Let's not accept the fact that FS is just a videogame now

[RXP 2,338]

@fogboundturtle I understand it might look this way, but it just look this way...

Like I've already explained to you (see below), it is not about Reality XP products or my ego: one WT member is explaining they are facing the very same limit I've kept "hammering" (your words) since the early beta:

I understand it is not easy to understand it all, because it is highly technical and I've built a unique expertise on Flight Simulator and X-Plane development for nearly 20 years. If is unique of course because it is mine, and every seasoned 3rd party developer has his/her own unique expertise as well. It is not a question of who has more "knowledge" or "authority" in these matters. However, I know for a fact, due to the nature of the Reality XP products, I've been building transversal understanding and orthogonal expertise on both main platforms SDK, and this can benefit every single 3rd party vendor, not just RXP.

Let me illustrate the uniqueness of this expertise with these short examples:

1) The RXP gauges can display in 32 bits high-res graphics without any impact whatsoever to the FPS. Other gauges are displaying in the SDK limit of 16bits colors.

Here is the trick: there is no hack to doing this with the RXP gauges, and they can do it from FS9 to P3D5... It is all there in the SDK already, but it takes reverse engineering the SDK implementation and the FS internals to know how to exploit this capability.

2) The RXP gauges can display alpha blended bitmaps with varying degree of blending (see integral lighting in our GTN and GNS V2). Other gauges are displaying either fully transparent or opaque.

Here is the trick: there is no hack either, it is all in the SDK already. It is all in the SDK provided again you know and understand the implementation details of the SDK.

3) The RXP gauges can display many different instances of the same gauge at different size, both in popup 2D windows and in the VC. Most other gauges are displaying one or the other (VC or popup), otherwise they incur a fps penalty (most of them).

Here is the trick again: there is no hack to doing this either. It is all in the SDK, again.

The question you might want to ask is how come only RXP gauges can do this kind of things.

 

54 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

I feel like most of your post are expressing bitterness toward Asobo because they didn't consider you and their approach is directly preventing  you from offering your product on MSFS. Something I am sure  you want to do. Isn't there anyway for you to do adapt and work the system ? I don't think MS and Asobo has any intention to ever make it an open system. 

You might find my posts are expressing a form of bitterness, and others might be feeling the same too. I can't judge your feelings and actually I thank you for sharing and being open with me. In a way I understand it looks like bitterness, but it is not, far from it. I'm actually really opening up about these subjects because I can't help considering sharing knowledge is paramount to elevating the debate.

In the end, as an end-user, you (not you but the generic you) might not care about all these fine details as long as the simulator is offering enough for what you're looking for. 3rd party come and go and this is just business after all. And I agree. However, the flight simulation community and the simmers in particular are not to me just like any other customers. They do care for the ecosystem and the platform, they do care for the 3rd party developers, they are smart and brilliant in most things aviation, and these forums are astonishingly raising the knowledge level it is always a pleasure every day learning from each other. I believe this is rather unique in the gaming world and this has been a compelling reason for me keeping doing it for the last 20 years full time. In other words, like you, I do care about the genre in general and the franchise in particular not just as a business, but as a simmer too. This might be the reason some of my comments are giving the impression of bitterness, because it is not easy to separate the personal concerns from the business interests, but there is no need to separate the two either when I'm merely describing and commenting on technical facts.

 

Edited March 25, 2021 by RXP

[Alpine Scenery 1,609]

13 minutes ago, honanhal said:

I understand frustration from people who are running into showstopping performance bugs, I really do. I'm all for calling out problems. But the "high-pitched" MSFS criticism you get here at Avsim just seems unmoored from reality at times. To take one example: think of how many times people here have implied or said explicitly that the performance bugs are a sign that Asobo is "deliberately dumbing MSFS down for the Xbox gamer crowd." Huh?

James

It's just life in general, people tend to bring out the most extreme arguments to try to win over others. I don't think they are doing that much "deliberately", and that's the issue. It's definitely a tough job, but there are extreme prioritization issues. I agree there is some real silliness in here at times, but (even that said)...

Let's take a step back for a moment, a step back in time that is...

Most of the original terrain spike bugs (not all) could have been solved by a simple file rollback (literally all they needed was to use their own backups), but while this was going on, it took them forever to even patch it, so we all had to use a mod. Before this incident, I didn't think they were doing a bad job on the releases, but this is where the releases started to go downhill.

At this point, if I am honest, the last 3-4 months are pretty bad in QC. We have terrain spike bugs, SDK bugs, CTD bugs, Autopilot bugs, and now a performance bug.

It's not like this stuff is occurring irregularly, but it's become the norm. Also, anyone that is involved on the development side knows they've done some crazy unnecessary updating to the SDK causing airport designers random problems (disappearing taxiways in Dev Mode is the latest bug), before that we had floating Aprons when trying to place them. Oh yah, we also have the excludes on vegetation stopped working.

