18 minutes ago, Daube said:

The clouds and their lighting looks very good indeed, but these are not the same cloud types (much thicker) as depicted in the MSFS shot, so can they really be compared ?

Rule of thumb: Doesn't matter, XP better.

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Concerning the atmosphere though, it would be fair to mention that MSFS currently suffers from a bug preventing the haze/visibility from being depicted correctly in real weather mode. It's still possible to get very nice results in manual weather mode though. Hopefully the bug will be sorted out at some point.

This board is not about fairness in comparisons, it's about repeating how advanced in basically every aspect XP is.

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To get back on XP12, why is the ground so dark in these screenshot ? Is there some big cloud formations behing the point of view which are casting shadow on the visible ground ?

XP has always issues with lighting. I think just comparing the last three screenshots on this page is telling enough. But keep the rule of thumb in mind.

Well well, would you look at that, another thread devolved into comparisons to MSFS. It's almost like a rule over here. 

4 minutes ago, Sethos said:

Well well, would you look at that, another thread devolved into comparisons to MSFS. It's almost like a rule over here. 

What I don't understand is why this is even necessary, I mean we all know that XP is better in basically every aspect. No idea why it needs to be proven again and again.

4 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

However, with some ortho at a higher quality than MSFS is capable of, Simheaven and GlobalForest, XP12 is better than MSFS imho.

Hmm,

I think its safe to say it will be.

What we have now is mostly still predomintly XP11 with very early use of the new vegatation engine and not spoilt by the broken lighting in XP11.

XP, tuned up, is now consistently good, its a pleasure, but I'm not convinced the scenery available quite passes a "always better than msfs" bar just yet. That wasn't even a goal of the releases so far...

 

8 minutes ago, mSparks said:

What we have now is mostly still predomintly XP11 with very early use of the new vegatation engine and not spoilt by the broken lighting in XP11.

The lighting and the clouds were the biggest issues/limitations of XP11 anyways. The autogen of XP11 was very good, even if the trees were not 3D. It simply suffered from the lighting problems ("radioactive trees" being the worst consequence). This is mostly solved in XP12 if I understood correctly, so addon landscapes should look just great. (including in VR 🙂 ) 

 

Edited October 23, 20223 yr by Daube

10 minutes ago, Daube said:

The lighting and the clouds were the biggest issues/limitations of XP11 anyways. The autogen of XP11 was very good, even if the trees were not 3D. It simply suffered from the lighting problems ("radioactive trees"). This is mostly solved in XP12 if I understood correctly, so addon landscapes should look just great. (including in VR 🙂 ) 

 

Oh the fights we had here trying to make exactly that point before people saw with their own eyes it was the lighting not the art assets that were the main problem...

But also, the XP art assets are very dated now compared with others like ms and dcs, there are many tools now compared to when they were created to do much better, and thats still to come.

 

Edited October 23, 20223 yr by mSparks

2 hours ago, Daube said:

To get back on XP12, why is the ground so dark in these screenshot ? Is there some big cloud formations behing the point of view which are casting shadow on the visible ground ?

[EDIT: corrected the XP screenshot which had been made at early morning time. The current one is at around noon time].

I think I set visibility to a lowish 15 miles (IMO it's where XP lighting engine gives its best).

But you might be right in that XP cloud shadows seem to "expand" too much compared to the actual cloud cover.

Anyway, here it is with the max 100 miles visibility and no clouds:

In general XP seems to be darker even with high visibility, but it's interesting to compare the screenshot to a real life photo of 100 miles visibility (by Austin himself nonethless):

 

 

Edited October 23, 20223 yr by Murmur

1 hour ago, rka said:

I think just comparing the last three screenshots on this page is telling enough.

Indeed!

Real life 100 miles visibility:

vs XP12:

 

vs MSFS:

 

Edited October 23, 20223 yr by Murmur

55 minutes ago, rka said:

What I don't understand is why this is even necessary, I mean we all know that XP is better in basically every aspect.

I always said MSFS scenery is much better. If scenery is your priority use MSFS. That is true for 90% of simmers and always has been!

3 hours ago, rka said:

This board is not about fairness in comparisons, it's about repeating how advanced in basically every aspect XP is.

