P3D and Unreal Engine - Article

[mpo910 2,112]

Article P3D with Unreal Engine

Seems they are heading towards a fully new direction. 

Incl...Photorealistic Models!

Marcus

 

[spearmint_flyer 579]

Well. This could make things interesting for me. Go on. 🤔

[Iadbound 211]

Already discussing this here: 

But it is interesting.

[alox 6]

Anyone Knows if unreal engine works with true sky?

Regards.

[chapstick 2,757]

22 minutes ago, alox said:

Anyone Knows if unreal engine works with true sky?

Regards.

TrueSky wouldn’t be needed. UE has its own volumetric clouds.

[FrankSalo 272]

3 hours ago, alox said:

Anyone Knows if unreal engine works with true sky?

Regards.

It did for Ace Combat 7 when it was released in 2019 so yes. 

[ZLA Steve 374]

I would manage your expectations as nowhere in this piece do they specifically mention Prepar3d. It's possible this isn't a consumer-focused program and what you're seeing isn't v6.

[Garys 209]

45 minutes ago, ZLA Steve said:

I would manage your expectations as nowhere in this piece do they specifically mention Prepar3d. It's possible this isn't a consumer-focused program and what you're seeing isn't v6.

They didnt really have too. On the Unreal LM release the Lockheed guy talked about the issues of having to build 2 seperate models for flight and ground ops because they werent compatible. We know that Prepar3d is flightops. They have showcased it a million times. He said very clearly that this wont be an issue any longer when moving to the Unreal engine.

[jymp 168]

1000% speculation currently, Unreal engine ?, however this could be big, hope springs eternal....

[coastaldriver 920]

It seems my initial assessment of where LM were taking Flight Simulation was basically correct.

They are refocusing on their main customer base - military and commercial. LM will build the models required (With acres of CADCAM data for LM products should not be too difficult with help from A2A or BlackBird or whoever they wish) and this Unreal Engine is too deliver what they are fond of referring to as Scenarios (Probably right down to nuts and bolts engineering and vehicle technical support) This makes sense. What LM did not say but I have long suspected is that they have hit the wall with the coding of P3D (aka MS Flight Simulator circa FSX vintage) and distributed processing and multicore CPUs - the MS DLL daisy chain issue. It is not really suited to multi-core systems with 4-6or 8 cores running efficiently and well. It seems to me that is what Unreal Engine is for that and of course to pull in high quality graphic outcomes for various models (The high quality gaming visual environment referred to).

What does this mean for P3D as we know it - hard to say but one could say the Unreal Engine graphics and distributed processing engines and software will be applied to selected LM vehicles (Namely those of their customer based whether it be the F35 or drones or missile systems and of course the ability to interface realistic onboard CDU's and their operation. So we will not be getting access to that and basically Unreal will only be for Commercial and Military customers not the Amateur or Academic P3D user. Look their may be some carry over into an update for P3DV5.3 but I am not expecting much at all. Seems they acknowledge that as far as scenery ground objects goes that it is just a bunch of polygons so no doubt the Unreal Engine will be able to selectively enhance and modify the graphics of particular points or areas as required. This also makes sense because military and commercial training basically does the same thing over and over and over. You might have at maximum 30 different areas to worry about for basic flight training and more dependent on the training for operational or tactical training. To pull together high level packages that overlay on the basic P3D process then makes perfect sense and is much more cost effective and LM seem satisfied that what they have seen will work. Their may be some improvements in the base scenery accuracy and look for P3D but the days of bulk updates to world scenery etc are I would hazard a guess are over! You could see with how P3D progressed to V5 that this where they were going, multi core processing, addons processes and keep the main engine lean and mean - that is rely on 3rd party software people to bolt in proven technology that was suitable. Basically they will removed the clunky and unworkable SIM DIRECTOR part of the sim and let UNREAL package as required. They already have hundreds of thousands of high quality 3D models of building vehicles etc to work with so no biggy - just takes up a lot of programmer time and resources for small outcomes.

I hate to say this but I will be blunt this is the end of the line for the MS derived flight simulation program P3D LM have taken it as far as they can in the 64 bit world but its achilles heel has always been multicore processing and the daisy chain file system that is core to MS products all over. 

I never expected them to pick up a world scenery such as Bing Maps or Google Earth - why they are both only day time photgrammatic representations and a lot of fudging has to go on for night and to create that 3D building look. Google or MS both. But you never know  it just may be possible that Unreal Engine will be made available in some form to be able to work on P3D scenery and fligth models as it is. IF so great but I am not holding my breath, 

I just keep V5.3 rolling along improving scenery where I can and when it is available. As for aeroplanes there are none that I want or need that are not already available to me either. It still hits the nail on head for accuracy, repeatability and correct flight simulation for the IFR environment. 

Edited November 30, 2022 by coastaldriver
spelling

[mpo910 2,112]

2 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

So we will not be getting access to that and basically Unreal will only be for Commercial and Military customers not the Amateur or Academic P3D user.

I assume this as well!

[shivers9 1,174]

8 hours ago, mpo910 said:

I assume this as well!

Well, you guys seem to be painting a very negative view of our Flight Sim hobby moving forward. All that you say may turn out to be spot on and if so it is really kind of the beginning of the end of the hobby. If I accept your predictions and I have no reasons not to, then We seem to be at a point where those among us who are not interested in crashing our toy 747's into fake buildings with flushing potties need to just move on to something else. I don't see an xbox thingy in my future or sitting around waiting for the bi-weekly "update" that is roughly the size of a digital Library of Congress to download which may fix the last "update" that broke the last "update". Meanwhile over at X-Pain 12 things don't really look earth shattering either. It seems that their new Beta release is not getting anyone excited except maybe the owner. 

It is interesting to note that the Front page New Releases at AVSIM features X-Pain 12 and that is nearly 3 months old now. I think that says a lot about the current state of our hobby and is quite a departure from how things were a couple of years ago.

 

Edited November 30, 2022 by shivers9

[FrankSalo 272]

1 hour ago, shivers9 said:

 We seem to be at a point where those among us who are not interested in crashing our toy 747's into fake buildings with flushing potties need to just move on to something else.

I've used Prepar3d from V2.5 to 5.3 and am very much excited for what V6 will do. However these "toy" sentiments about the other sim in November/December 2022 is just plain wrong. I can load up my PMDG 737 serviced by GSX at Flytampa KBOS, fly on Vatsim with AIG model matching down to LatinVFR following all procedures in the other sim just the same as I do in P3D 5.3. Is it missing some features like proper weather radar? Yes. Your other points about updates I can understand, but that's the nature of most software in 2022 and we're not going back unfortunately. I brought this up because repeating our opinion of the other sim when it launched back in 2020 here in 2022 following the strides it made (especially in the last 6 months) makes us look disingenuous and tribal. The gap between the other sim and P3D is shrinking considerably however LM may well regain the edge again with their next release. The good news is all the excitement Microsoft stirred up may have the more professional users who just returned to flight sim seeking something a higher fidelity sim may end up looking at LM's next gen sim when it launches. We all win in the end so I wouldn't feel animosity to the guys having fun in Camp Microsoft/Asobo. 

[Christopher Low 5,354]

Let's not sign the death certificate of P3D just yet. We know next to nothing about Lockheed Martin's plans for the new "flight operations training simulator". It's also worth noting that with Unreal Engine 5, they may even fancy breaking into the first person shooter arena

[G-RFRY 1,712]

You can keep what you have no forced upgrade, you can have both for the cost of a PC game your choice, remember users call for moving on from old code for years.