I still think that XP12 development is progressing at a pace and with a quality in various fronts, from graphics to flight dynamics and weather modelling, that appears to me the fastest since XP10...

The only areas still lacking, but that will probably get updates too are AI Traffic and ATC, although ATC itself got a major update from previous versions.

I do believe competition helped.

Hi,

Well, right from Ben so we'll see what happens. Networking is almost done (under going testing) and they have had no reports of any problems. Best setup for those networking is  a server computer and separate computers for visuals. Should be ready Q3, we'll see.

10 hours ago, jcomm said:

I do believe competition helped.

I am sure it is now proven it didn't hurt.

I would still posit the main benefits/help came indirectly from the insanely large marketing budget flightsim had over the previous 3 or 4 years, that for sure helped, and didnt cost Laminar an extra cent.

Everything they are delivering right now is the fruition of 10 or so years hard work, well before competition was a consideration.

If there hadn't been the influx of users that work could well have just been abandoned before we saw it.

How they interact with the community has improved exponentially, their discord, the developer group, dev conference in Feb,  the incoming store. But I think that is more of a product of getting complaints about not interacting with the community effectively, than competition merely existing, that could have and should have happened regardless of anything else in flight sim.

Edited June 23, 20241 yr by mSparks

13 hours ago, Inu said:

I honestly can't see any feature that made it to XP12 that was influenced by the release of MSFS. The only thing that comes to mind is the 3rd parties marketplace.

Stuff like 3D water were already touched early in the v11 run, as well as the desire to change lighting, clouds, weathet etc...

It is the Vulkan/Metal transition that was needed, mostly.

 

I think it's less about specifical features and more about their whole deeper focus on many aspects (that haven't been that important years ago). Being XP-user since around 2000, I could very clearly see a big change since 3-4 years, more specificially of course with XP12. They know that man users have now much higher expectations about visuals. I have little to no doubt that without MSFS they wouldn't put that much efforts into that. So for me MSFS has had a clear benefit for the longterm developpment of XP. One of the other advantages being the users that never used any sim before, got curious because of MSFS, and changed to XP because of being unstatisifed with it (as seen many times). I also remember when LR was a team of..how much 4-5 persons? They have never been as big as today (over 30?), so a perfect win-win.

1 hour ago, Franz007 said:

I think it's less about specifical features and more about their whole deeper focus on many aspects (that haven't been that important years ago). Being XP-user since around 2000, I could very clearly see a big change since 3-4 years, more specificially of course with XP12. They know that man users have now much higher expectations about visuals. I have little to no doubt that without MSFS they wouldn't put that much efforts into that. So for me MSFS has had a clear benefit for the longterm developpment of XP. One of the other advantages being the users that never used any sim before, got curious because of MSFS, and changed to XP because of being unstatisifed with it (as seen many times). I also remember when LR was a team of..how much 4-5 persons? They have never been as big as today (over 30?), so a perfect win-win.

50 was quoted today at expo.

Without xplanes transition to Vulkan during XP11 none of this would have being possible, was funny to hear a few months ago that even MS declared they needed a new engine the current one was limiting them,.

18 hours ago, jcomm said:

MSFS was the best thing that happened to XP users... It kicked the @#$$es of  helped pushing forward the LR Team and made Austin finally listen to long time claims by the user community in areas that were not so important to him.

I agree. I felt like flight simulation was in decline a few years ago. Things just felt very stagnant.  I could not find a good/reasonably priced flight yoke. It was just the same old saitek products. Now look at all the new peripherals that were announced at the expo. I'm especially impressed with winwing. If not for the reinvigoration of the hobby by MSFS, these company would not be investing in the hardware at the levels that they are today. Without the influx of new players, no way would we get a mcdu for 130 USD. 

The new interest in simming has pushed Laminar to improve the sim more rapidly in areas where they were reluctant to so previously. The flight sim hobby is once again growing, and we as simmers are benefitting. Developers are benefitting too with many new studios being created as a result of 2020.

To drive the point home:

Edited June 23, 20241 yr by brinx

1 hour ago, mjrhealth said:

that even MS declared they needed a new engine the current one was limiting them,.

They went with directx12. Obsolete and outranked before they even started.

Good enough reasons to do so, but was never going to attract the best in the business to work with them (Laminar and Unreal plucked them up)

Edited June 23, 20241 yr by mSparks

The scenery tiling system has definitely been a long time coming, it's been very difficult to make mesh enhancements due to the large 1x1 degree tile limit. So I expect good things to happen from 3rd parties once this becomes generally available and lot of problems of conflicting packages disappears

2 minutes ago, mSparks said:

They went with directx12. Obsolete and outranked before they even started.

Good enough reasons to do so, but was never going to attract the best in the business to work with them (Laminar and Unreal plucked them up)

But its there's.

Scenery system "Streaming friendy" (9:25). I haven't expected that! I have been asking for an API to deliver single MipMaps to the sim to get rid of the current AutoOrtho pseudo-file system workaround. Not sure if they mean that. Ben mentions vendors "lazy-loading" their scenery. I really hope they think big enough here!

It's sounding like "streaming" is more talking about the sim core architecture being able to read/ingest/process a steady stream of scenery data as you move around instead of taking a few seconds to load a couple of dsf tiles all at once. Could be from a network source or a local file. And to be clear, this also doesn't mean LR is suddenly going to be streaming ortho imagery from their real weather data servers too, but I bet autoortho would benefit. I'll be sticking with O4XP.

27 minutes ago, blingthinger said:

Could be from a network source or a local file.

It must be coming from a process and that must receive more information than the currently accessed texture filename or it is going to be very boring. The process should also be able to signal X-Plane that it shall reload a specific texture (because newer data allows to display it in higher quality now). That's what I mean by they really have to think big enough. If they do, developers will be hyped to build the next-gen AutoOrtho.

Interesting times, I hope for new information on the dev blog 😉

19 hours ago, flightwusel said:

 The process should also be able to signal X-Plane that it shall reload a specific texture (because newer data allows to display it in higher quality now). That's what I mean by they really have to think big enough. If they do, developers will be hyped to build the next-gen AutoOrtho.

Mipmaps can act as LODs for that purpose. This kind of "streaming" is already in X-Plane for raster (or textures...) in general,  that's why you have blurry textures under heavy Vram conditions, the first "LOD" in the mipmaps chain is thrown away leaving you with lower quality ones.

A similar approach could be taken by raster tiles, for 3d grass & trees density, height maps etc...every tile/raster can have a bulk of data that is scalable as you get closer/further simply by using mipmaps.

As long as the data is what the GPU wants to consume (rasters), it is a perfect fit for a new modern mesh pipeline as well.

Edited June 24, 20241 yr by Inu

On 6/23/2024 at 7:37 AM, Franz007 said:

the users ...... of MSFS, and changed to XP because of being unstatisifed with it

they must be really unsatisfied as they spent "only" $$ 20 million on add-ons in the market place alone, not counting the additional sales outside of marketplace.

with over 15 million users of MSFS, how many million roughly have changed to xplane because they are "unsatisfied"? 

mind to support your claim "as seen many times"" with facts or is this just an opinion with no proof nor foundation whatsoever.

even if only 10% were "unsatisfied", this would still leave 1.5 million desperate MSFS-to-Xplane converts for Laminar. 🤣

Edited June 24, 20241 yr by turbomax

Not only have some changed to X-plane, but many have included X-Plane. Nothing wrong with having more than one sim installed to get the best of both platforms. 
Not everyone shares the same opinion you do. 

Edited June 24, 20241 yr by GoranM