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FS11 - Will the scenery engine improve?

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The scenery isn't everything. The aircraft need to be much better. Right now they are terrible. The flight planner is lame.

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Not sure what a/c you're talking about or what kind of a/c you like but personally I've used Level-D's 767 a lot and to me that is a great a/c in many ways!I have also recently bought Digital Aviation's Piper Cheyenne X although I haven't had the time yet to learn it but I've heard that is also a very good a/c and very close to it's real world counterpart.


Richard Åsberg

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All I can say is that I constantly get 25-35+ frames with most everything on max...especially extremely dense scenery. I love FSX and I can't imagine ever going back. Everything works great. The hardware is out there. If you can't play in this league, I'm sorry for you.

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I think it is a common misperception that "FS doesn't use what the graphic card has to offer but instead rely heavily on the CPU also for the graphics" and while that might contribute to the problem it is not *the problem*.In a nutshell the problem is delivering a full planet simulator with 120km+ view distances and the amount of detail we simulate turned out to be harder than we expected.One issue that makes us appear CPU-bound is the sheer number of D3D API calls we issue to render, so that we are bound in the graphics driver. SP1 drastically reduced the number of API calls, through a lot of hard optimization work. SP2 added to that somewhat. But the app is still somewhat overcomitted on API calls.Yes another issue is that some techniques that are today done on the CPU need to be moved to the GPU, but only after we perform further optimizations so we just are not moving the bottleneck from one place to another. So when you are overdriving the GPU it can appear the app is bound on the CPU. It is all about balance, and we will get better at that.Simplistic answers are just that and they fail to capture the real nature of the problem.

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>I think it is a common misperception that "FS doesn't use>what the graphic card has to offer but instead rely heavily on>the CPU also for the graphics" and while that might contribute>to the problem it is not *the problem*.>>In a nutshell the problem is delivering a full planet>simulator with 120km+ view distances and the amount of detail>we simulate turned out to be harder than we expected.>>One issue that makes us appear CPU-bound is the sheer number>of D3D API calls we issue to render, so that we are bound in>the graphics driver. >>SP1 drastically reduced the number of API calls, through a lot>of hard optimization work. SP2 added to that somewhat. But the>app is still somewhat overcomitted on API calls.>>Yes another issue is that some techniques that are today done>on the CPU need to be moved to the GPU, but only after we>perform further optimizations so we just are not moving the>bottleneck from one place to another. >>So when you are overdriving the GPU it can appear the app is>bound on the CPU. It is all about balance, and we will get>better at that.>>Simplistic answers are just that and they fail to capture the>real nature of the problem.Phil,I'm sure it's been thought of or brought up in some kind of meeting or something already, but has anyone ever considered "real as it gets" and maybe dropping the support for "looking backwards"?What I mean by that is not backward compatability (that is a whole different topic), but the option for those with slower computers to turn off any scenery "behind them". How many airplanes (MAYBE a handful) actually allow any pilot to turn around and view what is behind them? How many pilots actually view what is behind them if they could anyway? I know I can't turn my head 180 degrees! :)So where I'm going with this is that if FS dropped having to render about a 90-120 degree area "behind" the pilot, would that dramatically help the render process?Yah, that means no more spot view, but how many rw pilots have a spot view? And a tower view might still work since I don't think there's a need to redraw all of the scenery by frame since the position of the tower is static, right?Maybe I'm way off on this suggestion or there is something obvious I am not thinking of. And perhaps that's just too much (work) to consider even in future versions of fs? And even if it could be done maybe it wouldn't even make a bunch of difference in render workload, who knows?

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That's great that you're so happy with FSX, I'm glad for you!I'm quite happy with FSX as well and there are some new things in it that I wouldn't want to be without by going back to FS9.As for the performance I can have those figures as well depending on a number of things like what a/c I'm in, what kind of weather it is, if I'm at a big and complex airport or not etc etc. Under the worst conditions beeing in a complex add-on a/c like the Level-D 767 on a rainy day at a large airport I often see the FPS drop down to 10-15 FPS and that is after I disabled 'bloom' and ground shadows - having them enabled would often have my FPS drop even below 10 FPS and to me that is not OK when running on a watercooled Q6600 currently @ 3.4 GHz with 4 GB Corsair Dominator RAM, an EVGA 8800GT SSC Edition and a Raid0 config...then to me there is obviously something in the core code that needs to be optimized/rewritten to make better use of the HW...Can also add that if I enable DX10 I see much better FPS but unfortunately since it's only a 'preview' many of the 3'rd party developers can't promise their products will work in this mode and they can't even promise they will try to fix it since they are waiting for a 'real' version of DX10...which we probably won't see until FS11...


