Future of p3d ?

[ryanbatc 12,857]

On 11/6/2021 at 3:48 AM, Ray Proudfoot said:

 

Whether it will become a viable rival for IFR flying will become clear over time. 

What is your definition of IFR flying?  If it's flying the PMDG 737 or FS Labs 'bus - then P3D is probably best for you at the moment.  But pretty much any other IFR flying can be accomplished in MSFS right now.  Check out the latest revision of the G1000 NXi - it's about the same as the default XP11 G1000, or Flight1 G1000 that was in the old King Air.  IFR flying isn't limited to airliners.  In fact I've worked a few VFR airliners 😉

[Ray Proudfoot 8,956]

13 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

What is your definition of IFR flying?  If it's flying the PMDG 737 or FS Labs 'bus - then P3D is probably best for you at the moment.  But pretty much any other IFR flying can be accomplished in MSFS right now.  Check out the latest revision of the G1000 NXi - it's about the same as the default XP11 G1000, or Flight1 G1000 that was in the old King Air.  IFR flying isn't limited to airliners.  In fact I've worked a few VFR airliners 😉

Generally flying at Mach 0.79 or faster up to FL450. I have an Xtreme Prototypes Lear 25 that only works in P3D. Anything slower for IFR doesn’t appeal. I also have the PMDG737u.

In any case I would only use MSFS for VFR flying since that’s the best way of enjoying the scenery. Still no plans to buy it until these enormous updates cease and it is a more stable simulator.

Edited November 22, 2021 by Ray Proudfoot
Additional info

[ryanbatc 12,857]

18 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Generally flying at Mach 0.79 or faster up to FL450. I have an Xtreme Prototypes Lear 25 that only works in P3D. Anything slower for IFR doesn’t appeal. I also have the PMDG737u.

In any case I would only use MSFS for VFR flying since that’s the best way of enjoying the scenery. Still no plans to buy it until these enormous updates cease and it is a more stable simulator.

That's a very specific genre of aviation hehe.  Fwiw I think I saw news of Flysimware bringing their Lear to the new sim as well.  Happy simming!

[Ray Proudfoot 8,956]

3 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

That's a very specific genre of aviation hehe.  Fwiw I think I saw news of Flysimware bringing their Lear to the new sim as well.  Happy simming!

Thanks. I only have a handful of aircraft. Vertx DA62, Carenado PC12, PMDG737 and the Lear. At some point Concorde will join them.

As for MSFS I would be looking for an aircraft with excellent visibility and preferably a high wing for better ground views. Flying it from outside doesn’t seem right but every YT video seems to show people doing that.

[out 769]

21 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Flying it from outside doesn’t seem right but every YT video seems to show people doing that.

LOL, so true! 🤭

[virtuali 4,421]

On 11/22/2021 at 3:23 PM, G-YMML1 said:

Good riddance. Their quality has decreased dramatically over the recent years. KORD is some sort FSX-mediocre product that I have to use in absence of the alternative (and DD is much worse n my opinion)

Are you referring to the same KORD everybody knows ?

 

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some sort FSX-mediocre

EXCUSE ME ?

You wrote something that be used to describe as a quick cash grab FSX conversion and, you took the most P34-native airport scenery out there as an example ? REALLY ?

KORD is the poster child of what a PROPER P3D4 product should be.

In fact, it's way more of that because, while I can say in order to be a "proper" P3D4 product, I would be ok with something that is "just" made from scratch and not ported over FSX and uses PBR, KORD is SO MUCH more and it goes beyond what one should expect about going deep in supporting the P3D4-only features of the SDK and, as of today, nobody even came close to doing that. I'm sorry, but KORD is really in a different league and, it's really impossible not to notice.

PBR

Many of the advertised "P3D-native" sceneries out there, are made with the notion that it's enough to continue to slap a photo texture ( as they did in FSX ) and "just" add a couple of normal maps and metallic effects, because that's what most users associate with PBR. Which of course is not getting it. PBR means simulating real materials and how they react to the light, NOT just add few shiny chrome here and there. That's why, a scenery that wants to call itself "full PBR", should NOT have photographic textures + additional metallic effect but, instead, use proper PBR materials with actual (measured) pyhiscal properties and maps created by baking very high resolution models over the low polygon model, to get extra information about curvature, irradiance, ambient occlusion, surface roughness, all derived from the hires models and scientifically accurate.

