4 hours ago, jarmstro said:

To me that looks pathetic.

I'd bet it's more advanced than any XP12 snow effects that LR put out.

On 2/13/2021 at 7:34 PM, torfih said:

stop.feeding.the.trolls.

Reminder.

4 hours ago, Murmur said:

Reminder.

even troll need to eat. We cant just stop writing about XPLANE because of one person.

32 minutes ago, mjrhealth said:

even troll need to eat. We cant just stop writing about XPLANE because of one person.

I think he was talking about not feeding the trolls last comment...

"I'd bet it's more advanced than any XP12 snow effects that LR put out."

Even a 5 year old knows that's a "bait" post.

Edited February 15, 20215 yr by GoranM

8 hours ago, Murmur said:

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

Please expand on that. Do you mean there could be some sort in-house of Vatsim system? That would be fantastic. Otherwise I can't see how having hundreds of assorted planes and helicopters buzzing around every which way can be considered to be realistic?

7 hours ago, Greazer said:

I'd bet it's more advanced than any XP12 snow effects that LR put out.

Dont know about xp12, but no new features are coming to xp11, so definitely more advanced than no snow on orthophoto.

But as I think Ive said, you hint at one of the biggest hurdles I think LR faces wih XP12 - there are so many high quality addons for XP11 that already do most of what people want, many with significant time investment, that it is not an easy task for them to do better for XP12.

xEnviro for example, the latest version does snow aiui, its a pretty mammoth project.

How attractive would XP2021 really be if XP11+xEnviro still looks better? Great for us Linux and Mac users for sure, but I think there is going to be a lot more resistance from existing users switching over this time round. 

4 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Please expand on that.

There are quite a few "sensible" ways to use multiplayer in a flightsimulator.

Naturally the  first thing that may come to mind is the hilarious "free for all fragfest" that we saw in MSFS when everyone spawned 787s at Lukla... but I think that multiplayer improvements are needed for controlled groups that want to join and fly together, especially the virtual online aerobatic teams come to mind.

They would benefit from ease of setup (GUI) and better neworking code. Especially when it comes to internet latency and packet losses there are some modern techniques that use prediction algorithms to vastly smooth out the experience.

One example: If you fly in formation with someone a few thousand miles away, the information from his computer will invariably be delayed, lets say 100ms. This is one tenth of a second, so at 200kts his plane will be 10 meters further aft on your computer than what he sees on his computer. But if your computer "knows" the delay to his computer and factors in the airspeed, he can "predict" his plane to be 10 meter forward - so it looks the same on your end as it does on his.

Another "non gamey" use would be to practice flying traffic patterns with some friends, it takes good judgment and coordination to keep separation on non controlled airports and mid-air collisions for GA aircraft are the most likely in the landing phase of the traffic pattern.

Cheers, Jan

 

11 minutes ago, Janov said:

There are quite a few "sensible" ways to use multiplayer in a flightsimulator.

Naturally the  first thing that may come to mind is the hilarious "free for all fragfest" that we saw in MSFS when everyone spawned 787s at Lukla... but I think that multiplayer improvements are needed for controlled groups that want to join and fly together, especially the virtual online aerobatic teams come to mind.

They would benefit from ease of setup (GUI) and better neworking code. Especially when it comes to internet latency and packet losses there are some modern techniques that use prediction algorithms to vastly smooth out the experience.

One example: If you fly in formation with someone a few thousand miles away, the information from his computer will invariably be delayed, lets say 100ms. This is one tenth of a second, so at 200kts his plane will be 10 meters further aft on your computer than what he sees on his computer. But if your computer "knows" the delay to his computer and factors in the airspeed, he can "predict" his plane to be 10 meter forward - so it looks the same on your end as it does on his.

Another "non gamey" use would be to practice flying traffic patterns with some friends, it takes good judgment and coordination to keep separation on non controlled airports and mid-air collisions for GA aircraft are the most likely in the landing phase of the traffic pattern.

Cheers, Jan

 

multplayer flight sim only ever goes one way, Xplane and MSFS both dream they were this amusing.