Richard Åsberg

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>The scenery isn't everything. The aircraft need to be much>better. Right now they are terrible. The flight planner is>lame. I don't think much of these "generalization/blanket" statements. Such as claiming the airplanes are terrible. Is it certain aircraft, all the aircraft, and terrible compared to what? I usually prefer the 3rd party addon's; but, IMO, some of the defaults aren't too bad at all! As in rather good VC's, and getting point A to B with resonable pilot inputs.L.Adamson

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Thanks alot for your answer and clarification Phil, much appreciated to hear from someone "behind the scene"!In no way I doubt that there are lots of things to consider and that some of them will be of the kind that they will slow things down but my personal guess is that what is holding you back most is the fact that you need to think about the backward compatibility and that kind of stuff - wouldn't you be able to do some of the things that are in the code today much faster/smarter if you didn't have to think for a split second about compatibility or am I wrong?Then of course you can always debate whether that would be a good thing that everything having been developed for FS has to be done again from scratch but personally I would actually prefer to wait for the add-on market to catch up if that would in return give me a FS that would have both stunning looks and great performance at the same time on HW that can be bought today and not in 3-5 years.Best,


Richard Åsberg

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it doesnt help as much as you might think.we load when you turn and bring the area "behind" into view, we just do not unload right away.and we certainly do not issue Draw calls for the scenery that isnt visible.really more optimization is the only fix. and we are working on that. we got pretty far with the batching work in SP1 and SP2.what is next is we are working on adding Instancing support ( both DX9 SM3.0 style as well as the better DX10 SM4.0 style ) to both further reduce Draw calls and reduce the amount of information shipped across the bus every frame. it turns out the bus usage is likely to be an issue as well so taking that into account is necessary at this point so we dont saturate the bus. on multi-core processors that is a very bad thing to do.both of those will help, but that is not all that we plan I just cannot state more at this time. everyone will just have to be patient and trust that improving performance is a major part of the effort moving forward. not something we will do at the end, or in an SP :-).

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>both of those will help, but that is not all that we plan I>just cannot state more at this time. everyone will just have>to be patient and trust that improving performance is a major>part of the effort moving forward. Sounds like music in my ears Phil, thanks for your input!!


Richard Åsberg

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You know, I have been extremely patient with FSX. When I first bought it over a year ago, I thought it was fantastic (prior to SP1). My old hardware at the time which included a 256MB x800xl, while it wasn't the fastest out there, did a good job and I did not have the blurries! It did occasionally stutter, but I was content thinking that this would be corrected with SP1. Then SP1 came out and although the stuttering was gone, the blurries appeared.Now I have an e6750 and a 8800gts512, 4GB 1066 memory, and nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing I do resolves the dreaded "B" problem. To give you an idea of how well my computer performs, I run crysis on full settings except for 2xAA, since I have a 24" Dell monitor. I can run crysis full blast on either 1680x1250 or 1900x1200 with excellent frame rates, and the graphics are gorgeous.I have tried everything possible to eradicate the B's in FSX, but nothing works. Even if I am flying the ultralight at 60 MPH from 18000' , I can see where the tiles don't seeem to be refreshing as one would expect. It's a patchwork quilt that defies logic.I really do hope that the new team manages to do a good job with the new engine, and I am open to suggestions from anyone with similar hardware who doesn't have the same issue as I do on how to "fix" it.AJ

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Also, if you haven't tried nHancer using the settings recommended for FSX give it a try.


Richard Åsberg

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>I stopped buying and using products from Valve after STEAM>came out. I understand that I am missing some content>involving Half Life as well as other games. I do not feel>that having those games on my system is worth the bother of>maintaining STEAM. I would be most displeased should>Microsoft adopt a similar strategy with MSFS. >>This is just my personal opinion only, and may or may not>reflect any actual official opinion AVSIM has regarding this>subject, if any. >>Jeff Shyluk>Assistant Managing Editor>Senior Staff Reviwer>AVSIMJeff,I think you're really wrong here. Have you used Steam recently? It's amazing. They're letting all sorts of small independent developers publish on it and there's some really great games. These people wouldn't have a market if they had to deal with expensive store distribution and packaging etc. Far more money is going to the people who actually make the games via Steam than with a brick and mortar store. This is the way it should be in my opinion.You don't have to worry about CD keys or copy protection driver crap getting installed on your system, and it's fast enough downloading now too that you can get a full game in less time than it'd take you to drive down to Best Buy and get the boxed version. The community features are second to none too with the in-game chat and friends list overlay. You can easily join a game of TF2, COD4 etc that your friend is in just by clicking on his/her name.Valve's own Steam products have been a massive success too - Portal and TF2 are two of my favorite games in a really long time and I was playing them literally minutes after release thanks to Steam.I think a Steam type app for FS and addons would be absolutely great.


Ryan Maziarz
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