XP12: the good, the bad, the ugly

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

9 hours ago, Humpty said:

Devon

 Firstly I would like to repeat again that we simmers are comparing a billion dollar company with a probably not even a 100 million dollar company. makes no sense.

MS has tremendous resources , they can pour in a lot of money and pullout when they see no profits.

Had tried MSFS for a month with the game pass , personally it didn't fit well with me. 

Also one of the reasons at least me not wanting MSFS would be no great helis.  on the psychological level it felt like a kidZ game , XP is also a game but it didn't register as a game psychologically , probably to do with the helicopters , again this is a personal opinion.

XP12 is a big improvement from XP11 , but some can't digest that.  They will find something to talk about , is XP perfect NOPE so is MSFS. 

I do want the scenery of MSFS but that is not possible in XP,  maybe in the future. There are certain aspects that can be done I am sure.

I don't want XP to look like MFS.  I find XP to be much better in looks, again this is a personal opinion.

The lighting has improved so has the water and the weather and I like those clouds , ofc it needs more refinement.

 

I think the major issue, at least right now with XP12, You got all this new lighting engine but the reset of the asset are not matching the work they have done. All the autogen, outside of airport assets, looks very out of place. Also night lighting , again besides airport assets, has not be overhaul yet.  This is still Beta3 but you cannot criticized people for point this out as it very obvious.  They have good job with the haze in daytime but night time as no light pollution. The sky should not be pitch black over the city, it will be grey with some glow from the sulfur light relfecting. 

I am willing to give the chance to LR to improved on this. They have a long way to go.

[mSparks 2,086]

26 minutes ago, Gulfstream said:

That sounds like a VFR flight to me

You skip the preflight checks in the real world?

[MrBitstFlyer 3,875]

1 hour ago, HiFlyer said:

Sorry, but I'm not going anywhere near it, right now. (Been there, done that)

Did you have problems with it because I just purchased it?

[MrBitstFlyer 3,875]

1 hour ago, Gulfstream said:

If you are launching 0/0 and doing a CAT-III inbound with a follow-me truck, then perhaps you can disregard the outside visuals

Personally, I can't keep my eyes off the outside visuals 😁

https://postimg.cc/7G9khmkD

[HiFlyer 9,360]

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Edited September 19, 2022 by HiFlyer

[Baber20 1,438]

4 hours ago, fogboundturtle said:

I think the major issue, at least right now with XP12, You got all this new lighting engine but the reset of the asset are not matching the work they have done. All the autogen, outside of airport assets, looks very out of place. Also night lighting , again besides airport assets, has not be overhaul yet.  This is still Beta3 but you cannot criticized people for point this out as it very obvious.  They have good job with the haze in daytime but night time as no light pollution. The sky should not be pitch black over the city, it will be grey with some glow from the sulfur light relfecting. 

I am willing to give the chance to LR to improved on this. They have a long way to go.

The single biggest issue with the sim right now is the complete lack of shadows on the ground scenery. No matter how good the lighting engine is, it can only do so much. Once you look down at the scenery, it just straight up breaks the immersion because it looks like the autogen is literally floating on the ground. Shadows + ambient occlusion NEEDS to be implemented for the autogen asap.

[mSparks 2,086]

51 minutes ago, Baber20 said:

Shadows + ambient occlusion NEEDS to be implemented

Why would you think they are not?

Looks great to me?

 

[MrBitstFlyer 3,875]

1 hour ago, Baber20 said:

The single biggest issue with the sim right now is the complete lack of shadows on the ground scenery. No matter how good the lighting engine is, it can only do so much. Once you look down at the scenery, it just straight up breaks the immersion because it looks like the autogen is literally floating on the ground. Shadows + ambient occlusion NEEDS to be implemented for the autogen asap.

YES, YES, YES! 

XP12s new lighting is phenomenal, but the lack of ground scenery shadows is baffling!  Every few XP12 flights I load up MSFS and fly the same route to compare.  MSFS lighting is not bad, but XP12s is better - more natural.  The way the ground is shadowed by the lighting engine and the clouds is great, but is partly let down by autogen buildings and trees without shadows.  In areas with lots of trees, the building bottoms can be hidden, thus the lack of shadows is not as jarring, but in areas without trees, the buildings do not seem to be connected to the ground - they appear to float over it!  The autogen in isolation does look like it is from a simulator 20 years ago!

