Future of X-plane

[Janov 2,383]

2 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Animals AND wildlife? A tall order to be sure.

I would add procedural fauna to that. Just to make that featureset complete!

[Humpty 751]

2 minutes ago, Janov said:

I would add procedural fauna to that. Just to make that featureset complete!

I want to see fishes of all types when I fly over clear water inland / sea , when I fly low  I want to see skirts flying up ... word not allowed I have a quite a big list.

 

Edited February 11, 2021 by HumptyDumpty

[Janov 2,383]

1 minute ago, HumptyDumpty said:

when I fly low  I want to see skirts flying up

When I fly low it will be over those beaches where they aren´t wearing skirts!

[Humpty 751]

15 minutes ago, Janov said:

When I fly low it will be over those beaches where they aren´t wearing skirts!

Hahhahaaa , well my initial word was "bikinis" , had to change it thinking it would be "word not allowed" 

But i get it

 

Edited February 11, 2021 by HumptyDumpty

[mSparks 2,086]

10 hours ago, GCBraun said:

Have you ever heard of Game Pass? The vast majority of MSFS users *have not* even purchased the sim (I did, but via the MS Store, so I am not part of these statistics).

Have you heard of Android and iPhone?

even gamepass only has some 18million subscribers

MSFS is a looong way off getting close to the numbers of people with xplane in their hands, let alone the number of people who -could- have xplane in their hands.

there is good reason the codebase for mobile is a way ahead of desktop.

Doesnt mean I like it, but it demonstrates how ridiculous such comments are.

Steam does one thing and one thing only, shows us the trend.

That is a MoM 1% net loss of users for MSFS and 9% net growth for xplane. Its perfectly acceptable to assume that trend transfers outside of steam.

At this point MSFS needs a major overhaul to not die an early death and Laminar just need to not screw up a good thing.

Edited February 11, 2021 by mSparks

[Greazer 1,320]

Anything less than above XP12 requirements and developers get an F (Failed).

[jarmstro 2,402]

But back on topic... Why is the performance of X-Plane with regard to shadows, lighting and reflections so downright poor? (Let alone volumetric clouds and ai planes.) Is this something that will be corrected in XP12? Can it be corrected?

[Humpty 751]

18 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Anything less than above XP12 requirements and developers get an F (Failed).

Don't use it and frustrate yourself

[Janov 2,383]

6 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Is this something that will be corrected in XP12? Can it be corrected?

https://developer.x-plane.com/2020/11/stuff-we-are-working-on/

[jarmstro 2,402]

9 minutes ago, Janov said:

https://developer.x-plane.com/2020/11/stuff-we-are-working-on/

God. It's still in beta. I didn't realise. All the rest is just gobbledygook to me I am afraid. What does it mean in layman's language? Multi gpu's? I've only got one. So to run X-Plane you will need two graphics cards??

Edited February 11, 2021 by jarmstro

[Bjoern 1,157]

I won't be surprised if XP12 does not run as well as people expect it to. After all, it is hardware that was, is and will drive rendering performance of flight simulation software because rendering engine optimizations can only do so much and are usually quickly eaten up by greater levels of detail, in X-Plane 12's case most likely high resolution shadows, windshield rain effects, volumetric clouds and more variety in autogen objects.

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

God. It's still in beta. I didn't realise. All the rest is just gobbledygook to me I am afraid. What does it mean in layman's language? Multi gpu's? I've only got one.

I'd call it "tech demo" right now tbh.

But I also wouldn't be to concerned, graphics is "hard" in the technical sense, but (aside from artist work) its not hugely time consuming, as a rough guide to how long graphics engine components take, enhanced cloudscapes was here:

June 2020

and here

July 2020

Everything else is bug fixing that is a never completed task, you just spend longer and longer on smaller and smaller bugs.

They've also deployed a lot of stuff on mobile already. (Mobile is nice platform to dev for because you get really detailed automated feedback from the respected operating systems, rather than the "it doesn't work" -> "post your log file" process that plagues the desktop)

48 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

I won't be surprised if XP12 does not run as well as people expect it to. After all, it is hardware that was, is and will drive rendering performance of flight simulation software because rendering engine optimizations can only do so much and are usually quickly eaten up by greater levels of detail, in X-Plane 12's case most likely high resolution shadows, windshield rain effects, volumetric clouds and more variety in autogen objects.

I think they are given - I also dont think they are that important or time consuming.

OTOH

Plane maker needs completely knocking down to its foundations and building back up with a UI not completely word used by developers one, integrating with airfoil maker and a virtual wind tunnel.

The cockpit displays needs ripping a new one

.obj wants support for bezier curves and more varied active materials (e.g. for dynamic tail numbers on the fuselage)

.for needs a complete redesign.

To name a few, all of which are a royal lots of words not even used by developers.

Also, Ben needs to get his backup drive out and finish

 

Edited February 11, 2021 by mSparks

[Gilandred 690]

2 hours ago, mSparks said:

Steam does one thing and one thing only, shows us the trend.

That is a MoM 1% net loss of users for MSFS and 9% net growth for xplane. Its perfectly acceptable to assume that trend transfers outside of steam.

At this point MSFS needs a major overhaul to not die an early death and Laminar just need to not screw up a good thing.

Steam trend charts show XP has settled in at around 1600 average players - this is similar to prior year January 2020 numbers and would indicate a recapture of lost market due to MSFS launch.  MSFS on the other hand looks to have stabilized at around 5000 average players, and that’s without all the bells and whistles (study level aircraft, GSX, etc) available in other sims.  I don’t believe either sim is in jeopardy of an early death, based on data and testimonials from developers.

[Murmur 3,941]

51 minutes ago, mSparks said:

integrating with airfoil maker and a virtual wind tunnel.

A virtual wind tunnel (in Plane Maker) would be fantastic, and very useful for developers. It would allow them to tune aircraft performance and handling in much less time.

At the moment XP has an extremely limited virtual wind tunnel, with the menu entry that calculates on the fly (pun intended) the longitudinal and lateral stability coefficients. But it's next to useless the way it's made now.

A complete virtual wind tunnel inside Plane Maker would ideally run the aircraft through the XP flight model, and determine significant performance figures such as: L/D curves, climb rate vs airspeed, ceiling, stall speeds, etc. And also handling characteristics such as dutch roll and short period frequency and damping, max roll rate, etc.

But it would require quite some work by Austin to code all that. I think MFS has a limited virtual wind tunnel, in that some aircraft curves are traced in real time (i.e. they change if the flight model coefficients are changed) when using the developer mode.

 

[akita 429]

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

.obj wants support for bezier curves and more varied active materials (e.g. for dynamic tail numbers on the fuselage)

.for needs a complete redesign.

To name a few, all of which are a royal lots of words not even used by developers.

Also, Ben needs to get his backup drive out and finish

 

honestly .for files are fine just needs to be exposed for obj files. custom LOD scale able meshes for vegetation.

for objs multiple-uv maps and unpack PBR from the normal map texture.

this will enable:

1) normal map compression, xplane uses uncompressed png's !!! (this deserves lots of !!)

2) sharing materials and managing uv space across different assets. proper artists will use it to have even higher quality textures while using less VRAM.