X-plane - The past, present & future

[Theboot100 404]

25 minutes ago, mSparks said:

There is a small problem with Unreal engine.

Namely that Xplanes engine is already better than it..... (unreal engine is missing seamless traversal of terrain at a global scale)

Exactly. Unreal engine is not designed for an earth scale world with a zoom level to 100000 feet.

 

The problem with a ready made game engine (unreal, unity etc) is they carry a lot of bloat.  And you will never get the efficiency of earth scale world rendering as a custom engine.

[Paraffin 2,197]

13 minutes ago, Theboot100 said:

Exactly. Unreal engine is not designed for an earth scale world with a zoom level to 100000 feet.

The problem with a ready made game engine (unreal, unity etc) is they carry a lot of bloat.  And you will never get the efficiency of earth scale world rendering as a custom engine.

That's the kind of problem Star Citizen ran into when the developer licensed CryEngine, then found that it didn't scale to the scope creep of the game over time. They had to modify it so much to make it work (and it still doesn't work) that they got into licensing issues. 

[mSparks 2,092]

58 minutes ago, Theboot100 said:

zoom level to 100000 feet.

Heresy!

X15/space shuttle/starship special starts are from 450,000 feet. 

Edited March 25, 2021 by mSparks

[jarmstro 2,405]

1 hour ago, Greazer said:

X Plane will never look like that or have a proper engine because they are always on a shoestring budget with barely enough money to pay for a few developers to tweak legacy XP code in their basement.

It's difficult to blame them for the lack of timely investment. Why would they bother when their followers constantly eulogise the product and shower them with praise? Unreal engine or not XP12 will be hailed as a masterpiece no matter how mediocre it is. A bit more honest criticism wouldn't  go amiss imo.

[GoranM 3,772]

1 minute ago, jarmstro said:

Why would they bother when their followers constantly eulogise the product and shower them with praise?

You really haven't been reading the various X-Plane forums enough.  I promise you, the X-Plane community is constantly on X-Plane's back about things to fix and features to add.

Even the developers have meetings with LR to discuss what we want out of X-Plane.

[jarmstro 2,405]

18 minutes ago, GoranM said:

You really haven't been reading the various X-Plane forums enough

Trust me, I have. Criticism = Heresy. I've got the tee shirt.😂 Mention MSFS in a positive light and BAMM! You are cancelled.

Edited March 25, 2021 by jarmstro

[mSparks 2,092]

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

Trust me, I have. Criticism = Heresy. I've got the tee shirt.😂 Mention MSFS in a positive light and BAMM! You are cancelled.

True enough that.

But then the last org mod to try that stupidity with me (wasn't even talking about MSFS, just voicing my thoughts that XP12 might be some time off yet) had to deal with the ~1,200 beta testers for the 744 (about 300 of which were online at the time) who were pinged minutes afterwards. Hopefully things improve over there.

Edited March 25, 2021 by mSparks

[Theboot100 404]

I think we will be pleasantly surprised with Xplane 12.

We know Lamineer have hired a bunch of artists so obviously autogen is going to be massively improved. While it may not be satellite imagery i think the autogen buildings, roads and airport quality will be on par with msfs autogen.

There should be a few new planes, and I think they will improve on the default systems for them (improved default fmc etc)

Austin would have played around with MSFS and seen its visual strengths.  So I would think the bland atmosphere will be gone, volumetric clouds will be in, smooth weather transitions and better wind modelling.

I will buy xplane 12 regardless of its improvements.  At the moment I've gone off 11 because to me the graphics seem bland, and when creating orthos ive struggled to get the roads and buildings looking correctly

As fun as helis are in vr, I also like good scenery when heli flying.

I think xplane 12 will be a major leap in visual quality.  Aerodynamics and systems don't really need much improvement

[Greazer 1,338]

1 hour ago, Theboot100 said:

There should be a few new planes, and I think they will improve on the default systems for them (improved default fmc etc)

Besides limited budget they always have massive problems managing priorities.

Lowest Priorities:  new planes, enhanced planes (hud's etc), flight model at speed of sound, GUI stuff, linux support, Glomo, missions, tutorials  etc.