That's how KORD was made. Completely from scrach, not converted from older work, not using any of the oder methods, all using the above for *each* and every texture in the scenery. So, it's a scenery that has the RIGHT to be called "full PBR", a term too much abused recently.

We started working on it even BEFORE P3D4 came out, at that time, we wrote a custom plugin to simulate PBR in P3D3 because, of course, we knew in advance this would be the way forward in graphic design, even before we had a sim that supported it. And that's why it was the first scenery we ported to MSFS and why it looks so good there too: PBR is PBR so, you don't have to remodel anything if you did the things right *before* but, due to the better way the MSFS graphic engine renders the whole environment and the more accurate lighting, the scenery in MSFS finally looks as it was always supposed to.

I don't see how anybody could possibly say KORD, of all products out there, it's an "FSX-mediocre", it surely doesn't look ANYTHING like FSX!

Usage of the P3D4 SDK

Ok, graphic is subjective so, even if in MY opinion you are completely wrong about the scenery appearance, we know it's impossible to please everybody, especially when graphic is concerned. I keep seeing people tweaking P3D trying to make it look better, post pictures using shader tweakers that, in my opinion, are switching from strange, to silly, to hideous but, again, graphic is highly subjective.

However, features are more factual and easy to point out and, if you see yourself as a serious P3D user, you shoud weight features and usage of the P3D SDK quite high when judging a product. Saying a product is "mediocre" because YOU don't "like" the graphic, as P3D user, and glossing over the P3D-native features that makes it UNIQUE and UNRIVALLED, as a P3D user ?

Let's see some of the features:

Render to Texture with DirectX

The Active Information Panels: these are real-life KORD signature objects at gates which, should probably be more important to you, the pilot, than terminal interiors, because you can't miss them from the cockpit.

THEY WORK, showing not just the gate number, but if you have a flight plan loaded in the default Flight planner, they show your destination airport. And, they work with AI too.

And they have virtually zero impact on fps, both because fast C++ DirectX code is used (nothing is faster than that), but also because they are carefully optimized, using another feature nobody else has, which is a custom collision detection system based on arbitrary polygons instead than a simple radius, which allows us to define precise and extremely optimized "cones of view" to be sure we don't draw anything that is not required, yet without the limitation of radius or LOD-based methods, which have too generic geometries to be tweaked for the precise kind of object that needs to be optimized. The system allows "events" (sounds, animations, anything) to be trigged when the airplane or the avatar enters in a specific area.

Working traffic boards

Another never-seen-before feature at KORD are the fully working traffic boards that, using again DirectX, shows a working Timetable that shows the *actual* AI airplanes and their Departures/Arrival/On route status. Using the aforementioned collision system, this is part of the interiors so, it's not even loaded if you are not in Avatar mode. 

Terminal interior

They seem to be all the rage today but, KORD is doing that in a showcase way to show how it should be done. Leveraging on the previous custom collision system, instead of "just using LOD" to prevent the interior to be loaded when it's not required, using the precise geometric shape of the terminal as an "hot area", we can ensure not only that the complex interior won't even be loaded in memory when your are not really close to it but, we can even check to activate it ONLY when you go on foot in AVATAR mode. When we first released the never-seen-before KORD Terminal C interior, most users didn't understand how this system worked, said an interior so detailed was overkill, would hamper performance or cause VRAM OOMs, because they had no idea how it was made. A separate, lower detailed version of the interior is used when you are in the cockpit of the airplane but, the transition is seamless enough that you don't notice it much.

Animated passengers inside the terminal

Yes, they also seem to be on fashion lately but here, instead of showing always the same guys, we created passengers dynamically, using specific "routes" they walk and even climb stairs, using different percentages of class of people ( most are passengers, some are crew, some are pilots ) and they are always different, and can be varied in density. We called them "Airport walkers", because they could possibly walk through the whole airport, they could even walk from the airport to Chicago Downtown if we wanted to, all proceduraly.