Now these may seem minor, but imagine when you just finished placing 50 polygons, now you're taxiways disappear, and then trees start popping up all over the place after you already excluded them. There is also a new CTD bug where some things work fine in Dev mode, then crash with the compiled version.

That's a lot of ISSUES, they need to SLOW the releases down, it's that simple.

It doesn't matter if some people are not having any issues, but there is a lot more going on behind the scenes with some of us than just being casual sim users, especially with the dev side of it.

Edited March 25, 2021 by Alpine Scenery

[Bobsk8 12,788]

2 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

It's just life in general, people tend to bring out the most extreme arguments to try to win over others. I don't think they are doing that much "deliberately", and that's the issue. It's definitely a tough job, but there are extreme prioritization issues. I agree there is some real silliness in here at times, but (even that said)...

Let's take a step back for a moment, a step back in time that is...

Most of the original terrain spike bugs (not all) could have been solved by a simple file rollback (literally all they needed was to use their own backups), but while this was going on, it took them forever to even patch it, so we all had to use a mod. Before this incident, I didn't think they were doing a bad job on the releases, but this is where it really started to go downhill.

At this point, if I am honest, the last 3-4 months are pretty bad in QC. We have terrain spike bugs, SDK bugs, CTD bugs, Autopilot bugs, and now a performance bug.

It's not like this stuff is occurring irregularly, but it's become the norm. Also, anyone that is involved on the development side knows they've done some crazy unnecessary updates to the SDK causing airport designers random problems (disappearing taxiways in Dev Mode is the latest bug), before that we had floating Aprons when trying to place them. Oh yah, we also have the excludes on vegetation stopped working.

Now these may seem minor, but imagine when you just finished placing 50 polygons, now you're taxiways disappear, and then trees start popping up all over the place after you already excluded them. There is also a new CTD bug in Dev mode where you cannot use Aprons to display certain textures (still looking into that one).

That's a lot of ISSUES, they need to SLOW the releases down, it's that simple.

It doesn't matter if some people are not having any issues, but there is a lot more going on behind the scenes with some of us than just being casual sim users, especially with the dev side of it.

And they need to start beta testing these updates instead of having the users be the beta testers, which is the way it is currently. . 

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

@RXP I appreciate your honesty and I always knew your intention are good. Somethings the message doesn't always come across this way. I am been in IT for more than 25 year, now as a Solution Architect. I deal with very technical discussion every day. Since I've never worked in any of the flight sim SDK in the past, I have to rely on your expertise and experience. I love to have this really deep discussion about what an SDK can and cannot do as every day I hear someone telling me they can't do this or that but it's far from the truth. 

Based on what you are saying, you could make your RXP product works on MSFS but it wouldn't be the same experience.  Sometimes we have to adapt to a less than ideal situation. I wouldn't care if I didn't get pop-pup or less transparency in order to have a working GTN650/750 stack.  

[omarsmak30 4,068]

55 minutes ago, Chock said:

And the funny thing is, people just don't learn. All of this whining about this and that with MSFS is something which occurs with every simulator. Frankly, if you searched through the Avsim archives, grabbed a post from six months after the release of literally any version of Microsoft Flight Simulator from the past 20 years, then went through it and changed the text from FSX/FS2002 etc to MSFS, changed the word Aces to Asobo, then put today's date on it and pasted it this forum, I'd defy anyone to spot the difference.

I think is normal, not only in the flight sim world, even in technology aspect. When people are getting used to certain way of doing things for long and then you introduce something completely new, the other reaction starts. Just like how OSGi vs containers 😄. 

 

[FlyBaby 659]

1 hour ago, honanhal said:

I understand frustration from people who are running into showstopping performance bugs, I really do. I'm all for calling out problems. But the "high-pitched" MSFS criticism you get here at Avsim just seems unmoored from reality at times. To take one example: think of how many times people here have implied or said explicitly that the performance bugs are a sign that Asobo is "deliberately dumbing MSFS down for the Xbox gamer crowd." Huh?

If you understand the frustration, then you can understand that in the absence of real answers, people will come to their own conclusion.

There have been alpha testers claiming that MSFS looked better / farther view distance in the pre released version of MSFS. Now folk are seeing both declining performance and shorter view distance since the release of MSFS.

Do you have an answer for this??? No...then don't look to criticize...the critics.

 

 

[sightseer 895]

@RXP -  I agree completely with @fogboundturtle.  I really think you are too close to your own products.  I doubt that most RXP users care about alpha blending.  I just want gauges that act like the real gauge so that I can learn how to use them.  I'm not a real pilot and I'm not going to be and I don't want to always take flight simulation as seriously as some seem to need to.

I like to fly and I think its important that gauges be as realistic as possible but not that perfection should be the enemy of the good.  These other developers like PMDG and Aerosoft and the working Title people seem to have found ways to come close enough and it'd be a shame that you would choose perfect perfection over just having gauges that are better than what we have now.

I for one don't even try to make it "real" because I already know the gauges aren't anything I can learn from so I just fly.  

[FlyBaby 659]

1 hour ago, RXP said:

@fogboundturtle I understand it might look this way, but it just look this way...

