35 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

This isn't really an avsim problem

It's an Avsim problem in the sense that they allow him to do this over and over for years. It's pretty much a guarantee in any thread you visit in this forum that he and/or jarmstro will do their best to derail it. Why people feed into it is beyond me.

mSparks specifically has some form of complex to want to have the last word, and never be wrong. He'll attempt to bait you at every angle. It's bizarre, but Avsim lives with it, so the answer is to just not visit these threads often and live a less stressful life. 🙂 

At the end of the day your time wasted responding to these non-winnable debates will have been a genuine waste of your time. Don't try to be right. Let him feel important and move on. That need to feel such a way is indeed a trait of being narcissistic as @SAS_A340 suggested, but it's not our job to diagnose these things on a forum. Most everyone reading and posting already agrees with your views of the matter without replying to him anyhow. It's all good!

48 minutes ago, Cameron XA said:

It's an Avsim problem in the sense that they allow him to do this over and over for years.

Talking about flight sim on a flight sim forum... yeah... terrible... I assume that's something verboten where you mod right? seemed to be from the few threads I read anyway, and the personal abuse you launched into on your customers (let me guess.... now you remember why you dont like me 🤣).

Guys like you are X-Planes biggest problem, Not just wanting to push a fight, launching into personal attacks, but actually bringing some credibility with you at the same time.

Rein your neck in kid, I can go as low as you, and that's saying something. 

EDIT: But thanks for reminding exactly why we need an in sim market place, I'll get right back on lobbying for that.

 

Edited December 5, 20223 yr by mSparks

On 12/3/2022 at 1:23 PM, soaring_penguin said:

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

and therefore must be avoided by all means.

just as MSFS is a replica of x-plane because they added the whole Garmin GNS 430/530 instrument set, but fortunately improved upon the x-plane implementation level greatly.

both use Textron drawings to implement the Cessna 172 shape and model.

and both use math and the value of pi to achieve an ultimately very similar flight model. worse yet, both use the same aircraft manufacturer's data to calculate the respective aircraft's stall speeds. 😈

I am glad Lockheed Martin decided to implement Blacksharks AI, I might be tempted to load P3D v6 again for the first time after 2 years and enjoy that replica.

later:

oh no, I just learnt that Gears of War's is using Unreal Engine 5 in "Alpha Point" making P3D v6 a replica of this and hundreds of ego shooter games.

do we really want another pretty scenery simulator? Unreal Engine 5 runs even on the game console PS5, what were they thinking!

"The Coalition, the studio behind Gears of War's recent entries, revealed an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo called Alpha Point, demonstrating the technology's ability to create realistic shadows and reflections."

heaven forbid x-plane ever implements a powerful graphics engine like Unreal Engine 5 and thus ends up being a replica of whatever.

https://gamerant.com/all-confirmed-unreal-engine-5-games/

Edited December 5, 20223 yr by turbomax

1 hour ago, turbomax said:

I am glad Lockheed Martin decided to implement Blacksharks AI, I might be tempted to load P3D v6 again for the first time after 2 years and enjoy that replica.

I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it too. I also think it would be a good demonstration of how even something "the same" can make a sim look very different.

Blackshark makes a compelling product. I think it would look great in X-Plane too. Time will tell what Laminar decides to do with scenery in the v12 run though. I know they don't intend to just sit still about it.

Edited December 5, 20223 yr by Cameron XA

15 minutes ago, Cameron XA said:

how even something "the same" can make a sim look very different

after 300 posts we are finally back at my thread title. thank you Cameron. and I totally agree with you. Blackshark, Unreal Engine etc. these are all tools the major flightsim developers can outsource to and implement to save time and concentrate on what they are best at, and that is definitely not to re-invent the most advanced graphics engines or highly specialised geo data algorithms. the "not invented here" syndrome has killed other companies before. remember Kodak, Nokia etc?

Edited December 6, 20223 yr by turbomax

9 minutes ago, turbomax said:

the "not invented here" syndrome has killed other companies before. remember Kodak, Nokia etc?

