X-Plane Technology Preview One

[jarmstro 2,405]

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

Some people have different opinions its true, luckily for everyone LR didn't and don't listen to such minority voices.

But also, you might be referring to the potential introduction of high resolution oil drums in around XP v11.2ish, which really didn't go down well with anyone while the sim was struggling to make 20fps on the vast majority of users machines and had almost as many flight model bugs as MSFS has now.

Those oil drums, iirc, were referred to as "unnecessary eye candy" at that time and in the context of what LR should be concentrating theiir efforts on at that time.

Having lived through that pain is the #1 reason I dont want to go through it again with another flight sim, MS or otherwise.

 

 

No I was was, for example, referring to the fact that people such as you have, for eight months been posting screen shots arguing that X-Planes visuals and lighting were already without equal and beautiful to behold. And that eye candy was of no importance in a serious simulator. Need me to post some links?😂

Edited June 2, 2021 by jarmstro

[mSparks 2,094]

25 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

Many aspects have simply been neglected, particularly on the visual side.

As @jarmstro noticed, "the visual side" was completely deprioritised by everyone as long as visual performance was unsatisfactory, but this wasn't a lack of resources or any dislike for good visuals - it was a conscious decision coming simply from an understanding that getting more people kicked off vatsim for having less than 20fps in favour of more detailed grass wasn't in anyones interest.

There would be more truth in me proclaiming "Asobo ignored helicopters" - because the math and physics involved in a helicopter flight model is enough to make Ramanujan's bum squeek, and apparently they are a long way off even something comparatively super simple like the C172 and adverse yaw.

All these visuals (and a lot more) are mostly "solved problems", they will take time:- but nothing like the amount of time from XP11.10 till now, or the time and investment Asobo still has to make if they truly want to win over us rotorheads.

[FlyBaby 659]

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

As @jarmstro noticed, "the visual side" was completely deprioritised by everyone as long as visual performance was unsatisfactory, but this wasn't a lack of resources or any dislike for good visuals - it was a conscious decision coming simply from an understanding that getting more people kicked off vatsim for having less than 20fps in favour of more detailed grass wasn't in anyones interest.

 

No, this doesn't work...XP has been in the market for how long??? It was a decision to ignore what the users were asking for. Austin himself talked about the clouds being not so good "years" ago. He simply did not make the visuals a priority.

In a podcast he mentioned that he started looking at performance improvement when a large client requested it, but the general user base had been doing so for years.

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

There would be more truth in me proclaiming "Asobo ignored helicopters" - because the math and physics involved in a helicopter flight model is enough to make Ramanujan's bum squeek, and apparently they are a long way off even something comparatively super simple like the C172 and adverse yaw.

All these visuals (and a lot more) are mostly "solved problems", they will take time:- but nothing like the amount of time from XP11.10 till now, or the time and investment Asobo still has to make if they truly want to win over us rotorheads.

Lets stay away from any Asobo / MSFS reference. The unofficial gatekeepers start whining here in these threads blaming folk for comparison debates that get threads locked..

LR is now being more reactive as opposed to proactive. Making excuses now as to why LR chose to ignore the graphics side for so long does not sweep a half decade of  cloud neglect under the rug.

To me, Austin has always taken a rather arrogant position with regard to what the users were asking for vs. what "he" wanted in the sim that "he" was selling to those users. His comments in the 17 (I believe) sim conference show this. In the 19 flight "sim" conference he was showcasing his "plane" project. He just seemed generally disconnected from what users wanted.

Now...if the new lighting is the start of more visual advancements, then that is a good thing. But again, to me, he is just reacting. As I have always said, I am not sure if there will be a substantial user base to support continued XP development after any official release.

Sim development (flight, train, racing) is seemingly never done...that intitial release is just the start, and users are now looking for consistent development / updates / improvements after the release. And we are just at a teaser video here with XP...

 

Edited June 2, 2021 by FlyBaby

[mSparks 2,094]

2 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

XP has been in the market for how long?

26 years.

4 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

He simply did not make the visuals a priority.

 

Actually, visuals were always one of the main attractions for professional sims like Aerowinx, where they would use Aerowinx for the aircraft simulation and X-Plane for the visuals, X-Plane visuals have always been first class for the hardware available of the day.

7 minutes ago, FlyBaby said:

Making excuses now as to why LR chose to ignore the graphics side for so long does not sweep a half decade of  cloud neglect under the rug.

better than xplane default clouds for daily flight sim use still doesn't exist, I've actually got a PM I still have to answer on the org asking/questioning how to bring ECE onto par with them. They were and are "good enough" for the most part, at least as far as flight sim goes. 