Like I've already explained to you (see below), it is not about Reality XP products or my ego: one WT member is explaining they are facing the very same limit I've kept "hammering" (your words) since the early beta:

 

 

Without understanding all of the "ins and outs" of the technical issues here, I sincerely hope that you are able to resolve the issues with MSFS...

...of the hundreds of dollars that I spent on P3D addons, the GTN 750 was the best addon and worth every cent. I would really like to see 3PDev Garmin systems in MSFS.

[Ricardo41 5,958]

I love the statement "the sdk isn't ready."

The sdk is ready as soon as an addon developer realizes the huge gap between his aspirations and his (emptying) bank account. 

Btw, someone is already working on a GTN 750; if I were Reality XP or flight1 I'd step on the pedal.

[MrFuzzy 2,120]

I am sorry to have generated a thread polluted by negativity and some flames, I wish the community were more compact and everybody realized that if Asobo improves the sim, the sim will be better for everyone, simmers and casual gamers, quad core and ninja PC owners, and in the future XBOX gamers (ewwwwww - no, I'm joking!) 

I am a whiner, an elitist, an extremist, I have a middle age crisis about a videogame 🙂 I am sure that I am a bit of all these things, I take all these names and stick then to me, but in return, please watch this video recorded on September 2, 2020. I have not searched hard for it, it's most probably not the best video on the very first release of FS to the public... I was just looking for tips for the A320 autopilot.

Please watch this video and tell me, honestly, what you think about the development of the sim. Tell me if in your opinion FS 2020 is now much better than then in terms of graphics, draw distance, objects pop-in, smoothness, aircraft functionality. The guy had a 9900K with a 2080 Ti.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 25, 2021 by MrFuzzy

[sightseer 895]

7 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

There have been alpha testers claiming that MSFS looked better / farther view distance in the pre released version of MSFS.

I've heard these same people say that the shot with the Cessna in the mountains is from that same period.  Everyone should look at what I suspect are deciduous trees in that pic.  They are nothing but round blobs.  I dont think thats anything to aspire to.

What I cant get over is how in PG areas, even with LOD set to 100, you can still see things to an extreme distance but yet in autogen only areas, especially in the mountains, the view distance is much much shorter.

 

[honanhal 1,420]

55 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

It's just life in general, people tend to bring out the most extreme arguments to try to win over others. I don't think they are doing that much "deliberately", and that's the issue. It's definitely a tough job, but there are extreme prioritization issues. I agree there is some real silliness in here at times, but (even that said)...

That's a lot of ISSUES, they need to SLOW the releases down, it's that simple.

These are reasonable points and a coherent argument! I don’t necessarily disagree. But none of that has any bearing on the question of “is this a sim or a GAME,” etc. which seems to be where this discussion goes very quickly...

[RXP 2,338]

3 hours ago, fogboundturtle said:

Based on what you are saying, you could make your RXP product works on MSFS but it wouldn't be the same experience.  Sometimes we have to adapt to a less than ideal situation. I wouldn't care if I didn't get pop-pup or less transparency in order to have a working GTN650/750 stack.  

I agree with you. Unlike what some are saying I'm not refraining from changing at all, on the contrary: I've been advocating they drop entirely the antiquated FSX "look alike: SDK bridge from the last 12 months in the private FS2020 3rd party dev forum...

In this specific context, adapting the GTN to the the situation would be:

- A gauge displaying the GTN screen only if you pre-bake the gauge in the 3D model, otherwise a global popup via the "tab bar".

- A user interaction lagging when dragging the mouse on the screen, with possible lockups for unknown duration (no latency/throughput guarantees when using the SDK "pipes" like Simconnect).

- No connection to the aircraft autopilot whatsoever, unless specifically coded by the 3rd party aircraft vendor, and even then, the A/P coupling flying like a FS2020 route, not like a Garmin route.

- No link to to the HSI and/or VOR gauges on the panel, unless again specifically coded by the 3rd party aircraft vendor.

- There are few more items related to performance where juts bliting the GTN screen is taking about 10x more resources than in all other flight simulator versions (all done in CPU with them, I don't count XP11 where we can directly draw in the simulator 3D rendering context...)

 

Edited March 25, 2021 by RXP

[OneOfMany 317]

22 minutes ago, MrFuzzy said:

I am sorry to have generated a thread

Well, that was the problem on this forum from what I am gathering 😜

[honanhal 1,420]

57 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

If you understand the frustration, then you can understand that in the absence of real answers, people will come to their own conclusion.

There have been alpha testers claiming that MSFS looked better / farther view distance in the pre released version of MSFS. Now folk are seeing both declining performance and shorter view distance since the release of MSFS.

Do you have an answer for this??? No...then don't look to criticize...the critics.

The obvious answer is that Asobo has been making mistakes. No more, no less. Of course I’m going to criticize the critics if their arguments are incoherent. Seriously, what’s the theory? Complete this sentence: Asobo has been deliberately making performance worse because...