Yes, I hear you there.

I don't want to speak for Laminar. The folks there are good friends of mine, and I'm not a PR spokesman for them. That said, I've had casual phone conversations about topics like scenery, licensing, etc, and one of the concerns there has been more one of, "What happens if we were to license tech that one day a company decides is no longer worth their time to develop of license?" It's a situation of not wanting to depend on other parties to the extent they can kill your product in one fell swoop. Looking back at it, Google has a history of this with various products as an example.

I'm not siding one way or the other. I do understand such a concern when you've worked on a sim like Austin and Ben have for over 20 years. I sure would love to see some streaming ortho and AI autogenerated stuff from the likes of Blackshark though. Cool thought!

I should be clear that I'm also not sharing a final stance from Laminar. Just a valid concern in their process of thought about what to do for the future. If and when they announce something will be entirely up to them. 😎

I imagine there are contracts signed between Lockheed Martin, Microsoft/Asobo and the developers of crucial components like UnrealEngine, BlackShark etc. that take care of this.

edit: some contracts even include access to the source code.

Edited December 6, 20223 yr by turbomax

15 minutes ago, turbomax said:

I imagine there are contracts signed between Lockheed Martin, Microsoft/Asobo and the developers of crucial components like UnrealEngine, BlackShark etc. that take care of this.

You may be right. I'm not privy to that information, however, at the end of the day it may well also just be a licensed service. There's really nothing that says a company or product must stay in business if it fails or is failing.

I mentioned Google as an example because they're quite a large corporation with many corporate contracts. While they do give warning when things are shutting down, a game/sim is not quite as, "Hey, let's quickly shift our IT to this alternative."

Either way, there's limits to what Laminar is willing to entrust in another entity if it means the specific component makes or breaks their sim should things go awry. Where that will ultimately end up is something we'll find out together. 🙂

and if Apple closes down their app store for x-plane mobile, and Microsoft stops developing windows, there will always be Linux. 😀

For example, Google gave Stadia devs (including their own internal employees) 3 month's notice of the shutdown. Certainly a bit different than access to streaming map services, but still a blink of the eye for a LR-type company slurping down a small fraction of that bandwidth.

32 minutes ago, turbomax said:

and if Apple closes down their app store for x-plane mobile, and Microsoft stops developing windows, there will always be Linux. 😀

Haha, yes. Not quite the same comparison though. 😛

15 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

For example, Google gave Stadia devs (including their own internal employees) 3 month's notice of the shutdown. Certainly a bit different than access to streaming map services, but still a blink of the eye for a LR-type company slurping down a small fraction of that bandwidth.

This is a much better example. Thanks!

6 hours ago, espent said:

Of course the DC-6 will be on XBOX by April, but it depends if people have time to test it since we just in the last hours got a free upgrade to the TBM, CJ4 and the Longitude with pretty much 1:1 avionics.

BTW: This upgrade was another one you said would never come.

So much free quality stuff. Hard to choose.

Don't worry; it's always worse in Manchester.

Quote

and therefore must be avoided by all means.

No, it hasn't to be avoided by all means. But why would you (or anybody else) insist on LR to go that route? As blingthinger explained, there can be good business reasons not to do implement a third party scenery generator. In the end, the decision is with Austin Meyer. 

As I try to explain my children, there is a distinction between: "I would like" and "you must".

But also

https://stormbirds.blog/2022/12/04/unreal-and-nor-and-future-simulators-from-the-unreal-engine/

 

Edited December 6, 20223 yr by mSparks

Wow, this thread! Thankfully there's a nice ignore button 🙂

On-topic, it's exciting to see that the entire planet is available inside games, and that too at a very high level of detail. Whether XP uses it or not (and there are good reasons both ways, including the fact that streaming data brings a new set of issues - slow internet, etc), it's clear that we will see new types of games soon, and flight sims are the ideal type of game - you can see the earth, but you aren't close enough to have the illusion break down the way you would be in a racing or open world game.