@Abriael at no point did I ever mention any other sim or developer. Don’t create drama where there is none. 

8 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

And their are more than a few aviation experts  that thought his blade element theory is was not very realistic. The poor accuracy of the simple blade-element theory is very well shown in a report by Durand and Lesley, in which they have computed the performance of a large number of model propellers (80) and compared the computed values with the actual performances obtained from tests on the model propellers themselves.

 

You do understand that "blade element theory" is a developement concept more than it is an implementation by itself and this is up to the developer !?

Its like saying "PBR looks bad" based on a single developer's work.

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by mtaxp

8 hours ago, Abriael said:

Experience as a pilot doesn't make you a good developer. That's why simulations have consultants that are not and don't need to be developers. 

Austin Meyer may be a great pilot, but proves that he's a rather poor developer pretty much at every corner, despite the fact that his job is developing, not piloting.

Unless you're trying to make a small indie game, size is absolutely what matters. The size of the team. The size of the resources available. The size of the budget. And this is shown quite clearly by the evolution MSFS has done in a year and a half, while Xplane 12 still looks like a game from a generation ago. 

Flight simulators are pretty much the exact opposite of small indie games in which a single or a few programmers can punch above their weight. The more time goes on, the more the massive difference in development resources will make its weight felt. The gap is already large and it's only going to widen. 

Pretty astonishing this comment given the fact that it's the same for years now and every time proven wrong. And this is not speaking on the fligh sim niche only.

As for Austin Meyer the poor developer, if a developer manages to build his own plane for real life tested in his own written software (that made him a fortune) is considered poor, then you must be literaly a real life "space ship to Mars" builder. The arrogance of the internet 😂🤣

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by mtaxp

I confess I still didn't get exactly how MFS FDM works, but I believe it actually also went BeT-way more than table-based way.

It's a mix of the old MSFS solution and a BeT "view" of the aircraft, although rather limited in terms of aerodynamic structures that together represent a reference airplane.

With the development announced for SU9 and following, and the upcomming adaptations for rotary wings, I believe that we can see more detail put into the characterization of a given aircraft in terms, for instance, of it's geometry. 

Presently we know that it is not possible to model bi-planes, or planes with multiple wings, rudders, etc... It's stuff like this that I believe is presently based more on the parametric nature of the flight model of a given aircraft à-la old MSFS.

There are areas that are actively under development and revision. For instance they had a wrong assessement of the geometric position of the Center of Pressure relative to the MAC and it's travel along that conceptual line as AoA varies, as well as during transition from transonic to supersonic flight, stuff that are circumvented by some aerodynamic parameters in FSX / P3D. Also the calculation was wrong for wings with sweep, and the bigger the sweep the bigger the wrong determination, etc...

Looking at how MFS deals for instance with "Ground Effect" is also interesting because at present it lacks details, and simplifies the actual "aerodynamics of ground effect". I hope it get's updated along the next SUs...

Just to say that all of the above "features" have long been detailed in X-Plane's FM, which in the spectrum of FDMs lays more towards the BeT end... In MFS we are partially tied to the old model and see the new one being promissing, for sure, but still not used to the extent of what we have in XP, and will get even better from what LR stated already regarding XP12.

All in all, for me it's going to be a win-win process. Both platforms have their weeknesses and their strenghts, and I can't really say, at the moment and given what has been announced already by either ASOBO or LR, that one is better than the other. Maybe the only drawback in MFS s that a dynamic platform also brings problems for developers more than one that stars already from a more detailled / complex / complete representation of the aerodynamics of an aircraft, because with MFS developers when building their models had to use "tricks" to circumvent a given limitation / bug and in the future may have to spend more energy patching their stuff ( the same applied to X-Plane 11 when Austin introduced the "Experimental FM" ).

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by jcomm

9 hours ago, mtaxp said:

Pretty astonishing this comment given the fact that it's the same for years now and every time proven wrong. And this is not speaking on the fligh sim niche only.

As for Austin Meyer the poor developer, if a developer manages to build his own plane for real life tested in his own written software (that made him a fortune) is considered poor, then you must be literaly a real life "space ship to Mars" builder. The arrogance of the internet 😂🤣

There's a difference between a programmer and a developer. One can be a great programmer and a very poor developer. It's not even a subtle difference. Xplane's lack of optimization, continued refusal to adopt actual innovation (and scoffing at it), lacking user-friendliness, limited resources spent uselessly or detrimentally (3D trees that look like plastic and completely out of place on the bad terrain anyone?) shows that Meyer may be a good programmer, but isn't a good developer.

You can also be a great developer without having any knowledge of programming. They're two entirely different things. Programming is just a discipline of game development among many, but it's great game designers that turn what programmers do into great games, and design is where Meyers and laminar in general lack.

As a matter of fact, good design is what has been lacking in the flight simulation genre for a long time, and MSFS has brought back. 

Also, small team can do great games, as I did mention in my post, which you decided to ignore, but they can do great small indie games. A flight simulator is the complete opposite of a small game. Due to its intrinsic complexity and scope, to improve meaningfully, it requires constant iteration and a metric ton of man-hours thrown at it, which the extremely slow evolution of platforms like xplane and p3d should aptly show. 

