virtuali

I'm flying now, over KORD, feels WAY smoother.

Ok, you can order your RTX 3090 now...:)

Wow, 15GB...

If you mean FSDT KORD, it's on the MS Marketplace since last Friday, it's also available on our own site, and also on Simmarket.

It would be nice if you could do some tests with your current system, and note the fps, and repeat the test with the new system without changing any settings. I also have an old i7-6700 with a 2080Ti, and I would be very interested seeing how much improvement you will get with the new CPU.

We are not far from that in GSX ( and in some things, like headsets, we are definitely more detailed already ), these are some of the PBR characters that are in GSX right now: And this is P3D V4, they look auto-magically look better in MSFS, even without any changes. Not all GSX characters looks like this, those are the ones we remade in PBR. The plan was to convert them gradually, until no old characters made for FSX remained, saving the most important ones ( Pushback/Wingwalkers ) to be the last. This would have worked well, if only Microsoft didn't surprise everybody and announced MSFS and, while waiting for it with a very early SDK in hand, P3D V5 came out, which we had to support it too so, all plans had to stop to understand how to work with the new sim. Of course, the thing we learned about character animation that allowed us to reach this quality in P3D, surely won't be wasted with a better graphic engine... Problem is, we were always limited in what we could do, because of the baggage of having to support FSX, which is particularly limited with character animation. There's an ancient limit of 22 maximum bones for a human skeleton, which nowadays is considered ancient, not even "legacy". Unreal engine, for example, consider 75 bones to be standard for the "mobile" profile, a character that should be used in a game that could run on a *phone*...PC profile is like 144 bones, I think. THAT'S why some of the GSX characters "limps", you cannot do a smooth and natural human animation with only 22 bones, some in the spine must be removed ( so the character walk cycle will be hampered ), and no modern animation software or motion capture system work with so few. And, with no chance to have articulated fingers and toes, the character movement will be very stiff. P3D is better, with 64 connected bones, so these guys up here moves way better, even if we still can't use all we could, like facial animation, expressions and lip-sync. In regard to rendering, the MSFS engine allows at least two important features to increase realism for humans, that is a dedicated shader for Hair, and Subsurface Scattering ( SSS ) shader, which simulates the color of the blood vessels shining through skin, which in reality is not entirely opaque, and this ups a notch realism for characters. The software we use to create humans obviously supports this, but there was no simulator ( until now ) that had this kind of shaders, so we can't wait to see our people the way they are *supposed* to be seen.

This has been explained on our forum: http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,24166.0.html Without our software modules, is not possible to have a Trial. This might change at any time, when the SDK and Simconnect will restore all the missing features from FSX Simconnect, which would allow us not only to restore a Trial, but (more importantly) to do GSX...

Then the problem are the settings. If you tuned your settings in a sparser area or on a smaller airport, they will surely not work as well in a huge airport with hundreds of jetways, AI and ground vehicles. Since your system is exactly the opposite of mine ( I have a fairly weak CPU i7-6700, not overclocked, with a 2080 Ti ), while you have a very good CPU with a mid-class GPU, you can probably afford settings that affect more the processor, like AI density, traffic density, etc, but you must lower the settings that affect more the GPU, like texture resolution, supersampling, and try to stay safely under 8GB, like 6-7GB or so. Use the fps counter of the developer mode to help you finding the proper settings. Note that, with almost all GPU-related settings to Ultra, I'm using about 7.GB ( as you can see in the screenshot I posted ), I wonder how high are yours, if you can exceed 8GB. And yes, when VRAM is exceeded, the fps drop is dramatic.

After you remove the airplane folder ( the complete package ), go into the Content Manger, and search for the baron, you'll find there's a download button.

Not yet, but he stole my laptop, my Honeycomb yoke, and he's waiting for the Bravo throttle...

