13th April 2021 Developer Q&A: Begins at 10:30 AM PST

[Christopher Low 5,416]

On 4/13/2021 at 6:58 PM, pstrub said:

World update 5: The Nordics: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland

What about the Faroe Islands?

[pstrub 998]

Just now, Christopher Low said:

What about the Faroe Islands?

As they're technically a part of Denmark, hopefully they're gonna get some love now... I think they mentioned some improvements for them too in the video, but I'm not sure and I'm not going to watch the video again now 😅

[DaWu 779]

After listening to Jörgs yalalala about how awesome online traffic will be in 2087 when they have all the liveries in the sim, he still don’t understand why offline ai traffic is better and more important. When I start simming in 23pm at an airport like Eddf where all traffic stops between 22-5 my airport will be a death valley even if I set ingame time to 12am. Completely useless. Live traffic and and live weather are gimmicks that sound cool but are pointless and contraproductive for everyone flying with async real and sim clock. 
 

Jörg PLEASE support the AIG guys. allowing them make an awesome ai traffic

[RXP 2,338]

On 4/14/2021 at 8:57 AM, MattNischan said:

All the love in the world to Jean-Luc

Thanks! truly appreciated!

On 4/14/2021 at 8:57 AM, MattNischan said:

He is correct, sometimes mesh topology is not retained with great accuracy when reduced in detail throughout the processing pipeline. However, maintaining roughly equivalent looking mesh topology while automatically decreasing vertex detail is seriously a PhD whitepaper level issue that has been studied extensively for three+ decades without a globally usable answer. No technique works equally well for all mesh shapes, and you can get some truly bizarro results sometimes.

This is indeed a difficult engineering problem and I'd be speculating in saying the following but maybe one of the main constraint they are having is due to how they're using the data source in the simulator itself. For example when looking at the wireframe view over a flat region, you can clearly see how the mesh is simply divided into quads (2x triangles). In the latest version there was another bug with LOD ring distance which doesn't adjust by COS(LAT). In short, the closer to the poles, the shorter the LOD rings. If you're then reducing poly count along an axis aligned grid of quads, and you're doing so too close to the point of view because of the bug, you can't avoid both saw tooth patterns on the coastlines and shape morphing LOD changes.

Like you're saying, there might be other ways to "mesh" the ground so that you can clusterize higher density mesh where needed and eventually, with a "defined matching boundary", retain higher LOD details for the clusters even if you use lower LOD details around. This would alleviate some of the shape-morphing problems while keeping the principles of optimizing rendering in reducing poly count. FS2020 is already "aware" of TIN mesh topologies but I don't know to which extent they are using this for the ground and if this is even helping whatsoever (shape preserving and/or performance). The devil is in the details though, therefore this won't optimize much anything if you're flying in the middle of the Alps because there, all the surrounding terrain will keep high poly count anyhow.

Nevertheless, XP11 is not immune from the same problem (like any terrain render engine) but I suspect it is less visible because they do keep LOD distance rings higher than FS2020 (there is a bug in FS2020 I've been documenting - sqrt(LOD) - which a dev confirmed to me was peculiar and warrant for further investigations).

On 4/14/2021 at 8:57 AM, MattNischan said:

Yes, he points out one such solution, but as any modeler will tell you, they've used them all, and they all are just swapping different evils. You do the best you can, but with a sample size the size of the whole world, I'm not sure there even is a good answer

This solution, Simplygon (is this what you're referring to?) was acquired by Microsoft nearly 4 years ago and might help indeed. It is also now a standard technology in the Xbox dev toolbox. I'm suggesting this one because I've been told they are not using it in FS2020 runtime. I've also been told they could have used it for something in the Bing map processing a while back but it might no longer be used anymore there either.

This doesn't tell whether it wasn't able to help for this specific tessellation problem though, just that they are not using it, and given this technology is meant for this, and much more (like distant impostors for vegetation and buildings to name a few), it might be worth it evaluating it for this specific tessellation need, especially if it wasn't evaluated yet.