"Better" needs (I hope now past tense - needed) a complete rewrite from scratch, and I can tell you they exact day people really first started asking for that, because I was there:

January 19th, 2019

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/168657-ace-combat-7-weather-shows-x-plane-what-its-missing/&

Not exactly the "half decade" you proclaim.

[GoranM 3,799]

2 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

No, this doesn't work...XP has been in the market for how long??? It was a decision to ignore what the users were asking for. Austin himself talked about the clouds being not so good "years" ago. He simply did not make the visuals a priority.

In a podcast he mentioned that he started looking at performance improvement when a large client requested it, but the general user base had been doing so for years.

Lets stay away from any Asobo / MSFS reference. The unofficial gatekeepers start whining here in these threads blaming folk for comparison debates that get threads locked..

LR is now being more reactive as opposed to proactive. Making excuses now as to why LR chose to ignore the graphics side for so long does not sweep a half decade of  cloud neglect under the rug.

To me, Austin has always taken a rather arrogant position with regard to what the users were asking for vs. what "he" wanted in the sim that "he" was selling to those users. His comments in the 17 (I believe) sim conference show this. In the 19 flight "sim" conference he was showcasing his "plane" project. He just seemed generally disconnected from what users wanted.

Now...if the new lighting is the start of more visual advancements, then that is a good thing. But again, to me, he is just reacting. As I have always said, I am not sure if there will be a substantial user base to support continued XP development after any official release.

Sim development (flight, train, racing) is seemingly never done...that intitial release is just the start, and users are now looking for consistent development / updates / improvements after the release. And we are just at a teaser video here with XP...

 

You seem to really dislike everything about X-Plane…except, apparently…the night lighting.  As Tony said earlier, if you don’t like X-Plane, move along and let the rest of us discuss it and enjoy it. 
I’lll get back to you when the video hits a million views. Will that make you happy?

[FlyBaby 659]

5 hours ago, mSparks said:

 

26 years.

 

Actually, visuals were always one of the main attractions for professional sims like Aerowinx, where they would use Aerowinx for the aircraft simulation and X-Plane for the visuals, X-Plane visuals have always been first class for the hardware available of the day.

 

After 26 years, you earlier described XPs stock visuals as making your eyes bleed, and now they have been first class for the hardware available....You can certainly put a spin on things...

With regard to clouds...hey I applaud any effort and supported X-Enviro through all of their versions. But they never really looked all that great, and the performance hit was too much to enjoy.

I just don't see how LR let that slip regardless...there have been 3rd party cloud Devs trying to improve them for years, and LR was aware that the clouds didn't go to the horizon since XP10s release.

Edited June 3, 2021 by FlyBaby

[mjrhealth 835]

6 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

After 26 years, you earlier described XPs stock visuals as making your eyes bleed, and now they have been first class for the hardware available....You can certainly put a spin on things...

With regard to clouds...hey I applaud any effort and supported X-Enviro through all of their versions. But they never really looked all that great, and the performance hit was too much to enjoy.

I just don't see how LR let that slip regardless...there have been 3rd party cloud Devs trying to improve them for years, and LR was aware that the clouds didn't go to the horizon since XP10s release.

Ho Hummmmmmm. Another stuck record. Should go to SSD they dont get stuck they have no moving parts.

[strider1 575]

6 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

After 26 years, you earlier described XPs stock visuals as making your eyes bleed, and now they have been first class for the hardware available....You can certainly put a spin on things...

With regard to clouds...hey I applaud any effort and supported X-Enviro through all of their versions. But they never really looked all that great, and the performance hit was too much to enjoy.

I just don't see how LR let that slip regardless...there have been 3rd party cloud Devs trying to improve them for years, and LR was aware that the clouds didn't go to the horizon since XP10s release.

Enough is enough, put a sock in it already! It's pretty obvious you hate XP with a passion. Do you have any other hobbies?  

[jcomm 5,997]

For sure guys !

It's really Great News !

As you all know, MFS was the drop in a filled cup regarding total disappointment with flight simulation.

After the dismay with MFS, no news regarding XP, ELITE dropping their PC-based v9, ... I really decided it was time to get away from stress and take a good vacation away from flight simulation. R/C is one of the alternatives too, and I found Murmur got interested in it, and it's actually a step ahead of me 🙂

In the past week though, there were two important news - PSX having a deal with Aerosoft for the feed of it's yearly, maybe monthly in the future, NavData and this excellent news regarding XP12 !

Maybe I'll return to flight simulation somewhere in 2022 !!!

 

 

Edited June 3, 2021 by jcomm

[mSparks 2,094]

8 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

You can certainly put a spin on things...

No spin, both

8 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

XPs stock visuals as making your eyes bleed

and

On 6/2/2021 at 4:37 AM, Greazer said:

this little preview.   XP11 + xVision does the same (or better). 

are true enough.