Comment from my 12-years old son, when he first saw the MSFS trailer: "the graphic is fantastic, but the airports are not that good"

I don't know much about Blender but, in a tutorial I saw on Youtube, the guy presenting it said you had two options to unwrap: directly from Blender, which takes quite a bit of time, and by exporting to Meshlab, which is supposed to be quicker, but with inferior results. In 3ds Max, there are several options, but the absolute best is Flatiron, which is a fairly expensive plugin, but gives professional results: https://www.texturebaking.com/ This does both unwrapping and baking, and has so many options and different algorithms optimized depending on the source material. However, the same company does also a FREE unwrapper, which currently supports only 3DS Max and Maya but, it seems Blender support is coming: https://www.uv-packer.com/ That's because your area was fairly small, so the unoptimized materials weren't enough to make an impact. With GPU is like that: your card can do it, until it can't and after the breaking point, fps will collapse abruptly. The freeware Monaco scenery had more than 16.000 different texture, and that was just too much, I guess yours is a lot less, so you might not see the difference but, I assure you baking should be done with this kind of project.

I can't help but thinking about those titles from Youtubers such as: "Why everybody hates Star Trek Picard" ( I think it was just fine, but it's just me... ) "Why everybody hates Kathleen Kennedy and she's being fired from Star Wars" ( really ? who knows...) "Why everybody hates Brie Larson" ( I think Capt. Marvel was fun, but it's just me... ) Maybe I'm following the wrong YouTubers but, it's fun how even this one used some terms like "put the mixture to Idle" and "Leaning the Propellor"...

Very good review and, if I had to say anything, I'm happy to say that all the minor issues you found are all entirely due to things we cannot control ( yet 😞 - the jetway hood animation is not as good as it might be, because there's no documentation in the SDK how to do jetways hoods, we had to improvise a bit with trial and error, but I'm sure it can be improved, once this part of the SDK gets cleared. - the grass polygon showing a too sharp transition with snow seems to be caused by the sim ignoring ( only in snow ) the falloff parameter which normally makes polygon edges more smooth. - the glass materials not reacting well to fog is a known issue that is being discussed right now with other developers and Asobo and affects every scenery just the same. It seems that glass + fog is hard to do, because even P3D has a similar issue, semi-transparent things and objects behind glass don't work properly with fog. - rain too uniform it's because we haven't modeled any rain puddles (like we did in the P3D version, including ice in freezing conditions), we are just getting it as a default feature from the sim, since it's not very clear if it's possible to create custom puddles, since the SDK doesn't allow smart materials ( materials that change dynamically, like P3D materials with a LUA script attached ) and Simconnect doesn't allow to create/destroy custom objects yet, which was another method we programmatically created rain puddles that change overtime in some of our past sceneries. - The only terminal we ever advertised to have "fully modeled interiors" has always been Terminal C, both on our site and on MS Marketplace description. We never claimed to have modeled interiors for any other terminal, even if we DID have *some* ( not at the same level of Terminal C ) 3d interior modeling in other terminals. We never claimed to be a modeled interior, because it was just some structure with a flat texture. Doing the whole O'Hare with fully 3d modeled interiors is probably overkill, considering MSFS doesn't even have an "Avatar mode" you can use to walk in. - The reason you see the pseudo-3D effect on Terminal B which disappear if you go inside, is a NEW feature, possible only with MSFS, which is called Parallax Interior Mapping, and if you look at previous posts in this thread, you'll find another post of mine, with a video showing how it works. It's a really neat optical illusion, that looks as if there was some interior, but there's none, and this SAVES some polygons, I think we probably saved a couple of thousands polygons from Terminal B, because instead of an interior which wasn't on the level of quality of Terminal C, there's just nothing there now, but it still looks very similar as if it were 3D, when seeing it from the outside. The idea is that, if something is not very good, you might just as well use an optical illusion, and save some fps in the meantime. However, other terminals are still made with "some" 3D interior, because in that case, they way they are done, doing them with the Parallax Window method wouldn't have save polygons but instead would increase them for many reasons related to how they are modeled differently that are just too long to explain here. We don't use new features as a buzzword to make marketing noise: we use them when they are *helpful* in reaching the goal, which is always finding a good balance between detail and performances.

