3 minutes ago, rka said:

Apology accepted, I actually choose to ignore the childish attacks on me that follow.

And I'm waiting for LR and friends claims about expected x-plane 12 performance. Both of us are not perfect, at least I back my claims with something and admit when I'm wrong😉

Edited November 17, 20214 yr by mtaxp

The biggest hurdle they will have to cross is going to be the terrain, which seems to be carefully missing from videos so far on the lighting and clouds.

MSFS has a huge leg up here due to the satellite imagery and the ability to use AI to automatically place 3-D buildings based on their foundations in images, even where OpenStreetMap is not available.

X-Plane can likely get the buildings in the correct places, in some places, via OSM.  They won't be able to do satellite, so I feel the ground (roads, buildings, etc) is going to be the most difficult part to drag into 2021.

I'm curious to see what they come up with.

1 hour ago, Gulfstream said:

Now all of a sudden we have proper atmospheric lighting, forests of trees and 3D clouds coming in XP12. 

This didn't happen because they finally got around to it.

Exactly, it really doesn't - its taken about 5 years of development, in between fixing XP11 bugs.

"XP12" doesn't happen because they woke up one morning, threw some stuff together they copied and pasted off the internet, then you download it that evening.

Work on XP12 started pretty much as soon as XP11 was released.

Work on the next version after XP12 has already started (in so much as some things that are kinda working that will wait for the next version after XP12 have already been somewhat decided).

Now all of a sudden they can show off what they were working on, because its nearly ready.

@abrams_tank

I thank you for your kind words. I'm just trying to share my technical understanding of these things and when I can, my contextual knowledge. I can be wrong many times, this remains highly possible!

To the question you're raising, I was about to answer something which is not really different from what @mtaxp has posted here:

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/609740-xp-12-sneak-peek-clouds/page/12/?tab=comments#comment-4664213

I can't of course share all the details because I'm also bound to NDA, but a lot of what has been announced for XP12 has been already discussed and experimented well before any FS2020 official announcement. This just takes time and sometimes you have to first implement the foundations prior being in a position to be able to put your overall vision to fruition.

I agree with your idea of FS2020 setting a bar though, not in the sense of implementing novel ways to do things, but like you've explained, in setting a reference to compare with. In effect, the technology driving the eye candy is more or less known and used throughout the gaming industry for several years, and Ben is a bright individual I highly respect for his knowledge and execution of all these things. So in this case, this gives LR a reference they can gauge their visuals against.

I believe we would be very hypocritical as simmers to say we don't care much about graphics and eye candy. We do, regardless we admit it or not. It doesn't need to be visual effects you'd expect in a blockbuster movie, but it needs to be "more believable" nonetheless. Because at least, FS2020 shows what technology can do in the visuals department in terms of volumetric clouds and lighting, regardless of whether it is well done or not, it still shows it is possible to do nowadays on today's hardware, and it also shows it adds to the immersion one way or the other.

LR knows and did plan for a long time to enhanced their graphics along this route, and maybe FS2020 did push the implementation a little bit sooner (or not), but I believe regardless of FS2020 XP12 (or XP13) would have had implemented these modern rendering techniques anyhow!

Edited November 17, 20214 yr by RXP

3 hours ago, Gulfstream said:

The biggest hurdle they will have to cross is going to be the terrain, which seems to be carefully missing from videos so far on the lighting and clouds.

MSFS has a huge leg up here due to the satellite imagery and the ability to use AI to automatically place 3-D buildings based on their foundations in images, even where OpenStreetMap is not available.

X-Plane can likely get the buildings in the correct places, in some places, via OSM.  They won't be able to do satellite, so I feel the ground (roads, buildings, etc) is going to be the most difficult part to drag into 2021.

I'm curious to see what they come up with.

I'd bet they carefully plan to unveil terrain when it is the right time for them. This could mean when it is technologically ready to showcase, or even when it is worth it from a marketing and sales standpoint only. I mean if they are intentionally holding back on showcasing much of the novelty right now so that they offer us a WOW moment later, I'm fine with this!

