12 minutes ago, jcomm said:

But one aspect that can already be compared is that of the fluidity of the instruments display, smoother and crisper on xp11 even being 6+yo...

No it can't? You can even change how fluid they run.

Edited September 11, 20214 yr by rka

2 minutes ago, rka said:

No it can't? You can even change how fluid they run.

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but still... I prefer the smoothness and even the way you can pop them up and still interact with the buttons / switches / dials that XP11 offers.

6 hours ago, alexcolka said:

Don't have Xbox and not planning to do so, the fact is I own the Store version and recently used again Steam for an old game that always liked and now I'm curious of what is the benefit of the Steam version of MSFS, how about your Marketplace purchases in the MS Store version? Those will be owned too in the Steam version? Thanks,

BTW Sorry if the main topic is another in the thread.

From what I gleaned from these fora, Steam skims 35% of all marketplace sales leaving less for the developer and Microsoft so that would be a reason for the store version. I use Steam a lot but I went for the Store version and without any regrets, but some consider the Steam version a little easier to use concerning updates.

1 minute ago, jcomm said:

Yeah, I'm aware of that, but still... I prefer the smoothness and even the way you can pop them up and still interact with the buttons / switches / dials that XP11 offers.

You were aware that they actually aren't less fluid in MSFS but you claimed they were despite of that? Because you like the buttons?

7 minutes ago, rka said:

You were aware that they actually aren't less fluid in MSFS but you claimed they were despite of that? Because you like the buttons?

No, they're more fluid in XP AND I can interact easily with their controls. What I told you I was aware is that there are 3 settings for their fluidity in MFS 🙂. Using the higher one though, impacts on my fps, while in XP it has no impact at all... It's fluid from the beginning, and fluidity in flight instrument displays is really important.

Have you tried to interact with the popup G1000 in MFS ? Do you really find it easy / practical ?  Well, I honestly don't ...

Edited September 11, 20214 yr by jcomm

35 minutes ago, jcomm said:

It's imo useless to take xp11 as basis for such comparison. It's comparing a 6+ yo simulator and technology to something released last year. 

Only makes sense when xp12 gets available. But one aspect that can already be compared is that of the fluidity of the instruments display, smoother and crisper on xp11 even being 6+yo...

Yes, a comparison of X-Plane 12 to MSFS would be a more fair comparison. We will have to wait for X-Plane 12.  Having said that, I think it's highly unlikely that X-Plane 12 can match MSFS in both graphics and FPS.  I suspect X-Plane 12 will close the gap with MSFS in graphics, but the tradeoff will still be likely lower FPS than MSFS, because X-Plane 12 is using an older architecture and has accumulated a lot of "technical debt" over the years.  Only if X-Plane 12 had an entire makeover of its architecture, something that would probably take many years, would it be able to match MSFS in both graphics and FPS, but that would be a very expensive project for LR.

14 minutes ago, jcomm said:

Using the higher one though, impacts on my fps, while in XP it has no impact at all...

How would you measure the impact in XP when you can't change the setting?

Also IMHO going from 50 to 45 fps in MSFS if setting glass rendering to high is still much much better than being maxed at 28 fps in XP... 😉

I didn't notice any fps loss going to high btw.

The knobs and interaction is the ONLY thing you could fairly critique here.

 

Edited September 11, 20214 yr by rka

Yes, what I said being said, I'm not that blind that I can't tell the HUGE differences in scenery AND weather rendering at superb performance in MFS. As I've written many times, it's second to none in my whole flightsim user history experience !

I just don't find it fair to compare MFS to XP11 graphics wise...

3 minutes ago, jcomm said:

I just don't find it fair to compare MFS to XP11 graphics wise...

Why not? It's not like LR didn't have lots of time to improve graphics wise, but they took their own decisions. You know the sermon as good as I do: Everything above 20 fps is sufficient for flight sim; graphics are for gamers, it's an engineering tool; who needs a world, for serious simming a cockpit is enough and looking out of the windows is for gamers as well, so why are you mad about how the clouds look; it's impossible to draw shadows that are not jaggy; of course the weather has to hard switch and cannot blend over; also remember 20 fps is plenty.

It's perfectly fair. It just doesn't make LR and their (his) decisions look good. But that still shouldn't make people claim things about the competitor that are not true just to make the competitor look bad as well.

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

 X-Plane 12 is using an older architecture 

If we actually stick to facts, Xplane 12 is dropping OpenGL for good and embracing Vulkan/Metal, both are much newer than DX11, in fact even newer than DX12. So it's actually the contrary, MSFS architecture is already really dated.

What you are referring to and what gives MSFS the better graphics are fancier shaders, Xplane12 is coming with it's own modern and fancy Vulkan rendering pipeline. The last preview of *millions* of animated and seasoned trees being rendered up to the horizon on a GTX1070 while "barely even felt performance wise" (according to them) really shows what a true next generation renderer can do. Meanwhile MSFS is making trees 2x bigger than reality to make it look like a dense forest.

We really just should wait for another 2 weeks, then Xplane12 will probably be announced at this Flight-sim Conference thing and see the first official shots of the full "Next Generation Rendering Pipeline" (as they call it).

 

Edited September 11, 20214 yr by akita

7 minutes ago, akita said:

Xplane 12 is dropping OpenGL for good and embracing Vulkan/Metal, both are much newer than DX11, in fact even newer than DX12. So it's actually the contrary, MSFS architecture is already really dated.