If you consider "working" something with all MFD gauges blank, and the rest of the analog ones frozen, because they were both controlled by a C++ 32 .DLL module that has no chance to work in MSFS without an extensive rewrite starting from the source code.

We don't know exactly. The jetways are made in a very similar way as FSX, which is why at a certain point SODE arrived to improve the situation. In some cases there might be bugs of the animation system, in other cases, it might simply because AI don't usually park with the same level of precision as the user airplane ( with a proper GSX customization that places the door in a predictable position for all airplanes ), but it also due to the fact that it seems AI don't stay with the jetway docked all the time. It might be combination of all these factors. We all have been a bit spoiled by SODE/GSX L2, I guess. However, the standard system is similar to FSX, but it's not *identical*, there are some things which seems to be better, which we hope will be better documented ( the hood is not fully documented yet, we had to figure it out with trials and error ).

We'll try not to overdo it, but concrete ( asphalt maybe less so, but KORD is mostly concrete ) has some specular effect, especially on painted lines. Right now, it doesn't seem possible, and even in P3D4 it was extremely complex to do, which explains why nobody has ever done it before. We had our Addon Manager .DLL, which is a PDK plugin for P3D4, that is allowed to intercept texture creation, and use native DirectX 11 code to write into the scenery texture in realtime. This was extremely fast ( nothing beats native C++ making DirectX calls directly ), very difficult and possibly very dangerous, because any mistake would likely result in a crash of the sim. But the Addon Manager was providing only the fundamentals. The panel logic was a made with a Python script running under the Couatl Python interpreter, which both made calls to Simconnect, to know about all AIs location, flight plans, etc, to GSX, to know about the status of services going underway, and Couatl in turn made the calls to the Addon Manager, to translate the Python logic into communication commands to the Addon Manager Render To Texture DirectX 11 engine. THAT's exactly how complex it was... In MSFS, .DLL modules are still not possible as of today. When they will, they will run in a very secured sandbox mode ( Webassembly ), and won't be allowed to call any API except those that will be explicitly allowed. We are 100% sure DirectX 11 calls will never be allowed. HOWEVER, MSFS has 3 new graphic APIs, which stays on top of DirectX ( 11 or eventually 12, it won't be our concern ), which can be used by Webassembly modules ( when they will be available, as of today, only Gauges work with WASM ), so we can only hope the SDK will be extended to a point that we might use one of these in scenery objects, like we did with RTT in P3D4. These will be a new "modern" and probably better/safer way to draw dynamically on the scenery, which will allow to do realistic Docking Systems, Jetway with numbers, etc.

FIY, here's the fps I get sitting with the 152 on rwy 28C, realtime weather as of now: Resolution is 5120x1440 32:9, which even if it's a bit less than 4K in total pixel count ( about 6.5 M/pixel vs 8.2 M/pixel ), can still be quite demanding because of the extra wide aspect, showing more objects in sight. I can reach 47-48 fps with a non-ultrawide resolution, like 1440p. My settings are a combination of High and Ultra, since my system is a bit weak CPU-wise, but very strong in GPU, I started with High, and set to Ultra all those settings that are completely related to the GPU, since I'm not GPU-limited. My CPU it's a 2016 i7-6700 NOT overclocked, with 64 GB RAM and a 2080 Ti. I just took the screenshot as I were, so I had all sort of word not allowed utilities running in the background, like Ms Teams, Xbox, Skype, Steam, the ElGato Streamdeck software, Adobe Creative Cloud, Dropxbox, the Asus audio panel, the 3dConnexion 3d mouse interface, Mozilla Thunderbird reading emails in the background, my Task manager has more than a hundred processes running, and I haven't turned off any or optimized anything. I'm sure I could get at least another 4-5 fps more, if I tried, even with no overclock.

