6 hours ago, GoranM said:

4.  Really??  Detailed ground, dirt, grass, trees, people??  I would rather have the extra CPU cycles dedicated to important things that have to do with flight simming.  Not scenery simming.  I don't mind SOME resources dedicated to scenery, but grass and people??  

I think you underestimate how much people want these features. If Orbx make an airport without these, people absolutely do notice and complain. Done correctly, they shouldn't have a huge impact on performance and just adds some nice visual eye-candy when on the ground. Many of our customers enjoy looking around the airport, looking at little details and want this immersion, so what is important to you is not necessarily what is important to other people, and you can just use default airports or scenery if you don't mind the lack of them. Some people actually use flight simulators to look at scenery and fly around etc, others are in it for the aircraft simulation, and others such as myself, a bit of both.

 

 

7 hours ago, GoranM said:

 would rather have the extra CPU cycles dedicated to important things that have to do with flight simming.  Not scenery simming.  I don't mind SOME resources dedicated to scenery, but grass and people?? 

it's about taking the current and accelerate on gpu.

current xplane mesh, including water, suffers from a constant low poly environment. hence water waves are not 3d, roads are jaggy and not smooth curved, forest polygons and much more.

high quality mesh and soil are achieved using displacement maps as a base and forcing the mesh to a certain tessellated sub-division, usually as a rendering setting option, but detail can also change on the fly, when needed.

1 hour ago, HumptyDumpty said:

Talking about Vulkan, i do remember something had been mentioned by Ben on the blog much prior to the Vulkan API release , it was regarding using multithreading under Vulkan and do remember Ben said that it won't be in XP11, the whole Vulkan engine would be released with XP12 , in a way Greazer is not right or wrong.

His claims are not insane but with obvious lack of differentiating between what is vulkan as an api and what features become possible as a result of vulkan.

yes, multithreading was available a while ago, but neither opengl or dx11 are actually good at that, dx12 and vulkan are built FOR it as a goal hence efficient multithreading rendering became available to implement.

8 hours ago, GoranM said:

4.  Really??  Detailed ground, dirt, grass, trees, people??  I would rather have the extra CPU cycles dedicated to important things that have to do with flight simming.  Not scenery simming.  I don't mind SOME resources dedicated to scenery, but grass and people??  

Those details should not be "CPU cycles" they should be coded to run via the graphics processor only. The engine is already bottlenecked by too much stuff running on the CPU. The GPU is having a too easy time. Laminar need to contract hire a graphics guru who can come in and code up procedural generation and realistic graphics shaders for nice waves, grass, dirt and animations. Even little rodents. The XP world might start to look real. 

Edited January 22, 20215 yr by Greazer

On 1/20/2021 at 3:53 AM, Janov said:

There is no roadmap or official announcement per se. Laminar Research has been fairly quiet with anything like this, partly to let the MSFS hype die down (anything they would have said up to now would have been considered as a desperate defence), partly to not promise anything that they may not be able to deliver.

 

 

10 hours ago, Janov said:

Most of these points will be taken care of/touched in the next version of X-Plane. I don´t know any details, but there is extensive work going on (as hinted by LR) with regard to graphics, including lighting and multicore.

 

Your comments demonstrate the challenge with the future of XP. Engagement & also Partnering.

The competitive landscape has shifted drastically over the last 1-2 years. I recently realized that P3D tapped TrueSky (learning from FSW). Flight Sims cover many areas, and engaging / partnering with Devs who can bring their expertise to the table seems to be the direction going forward. Engaging not only the community, but 3PDevs “during” development help to ensure investment / interest / anticipation (both community and 3P Devs) going forward.

If you look at Train Sim World 2, DTG has a roadmap & a regularly updated news feed to keep consumers engaged with what’s new / upcoming / being fixed etc…releasing enough information to let folk “know”, “look forward to” with regard to the future. I don’t think that XP’s Dev blog hits this mark, nor does the “wait for the MSFS hype train die down” explain away the silence that has always been there with LR.