XP has always issues with lighting. I think just comparing the last three screenshots on this page is telling enough. But keep the rule of thumb in mind.

Thanks for the reality check. This whole time I thought I was posting in the Asobo forums!

Always has lighting issues? Did Beta 8 break the lighting? I haven't had the opportunity to update yet but it very much looks like it's stable enough for mSparks to start tuning 744 lights.

XP12's color grading is very realistic (see Murmur's posts above). Combined with the new atmosphere and photometric lighting model, it's the most realistic environment model one can buy for ~$100ish. Surely you've heard by now that XP is going to be used in a level D sim, specifically because of its atmospheric modeling fidelity. Goodness...can you imagine the chest-thumping over here in the XP forums if that was happening because of the flight model?? 🙂

8 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

Thanks for the reality check. This whole time I thought I was posting in the Asobo forums!

Always has lighting issues? Did Beta 8 break the lighting? I haven't had the opportunity to update yet but it very much looks like it's stable enough for mSparks to start tuning 744 lights.

XP12's color grading is very realistic (see Murmur's posts above). Combined with the new atmosphere and photometric lighting model, it's the most realistic environment model one can buy for ~$100ish. Surely you've heard by now that XP is going to be used in a level D sim, specifically because of its atmospheric modeling fidelity. Goodness...can you imagine the chest-thumping over here in the XP forums if that was happening because of the flight model?? 🙂

And to think that Xenviro found an opportunity to join the other side with their release with so many comparison shots of improvements to their weather environment and clouds is shocking considering that they think its so much better than Xplane. It just goes to show that someone can objectively find ways to make improvements to their clouds system and environment that they felt that was not all that impressive to them.

2 hours ago, Murmur said:

[EDIT: corrected the XP screenshot which had been made at early morning time. The current one is at around noon time].

I think I set visibility to a lowish 15 miles (IMO it's where XP lighting engine gives its best).

But you might be right in that XP cloud shadows seem to "expand" too much compared to the actual cloud cover.

Anyway, here it is with the max 100 miles visibility and no clouds:

In general XP seems to be darker even with high visibility, but it's interesting to compare the screenshot to a real life photo of 100 miles visibility (by Austin himself nonethless):

 

 

The nice thing with Xplane is that you get an actual visibility slider in the weather settings. MSFS doesn't have that 😞

There is however a "humidity" slider which has a similar effect. In the examples below, I tried some manual weather settings, showing the evolution from the minimum value to the maximum value for the humidity setting: 1, 5, 10 and 20.

1:

 

5:

 

10:

 

20:

 

Interestingly points are the variation of ambiant light and the effects on the shadows on the plane, as well as the visibility distance. It's quite sad that, in the current version, the real weather *seems* to ignore this parameter.

Also important to notice that I'm not able, at this point, to get a very low visibility with that setting. I don't know the weather interface very well though...

 

Edited October 23, 20223 yr by Daube

21 minutes ago, Daube said:

It's quite sad that, in the current version, the real weather *seems* to ignore this parameter.

Also important to notice that I'm not able, at this point, to get a very low visibility with that setting. I don't know the weather interface very well though...

That kind of a bug at this point must have Jorg jumping out of his skin!

Humidity is a cool way of controlling visibility. And certainly the most physically-representative method, too. I hope the 1-10 values actually mean something (e.g. % rel humid).

XP kind of does this via the visibility distance slider at long range (50+ miles). Would be a pain to use close in, though. A flight instructor or IFR enthusiast is just going to want to set a visible distance, not fumble around with ambient temp and water content of the air. 

Exactly. This is definitely one of the areas where XP simply does it better.

 

44 minutes ago, Daube said:

The nice thing with Xplane is that you get an actual visibility slider in the weather settings. MSFS doesn't have that 😞

Yeah strange choice, every flight simulator since FS2000 had a visibility setting.

45 minutes ago, Daube said:

Also important to notice that I'm not able, at this point, to get a very low visibility with that setting. I don't know the weather interface very well though...

I think you can get very low visibility with either precipitation or placing a cloud layer at ground level. But nothing as precise as you could do with a visibility slider.