I agree with you, there is no good answer, but like other users are saying in this topic and elsewhere, it was better prior. This still begs the question whether the changes leading to this apparent lower visual fidelity are also a side-effect of optimizations done mostly for raising the performance and if this is just a case of the cursor begin too far on one side in the balancing act between the two, or whether this is a bug they are already working on, or if this is an issue they are not really aware of the root causes at all yet.

I've no doubt they are talented engineers and they'll solve this problem in due time. I also believe for now the rendering engine won't change much on PC because it is the stale DX11 branch (they've kept evading night lighting questions in previous Q&A with something along the lines of "they guy responsible for rendering engine changes is on another project"). Once the DX12 branch becomes mainstream and releases, I'm certain ground rendering will see some major changes.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

1 hour ago, RXP said:

Thanks! truly appreciated!

...oh. I guess, that's why I thought the avatar looked familiar.

1 hour ago, RXP said:

Once the DX12 branch becomes mainstream and releases, I'm certain ground rendering will see some major changes.

I sure hope so. Even if the DirectX 12 release will probably come with tons of new issues on its own, limiting development of the PC version to one render path could lead to better overall stability and performance in the long term. I'm seeing a growing amount of small visual glitches that I keep reporting to Zendesk without a fix in sight.

It might not be too long from now. Sim Update 4 arrives in June, Martial mentioned lots of optimisations for the patches succeeding Sim Update 4, and the Xbox release is still slated for summer. Although, I'm afraid they will repeat their mistake of obsoleting several GPUs meeting the minimum requirements without any sort of prior notice. They really should be doing that already, considering the awful situation of the GPU market.

[marsman2020 1,310]

I really enjoyed the updates to the turboprop behavior that they showed in the Q&A this week, as well as the flight testing of the C172, which is fulfilling something that was promised in a prior Q&A in response to the long thread on the official forums about the flight model.

Some of these regressions like the tree draw distance, water climbing up hills, etc are particularly frustrating when it's clear these aspects were better at launch. 

I appreciate that Sebastian and Martial are busy and any time they spend on Q&As is time taking away from managing/overseeing things like arranging flight testing or fixing turboprop logic. 

It might not be the most effective use of their time to spend a lot of additional time prepping for the Q&A vs doing other things to move the sim along.

I guess the one suggestion I might have (and I should probably find an appropriate venue to voice this vs just here on AVSIM) might be to create an Asobo "counterpart" position to Jayne.  Someone who could dig into some of these technical things and provide details, read the forum threads where needed and make sure everyone is on the same page, spend more time reviewing the Q&A questions and marshaling the technical answers ahead of time, without taking the leadership away from doing their roles.  Call it the Community Technical Liaison or something.

Edited April 16, 2021 by marsman2020

[Dominique_K 10,152]

10 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

Although, I'm afraid they will repeat their mistake of obsoleting several GPUs meeting the minimum requirements without any sort of prior notice. T

If they do that  I see a class action coming their way, they cannot sell a product and make it obsolete within a year to push and sell their own hardware, the box.

10 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

Even if the DirectX 12 release will probably come with tons of new issues on its own, limiting development of the PC version to one render path could lead to better overall stability and performance in the long term.

 

Common sense would have been to concentrate on steadily improving the Dx11 version once it was decided to go that way before the release. MFS is not anymore a toy for mad  engineers to tweak at their heart content  but a product the user expects working the way it was sold.

EDIT « mad » engineers being said tongue-in-cheek of course

Edited April 16, 2021 by Dominique_K

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

7 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

It might not be the most effective use of their time to spend a lot of additional time prepping for the Q&A vs doing other things to move the sim along.

If it were that much to hamper progress on development then of course, but it wouldn't hurt to dedicate a couple of minutes to checking out each question and maybe take a few notes, instead of relying on a long read-out by Jayne every time. Too many times a question has not been answered correctly, which has sometimes taken a slot in the following Q&A.

Either way, the next Q&A will be with guided questions, so they will be preparing their answers again presumably.

7 hours ago, marsman2020 said:

create an Asobo "counterpart" position to Jayne.

That would be Olie, Jayne has literally called him her "counterpart at Asobo". He doesn't interact a lot with the community though, so I presume he is mostly busy with behind-the-scenes stuff, particularly the bug tracker considering his forum activity.