I think that DTG’s engagement helped to sell TSW2 given that many (including myself) felt like DTG had not really delivered on TSW1. TSW2 was sure to have beta of their RailDriver functionality prior to Holidays to deliver on their promise in the roadmap; and had seemingly developed a better relationship with RD to fully integrate the functionality of the hardware.

LR has always been an island unto itself rarely communicating / acknowledging / responding. To me, flight sims are now leaning more towards the “it takes a village” phenomena encompassing the core sim, freeware, 3PDevs, and consumer engagement (feedback / updates etc.). Live Youtube sessions (TSW2) and twitch interviews (MSFS) answering questions / giving feedback are playing a large role in engaging with the community, and helping the Devs strike a balance (what can we do now vs later / what can others do / what can’t be done).

XP will always have the diehard fanbase, but 1) many consumers want modern graphics / eye candy, 2) 3P Devs may not continue to split their resources across multiple sims when considering the relative consumer base / potential sales, and 3) community engagement is playing a larger role these days.

Beyond any "new" features that LR may announce…

Will LR improve upon its engagement with 3PDevs / Community going forward?

Will LR have a roadmap that goes beyond the initial release of XP12?

Will LR partner with other Devs to expand upon features beyond what LR has the capacity to do themselves?

…Or will LR continue to be a small & isolated team “mainly” appealing to the diehard fanbase (smaller & shrinking)? If so, I don’t see how there is enough of a consumer base (and continued 3P Dev investment) to fund / warrant any substantial progress.

 

I think that in todays media landscape companies like Laminar present an old-fashioned style and I appreciate that. I don´t think I have ever watched a single Twitch thingy, am not on Instagram, don´t really know what Reddit is and still think that Influencer is not a real job.

I would rather have a company say nothing at all than pumping up a hype train for gullible folks that just WANT to believe that whats too good to be true just MIGHT be true after all.

Giving roadmaps and outlooks never really works out. All too often one can´t meet his own estimates or a planned feature needs to slip.

We are all eager to find out what Laminar has in store. I am sure that the X-Plane target audience is not going to miss the release of X-Plane 12 because they are watching Asobo giving a Twitch interview...

Cheers, Jan

 

1 minute ago, Janov said:

don´t really know what Reddit is and still think that Influencer is not a real job.

I'll give you 100 points  for that, but maybe we're showing our age, because my teenage nieces wouldn't agree 🤪

I have a lot of faith in LR, they are a talented group of guys/girls. My hope is that they deliver what is right to keep the button/checklist crowd happy, but make the eye-candy crowd also happy. A challenge indeed, but I think lasting as long as they did, they know what they're doing. I still strongly believe XP will carry on, despite whatever is thrown at it, because they have a very specific goal, and I look forward to seeing it.

I don't see any smaller and shrinking userbase.

XP (like other games) had a temporary increase in users with the COVID lockdowns, then a significant decrease with the release of MFS, and now the users have been increasing for 3 months, at an average rate of 8% per month. It currently has approximately the same users it had one year ago. I think it's not bad for a product at the end of its life cycle.

Now that being said, I agree that it needs serious improvements to remain competitive. The good thing is that, for what we "unofficially" know, work is being done on most of the things that the community considers the most needed improvements.

 

18 minutes ago, Murmur said:

I agree that it needs serious improvements to remain competitive

That depends XPLANE is  A SIMULATOR not a game though many wish it was, the other is a game filled with pretty colours, but honestly when im flying i dont even consider mostly the things people are so mad about, ATC and weather with rain is all that matters but thats all secondary to flight model.

31 minutes ago, Murmur said:

It currently has approximately the same users it had one year ago. I think it's not bad for a product at the end of its life cycle.

X-Plane.org is as active as it was.. so is this forum IMO.. I don't see a huge decline in X-Plane users at present, I do see a decline in P3D users moving to X-Plane.

I want XP and P3D to carry on, competition and choice is good 🙂

3 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

nor does the “wait for the MSFS hype train die down” explain away the silence that has always been there with LR.

