Hi Everybody,

 

As stated, new beta .7 update is out.

Edited June 13, 20241 yr by Mike_CFII_MEL

Public Beta - 12.1.0b7

There is a new checkbox in the graphics settings called "Enable FXAA Antialiasing". This allows users to enable/disable FXAA independently of MSAA.

Bug fixes
● XPD-15389 - Bug report "G1000 is in boot mode on 3, 10 nm approaches if selected after cold and dark start".
● XPD-15390 - Bug report "Ground textures flashing with camera movements/zoom".
● XPD-15422 - Separate checkbox for enabling FXAA independently of MSAA.
● XPD-15424 - Bug report "Orthophotos on the ground blurred/overlayed at distance".
● XPD-15441 - Flight model of PA18 SuperCub needs adjusting.
● XPD-15478 - Crash In Vulkan Memory Allocator.
● XPD-15480 - Crash inside of render dag when volumetric fog is enabled.
● XPD-15488 - F14 standby horizon slip indicator (ball) reversed sense.
● XPD-15544 - "Minor bug - German Localisation - Startscreen missing Letter T in Taste".
● XPD-15567 - Crash in GFX metal code.
● XPD-15588 - Crash in replay.
● XPD-15589 - Livery pref lost with too many aircraft.
● XPD-15591 - "Translation issue German "Löschen" is not "Clear"".
● XPD-15594 - "ILS approaches with only Final Approach Course Fix ('I') don't show as transition option".
● XPD-15610 - Avionics API callbacks not counted in plugin admin performance tab.
● XPD-15611 - "The aviation flashlight is offset when the UI scale is not 100%".
● XPD-15613 - San Francisco Landmarks small fix.
● XPD-15632 - Crash at beginning of replay with aviation flashlight on - xp12.10_release.
● XPD-15637 - sim/operation/reset_flight command does not reset to last actual start.
● XPD-15638 - Re: Bug report "Draped polygons flickering".```

FXAA separated from MSAA = crisp instrument panels again 🙂

Basically we are back to v12.0 where FXAA is removed from the "setting.txt" file and only MSAA is left (the panels are less blurry but outside we would have shimmer everywhere).

I don't want to always seem critical, but can someone explain to me concretely what has really been improved in AA in 12.1? 
Because to me everything seems the same as before.
If at least in v12.1 we would have seen some other antialiasing system introduced (for example TAA, or DLSS) we could at least convince ourselves that we were seeing something innovative compared to before.
Instead we are still at the usual FXAA and MSAA 2x or 4X or 8X.

We don't even have SMAA in Xp12! 
In Xp11 there was SMAA, and it was very good.
I took these photos with Xp11 and 2x SMAA (I repeat, only 2x SMAA, without FXAA or MSAA, look at the clean graphics!)

Is it possible that XP12 in the year 2024 can't do better than Xp10 /11 in terms of antialiasing?? 🤔
 

17 minutes ago, efis007 said:

Is it possible that XP12 in the year 2024 can't do better than Xp10 /11 in terms of antialiasing?? 🤔
 

Anti aliasing algorithms haven't changed in 20 or 30 years. The only reason aliasing has less impact than 20 or 30 years ago is displays can now run at 4k and 8k rather than 640 x 480 so the edge of the pixels are much smaller.

what changed is they made it (much) faster, so you can now actually run 8x AA at a decent framerate instead of 10fps.

Edited June 15, 20241 yr by mSparks

14 minutes ago, efis007 said:

Is it possible that XP12 in the year 2024 can't do better than Xp10 /11 in terms of antialiasing??

I must wonder if users can do better in there patients, seems to be far worse than Laminars AA. XP12 is a completer engine rewrite, and Laminar have gone down the sensible approach of not giving in to user demands, but following there steps they choose to take. First was bug fixes, weather improvements, ATC always in the background, performance improvements which without will cause huge issues with AA as that in itself is a performance hit as I think you are well aware.. There have already being lots of eye candy updates, along with flight model and instruments.

I suppose Laminar could just throw in a whole bunch of AA than see the list of FPS hits complaints grow over night.

Just glad they are sticking to teh plan.

There is also a bug in the AA menu,  I think it goes 4MSAa is actually only 2 or something like that. Known bug. Came with last update.

Edited June 15, 20241 yr by mjrhealth

8 hours ago, mSparks said:

Anti aliasing algorithms haven't changed in 20 or 30 years. The only reason aliasing has less impact than 20 or 30 years ago is displays can now run at 4k and 8k rather than 640 x 480 so the edge of the pixels are much smaller.

I understand what you mean, but you have to agree that it doesn't make much sense to force users to buy a 4k or 8k monitor to see "less antialiasing jaggies".
The technical specifications of Xp12 do not force you to use monitors of this level.
And this is where XP12 clearly loses the comparison with previous Xplanes in terms of antialiasing.
The previous XP10 and 11 had not only FXAA and MSAA, but also SMAA which allowed for excellent antialiasing on Full HD 1080 monitors (as demonstrated by my images).
Unfortunately, SMAA is not present in Xp12, so the quality of antialiasing has worsened at the same monitor resolution (be it Full HD or 4k).

