@Janov - well,

VORs have mag, not true, reference, that the operators maintain as current as possible.

See, i.e. : https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/avs/offices/afx/afs/afs400/parc/parc_reco/media/2016/160422PARCMagVarVORRecs.pdf

There's the NOAA source for the magnetic field grid you can build, at chosen Lat and Lon step sizes, as well as date step sizes.

Aerowinx PSX uses this: https://aerowinx.com/board/index.php?topic=6290.msg68021#msg68021

Edited August 5, 20214 yr by jcomm

3 hours ago, tutmeister said:

Nearly every modern game(and lets face it, not so modern games) has plenty of scope to adjust graphics and I think that the tech support cop out is pretty pathetic for a modern high end simulator.

It's a modern high end simulator but the development team is tiny compared to modern AAA games. Look at the size of a developer outfit for the two games I'm playing now, Stellaris and one of the Total War games. Paradox has something like 560 employees, Creative Assembly has 800 employees. Some of the other AAA studios in the FPS and MMO genres are even larger.

Last I heard, Laminar Research has 24 employees (plus a few outsourced devs). That's more like a small studio indie game developer. You usually won't find elaborate graphics settings for that kind of game because it's too difficult to test and support. 

One other thing -- burying the settings in a config file allows Laminar to include things they're really not crazy about, but that some users still want. Like the "art" controls. Ben has deprecated the use of that, but it's still there (last time I looked) for those who want to mess with it, on a "you're on your own" basis. 

 

3 hours ago, Janov said:

I don´t think it is that outdated right now. I updated it about 5 years ago for Austin and I picked a (predictive) date in the future...I don´t quite remember, but I believe I put it 10 years in the future, so it should get more accurate still for another few years. Of course the actual movement of the field was just a forecast, a scientific guess.

The data in the navdata packages is just referenced to true north...and should not be affected by magnetic declination at all. Even the azimuth for ILS localizers that is nowadays coded in the navdata is referenced to true north, not magnetic. The one thing that is referenced to magnetic is the charting - so if you use old charts, the magnetic information on it will not be accurate anymore.

Nevertheless - having this updateable would be awesome!

 

Some Devs were complaining the Magnetic Declination was Hardcoded in XP11, and with not so precise 10x10 grid. They wanted something more up to date, also updatable as well. I Sent Austin with the Suggestion, which he replied, asking for some help. Hope this gets implemented, I also asked him to make it user updateable! Let's wait and see

15 hours ago, Paraffin said:

One other thing -- burying the settings in a config file allows Laminar to include things they're really not crazy about, but that some users still want. Like the "art" controls. Ben has deprecated the use of that, but it's still there (last time I looked) for those who want to mess with it, on a "you're on your own" basis. 

I agree that advanced controls and settings that can break the sim should be buried and at users own risk. But come on, not separating out things like, trees, buildings, roads, cars and detail distance is pretty basic and will allow some fine tuning based on your performance and aesthetic preferences without having to reboot the sim every time.

Also simple things like wanting to set max draw distance, but no cars or birds or deer or balloons etc was easy in XP10 and impossible in XP11 without doing some online research and then hacking away at some files. That is more likely to break a sim that a bunch of sliders. Another case of real simmers need to have arcane knowledge to change settings and making things more complicated to new users than necessary. Accessibility is about making clear sliders with good descriptions of what they do, again like nearly every other game out there.

Customers that will max every slider will max every slider whether they are individual or one master slider.

Edited August 6, 20214 yr by tutmeister

22 hours ago, Paraffin said:

It's a modern high end simulator but the development team is tiny compared to modern AAA games. Look at the size of a developer outfit for the two games I'm playing now, Stellaris and one of the Total War games. Paradox has something like 560 employees, Creative Assembly has 800 employees. Some of the other AAA studios in the FPS and MMO genres are even larger.

Last I heard, Laminar Research has 24 employees (plus a few outsourced devs). That's more like a small studio indie game developer. You usually won't find elaborate graphics settings for that kind of game because it's too difficult to test and support. 

One other thing -- burying the settings in a config file allows Laminar to include things they're really not crazy about, but that some users still want. Like the "art" controls. Ben has deprecated the use of that, but it's still there (last time I looked) for those who want to mess with it, on a "you're on your own" basis. 

 

This is why I can't see Laminar realistically trying to compete on graphics.  They can do things like what we've seen in the previews, modern trees and improved atmospheric lighting.  But how are they going to take an engine with its deep internal roots going back decades, and turn that into a modern AAA engine capable of graphics like we've seen in MSFS2020?