2 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Common sense would have been to concentrate on steadily improving the Dx11 version once it was decided to go that way before the release

It is a difficult situation. I wouldn't want old hardware to stand in the way of progress, especially if DirectX 12 can bring some sweet improvements, but since they already knew they would be upgrading the engine to DirectX 12 in 2019, they kind of dug their own hole by listing the GTX 770 in the minimum requirements.

They could avoid obsoleting these GPUs by including fallback rendering methods to ensure compatibility with Direct3D feature level 11_0, but based on responses by the support agents, that seems unlikely. The uproar over the flickering clouds was enough to get them to change their mind then, but probably not nearly enough to lead to the news being spread outside the official forums, or to class action.

Either way, the fact that they're not talking about this matter yet shows a complete lack of decency. It's not like nowadays one can upgrade to a cheap $100 GPU from eBay, and laptop owners are particularly screwed (most complaining about the flickering clouds were using laptops with GeForce 900 series mobile GPUs that were using the older GM107 chip).

Edited April 16, 2021 by ChaoticBeauty

[Dominique_K 10,152]

3 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

If it were that much to hamper progress on development then of course, but it wouldn't hurt to dedicate a couple of minutes to checking out each question and maybe take a few notes, instead of relying on a long read-out by Jayne every time. Too many times a question has not been answered correctly, which has sometimes taken a slot in the following Q&A.

Either way, the next Q&A will be with guided questions, so they will be preparing their answers again presumably.

 

It is a difficult situation. I wouldn't want old hardware to stand in the way of progress, especially if DirectX 12 can bring some sweet improvements, but since they already knew they would be upgrading the engine to DirectX 12 in 2019, they kind of dug their own hole by listing the GTX 770 in the minimum requirements.

They could avoid obsoleting these GPUs by including fallback rendering methods to ensure compatibility with Direct3D feature level 11_0, but based on responses by the support agents, that seems unlikely.  

Either way, the fact that they're not talking about this matter yet shows a complete lack of decency. It's not like nowadays one can upgrade to a cheap $100 GPU from eBay, and laptop owners are particularly screwed (most complaining about the flickering clouds were using laptops with GeForce 900 series mobile GPUs that were using the older GM107 chip).

That  puts into question the continuing improvement paradigm which shows more and more its limitation. I didn't like it much in P3D. It gets ridiculous (if not obnoxious) in MFS, a seemingly perpetual instability and now maybe hardware obsolescence. Changing version every three years would allow users with older hardware to still have the older sim.  At least the P3D team introduced DX12 in a new version. Users could fall back on version 4.

Considering what the GPU and CPU markets will be for months, maybe a couple of years ahead, obsoleting a range of GPU would mean only one thing, hard selling their Xbox. They would be treading on dangerous grounds  legally speaking, in my opinion. 

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

6 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

That  puts into question the continuing improvement paradigm which shows more and more its limitation. I didn't like it much in P3D. It gets ridiculous (if not obnoxious) in MFS, a seemingly perpetual instability and now maybe hardware obsolescence. Changing version every three years would allow users with older hardware to still have the older sim.  At least the P3D team introduced DX12 in a new version. Users could fall back on version 4.

The sad truth is that this change would only affect people using a GPU released in 2015 or before (personally I think the engine improvements will stop at DirectX 12 and the optional ray-tracing, marking Maxwell 2.0 the minimum requirement for the rest of the simulator's life), which means that the affected group is almost insignificant compared to the rest of the playerbase. Complaining about the flickering clouds outside the relevant bug report threads (in the rest of the official forums and Steam/Reddit/whatever) resulted in mockery from those with newer hardware not experiencing the issue.

Especially with the current situation of the GPU market it's going to be really nasty for those affected, and it's sad that Asobo do not seem to care. I'm not sure if it has to do with the new Xbox though, they've already broken the game once for older hardware under the DirectX 11 render path, and Jörg said they were still considering support for the Xbox One, which is essentially PC hardware from 2013 or so. There are several ways to ensure a smooth transition for the PC version, but based on their track record, I'm afraid it's going to be anything but smooth.