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by Abriael

57 minutes ago, Abriael said:

There's a difference between a programmer and a developer. One can be a great programmer and a very poor developer. It's not even a subtle difference. Xplane's lack of optimization, continued refusal to adopt actual innovation (and scoffing at it), lacking user-friendliness, limited resources spent uselessly or detrimentally (3D trees that look like plastic and completely out of place on the bad terrain anyone?) shows that Meyer may be a good programmer, but isn't a good developer.

You can also be a great developer without having any knowledge of programming. They're two entirely different things. Programming is just a discipline of game development among many, but it's great game designers that turn what programmers do into great games, and design is where Meyers and laminar in general lack.

As a matter of fact, good design is what has been lacking in the flight simulation genre for a long time, and MSFS has brought back. 

Also, small team can do great games, as I did mention in my post, which you decided to ignore, but they can do great small indie games. A flight simulator is the complete opposite of a small game. Due to its intrinsic complexity and scope, to improve meaningfully, it requires constant iteration and a metric ton of man-hours thrown at it, which the extremely slow evolution of platforms like xplane and p3d should aptly show. 

There are so many wrong statements in your comment as well as very wrong assumptions that I'm not going to proceed it here to not turn this thread into another ruined discussion.

The most obvious one is, Austin does not work on the rendering engine (i.e. graphics and performance) it's not his job in LR. 

If you want to proceed in private I can find the time so shoot me a message.

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by mtaxp

32 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

There are so many wrong statements in your comment as well as very wrong assumptions that I'm not going to proceed it here to not turn this thread into another ruined discussion.

The most obvious one is, Austin does not work on the rendering engine (i.e. graphics and performance) it's not his job in LR. 

If you want to proceed in private I can find the time so shoot me a message.

Saying someone is wrong doesn't make it so. Incidentally, that's the whole point. As the leader of the company and head of its development efforts, Austin Meyer's pure programming ability is of very secondary importance. You can find great programmers fairly easily. But he's tasked with taking decisions that pertain to design, not just programming, and he's not good at that. The poor graphics and performance (and the other issues I listed) aren't simply a matter of "oh, the people working on them aren't good." The responsibility for that falls on leadership, because it depends mostly on direction and resource allocation, much more than simple execution. That's the whole difference between being a good programmer and being a good developer.

No need for private messages. I've made my point.

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by Abriael

17 minutes ago, Abriael said:

Saying someone is wrong doesn't make it so. Incidentally, that's the whole point. As the leader of the company and head of its development efforts, Austin Meyer's pure programming ability is of very secondary importance. You can find great programmers fairly easily. But he's tasked with taking decisions that pertain to design, not just programming, and he's not good at that. The poor graphics and performance (and the other issues I listed) aren't simply a matter of "oh, the people working on them aren't good." The responsibility for that falls on leadership, because it depends mostly on direction and resource allocation, much more than simple execution. That's the whole difference between being a good programmer and being a good developer.

No need for private messages. I've made my point.

One thing if you want to make a point and another thing to want a true discussion hence my invetation for PMs.

I also never said that the other LR programmers are not good.

There is a lot about design decisions that can be interesting to discuss but as you said, you just wan't to make your point regardless if it's true or not. But it is a simple fact that x-plane is standing well currently even though it was supposed to die according to many "experts" around here, even though we are still in the outdated 11.

Although I rarely side with @mtaxp, he is absolutely correct regarding Austin.

The man is a genious - and a very polarizing personality.

14 minutes ago, mtaxp said:

One thing if you want to make a point and another thing to want a true discussion hence my invetation for PMs.

I also never said that the other LR programmers are not good.

There is a lot about design decisions that can be interesting to discuss but as you said, you just wan't to make your point regardless if it's true or not. But it is a simple fact that x-plane is standing well currently even though it was supposed to die according to many "experts" around here, even though we are still in the outdated 11.

"standing well" is a very vague expression. What do you mean with "standing well?" 

If you mean "continue to exist" sure. It is and it will. There's always people who will stick to their guns no matter what or aren't willing to give up their investment into a platform. That's the same with P3D. If you mean being successful, that's very debatable and it depends on what your idea of success is. In the perspective of a super-niche product, you could likely say it is, but this is not a super-niche market anymore.

PS: you keep talking about "programmers" but programming isn't really the issue X-plane has.

13 minutes ago, SAS443 said:

The man is a genious - and a very polarizing personality.

Being a genius (assuming the definition is appropriate here) can be and often is a rather detrimental issue in any team-based game development, especially when it goes hand in hand with a big ego. 

Edited March 27, 20224 yr by Abriael

I didn't know what CFD was, so I looked it up. 

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a digital form of aerodynamic analysis. It seems simple enough...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_fluid_dynamics

5 hours ago, SAS443 said:

The man is a genious

I don’t doubt his intelligence, and generally there’s lots to like about Austin.

He is prone to howlers though, the infamous and long-lasting ‘torque bug’ being a good example.