Where things are weak, there have been solid 3PD replacements for a long time. LR always encouraged this.

8 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

But they never really looked all that great, and the performance hit was too much to enjoy.

Because not having the performance hit required "next gen" graphics API. The tech able to draw volumetric clouds like EC/XE and Trusky has been around for years - but the underlying graphics API and hardware needed to make it good enough for mainstream use have only been maturing for a year or two - only available to everyone for normal use in XP since January (and AMD still don't have their ducks together) - and still a vague promise of sometime in the next year or two for MSFS maybe.

Ace Combat 7 was the first title to get it working at altitude in a production release, but to get it working they had to make significant sacrifices (like - their clouds don't blow around in the wind either, and in VR they only have a very very limited set of weather, which is always the same)

Edited June 3, 2021 by mSparks

[efis007 899]

Can anyone explain to me what that video shows? 

"New lighting system" ..... where ?? ... when ?? ... but what is there to see ?? ... it's the usual XP11 ever!
In the video they only changed the sky textures and reduced the raleigh value with the art controls (it gives the illusion that the setting sun is stronger and shines more).
All the effects in the video can already be obtained now, just use custom sky textures, play with the art controls, and emphasize gamma and lighting with Reshade.

XP12 new light technology?
Nope.... XP11 conventional.

I am a fan of XPlane.
But that video offended me, it's ridiculous, it proved absolute nothing. 👎

[Humpty 751]

20 hours ago, FlyBaby said:

I have always felt that XPs "night" lighting is awesome (even the traffic lighting), especially low level flying with Helis at night.

Yep the night lighting is awesome , what i am meant is the daytime 

[rka 916]

The shadows seem improved as well. The wing shadow is visible on the fuselage where it is not with the old engine for example. Also I think they are not so extremely jagged anymore.

 

[Biology 1,347]

2 hours ago, efis007 said:

Can anyone explain to me what that video shows? 

"New lighting system" ..... where ?? ... when ?? ... but what is there to see ?? ... it's the usual XP11 ever!
In the video they only changed the sky textures and reduced the raleigh value with the art controls (it gives the illusion that the setting sun is stronger and shines more).
All the effects in the video can already be obtained now, just use custom sky textures, play with the art controls, and emphasize gamma and lighting with Reshade.

XP12 new light technology?
Nope.... XP11 conventional.
I am a fan of XPlane.
But that video offended me, it's ridiculous, it proved absolute nothing. 👎

I'm 100% sure you can't replicate those real-time reflections in the teaser with any add-on in X-Plane 11. Not even mentioning that the sky in the teaser video is shader-based / procedural, not bitmap-based like X-Plane 11. In fact, there is no way to get X-Plane 11 sky look like that with any sky color set, as X-Plane 11 only uses a small portion (horizontal FOV is less than 45 degrees) of the sky color bitmaps. Basically, this is a lot more than playing with art controls.

Edited June 3, 2021 by Ray Proudfoot
Edited to remove embedded images in quoted post.

[FlyBaby 659]

7 hours ago, mSparks said:

are true enough.

Where things are weak, there have been solid 3PD replacements for a long time. LR always encouraged this.

 

But that is the issue, relying on 3PD Devs to do things that should be there "stock" out of the box. I don't think many people want to buy a sim, and rely on 3PD Devs for basic things like clouds, and decent looking water.

 

7 hours ago, mSparks said:

Because not having the performance hit required "next gen" graphics API. The tech able to draw volumetric clouds like EC/XE and Trusky has been around for years - but the underlying graphics API and hardware needed to make it good enough for mainstream use have only been maturing for a year or two - only available to everyone for normal use in XP since January (and AMD still don't have their ducks together) - and still a vague promise of sometime in the next year or two for MSFS maybe.

Ace Combat 7 was the first title to get it working at altitude in a production release, but to get it working they had to make significant sacrifices (like - their clouds don't blow around in the wind either, and in VR they only have a very very limited set of weather, which is always the same)

There will always be limitations as to how good the weather can be....but clouds not reaching the horizon is an issue that other Devs were able to solve years ago without the performance hit.

And its not just the clouds, the night lighting (although great) turns on in sections ahead of you like a little man is running in front of your plane (several miles out) switching on power grids.

There are several things that LR could have improved over the years (stock) without having to rely on 3P addon (payware or freeware).

Again, I don't think that many folk want to keep chasing rainbows for "basic" things after the initial purchase on freeware / payware sites. Especially if the Dev is not going to add / improve things on a consistent basis.

And as you said, LR has been at this for 26 years...

Edited June 3, 2021 by FlyBaby