Specific Avatar mode features

Avatar mode is a P3D-unique feature so, again, in spirit of doing the "most P3D-native product possible", we made extra work there. Using the same custom collision system, which works differently in Avatar mode: some parts of the terminal becomes "solid" and no, it's not just the default "platform" that many airports use for helipads or raised taxiway bridges, it does much more. If you walk as an Avatar over the Terminal C outside stairs which lead to the interior, you can't fall from the staircase, because the custom collision has defined the volume of the railings as a solid object, something not normally possible with "just" the default raised platform method, which is in fact used, but only for the pavements/steps. And it doesn't end there. Thanks to the custom collision "hot area" feature, when the Avatar touches are small area just around the entrance, the door animation (and the related sound) will be triggered AND the detailed interior will be loaded too! In addition to that, we have a custom menu with several convenient locations the Avatar can jump to, so you can quickly visit interesting places.

WORKING EMAS

The custom collision system helps us again here, to create an hot area over the EMAS, which will trigger a special routine that will actually SLOW down the airplane.

Positional audio

The scenery has some 3D sound sources you can listen to, and they work in surround too. As an example, when you walk in Avatar mode and you pass close to the McDonald restaurant, you can hear some specific sounds coming and going from that direction. Walking passengers have their own sound loops too. Sounds are also using the custom collision system so, they are not even loaded if the terminal interior is not.

Hyper-optimized Dynamic Lighting

Dynamic Lighting in P3D4 is costly on fps, because the engine use "Forward Rendering", instead of "Deferred Rendering". The problem with Forward Rendering is that, when there are many light sources, the cost on rendering a scene is equal to the number_of_polygons * number_of_lights which means, if you a scenery use lots of Dynamic Light AND has an high polygon count (and the number of polygons in your airplane counts too), over a certain amount of lights, the fps will start to drop too much so, the solution is either use less dynamic lights or less polygons or lots of pre-baked light but, while this is a legitimate method in other game engines like Unity or Unreal, that can *blend* and *switch* automatically from DL to static textured lights, it's not really possible in P3D so, mixing baked light and DL doesn't look very good.

Since doing KORD with fewer lights wouldn't look very good and, considering its superior PBR materials *require* Dynamic light to behave realistically ( DLs shows normal/metallic/roughness maps, static lights don't ), we used again our unique custom collision system to create "hot areas" around terminals, so we can show only the DLs closest to the airplane that, when combined with some of them that are always on, we can still keep the number of DLs used to a minimum, and yet illluminate dynamically the whole scenery, which would otherwise require to place hundreds of light sources. Yes, we do have as many, but, we only draw them 20-30 at once, at most. And we don't even create the light, rather than creating and making the sim work harder to cull it so, we keep the fps up even before the sim has any chance to slow down. I'll repeat again, this is one of the largest airports in the world, smaller airports are so much easier to fill up and optimize.

Integration with GSX

Ok, GSX profiles are reasonably easy but KORD does above and beyond the basics. Each and every parking position has a CUSTOM PUSHBACK ROUTE, in addition to carefully placed Stop positions so that jetways will always work and Docking system will always shows the correct stop position on ground.

But that's not all. Remember the previously discussed Active panels ? If you use GSX at KORD, and you activate one of these gates, GSX will momentarily and automatically disable all text feedback in the top green line and, instead, will use the Panel to show its feedback, for example the percentage completion of services like boarding/deboarding passengers and cargo, or the refueling process, making it way more immersive than the default message system.

Those are many of the P3D4-native features that go way beyond anything anybody made in an airport, in any sim.

That's the highest point in history of P3D-native airport sceneries, it's the living proof of what could be achieved by using the P3D SDK to its fullest extent and then some, surely when airport sceneries are concerned. In fact, we haven't even stopped at the SDK, we used the lower-level high perfofming PDK too (for Render to Texture) and of course Simconnect to the fullest extent, calling P3D-specific features that are still sadly MISSING IN MSFS.

