Recently I purchased a 4090 and have basically doubled my FPS on MSFS to 120 most of the time when using the new frame generation technology, and that with TAA, RealTraffic, 4K and everything on Ultra.

While I have purchased XP12 and did use it a lot, I must say that the performance gap is now so great that I have not bothered to launch XP for a long time, especially after SU11 and all its goodies.

Besides that, MSFS is absolutely rock solid, while on XP crashes and all sort of visual glitches are still common. 

Now with tons of add-ons and high quality free content being released for MSFS, I am afraid that the gap is becoming too large for me to commit to XP much further into the future. 

I sincerely hope that LR focuses on improving their engine to support most recent gaming technologies like DLSS and FR and perhaps be more clear in articulating how are they going to match the absurd visual difference between the two platforms, especially when it comes to terrain. 

Edited December 3, 20223 yr by GCBraun

I'm going to come in with a highly controversial opinion here, but I'm in a mood.

I was a heavy X-Plane user after Microsoft dropped out of the market.  The update pace was somewhat glacial but, hey, we were getting updates.  Sure, the auto-gen wasn't pretty, the roads were awful (especially on top of ortho) ... etc.  Yes, I know you can turn those off, with yet another toggle/switch/config change.

Oh, and speaking of ortho, it almost required us to be Comp Sci majors to get LoD correct and use the esoteric tools to make it function.  In the area we wanted.  If we wanted more, we have to pony up for a 1+ TB drive and handle all of that on an even greater scale.

Then Microsoft came out of nowhere with something that obliterates the competition scenery wise, global satellite coverage with correct building footprints, automatic cloud and shadowing removal, etc etc.

I read this Blackshark AI release with some interest, however X-Plane has too much technical debt to re-write the engine from scratch in something like Unreal.

So where does that leave them then?

The developers they have are extremely talented.  The lightening revamp alone I find MORE impressive than what is in MSFS at the moment.

But unless you are one of a handful of remaining die-hards who swear "the flight model feels more realistic", I don't see a clear path forward.  They'd have to scratch the engine and re-write, and you can only imagine with 20 years of C++ code, plus plugins and all the rest of it ... that's ....

Well that's not possible.

13 minutes ago, Gulfstream said:

But unless you are one of a handful of remaining die-hards who swear "the flight model feels more realistic", I don't see a clear path forward.  They'd have to scratch the engine and re-write, and you can only imagine with 20 years of C++ code, plus plugins and all the rest of it ... that's ....

Well that's not possible.

Fully agree on this conclusion. It's going to be a rocky road for XP and there have been warnings by lots of users about this for years, but they have been silenced at every occasion, I can tell from personal experience here and on the org 😉

This is exactly why Austin's Evolution is of importance. It really does sound like people expect (nay, hope) LR to disappear; as if Austin will have to fire everyone next year and go live under a bridge for the rest of his life, leaving us poor peons to suffer in misery with our addons that will never get updated for a v13 in 5 yrs.

LR isn't going anywhere. Austin has built a sustainable enterprise. The Evo is proof of that. Worst case scenario is that in 4-5 yrs he has to downsize by a few folks. Right now the opposite is happening.

There's quite a plethora of crybabies shedding tears about not wanting to do work to get ortho and maybe write some scripts here and there or install some additional software. XP is a tinkerer's simulator, no doubt about it. It's more and more obvious that the past few years of fame for xp11 attracted the eye-candy crowd. Buh-bye, now!

XP12's atmosphere and photometric lighting model is simply the best right now and the flight model always has been. Slap some ortho4xp in there and I don't see a reason to bother with anything else. Even then, I've been perfectly happy with the default textures for most of my flights since 12 came out. The weather is perfectly usable now and will continue to mature. And the fuzzy clouds? They actually frequently look like DCS's. No complaints there.

Asobo who?

Quote

And the fuzzy clouds? They actually frequently look like DCS's

That's really no excuse. I assume they keep them like that so x-plane would run even on more modest hardware. But really we should have the option to max them out. 

They could look like this: https://cdn2.unrealengine.com/f-21-shot-14-15ac740a84bd.mp4

4 hours ago, Gulfstream said:

I'm going to come in with a highly controversial opinion here, but I'm in a mood.

I was a heavy X-Plane user after Microsoft dropped out of the market.  The update pace was somewhat glacial but, hey, we were getting updates.  Sure, the auto-gen wasn't pretty, the roads were awful (especially on top of ortho) ... etc.  Yes, I know you can turn those off, with yet another toggle/switch/config change.

Oh, and speaking of ortho, it almost required us to be Comp Sci majors to get LoD correct and use the esoteric tools to make it function.  In the area we wanted.  If we wanted more, we have to pony up for a 1+ TB drive and handle all of that on an even greater scale.

Then Microsoft came out of nowhere with something that obliterates the competition scenery wise, global satellite coverage with correct building footprints, automatic cloud and shadowing removal, etc etc.

I read this Blackshark AI release with some interest, however X-Plane has too much technical debt to re-write the engine from scratch in something like Unreal.

So where does that leave them then?