If you see heavy usage of the Main Thread, it's very likely caused by too many AI and/or ground vehicles. Note that, on MSFS, all jetways can serve AI, and of course our custom jetways looks way better then the default ones. But it's not just jetways, the way the new Living World system works, the simulator can generate a lot of ground vehicles, animated guys, marshallers, etc, basically everywhere ( depending on the parking type, the biggest the parking, the more vehicles will be automatically generated ), and they move over vehicle paths randomly, depending on what AI airplanes are doing. It's great but, on big airports with many parkings, they can slow down fps a lot, and especially on the MainThread, since every vehicle has its own internal simulation, like a little airplane, in addition to AI and their own flight mode. All of these have a direct impact on the Main Thread. Hint: - when you see a big impact on the GPU, it's usually the airplane or scenery not properly optimized, like too many polygons, too many textures, too many materials,etc. - when you see a big impact on the MainThread, it's usually AI, Ground traffic, Road/Boat traffic. - when you see a big impact on CoherentGT, it's the airplane gauges.

You mean O'Hare 2011 for FSX ? Sorry, no. You can get a discount on KORD V2 for P3D, if you bought the FSX version ( our site has instructions how to get it ), and then ( as a KORD V2 P3D customer ) get the discount for the MSFS version but, if you are only interested in the MSFS version, it's surely cheaper to just buy that. Note that, the discount for P3D customers is permanent. Existing users got an email, but those buying the P3D version from today onward, will get a discount for the MSFS version in their P3D purchase receipt.

I guess 19.99$ ( and 13$ for previous customers ), IS lower than 34$, which was the price of the P3D version when it came out.

This very thread opened with: I wonder how's possible two people could see the same thing in such opposite ways... - About the supposedly "poor" performance, the only PROPER comparison ( because it's the same area ), would be against the Asobo version ( Premium, of course, the standard default is so sparse is not even worth comparing). And our version is slightly faster, yet looks way better and closer to the real thing, with nothing generic on it, everything is fully custom. - About the "Some PBR additions" ? Are you serious ? This scenery is 100% full PBR, there's not even a single texture that is not full PBR using the full complement of native materials. - About night lighting supposedly "mediocre". Really ? It's 100% dynamic lights using native MSFS light emitters. You are being completely MISLEAD it's a "direct port", just because the scenery came out on P3D4, but modeling is modeling, and PBR is PBR. A "direct port" would look bad if it wasn't MADE for PBR, so it had "some PBR" attached to it, but this is 100% true PBR from the bottom up. I'm SURE if the scenery wasn't made for P3D4, you would have lauded the first true 100% PBR scenery that really uses the MSFS engine as it should, because this is what REALLY is. - Even if the modeling was already 100% PBR, so there wasn't too much to improve, we ALSO added several new native features that are specific to MSFS, like Parallax Interior Mapping, that saves on the number of polygons on some terminal interiors, and Dynamic Lighting has been redone entirely from scratch. There's only ONE thing we are not entirely 100% happy with, and it's the fact we used a NEW ( native ) feature in the MSFS SDK called "Projected Mesh", which is a very efficient way to create a very complex and completely custom ground layout of markings, lines, etc. At this time, this feature doesn't support PBR entirely, just Albedo + Normal maps, so we are missing the Roughness, which gives the Asphalt a semi-reflective look. Asobo has promised support for full PBR in those kind of objects will come with an update of the sim and the SDK, and we are already ready to take advantage of it, it will be a very quick update and the file are already there.

That what MSFS does when you add a scenery that was made for FSX, it starts an automatic conversion routine that will try to convert what it can ( backward compatibility is not 100% ), and will place the result in that _CVT folder. If you keep removing it, it will slow down the startup, since it will redo the conversion again so, if you plan to keep the scenery installed, just leave it there.

It's out now, and can be purchased: - from the MS Marketplace - from the FSDT website - from Simmarket An Upgrade discount from the P3D version is possible, if you bought the P3D version from the FSDT website, you'll receive an email with a special purchase link that will activate your discount. If you bought it from Simmarket, the discount will appear automatically.

I replied to you on our forum. No, we don't plan to drop support for P3D V5 ( and neither V4.5, which was a wonderful version... ) anytime soon, although you surely understand most of our focus is currently on bringing some products out for MSFS. But we'll have updates for P3D soon.