https://www.x-plane.com/2025/12/x-plane-roadmap-update-december-2025/

 

Was hoping motion vectors would be ready, oh well, maybe another 6 months. XP is unusable in VR with the scenery vibrating and shimmering. 

Edited December 6, 2025Dec 6 by strider1

Quietly noted the pointer to next gen scenery - interesting and exciting but ominous that they are reviewing the bones of scenery design which they say is dated and 20 years old- dsf files. This is a major hurdle and one that makes me nervous that we will suddenly get a whole new system which renders useless or broken a truckload or mountain of work being done via WED and the Gateway (Surely they would'nt you think but then again XP12 sure broke a lot of stuff that was fine in XP11.)

8 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

This is a major hurdle and one that makes me nervous that we will suddenly get a whole new system which renders useless or broken a truckload or mountain of work being done via WED and the Gateway

That fear is utterly unfounded. Why would Laminar knowingly shoot themselves in the foot by breaking a core feature? If anything, the information (flatten or exclusions or whatever) contained in the .dsf files shipped with Global Airports gets converted into whatever new format there is and that's it.

19 minutes ago, Bjoern said:

That fear is utterly unfounded. Why would Laminar knowingly shoot themselves in the foot by breaking a core feature? If anything, the information (flatten or exclusions or whatever) contained in the .dsf files shipped with Global Airports gets converted into whatever new format there is and that's it.

I must differ - When a software programing team say "the format is over 20 years old" you know that is the major hurdle to what they are considering implementing does not mean conersion to a new format - that would be self defeating and add a overhead to processing needlessly equally any new format or converter is going to introduce different instructions and display logic which will not come from the dsf files - that seems perfectly clear to me! I am not saying what they have in mind or have begun testing is incorrect or deficient - I have not idea what it is they want to to I remained convinced the conversion factor will be deficient and a lot of older scenery will change as a result - it has too! If I was a scenery developer like FlyTampa or Orbx I would seriously need to consider whether an upgrade and change is worth it financially - whats it going to cost in hrs to do this? We have already seen this when XP12 replaced XP11 - a lot of stuff for the earlier sim does not work in XP12 some worse than others a lot of stuff was just left and not updated complex stuff required almost a total rebuild! That is my concern.

 

 

Edited December 7, 2025Dec 7 by coastaldriver

Not only will they not break dsf scenery but they're implementing features that scenery devs have been begging for for years. They're all on board.

2 hours ago, coastaldriver said:

That is my concern.

So - you are concerned that a next generation scenery - which will probably look a ton better than OrbX or FlyTampa scenery...is going to replace OrbX or FlyTampa?

 

44 minutes ago, Litjan said:

So - you are concerned that a next generation scenery - which will probably look a ton better than OrbX or FlyTampa scenery...is going to replace OrbX or FlyTampa?

 

If they're not going to use satellite ortho, how could it possibly look better than, or even AS good as, Orbx...?

My issue with XP scenery has little to do with airports, but EVERYTHING to do with pretty much every piece of ground outside the wire.

It is totally your prerogative to stay on X-Plane 12 and continue to enjoy all of those sceneries you have.

I totally do NOT know if the next-gen will render any scenery incompatible or if there needs to be work done to upgrade them to become so - but honestly, simply suggesting to forego or reconsider a total renewal of the scenery engine for worrying about that is questionable judgement, imho.

I've learned that X-Plane is definitely going to invest in water physics. Don't ask me how I know 🙂

(seen yesterday in Italy 😛 )

 

Edited December 7, 2025Dec 7 by Daube

Anyhow only speculating not worth arguing about what or may not happen - we shall see in time I guess. 

4 hours ago, Daube said:

I've learned that X-Plane is definitely going to invest in water physics. Don't ask me how I know 🙂

(seen yesterday in Italy 😛 )

 

I can't believe its real. We need to stop all work and focus on getting this into the sim!

4 hours ago, UrgentSiesta said:

If they're not going to use satellite ortho, how could it possibly look better than, or even AS good as, Orbx...?

information density

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdX3Rr

4KB of scenery data from 2009 gets you

4KB of Ortho doesn't even get you a patch of your garden.

Ortho is current gen scenery, the who point of

https://developer.x-plane.com/2024/03/we-are-all-raster-farians-now/

is instead of "simply" the raster "pixel" data being "this 3x3 square meters of ground is green" you get from ortho, their format will be something like "this 3x3 square meters of ground is part of a wheat field that is next to a road, that is brown in the winter"

They already do this for seasonal variations now, the tech itself is old and pretty easy to pull from all the mapping data available - the hard part..... the very hard part... is getting it performant enough to use in a flight sim while still looking great, the time consuming part is building the art assets and shaders to consume it.

I saw it out of pure luck. We were walking alongside the harbor of Savona and I suddenly saw it, like "wait, what?" So I had to take a picture to share it here 😄

 

54 minutes ago, mSparks said:

information density

https://www.shadertoy.com/view/MdX3Rr

4KB of scenery data from 2009 gets you

4KB of Ortho doesn't even get you a patch of your garden.

Ortho is current gen scenery, the who point of

https://developer.x-plane.com/2024/03/we-are-all-raster-farians-now/

is instead of "simply" the raster "pixel" data being "this 3x3 square meters of ground is green" you get from ortho, their format will be something like "this 3x3 square meters of ground is part of a wheat field that is next to a road, that is brown in the winter"

They already do this for seasonal variations now, the tech itself is old and pretty easy to pull from all the mapping data available - the hard part..... the very hard part... is getting it performant enough to use in a flight sim while still looking great, the time consuming part is building the art assets and shaders to consume it.

That’s a fascinating take, and backed up by Ben, to boot. 👍

I see how this could turn out to be a Good Thing! 😁