They can't ... it's simply not feasible for a group of 10 or so developers with a constrained budget to go up against 200+ and hundreds of millions of dollars.

This isn't all doom and gloom.  They can focus on the core strengths of the simulator and just make it "look better", which is fine.  Things like true volumetric clouds at fast frame rates, or better shadows, rain effects, etc.

There's just no way it's going to look like the engine MSFS2020 uses.

Pardon the link to a MSFS forum on the X-Plane discussion board, but it does include images and comparisons to X-Plane.

I am putting it here as an example of why overhauling "graphics" can be a tremendous undertaking for a small team.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/external-lights-only-render-on-right-eye-random-ghosting-image-on-right-eye-only/427755/6?u=cptlucky8

That is just a discussion on the minutiae of light bulbs at night.  When people want X-Plane to have "better graphics", there are the big-ticket items like trees and atmospheric colors, then there is the "weeds", the thousands upon thousands of little details that go into making graphics "look better".

If you have a small team, and decades to refine what your light bulbs look like at night, that's one thing.

When you have to go "back to the drawing board" and start having to look at light bulbs at night, that is an entirely different thing.

I wish them luck.  I've been a software PM before and I wouldn't envy this particular task.

Watching the amount of scenery that has been made available in said other item on offer is probably going to be hardest item to compete with but it is not unachievable. I don't think XP needs to be all singing all dancing spy satellite quality I see my next door neighbors garden and neither do I think XP needs to play "who is better" because it is has a couple redeeming features and benefits including being more dedicated towards accuracy of the flying. I agree the task of overhauling is probably going to be the hardest item of what to include and keep and, what to exclude to avoid wasted resources for the next release. Personally I would like removal of any XP10 items as a number items are very old now (ATR72-500 comes to mind). Gee I'm showing my age.

BTW talking about old items when do we get to see the Q4XP, images one thing but its not quite the same as flying the item 🙂

 

One item I would like is Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) similar to Aerosoft ENSH or ENVY sceneries for next release as it makes for a nice effect as I think this would improve the immersion and maybe finally try making the night sky look a little more realistic and not so much like the other guys night sky which I tend to think looks a little too false. xEnviro was looking promising in this respect but I notice it has gone very quite with the next update. So hopefully some if it not all the current issues that is part of the enjoyment of XP11 with figuring out a work around can be addressed in the next version. I would be happy if they could fix the lighting and address a couple of the bugs in the current version with next version like shadows etc and leave the rest for LR to surprise ourselves with what's new.

22 hours ago, Gulfstream said:

This is why I can't see Laminar realistically trying to compete on graphics.  They can do things like what we've seen in the previews, modern trees and improved atmospheric lighting.  But how are they going to take an engine with its deep internal roots going back decades, and turn that into a modern AAA engine capable of graphics like we've seen in MSFS2020?

They can't ... it's simply not feasible for a group of 10 or so developers with a constrained budget to go up against 200+ and hundreds of millions of dollars.

This isn't all doom and gloom.  They can focus on the core strengths of the simulator and just make it "look better", which is fine.  Things like true volumetric clouds at fast frame rates, or better shadows, rain effects, etc.

There's just no way it's going to look like the engine MSFS2020 uses.

Why does it have to look like the other sim? 

Here's how I see it. Laminar can't compete with the one huge accomplishment of MSFS, which is a world engine based on highly detailed orthophoto and photogrammetry-based scenery that doesn't take massive space on the user's hard drive. Laminar doesn't have the server infrastructure for that. 

But Laminar doesn't have to match it. For anyone more interested in accurate flight dynamics and high frame rates, the scenery only has to be good enough to be plausible. Not everyone needs to see their home town looking exactly like it does in real life. Heck, mine doesn't even look that way in MSFS because the data is sparse, even though I'm just 100 miles from Seattle. 

Austin has always preferred a procedural approach to building scenery, which is an alternative to keep hard drive space lower. From the previews it looks like he's pushing that to the next level. Seasonal changes, better trees, and (I hope) a vastly expanded set of autogen buildings to better represent the world outside the USA might be good enough for those who care more about the aircraft.

Another way to compete is with weather modeling, if Austin finally wants to get serious about it instead of offloading to 3rd party developers. 

The weather system in the other sim is closed to outside development. I think that's the right way to do it, but frankly it's not very good if you go beyond surface appeal. It's more eye candy and pretty sunsets than the dynamic weather we get when flying in the real world. A truly stunning new weather system in XP12 could lure some people away from the other sim, especially RW pilots. 