 

1 hour ago, Janov said:

There are quite a few "sensible" ways to use multiplayer in a flightsimulator.

Naturally the  first thing that may come to mind is the hilarious "free for all fragfest" that we saw in MSFS when everyone spawned 787s at Lukla... but I think that multiplayer improvements are needed for controlled groups that want to join and fly together, especially the virtual online aerobatic teams come to mind.

They would benefit from ease of setup (GUI) and better neworking code. Especially when it comes to internet latency and packet losses there are some modern techniques that use prediction algorithms to vastly smooth out the experience.

One example: If you fly in formation with someone a few thousand miles away, the information from his computer will invariably be delayed, lets say 100ms. This is one tenth of a second, so at 200kts his plane will be 10 meters further aft on your computer than what he sees on his computer. But if your computer "knows" the delay to his computer and factors in the airspeed, he can "predict" his plane to be 10 meter forward - so it looks the same on your end as it does on his.

Another "non gamey" use would be to practice flying traffic patterns with some friends, it takes good judgment and coordination to keep separation on non controlled airports and mid-air collisions for GA aircraft are the most likely in the landing phase of the traffic pattern.

Cheers, Jan

 

Thanks Jan. Very insightful. My only thought though is that, apart from the melee free-for-all MMP it's all a bit niche and a surprising use of LRs limited resources.

5 hours ago, mSparks said:

How attractive would XP2021 really be if XP11+xEnviro still looks better? Great for us Linux and Mac users for sure, but I think there is going to be a lot more resistance from existing users switching over this time round. 

I wouldn't count on xEnviro etc working on Mac OS anytime soon.. Especially with Apple not supporting vulkan directly and using their own API.

I can see the point that many say about just sticking to one platform such as Windows, but in the case of X-Plane, Mac OS is quite a chunk of their customer base (I'm one of them). Sadly, being multi-platform in this instance is causing problems, especially for third-party devs.

42 minutes ago, tonywob said:

Mac OS is quite a chunk of their customer base

Well, if the next versions lighting & clouds isn't a major improvement over what xEnviro have done, I don't think its beyond the realms of feasibility that windows users resistance to switching will end up with Linux and MacOS being the majority......

One thing I have also noticed, is that "number of people with windows" is somewhat misleading. the vast majority of windows machines sold over the last 5 or 10 years have been laptops with onboard Intel cards, they can't even run XP11, let alone whatever comes next.

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

My only thought though is that, apart from the melee free-for-all MMP it's all a bit niche and a surprising use of LRs limited resources.

Don´t forget that professional users also rely on good and solid networking options. Plus the technology is already present in X-Plane mobile

https://www.x-plane.com/2020/06/mobiles-massive-multiplayer-released/

https://developer.x-plane.com/2021/01/have-you-heard-the-good-news-about-elixir/

...so it is probably not as much work to have it be included in desktop as one might think.

Cheers, Jan

 

1 hour ago, tonywob said:

6 hours ago, mSparks said:

 

I wouldn't count on xEnviro etc working on Mac OS anytime soon..

It's also unusable for most Windows users because of the fps hit. 

I often look at the X-Plane 11 usage data dashboard and I'm always amazed to see the most used third party aircraft chart.

Number 1 is Zibo as expected considering it is free
Number 2 is Zenith CH 750 made by Olivier Faivre and HydroZ back in 2013 for X-Plane 9 and 10!!
I have to wonder if this dashboard is really up to date
http://dashboard.x-plane.com/

Edited February 15, 20215 yr by peroni

50 minutes ago, peroni said:

I have to wonder if this dashboard is really up to date

There are some things "fishy" about the dashboard.

It is really susceptible to weird data inputs and manipulation. It would be easy for someone to write a script to load a new flight with a certain airplane and have that trigger like 100 "new flights"every hour for that aircraft.

You can also see that all the people developing for X-Plane really skew the data, if you look at the #1 airport (Honolulu) you can guess that it is popular because it loads really fast (lots of water around).

Also so many people play with the mouse - just like me when I make airports on my laptop and start new flights to check out my work (I just use the mouse and the free camera to do that).

So I wouldn´t take everything you see in there at face value.

Cheers, Jan