: https://developer.x-plane.com/2016/10/developer-blooper-reel-water-world/

then the above mentioned shaders can change water colors (bathymetry maps instead of hand masking), can help with implementing seasons in earnest, grass and lots more.

as for trees, animated meshes with a particle system for foliage, they already have a modern particle system but exposed for aircrafts only.

this shouldn't take that long IMO, what might take more time are clouds and lightning, and for the latter I still want a ray traced GI 😄

Edited January 11, 20215 yr by akita

16 hours ago, mSparks said:

All those things you just listed, are why

or

Remind me why they are needed again.....

That XP VR video is supposed to prove something??  Just absolutely horrid stuttering and graphics. But that is the state of Vulkan for most.  Bad performance, after 4 years in the making, it should be the opposite  😑

18 hours ago, Greazer said:

The main point is, XP and scenery designer needs to be a heck of a lot smarter and intuitive and not float or sink 3d. In the case of buildings the terrain need to form around the base of the building so it looks proper. Their engine needs to draw realistic grass where the textures are green, and dirt/rocks where is is brown. They need to have proper trees that move in the wind direction, but, support the old trees and not kill every addon airport that was developed so far. And of course the HDR needs a total revamp because compared to the other sim it doesn't stack up.   

Oh, brother!

Your standards are impossibly high.  Literally.  

4 hours ago, Greazer said:

That XP VR video is supposed to prove something??  

that msfs graphics makes you puke in 10 minutes. And XP11 is fine for hours.

Now, with that what I thought was rather obvious explained.

You were going to explain why xplane needs to be made to stutter even more by loading it up with even more work to do "drawing realistic grass where the textures are green, and dirt/rocks where is is brown. They need to have proper trees that move in the wind direction, but, support the old trees and not kill every addon airport that was developed so far. And of course the HDR needs a total revamp."

tbh, complaining it already stutters to much suggests to me it most definitely doesn't need any of that.

Edited January 12, 20215 yr by mSparks

On 1/11/2021 at 6:19 AM, Greazer said:

The main point is, XP and scenery designer needs to be a heck of a lot smarter and intuitive and not float or sink 3d.

MFS also can't do this... It's up to the scenery designer to change the terrain around buildings if it's a problem. Whilst I agree it would be nice if our sims did this automatically, MFS at least makes modifying the local mesh easier, something that is incredibly painful to do in X-Plane.

On 1/11/2021 at 6:19 AM, Greazer said:

Their engine needs to draw realistic grass where the textures are green, and dirt/rocks where is is brown. They need to have proper trees that move in the wind direction, but, support the old trees and not kill every addon airport that was developed so far.

What flight sim engine currently does all that smoothly and correctly? If you are complaining now about performance and stutters, I don't think any of the above is going to improve your situation. I may get abuse for this, but I simply don't like the grass in MFS, no airport that I know would let the grass become that long, especially on a grass runway... I understand it's exaggerated for visual effect (same with the trees), but IMO it's too much and can't be turned off. As for trees, check them closely, they're not 3D either, but yes they are much better than XP's. If you're wanting the world to look like Red Dead Redemption 2 then you should probably come back in about 50 years or so.