Future of X-plane

[Bjoern 1,153]

On 2/11/2021 at 7:47 PM, mSparks said:

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.

Yes to everything.

 

On 2/11/2021 at 8:56 PM, Murmur said:

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.

Yes, oh god yes so much! I'd even bother with aerodynamics again if X-Plane had such a tool.

 

On 2/11/2021 at 9:08 PM, akita said:

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

Oh yeah, multiple materials per OBJ would be nice. Maybe also an option to binarize OBJ files as a low key DRM option for commercial devs, although it'd run a bit against X-Plane's relative openness.

 

 

16 hours ago, mSparks said:

This is my local Ski resort (in my profile picture) in XP11

...

everything is where its supposed to be (even the ski lifts), this is "standard" scenery (in the sense of Ortho + simheaven stuff), lightings good, framerate is perfect, flight model is perfect, my first comment - I don't have much to complain about, and I already have that level of detail for the entire world loaded on my nvme drive.

That looks good. What ortho zoom level is that?

Edited February 13, 2021 by Bjoern

[mSparks 2,086]

4 hours ago, Bjoern said:

.

That looks good. What ortho zoom level is that?

16 + dcl + xeurope.

Pretty decent with winter turned on to

Although not quite as nice as actually being there, - bit yellow? "It'll do me"

12 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Many of the most prominent within the X-Plane community consider 'eye candy' to be unnecessary and irrelevant.

Be specific? I can give you an example of where I have used it - From that FSEXPO or two ago, pre vulkan, when a good portion of the LR presentation was dedicated to detailed high res oil drums = "get that guy off the unnecessary eye candy and fix the things that really matter, like the bombing framerates and behavior in crosswinds on landing" -> and they did (technically they hired Sid and pushed through the vulkan pain, and pulled Austin out of the 744 toilet and got him to fix the grounds effect on windspeed).

 

18 hours ago, Janov said:

Well, there is ONE member here that keeps claiming that X-Plane´s graphics are on par with MSFS. But if you carefully read that members posting history here and in other forums on avsim you will quickly come to the conclusion that his posts and claims hold little merit...

You know I'm not just basing it on personal opinion right:

XP and P3Dv5 screenshots are being mistaken for MSFS screenshots on a regular basis, especially XP + reshade screenshots, which some of the hardcore "looks" guys are getting almost photoreal.

Edited February 14, 2021 by mSparks

[Janov 2,383]

9 hours ago, mSparks said:

XP and P3Dv5 screenshots are being mistaken for MSFS screenshots on a regular basis, especially XP + reshade screenshots, which some of the hardcore "looks" guys are getting almost photoreal.

mSparks, if you use clever positioning of the shot, certain lighting and weather conditions and custom scenery of high definition and texture resolution then yes, X-Plane can look as good as MSFS.

Why not take a shot of the nightsky at midnight in the middle of a cloud and compare that to the same shot in MSFS? 🙄

But to use those "tricks" with a pimped up version, Orthophotos, custom scenery and certain camera angles to claim that X-Plane looks as good as MSFS is just making a fool of yourself and giving general miscredit to the X-Plane community as well.

It is called "living in denial" and it only makes everyone sigh and roll their eyes.

I would suggest you stop working yourself deeper into that corner of playing devils advocate and concentrate on the many things that X-Plane DOES indeed do better.

You know so much about X-Plane and fly helicopters yourself - surely you must be able to contribute something that actually makes sense and holds up to scrutiny so people stop thinking that there must be something in the water where you live?

 

Edited February 14, 2021 by Janov

[mSparks 2,086]

13 minutes ago, Janov said:

if you use clever positioning of the shot, certain lighting and weather conditions and custom scenery of high definition and texture resolution

That's not what seems to be coming out at all, in fact, outside of their photogrammetry cities - 99% of the worlds land mass (which aiui don't look good up close) X-Plane seems to be superior in many many ways - not just the fact it has the important VFR  elements in like powerlines and nav aids (I'm still pretty shocked these are missing), but also even the trees - which as far as I can tell are a long long way from the promised palm trees bending over in the wind and just the same green blobs everywhere?

But my basic premise is that it is competitive, some places MSFS wins, in some XPlane wins, neither can really do a decent LOD in the cities anyway, simply due to hardware limitations.

And its those hardware limitations that really limit everything, there are some opportune improvements Laminar can make in the areas that are weak and broken, but absolutely nothing we've said it needs in this entire thread are going to significantly change the way it looks, lighting is the only one with a big impact, and even then only in "certain lighting and weather conditions".

 

[jcomm 5,890]

Guys... I can put it in a simple way, for myself at least:

- MFS is a Great Arcade Flight Sim, until something, which I do not believe will ever happen, proves the contrary.

The best they can do is reverting back to fs9/fsx/p3d flight dynamics, and, well... that's what it is. I don't believe ASOBO aims for what I care really for - flight dynamics and systems modelling as precise as possible...