8 hours ago, mSparks said:

what changed is they made it (much) faster, so you can now actually run 8x AA at a decent framerate instead of 10fps.

Ok but why force the user to pump an MSAA x8 when with the previous Xplanes it was enough to put SMAA 2x to get equal or better graphics than an MSAA 8x with less framerate consumption?
I have already tried to put the MSAA at 8X in XP12.
The graphics do not change almost at all, the sparkles are still present and the increase of the 8X does not seem different at all from the 2X.
Only one thing changes (for the worse): the framerate.
So I wonder what is the point of using an old MSAA when (maybe) it would be preferable to use a SMAA.

50 minutes ago, efis007 said:

he previous XP10 and 11 had not only FXAA and MSAA, but also SMAA

Xplane 12 if you havnt got it yet, is a complete engine rewrite to get the best performance out of new hardware and Vulkan. Its not an over night fix.

10 hours ago, efis007 said:

Basically we are back to v12.0 where FXAA is removed from the "setting.txt" file and only MSAA is left (the panels are less blurry but outside we would have shimmer everywhere).

I don't want to always seem critical, but can someone explain to me concretely what has really been improved in AA in 12.1? 
Because to me everything seems the same as before.
If at least in v12.1 we would have seen some other antialiasing system introduced (for example TAA, or DLSS) we could at least convince ourselves that we were seeing something innovative compared to before.
Instead we are still at the usual FXAA and MSAA 2x or 4X or 8X.

We don't even have SMAA in Xp12! 
In Xp11 there was SMAA, and it was very good.
I took these photos with Xp11 and 2x SMAA (I repeat, only 2x SMAA, without FXAA or MSAA, look at the clean graphics!)

Is it possible that XP12 in the year 2024 can't do better than Xp10 /11 in terms of antialiasing?? 🤔
 

What changed in 12.1 is the fact that MSAA is now:

1) In the correct order in the pipeline and in the right photometric values (fuselage looks much better than 12.0)

2) It samples alpha textures, so fences, trees & anything that has alpha transparency should be less shimmery.

XP11 did NOT have SMAA, it had SSAA, if you want SSAA go ahead and use Nivdia DSR factors (or whatever AMD has), it's pretty much the same thing (Render everything X times larger and downscale). Watch the performance & VRAM though, it WILL be painful.

MSAA is similar to SSAA just it works only on geometry and now on alpha, not on lighting & specular reflections, those latter parts could be better & LR plans to improve them, they are the big remaining sources for AA problems.

as for XP10 VS XP12 AA, older games generally have better AA and that has to do with the change from forward to deferred rendering, the latter is what makes many lighting sources & reflections possible but yes it has AA challenges that the entire industry is trying to deal with not just LR.

And if you don't like FXAA for blurriness, wait till you see ghosting with TAA once that comes out.

Still in beta? Hmmm. By the time it's got DX12 and Frame Generation I'll be pushing up daisies. 😂

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

DX12

Oof. You don't want that. It's taken other game dev houses 500+ active devs to still leave their DX12 implementation in beta mode after years of work. Ouch! Must be quite a mess over there. Good thing LR went Vulkan. 

 

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

Frame Generation

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/645518-frame-generation-in-xp12/

 

Hope I'm not accelerating your path to daisy food-dom, though I'm sure they'll eventually be more pretty than my cactus products! 

9 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

Oof. You don't want that. It's taken other game dev houses 500+ active devs to still leave their DX12 implementation in beta mode after years of work.

Reminds me of how Directx 10 was left on the table, never finish only to be left for the fixer to fix.

14 hours ago, efis007 said:

doesn't make much sense to force users to buy a 4k or 8k

no one is forcing anyone to do anything.

There is only so much you can do to make big pixels less obvious by blurring surrounding pixels color, if you want pixels to small to see you will need a display with pixels to small to see.

14 hours ago, efis007 said:

Ok but why force the user to pump an MSAA x8 when with the previous Xplanes it was enough to put SMAA 2x to get equal or better graphics than an MSAA 8x with less framerate consumption?

 this simply isn't true afaik, they all do exactly the same thing but with different fps impact. 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/what-is-anti-aliasing/

btw: By far the best "aliasing" fix is a mod to xroads + ortho that reduces the roads visibility, that way you dont get the jagged edges for low LOD roads at a distance, instead getting them from the ortho - but still get the crisp 2D road edges up close.

Edited June 15, 20241 yr by mSparks

3 hours ago, jarmstro said:

. By the time it's got DX12

Dont think Laminar are that stupid, and flight sims are always in beta as they are always getting updates. Look at win 11or  linux, whats final??

11 hours ago, jarmstro said:

By the time it's got DX12

😅 Why do you want DX12?