Speaking of buildings and OSM data though, it seems you could use some of the FS2020 AI building in X-Plane... 🙂

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/255854-simheaven-x-america-20-and-x-australia-oceania-20/&do=findComment&comment=2275150

Quote

MS have put their machine-learning division to the task of extracting building footprints from Bing maps in principle to help OpenStreetMap. But as the import policy of OSM is so that automated imports are not really desired, only a small fraction of those building footprints actually has made it into OSM, yet. Therefore it is worth while to compute the missing buildings and to add them to simheaven.com. Over 92 million just for the US alone 🙂 And MS seem to be committed to providing building footprints. They started a few years back and the latest release (South America) was a couple of weeks ago.

The datasets are here:

https://github.com/orgs/microsoft/repositories?q=building+footprints

Disregard, sometimes it's just best to ignore certain things

Edited November 17, 20214 yr by rka

7 hours ago, RXP said:

Speaking of buildings and OSM data though, it seems you could use some of the FS2020 AI building in X-Plane... 🙂

https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/255854-simheaven-x-america-20-and-x-australia-oceania-20/&do=findComment&comment=2275150

The datasets are here:

https://github.com/orgs/microsoft/repositories?q=building+footprints

Holy mackrel, that thread flew totally past me. That's one serious improvement!

2 hours ago, Bjoern said:

Holy mackrel, that thread flew totally past me. That's one serious improvement!

I mean it's hard to get too excited, you still have bland buildings only now more bland buildings. On the other side you have a developer releasing their Game of the Year Edition with hundreds of fixes, handfuls of new aircraft and airports for free plus the software upgrade to the latest graphics API (Directx 12). The Laminar graphics update took 5 long years. And it still has nasty bugs and CTD's.

4 hours ago, Greazer said:

I ears. And it still has nasty bugs and CTD's.

I dont get ctds. Must be dodgy setup

4 hours ago, mjrhealth said:

I dont get ctds. Must be dodgy setup

I get steamvr 203 errors a lot, but that is other, less competent companies fault - namely Valve and Nvidia.

Xplane itself has been completely bullet proof since about 11.40, and usable as a flightsim since late 2020, which was a big factor on me pulling the trigger on finally fully upgrading my system late last year.

Edited November 18, 20214 yr by mSparks

11 hours ago, Greazer said:

I mean it's hard to get too excited, you still have bland buildings only now more bland buildings. On the other side you have a developer releasing their Game of the Year Edition with hundreds of fixes, handfuls of new aircraft and airports for free plus the software upgrade to the latest graphics API (Directx 12). The Laminar graphics update took 5 long years. And it still has nasty bugs and CTD's.

Super excited instead! 😍 XP will have MS buildings as well, WITH the new realistic photometric lighting AND windy trees AND environmental effects (accumulating snow and puddles on runway) AND procedural seasons AND a completely revised weather system (a weather system already used in real aviation avionics)! 

All of this, with a base product which is already better in many aspects AND much more open to 3rd parties and developers! And they HAVE DONE ALL OF THIS IN 2 YEARS! (i.e. since the competitor product was announced, according to many people here who are very critical of LR and hence who could not be suspected of bias towards them).

Poor haters, wouldn't want to be one of them...

Keep flying with the rose colored glasses, it's good.

47 minutes ago, Greazer said:

Keep flying with the rose colored glasses, it's good.

Just facts! I know some people get irritated by them. 😍

Edited November 18, 20214 yr by Murmur

I said it's "good"

1 hour ago, Murmur said:

Super excited instead! 😍 XP will have MS buildings as well, WITH the new realistic photometric lighting AND windy trees AND environmental effects (accumulating snow and puddles on runway) AND procedural seasons AND a completely revised weather system (a weather system already used in real aviation avionics)! 

All of this, with a base product which is already better in many aspects AND much more open to 3rd parties and developers! And they HAVE DONE ALL OF THIS IN 2 YEARS! (i.e. since the competitor product was announced, according to many people here who are very critical of LR and hence who could not be suspected of bias towards them).

Poor haters, wouldn't want to be one of them...

well, when you put it like that.

Im right back to desperately wanting what I cant have [yet]....

But since there is that whole beta process to get through first, Im gonna just tell myself its better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than in the air wishing you were on the ground.

And tbf, XP11 is much closer to being in the air than on the ground anyway, so "right now" is really as good as its gonna be for while yet.

XP10 Beta ruined XP9

XP11 Beta ruined XP10

VR ruined 2D

Ortho ruined Autogen ground textures

EC ruined 2D cloudart

Anyone gonna give decent odds for XP12 Beta ruining XP11?