Laminar Research, you have created a flight sim of so much promise, but the lack of shadows to ground scenery is letting down the product.  as I have said, to create a lighting model as good as you have in XP12 yet not allow that light to cast shadows to autogen and trees is just baffling!  I sure hope autogen shadows are in the development plan! 

 

[MrBitstFlyer 3,875]

31 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Why would you think they are not?

Looks great to me?

Shadow do indeed look great at very low altitudes and very close to the aircraft, but the problem is the distance shadows are plotted.  Here is a screenshot just 1000ft off the ground - no shadowing at all!

The autogen designs are fine, but the lack of shadows (even directly under the aircraft) spoils the illusion.  

[mSparks 2,086]

13 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Here is a screenshot just 1000ft off the ground - no shadowing at all!

right - and the reason for that is performance....

I believe there is an art dataref that sets how far away the dynamic shadows render (so you can try tweeking that and see if the fps cost is worth it for you).

There has also been some discussion about generic shadow system "hacks" for the objects and trees, but anything like that is probably at least as far off as the snow and water mesh deformers I would like to see.

 

[Baber20 1,438]

1 hour ago, mSparks said:

right - and the reason for that is performance....

 

This is 2022 not 2002. Shadow rendering isn't really that hard on performance unless it isn't built into the rendering pipeline.

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

How do you ship a graphic engine without motion vectoring and TAA in 2022. I feel like LR focus on all a lot of wrong thing, they should have modernise their engine before doing the rest

[Gary1124 181]

8 hours ago, Gulfstream said:

This is silly.

I'm a US/CPMEL and I am very familiar with all of the operations you list above, in the real world.

That sounds like a VFR flight to me, which means looking out the window.  You can't fly VFR without "looking at the ground much".

If you are launching 0/0 and doing a CAT-III inbound with a follow-me truck, then perhaps you can disregard the outside visuals.

Yes. It is VFR. Most of my flights are in the Mid-Atlantic. My homefield sim and for real is KSEG, Selinsgrove, PA. You ought to see how I used ADE to dress up the whole area in P3D/FSX. Only the paint shades are a little off. In both P3D/Orbx and XP11 the regional scenery is reasonably correct. No, the buildings are not exact but street grids are close enough and roads, water courses and geography are very decent. I was amazed when I first toured around in Xplane 11 how accurate our local regionals were to the actual airports. N79, KZER, KCXY, KMDT, KRVL, KLNS, KRDG. All very well done for default. Although I did need xAmerica to have the landmark cooling towers West of MDT 31 approach. But, in either I can navigate piloteage. I even once flew Pigeon Forge to Shenandoah following I-81 in P3D. Two hours. I am learning in a C182. I stay with planes I could resonably get close to in the 20- 30 or so years left in my life.

[Sethos 4,343]

4 hours ago, fogboundturtle said:

How do you ship a graphic engine without motion vectoring and TAA in 2022. I feel like LR focus on all a lot of wrong thing, they should have modernise their engine before doing the rest

Indeed. It really does feel like we've gone back 10-15 years in time when talking about X-Plane's engine, the performance hits etc. 

[soaring_penguin 428]

2 hours ago, Sethos said:

Indeed. It really does feel like we've gone back 10-15 years in time when talking about X-Plane's engine, the performance hits etc. 

And this is what I meant in the other thread. I do accept positive criticism, but this boils down to: "Laminar has been doing it wrong all this time". 

Along the development road, there are decisions to be made, and sometimes they turn out not the best for any given problem/solution.
The important thing is sometimes that a decision is being made, just to be able to move forward.
We don't know what the status of motion vectoring and TAA was at the time off their decision making, and how difficult it is to implement in Vulkan, while keeping interoperability with all the thee OS's, existing hardware and add-ons.

My last upgrade was 7 years ago, and I don't have currently the means to upgrade, so yes, interoperability is important for me.

BTW, version 12 is running at acceptable levels on my 10 year old Intel i5 and Geforce 1070. Much better then I anticipated (usually above 25, and around 40 outside cities).

World-X-Europe does make a heavy hit, I am still considering if I should be using it in the current state of the beta.