The developers they have are extremely talented.  The lightening revamp alone I find MORE impressive than what is in MSFS at the moment.

But unless you are one of a handful of remaining die-hards who swear "the flight model feels more realistic", I don't see a clear path forward.  They'd have to scratch the engine and re-write, and you can only imagine with 20 years of C++ code, plus plugins and all the rest of it ... that's ....

Well that's not possible.

It pains me to agree with you, (only because I had such high hopes for xp12) but i do agree with you 100 percent. 

3 hours ago, blingthinger said:

XP12's atmosphere and photometric lighting model is simply the best right now and the flight model always has been. 

Atmosphere certainly not the best, the rest - lighting model and **some** aspects of flight dynamics I do like yes...

4 hours ago, blingthinger said:

XP12's atmosphere and photometric lighting model is simply the best right now and the flight model always has been.

I have been a customer of xplane for 6 years.
The lighting of XP12 is not the best at all, MSFS is far superior in recreating real solar lighting, it is enough to take a tour in the "images" section of the forum to realize this.
Also, XP12's photometric illumination is as buggy as XP11's; both generate unrealistic dark panels.

I agree instead on the flight dynamics, they are very good.

6 hours ago, Gulfstream said:

But unless you are one of a handful of remaining die-hards who swear "the flight model feels more realistic",

well, its not just the flight model that has made XP12 the most successful xplane release for Laminar ever.... Thats just one of the few things no one really disagrees with.

 

6 hours ago, Gulfstream said:

however X-Plane has too much technical debt to re-write the engine from scratch in something like Unreal.

There are two partnerships that could have been/be really beneficial but didnt happen imho

Truesky, and unigine.

Unreal not so much, because they cant do circumventing the entire globe without loading screens or stutters. Even unigine only claim to, not actually seen it for myself.

And that diferrence between what is claimed by others vs the reality of the situation is really the biggest challenge LR have to somehow overcome.

Blackshark ai is responsible for the default airports in MSFS yes? Are we really expected to believe that is an improvement over xplane that 

6 hours ago, Gulfstream said:

obliterates the competition scenery wise

 

Edited December 3, 20223 yr by mSparks

On 12/2/2022 at 11:38 AM, psolk said:

MSFS is built off Blackshark.ai technology.  It's a fact. They have now taken that and expanded it to the Unreal engine

sounds to me like MSFS had a 2 year exclusive which has now run out and not surprisingly we will see this everywhere pretty soon. great technology from the small country "Tu Felix Austria!"

17 hours ago, brinx said:

Lockheed Martin also competes in the same commercial simulator space as xplane. This would leave xplane in a very interesting position.

but x-plane can't use that modern technology, it would make them a "replica" 😄

3 hours ago, bogdansrb said:

I assume they keep them like that so x-plane would run even on more modest hardware.

More translucency generally equates to less performance. Not the other way around. Helping modest hardware would be to use more dense clouds. They've made an artistic choice that often looks like DCS. That sim generally gets praised for its clouds. Now, does it look quite as good as DCS all the time? No. But the artistic direction is similar. And yes, fuzzy clouds do occur many times IRL. All the time? Admittedly no.

 

2 hours ago, jcomm said:

Atmosphere certainly not the best

You're talking weather system modeling? If so, I agree with you. And there, XP is plausible enough right now that I see no reason to bother elsewhere. Atmospheric rendering is better. Photometric better.

 

52 minutes ago, efis007 said:

MSFS is far superior in recreating real solar lighting

You are just as wrong here as you were throwing your fit over the magenta issue never going away or getting 'fixed'. Looking through the images in this thread is enough to see that. It's sometimes 'just as good', but hardly 'far superior'. The dark cockpits are photometrically correct. They'll probably have to dumb the algorithm down a bit to effectively simulate eyeball iris functionality a bit better.

28 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

You're talking weather system modeling? If so, I agree with you. And there, XP is plausible enough right now that I see no reason to bother elsewhere. Atmospheric rendering is better. Photometric better.

Yes, the weather model, how they use the data they gather from NOA, some overdone turbulence, lack of detail in some aspects like those pertaining to soaring flight / convection etc...

Even rendering wise - no lights reflected / refracted by clouds during night, so no city light as IRL and aircraft lights do not illuminate clouds. This makes XP12's night irrealistically dark compared to RL, same place same weather... that glow you see when overflying cities, or from bellow.

Edited December 3, 20223 yr by jcomm

19 minutes ago, turbomax said:

but x-plane can't use that modern technology, it would make them a "replica" 😄

You do realize that Lockheed Martin continued the FSX code, and over the years added to it? Unlike X-Plane, which has been created from scratch by Austin himself for several decennia.

Using blackshark.AI would indeed make X-Plane a replica of MSFS, scenery wise, as it is the exact same technology.

43 minutes ago, jcomm said:

no lights reflected / refracted by clouds during night, so no city light as IRL and aircraft lights do not illuminate clouds

Ah yes, I agree again. I've hardly noticed it though, since I've been hanging out in big cities and have been so dazzled by the lights below. Approach at night to a runway w/ a full ALSF/RAIL looks amazing.