So, I understand your frustration for having said future P3D airports are unlikely ( but of course, we can never say never, perhaps one day a new P3D major version might come out to surprise us...) but taking KORD as an "example" of some point you were trying to make, when KORD should be the EXAMPLE of what P3D CAN do ?

No, not really. KORD V2 is doing even more than what an airport scenery is supposed to do, and we took the SDK/PDK usage to such an extreme level, that it took so much time to be really profitable. It finally became profitable NOW, when we ported it to MSFS, with half of the features it had in P3D and, thanks to how.

 

Quote

Their quality has decreased dramatically over the recent years.

Instead, KORD V2 for P3D V4 is the best scenery we ever made, and we are very proud of it, because there's nothing out there that's even close to it.

How you could possibly say our "quality decreased dramatically" when it's light years better than anything we ever did, and not even by a small margin. No comparison with our best selling sceneries like KLAX or KJFK V2, I can't even begin to understand how one could possibly even start to compare and not seeing the obvious improvements. Those were FSX sceneries which worked in P3D thanks to back-compatibility...

In an ideal world, MSFS never came out, and we might have continued to exploit the P3D like nobody ever before, like we did with KORD V2. But unfortunately, that's not the world we live in and, as a commercial developer ( for the past 28 years, thank you very much...), we can't just ignore where the market is going.

Edited November 24, 2021 by virtuali

[Iadbound 211]

Umberto. You probably just took the trophy for the longest post in any forum  - ever. 
 

Real question for you though: is it your view that P3D v4.5 was the pinnacle of P3D and that v5 was a step back? I know it hurt some of the logo functions of GSX for example? And is that part of the reason you’re putting your limited time into MSFS now?

[G-YMML1 582]

Ohhh, boy! What a drama! 🙂 

Umberto,

Take a good rest, my friend! You don't have to kill yourself by writing all those "justifications" as there is no nothing to justify here. 

Peace! 

 

[G-YMML1 582]

11 hours ago, Iadbound said:

Umberto. You probably just took the trophy for the longest post in any forum  - ever. 
 

Real question for you though: is it your view that P3D v4.5 was the pinnacle of P3D and that v5 was a step back? I know it hurt some of the logo functions of GSX for example? And is that part of the reason you’re putting your limited time into MSFS now?

Logo functions are back - just run the universal installer. 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,956]

5 minutes ago, G-YMML1 said:

Ohhh, boy! What a drama! 🙂 

Umberto,

Take a good rest, my friend! You don't have to kill yourself by writing all those "justifications" as there is no nothing to justify here. 

Peace! 

That’s a pretty disrespectful reply. Do you still use P3D? If you do then you should be grateful it’s supported by FSDT.

If you don’t what are you doing here?

[Iadbound 211]

15 minutes ago, G-YMML1 said:

Logo functions are back - just run the universal installer. 

Yes.  I know, but they were disrupted by v5.  Thus, it took Umberto some effort to get them working.  And if I recall correctly, it's still a workaround of sorts versus the DX11 approach they were using before.

[G-YMML1 582]

Irrelevant

Edited November 24, 2021 by G-YMML1

[Ray Proudfoot 8,956]

Just now, G-YMML1 said:

It's an irony. Good friendly irony mixed with sarcasm. 

It didn’t come across that way to me and I’m a native English speaker.

”What a drama” is disrespectful whether you meant it in jest or nor. And why the need for sarcasm? You know what they say about that being the lowest form of wit.

[G-YMML1 582]

6 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

It didn’t come across that way to me and I’m a native English speaker.

”What a drama” is disrespectful whether you meant it in jest or nor. And why the need for sarcasm? You know what they say about that being the lowest form of wit.

What is really disrespectful is to quote a deleted post. And yes, sorry for not being a "native speaker".

 

Cheers.

[Ray Proudfoot 8,956]

3 minutes ago, G-YMML1 said:

What is really disrespectful is to quote a deleted post. And yes, sorry for not being a "native speaker".

Cheers.

I’ve deleted nothing. To what post are you referring?