I think its a fairly reasonable cover story. 😁

1 hour ago, mjrhealth said:

That depends XPLANE is  A SIMULATOR not a game though many wish it was, the other is a game filled with pretty colours, but honestly when im flying i dont even consider mostly the things people are so mad about, ATC and weather with rain is all that matters but thats all secondary to flight model.

Perhaps.  I think they're both simulators really.   

X-Plane simulates "being in a simulator" .. i.e. all of your procedure training "study level" (with the right add-ons of course) but with the mediocre graphics of a level D setup

MSFS simulates the thrill of flying .. i.e. its much better at recreating the visual sensation of being in an aircraft over the earth.  In VR lately, I've been having some pretty amazing moments feeling like I'm actually in these places I'll never be otherwise and seeing some truly stunning sights.

 

Its kind of up to the user which they feel is actually a "flight" simulator...   I'd say there's a pretty solid argument for both cases and neither is a 'lesser' pursuit.

 

13 hours ago, Pastaiolo said:

Did you think about any of those situations, @GoranM ?

Yes I did.  And in all my years of flying, we have NEVER checked the grass for wind direction.  We have windsocks for that.  If we land on some kind of paddock in an emergency landing, we tune the radios in to the ATIS.  Depending on grass will (in the words of my old flight instructor) get you on the front page of the newspapers for all the wrong reasons.

Edited January 23, 20215 yr by GoranM

11 hours ago, Greazer said:

Those details should not be "CPU cycles" they should be coded to run via the graphics processor only.

If you want anything to move, whether it's via wind, legs on rodents (are you actually serious about wanting this??!!), legs on people, whatever, it's never getting done on the GPU.  Those computations are done on the CPU.  They always have and they always will.  That's what the CPU is there for.  It's like asking the wings of an aircraft to do the job of wheels on a car.  I see people asking for blades of grass to be influenced by the wind.  Depending on the grass coverage, that kind of feature will quickly bring your CPU to its knees.  No matter how many cores it has.  

Edited January 23, 20215 yr by GoranM

13 hours ago, tonywob said:

I think you underestimate how much people want these features.

First, sorry for the multi quotes.
This appears to be obvious.  However, wanting these features is one thing.  And maybe this is due to my forgiving nature, but there's a difference between wanting these features, and assuming LR will go out of business if they DON'T include these features in future releases.  Maybe it's because I have more of an insight into what goes into doing this stuff.  I imagine you do, too.  I can say for certain, pretty much anything is possible when it comes to requested features, but everyone thinks THEIR features should be a top priority.  Are blades of grass a top priority?  Of course not.  What I would love to see implemented, above everything else, is seasons and the weather effects seasons have on aircraft.  Smoother weather (Yes, I know that's what Greazer wants), but is it reasonable to expect that due to what is involved to get it?  I would say probably not.  I could go on.  
The most common sense thing to do is, if someone has an idea, submit it to LR.  They will never know what people want if they don't get the ideas in the first place.  @Greazer, whatever ideas you have, email Austin, and consider your idea contribution done.  Complaining about the lack of what YOU want in a sim, in forums that the guys at LR don't frequent, gets very boring.
One thing I can take away from all of this, is that people will never be happy with what they get.  They always want something else.  Inb4 someone else says it...whales blowing water out of their blowholes when crossing oceans.

Edited January 23, 20215 yr by GoranM

The decision to implement a feature is made considering these factors:

• How feasible/hard is it to enable the desired feature?
• How much is the feature desired by the userbase?
• How much does the feature align with the core idea of what X-Plane tries to be?

Lets take the "3D grass" as an example. It certainly scores high with user requests. But it is pretty hard to enable (to make it realistic, only grow where it needs to grow, react to airflow, be easy on performance, get excluded from inside aircraft...) and it does not align much with the core idea of X-Plane tries to be (as it is not very relevant to the operation of an aircraft).

That´s why it isn´t done yet while Austin spent considerable time on getting propeller slipstream or elevator downwash right. Even though that scores MUCH lower on the user request scale. But those features were easier to implement AND are much more relevant to X-Plane´s "mission".