The only thing that concerns me in the long-term is whether enough 3rd party aircraft developers can stick with XP. Laminar alone can't fill out the fleet. If XP12 is sufficiently backwards compatible to allow smooth import of XP11 aircraft it will keep the sim alive for a while, but people like to see new additions during the life cycle of a new version. If most of the major developers are working on the other sim, that's not going to happen very often. It's too soon to worry much about that, but it is a concern.

 

2 hours ago, Paraffin said:

Why does it have to look like the other sim? 

It doesn't have to look like the other sim. It has to better it. The best tool for the job gets my money. I have no allegiances with either and will spend my money on whichever is best. 

21 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

It doesn't have to look like the other sim. It has to better it. The best tool for the job gets my money. I have no allegiances with either and will spend my money on whichever is best. 

If one sim looks better, and the other sim has more accurate and immersive flight and systems modeling, then which is "best?" Which do you want to spend more time flying? It's a rhetorical question because the answer will be different for everyone.

BTW, I would add realistic and immersive weather to that comparison, because weather can't be divorced from flight modeling. It's the medium we fly in. 

 

 

11 hours ago, Paraffin said:

If one sim looks better, and the other sim has more accurate and immersive flight and systems modeling, then which is "best?" Which do you want to spend more time flying? It's a rhetorical question because the answer will be different for everyone.

BTW, I would add realistic and immersive weather to that comparison, because weather can't be divorced from flight modeling. It's the medium we fly in. 

 

 

Quite right. Looks are just just one slice of the tart. A big slice mind you.

On 8/7/2021 at 10:36 AM, Paraffin said:

But Laminar doesn't have to match it. For anyone more interested in accurate flight dynamics and high frame rates, the scenery only has to be good enough to be plausible. Not everyone needs to see their home town looking exactly like it does in real life. Heck, mine doesn't even look that way in MSFS because the data is sparse, even though I'm just 100 miles from Seattle. 

I completely agree with you here.

My biggest concern would be that the one remaining core selling point of X-Plane, the flight dynamics and "blade element theory", may be proven to be the same or even less accurate than what is in the "other sim".  I've read the SDK documentation on the math, it is not "on rails".

This is yet to be proven, and I'm not sure it can be.  It's a flight simulator, so most reports are about how aircraft "feel".  Obviously study-level aircraft are compared to real performance numbers, but a lot of this has to be forced and is not a by-product of the underlying aerodynamics engine.

You'll notice there are no major outcries from the sim community regarding flight dynamics, even with some of the more complex aircraft coming in like the PMDG DC-6.  You can find some sporadic issues inherent to any platform, but you'd think if this was a major issue, there would be cries of "LOL!" regarding how the aircraft flies.  There are not.

If the same approach that is taken to get aircraft flying "by the numbers" in X-Plane works just as well in "the other simulator", then what is left to compete on?

Graphics.  And that gets us back to square one.

Edited August 8, 20214 yr by Gulfstream

1 hour ago, Gulfstream said:

If the same approach that is taken to get aircraft flying "by the numbers" in X-Plane works just as well in "the other simulator", then what is left to compete on?

I think this will probably go the same way that Airbus vs Boeing went. First they had radically different approaches to building an airliner (think 737 Classic vs A320). Now they are copying each other´s strong points, working to fix their weak points... the latest Boeings and the latest Airbuses aren´t that far apart anymore.

It will be similiar with flightsims, I believe. MSFS improved the flight model, X-Plane improves the graphics. MSFS adds a "Scenery Gateway", X-Plane gets better weather. And so on.

In a few years, they will be more similar, but I also think that there will still be differences that make a person lean either way. One guy wants photorealistic scenery, the other guy wants to play offline. The next guy wants to tinker and build aircraft, the other one wants photorealistic scenery. Then someone wants to fly helicopters, the other one wants photorealistic scenery. Yet someone else wants to play on a Mac, the other one wants photorealistic scenery. One user may want to set up his visibility accurately so he can practice certain IFR approaches, the other one wants photorealistic scenery. And so on 🙂

5 minutes ago, Janov said:

In a few years, they will be more similar

I watched someones "PC vs XBOX" review for MSFS today, pretty much expecting to be buying an xbox x in the next year or so.

I was unsold in the first minute when I found out XBOX has no VR support..... MS has a veerrryy long way to go to catch up with even XP11 gfx, the new XBOX doesnt even have the basic features of my PS4 while Sony is actually moving onto truly next gen too (PSVR2 purported to be 2k per eye).