What you are referring to and what gives MSFS the better graphics are fancier shaders and rendering pipeline, Xplane12 is coming with it's own modern and fancy Vulkan rendering pipeline. The last preview of *millions* of animated and seasoned trees being rendered up to the horizon on a GTX1070 while "barely even felt performance wise" (according to them) really shows what does a true next generation renderer can do. Meanwhile MSFS is making trees 2x bigger than reality to make it look like a dense forest.

We really just should wait for another 2 weeks, then Xplane12 will probably be announced at this Flight-sim Conference thing and see the first official shots of the full "Next Generation Rendering Pipeline" (as they call it).

 

It's not just Vulkan though.  When I say X-Plane 12 has accumulated "technical debt," it's also the architecture for X-Plane underneath Vulkan.  I assume Vulkan is responsible for the graphics rendering in X-Plane 12.  But some of the most recent changes to MSFS to get better FPS weren't at the graphical level, if my memory is right, based on the Twitch Q&A.  This is because MSFS is still on DirectX 11 for the PC!  So Asobo was able to boost the FPS for MSFS while keeping MSFS on DirectX 11 on PC.  I believe Asobo made some changes to the underlying architecture that were not at the graphical level, and the underlying architecture is more optimized now, which led to some of the FPS gains.

I suppose more information about X-Plane 12 will come out at the flight sim conference.  But to really know how X-Plane 12 performs on a wide variety of PCs, especially if people still need to use add-ons to in X-Plane 12 to make the graphics better so that it can catch MSFS, we have to wait for X-Plane 12's official release.

IMO though, it's unlikely that X-Plane 12 can match MSFS in both graphics and FPS.  At best, X-Plane 12 may close the gap in graphics with MSFS, but to do that, FPS will be sacrificed. An overhaul of the entire X-Plane 12 would probably be needed, including the architecture of X-Plane below the graphics layer.

Edited September 11, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

27 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

it's also the architecture for X-Plane underneath Vulkan. 

There is no "underneath Vulkan", it's the rendering API, it's the heart, the brain and the foundation of a rendering engine.

It's the opposite, they now have a kicka** rendering engine that is barely utilized by modern graphic features.

You have some serious misconceptions about the differnce between a rendering engine as a whole thing VS a rendering pipeline and shader stages. Vulkan as an example can execute multiple rendering pipelines in the same time, that's what they are doing right now, creating those new fancy pipelines (New lighting shaders, trees shaders, terrain shaders, water etc...).

When talking about an architecture the questions are different; is VRAM management predictable? Does it crash a lot? what kind of overhead the driver has? What happens at edge cases? does it stutter? scene popups? for those questions, Xplane Vulkan already have rock solid answers. Then what determines the actual quality of graphics are those fancy shader stages mentioned above.

 

 

Edited September 11, 20214 yr by akita

18 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Default X-Plane running Vulkan runs very well. The problem comes when you add all the additional payware addons you need to bring the graphics up to an acceptable standard. Then there is a big problem with performance.  You need a super computer to do it justice.

Yes indeed I can as well confirm this. Out of the box, Vulkan performance is very very good but the moment you add add-ones, orthos .. etc, the performance became worse and worse that at some point. So yeah, MSFS definitely is the best when it comes to graphics/performance balance, especially after WU6, this shows how technology got advanced over years with all modern gaming engines. 

19 minutes ago, akita said:

There is no "underneath Vulkan", it's the rendering API, it's the heart, the brain and the foundation of a rendering engine.

It's the opposite, they now have a kicka** rendering engine that is barely utilized by modern graphic features.

You have some serious misconceptions about the differnce between a rendering engine as a whole thing VS a rendering pipeline and shader stages. Vulkan as an example can execute multiple rendering pipelines in the same time, that's what they are doing right now, creating those new fancy pipelines (New lighting shaders, trees shaders, terrain shaders, water etc...).

When talking about an architecture the questions are different; is VRAM management predictable? Does it crash a lot? what kind of overhead the driver has? What happens at edge cases? does it stutter? for those questions, Xplane Vulkan already have rock solid answers. Then what determines the actual quality of graphics are those fancy shader stages mentioned above.

Ughh, no.  If X-plane is using modern software development practices, there is likely a layer for graphics. Then there will be a layer underneath the graphics, that deals with other logic.    And there could be layers below that layer too.  You can have many layers in a software project.

If you come from a software development background, you should know about "layers" in software development.  My point is, Asobo likely made some changes to the layers below the graphics layer, to yield the FPS boost in Sim Update 5.

I don't know the details of X-Plane architecture, but what you describe, "multiple rendering pipelines in the same time, that's what they are doing right now, creating those new fancy pipelines (New lighting shaders, trees shaders, terrain shaders, water etc...)" would be in the graphics layer.

 

Edited September 11, 20214 yr by abrams_tank

19 hours ago, rosco3330 said:

I’ve built a new computer with the exception of a new graphics card. I installed X Plane 11 and a high settings (not quite max) I can get a frame rate of 60+. How would that indicate the performance of MSFS 2020. 

You will have no problems with performance, until ASOBO's next update breaks the sim. While many here, advice the need for a new computer to get better (smooth) fps, SU6 has proven once again that most systems can handle MSFS at ultra settings. If my i7 2600K can generate beautiful landscapes and a silky smooth simulation, most systems will be able to do the same.

When ASOBO issues an update that cause stutters while panning, micro pauses, or CTDs, don't come to AVSIM looking for answers. Just wait for the next update and keep your fingers crossed that the next update fixes what was broken by the previous update. 😀

This is just me and my experience with MSFS for the past 12 months. Take my sagacity as you wish.