3rd parties can really try to do their best, and they're already doing it, but MFS is THE LOOKS !

xp12 WOULD, IMO, simply have to keep supporting Linux and MacOS together with Windowze... and, give a step forward in terms of tools for weather injection and visuals, for 3rd parties to be able to do their magic better than they've been able to so far.

Austin needs someone to work with him in the flight dynamics component of the sim, and to start passing his knowledge to a few more LR team members dedicated 100% to aerodynamic and aircraft  systems  modelling.

For me that's about all. I can easily like P3Dv5 even more than MFS if I use the PMDG 777 ( nothing compares to it - 777 - for XP so far... ) or the FSLabs Airbuses + Active Sky with it, even with just default scenery, but then, XP11 still gives me a lot more in all aspects, including Vulkan performance, a Toliss Airbus which, even without a list of features as big as the one for FSLabs does it's flying and gives a feel a lot closer to the real thing, and continues under active development...

MFS wins hands down with it's wise and extremely optimized ( kudos to ASOBO ) photogrammetry and weather- visually !!! They profit form the Meteoblue feed for weather, although they do not know very well how to deal with it IMO, nor give 3pds the necessary tools to do what they don't know how to... Will it change for the better ? I hope so... Competition is always an advantage. Yet, MFS has been, so far, a true deception for me, in many aspects 😕

I look forward for the announcement of X-Plane 12. It will probably bring stuff many wouldn't like to have, like a subscription-based model, but I couldn't care less provided they can also bring additional flight dynamics and weather details.

Edited February 14, 2021 by jcomm

[Humpty 751]

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

😕

I look forward for the announcement of X-Plane 12. It will probably bring stuff many wouldn't like to have, like a subscription-based model, but I couldn't care less provided they can also bring additional flight dynamics and weather details.

They need to get the helis in , right now even using MFS with such great visuals has lost me interest in it and back on the excellent 412 flying around Yosemite using Orthos and US forests by Tony. Added a touch of reshade it looks pretty pretty along with EC.

The day MFS equals XP / DCS for helis that would be fun else it holds no interest at all for me except  checking out the world with the easy and automatic download of orthos.

Edited February 14, 2021 by HumptyDumpty

[jarmstro 2,402]

1 hour ago, jcomm said:

weather details.

I'm confused about what this means? I frequently see it requested. Like so much in X-Plane RW weather is already available at a cost. And now that I have paid for it I do not want LR to devote time to it at the expense of important visual and performance improvements which I cannot purchase.

[jcomm 5,890]

51 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

I'm confused about what this means? I frequently see it requested. Like so much in X-Plane RW weather is already available at a cost. And now that I have paid for it I do not want LR to devote time to it at the expense of important visual and performance improvements which I cannot purchase.

You mean you're ok with xEnviro ?

Never tried it. I use ASXP, and it's OK for me an runs on my old rig + Vulkan fluidly ...

Edited February 14, 2021 by jcomm

[jarmstro 2,402]

10 minutes ago, jcomm said:

You mean you're ok with xEnviro ?

Never tried it. I use ASXP, and it's OK for me an runs on my old rig + Vulkan fluidly ...

I meant ASXP. That's what I use as well. It injects RW weather into the sim as far as I know so my query was really why people want LR to do the same when most users have it, or something similar already? To be honest I think LR should just buy up the rights to these plugins and include them as default. Job done.

[mSparks 2,086]

 

[jarmstro 2,402]

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

 

To me that looks pathetic.

Edited February 14, 2021 by jarmstro

[peroni 541]

Maybe not pathetic but still not something to be proud of in 2021

In any case, no point in discussing if XP11 looks good or not, here we're on about the future of x-plane.
My only concern at this point is how much time it will take to implement the features marked as planned.
I know the devs have the skills. 

 

 

 

 

[jarmstro 2,402]

44 minutes ago, peroni said:

Maybe not pathetic but still not something to be proud of in 2021

In any case, no point in discussing if XP11 looks good or not, here we're on about the future of x-plane.
My only concern at this point is how much time it will take to implement the features marked as planned.
I know the devs have the skills. 

 

 

 

 

Hmmmm. Seems like multiplayer is the big deal. And there's me thinking X-Plane is not about gaming? And they seem to be looking into everything for the future but not actually doing anything about the present.

Edited February 14, 2021 by jarmstro

[mSparks 2,086]

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

To me that looks pathetic.

Compared to what? Super Mario Kart?

(And I'm not being difficult, I genuinely want to know what you think "nicer" looks like)

Half my argument of MSFS looks, is while it can look "nicer" more often than not it looks less realistic, and a lot of xplane "looks nasty" complaints are actually just because in ugly weather xplane looks realistically ugly.

Edited February 14, 2021 by mSparks

[Murmur 3,941]

18 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

Hmmmm. Seems like multiplayer is the big deal. And there's me thinking X-Plane is not about gaming?

Gaming? Multiplayer made the right way is way more realistic than AI traffic. You have a lot of preconceptions.