[mSparks 2,092]

2 hours ago, Theboot100 said:

I think we will be pleasantly surprised with Xplane 12.

We know Lamineer have hired a bunch of artists so obviously autogen is going to be massively improved. While it may not be satellite imagery i think the autogen buildings, roads and airport quality will be on par with msfs autogen.

There should be a few new planes, and I think they will improve on the default systems for them (improved default fmc etc)

Austin would have played around with MSFS and seen its visual strengths.  So I would think the bland atmosphere will be gone, volumetric clouds will be in, smooth weather transitions and better wind modelling.

I will buy xplane 12 regardless of its improvements.  At the moment I've gone off 11 because to me the graphics seem bland, and when creating orthos ive struggled to get the roads and buildings looking correctly

As fun as helis are in vr, I also like good scenery when heli flying.

I think xplane 12 will be a major leap in visual quality.  Aerodynamics and systems don't really need much improvement

Thing is, while I have no doubt we should expect all of this in the future.

There is nothing to suggest we should expect any of this in the near future.

While at the same time, the last few fixes left to "perfect" XP11 grind on and on, week by week, month by month.

There is a non zero cost to that much uncertainty: A decent proportion of people hold off buying [into] things they dont think are "finished", especially if there is uncertainty about them actually being finished any time soon.

30 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Besides limited budget they always have massive problems managing priorities.

Lowest Priorities:  new planes, enhanced planes (hud's etc), flight model at speed of sound, GUI stuff, linux support, Glomo, missions, tutorials  etc.

This really isn't the forum to discuss Microsoft and Asobo's Flight simulator (and its not news Asobo don't have the budget for any of those nice things)

Edited March 25, 2021 by mSparks

[mjrhealth 822]

44 minutes ago, mSparks said:

This really isn't the forum to discuss Microsoft and Asobo's Flight simulator

No its not, but when did MS$ ever finish anything, FSX was left to the developers which did quiet well once it was no longer a moving platform, than was the next we will give you this tiny bit and you can pay for the rest ,a  that too fell on its face, now you all think the will give you all this for nothing, Nothing is ever free in this world and MS$ now have millions to return back to investors. I wonder when the trap is sprung.At least with XPLANE I know where its going, slowly but its getting there. Look at this way. as long as it is in development they are supporting it when its finished why would they bother.  its like the Tortoise and the Hare.Whos going to get tired first.

Edited March 25, 2021 by mjrhealth

[Theboot100 404]

54 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Besides limited budget they always have massive problems managing priorities.

Lowest Priorities:  new planes, enhanced planes (hud's etc), flight model at speed of sound, GUI stuff, linux support, Glomo, missions, tutorials  etc.

They may be lowest priorities but I would be pretty certain they would have some new planes.  New version - a few new default planes would be a must to make sales to the non hard core simmers.  Flight simming is about planes and not everybody installs mods etc

[Theboot100 404]

50 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Thing is, while I have no doubt we should expect all of this in the future.

There is nothing to suggest we should expect any of this in the near future.

While at the same time, the last few fixes left to "perfect" XP11 grind on and on, week by week, month by month.

Whilst Austin has been working on the graphical side he has hinted a few times there have been other things in progress and ready to release over the last couple years.

As its a jump in version and requiring a rebuy i think the plan would be to make some pretty major improvements

[jarmstro 2,405]

3 hours ago, Theboot100 said:

We know Lamineer have hired a bunch of artists so obviously autogen is going to be massively improved. While it may not be satellite imagery i think the autogen buildings, roads and airport quality will be on par with msfs autogen.

Better autogen will make a big difference. One area where OrbX beats MSFS for me is with the localised autogen. Even after the GB update for MSFS I still rail against the site of village cottages portrayed as office blocks. I can also live without satellite imagery as long as the textures are more regionalised and less repetitive than they are at present.

[Murmur 3,944]

8 hours ago, GoranM said:

You really haven't been reading the various X-Plane forums enough.  I promise you, the X-Plane community is constantly on X-Plane's back about things to fix and features to add.

Even the developers have meetings with LR to discuss what we want out of X-Plane.

Not only trolls, but uninformed trolls! 🤣 I agree with you that they're also funny to read, though.