Gulfstream

I love the lighting engine ths XP12 uses. Nothing has every felt "real" to me in flight simulators, and that includes the latest MSFS. In the real world, colors are often muted and can be somewhat "depressing". It isn't always bright and oversaturated. XP12 nails that "flat light" look which I've only seen approximated with ReShade filtters in the past. The third and forth screenshots in the OP look more like the real world to me than anything I've seen prior.

Flew over a large stretch of open water at night, which can essentially be a sea of black outside the window (no visibile horizon). That's IFR, even though it's technically still VFR.

Is the sunlight on the dashboard a bug? It would seem to be coming from directly behind the aircraft, which means it would normally be blocked. Just something I noticed right away in that video.

Thanks, I read this somewhere too, but it's too late, I went the easier route. Full unininstall from Steam and reinstall.

My problem was I had to restart the machine while it was updating to the 40th Anniversary Pack. It was about 80% of the way there, I figured it would just pick up where it left off. But now I'm stuck in this endless loop of nothingness.

Interesting. Alright, I'll give it some time to let it do whatever it is doing (which seems to be nothing).

Any help would be appreciated. It just sits and spins. This is a fresh Steam install, trying to update to the latest version. I have NO addons or anything else, it's clean.

This is true, they are both using OSM data. It comes down to which one renders it better. X-Plane 12 is still in beta, one of the things they need to focus on is making the OSM integration better, esp with regards to roads, building types, etc... stuff like that. Noel is correct. If you do a side by side of just the OSM data from both sims, MSFS will look vastly better. But it's the same data source, no reason X-Plane can't catch up.

In this case, I don't think it's "sim wars". This was more of everyone happily making addons for X-Plane 11 (and some P3D) and then WHAM something drops out of the sky that nobody saw coming that captured the majority market share. Developers follow money. So we shall see down the road how it really shakes out.

That is the kicker, really. It will remain in second place, which is fine .... but if the big developers jump ship and you start seeing the best DC-10 ever made show up only in MSFS, that's a problem.

Because now it is much more depedant on internet infrastructucture / servers being up and in place, login systems working. Sure you can turn off ortho scenery but that only scratches the surface of how "server dependant" this product is now. The old ones they can just say "we're not developing them anymore" and you can carry on using it as if nothing happened.

Honest question ... Given the budget and team thrown at FS2020, do you really forsee MS just rug-pulling the whole thing one day, shutting down the servers and saying "sorry, no more Flight Simulator anymore". I just don't see that happening. Yes, it did abandon it in the past, but now it would essentially be lights-out breaking something people are actually using and a vast third-party ecosystem dependant on it. I see them as a permenant player now, not a "well let's give it a shot, if it doesn't work, forget it" type scenario. Just curious.

That's not really what they are doing over in the MS world. From the bits I've read on here, you yourself have experimented with removing clouds from ortho. They managed to do to that for the entire planet, automatically, including with constantly updating satellite imagery. Also, the exclusion of building footprints from satellite data and the removal of baked-shadows. This sort of stuff is light-years beyond what we have (or will have) in X-Plane. That's no slam against X-Plane, that's what you get when you hire 200+ top tier developers and throw hundreds of millions of dollars at them. It's impressive.

I'm going to come in with a highly controversial opinion here, but I'm in a mood. I was a heavy X-Plane user after Microsoft dropped out of the market. The update pace was somewhat glacial but, hey, we were getting updates. Sure, the auto-gen wasn't pretty, the roads were awful (especially on top of ortho) ... etc. Yes, I know you can turn those off, with yet another toggle/switch/config change. Oh, and speaking of ortho, it almost required us to be Comp Sci majors to get LoD correct and use the esoteric tools to make it function. In the area we wanted. If we wanted more, we have to pony up for a 1+ TB drive and handle all of that on an even greater scale. Then Microsoft came out of nowhere with something that obliterates the competition scenery wise, global satellite coverage with correct building footprints, automatic cloud and shadowing removal, etc etc. I read this Blackshark AI release with some interest, however X-Plane has too much technical debt to re-write the engine from scratch in something like Unreal. So where does that leave them then? The developers they have are extremely talented. The lightening revamp alone I find MORE impressive than what is in MSFS at the moment. But unless you are one of a handful of remaining die-hards who swear "the flight model feels more realistic", I don't see a clear path forward. They'd have to scratch the engine and re-write, and you can only imagine with 20 years of C++ code, plus plugins and all the rest of it ... that's .... Well that's not possible.

I've gotten the impression over the years that Laminar likes to run it very lean and mean and let the money flow in via that route. That have some extremely talented developers, who, up to this point, have managed to make it work. Sure, they've hired for things like mobile, but that's another cash cow. It wold seem hiring full-time developers to work on tweaking atmospherics is not high on the priority list. But you never know, I'd send them a resume.

Amazing presentation, thanks for this. It really shows how complex this beast is, not that you couldn't tell just by looking at it ... but man, as a software engineer myself, this is really impressive.

It could be something as simple as the new CFD atomopheric modelling, in place for gliders, isn't playing nicely with some configuratons for whatever reason. That is a new feature, and obviously isn't "free", so there go a few more CPU cycles. How many? That'd be the question. I'm not saying that is the reason, that is just one example of where it's difficult to separate concerns. This is a wildly complex piece of software, to the point where sometimes it's not possible to even release a new plane without "core" simulator updates. I think they're doing really well with this so far, and the (FREE) content still flows.

Interesting pics, you can see it appears to only affect transparent / semi-transparent surfaces (engine exhaust, windows, exterior light covers and panel display glass). At least that should help them narrow it down. If that is always the case.

I agree. Whatever algorithms they are using for the revamped atmopsheric lighting are very impressive and realistic.

I'm taking a break from simming, just watching from the sidelines. Extremely busy with my day job, which requires programming computers and sitting in front of screens for far too many hours. I find it tough to do it when I am off work. But I'm obviously keeping an eye on exactly what is going on, on all fronts. FS95 was what convinced me to go to college for Aeronautical Science and get my CPMEL/IA ... and then of all odd decisions become an Air Traffic Controller at a Level 12 TRACON. What am I doing now? Other stuff ... lol. Life, I'm tellin' ya.

This is the "real deal". I don't want anyone saying MSFS is for gamers (because it's on Xbox?), isn't a real simulation, is best for "visual flight" only, etc. Watch that video. That shows what the team behind it is working on and that is just for gliders.

I feel bad for developers like this, who were obviously making a lot of money on X-Plane sales due to the seriously lacking default weather in XP11. So now they are in a difficult position where they have to try to bring their product into the current dominate simulator, MSFS, and it simply can't compete with default weather. It's likely because a lot of these addons are one-man-shops and they are up against hundreds of skilled developers at Asobo making sure everything is working as it should. Either way, I am highly skeptical of any weather addon at this point that says it can do a better job than the effort that's been poured into the default.

The vast majority of people who design aircraft in the real world are not pilots. The people who design rockets are not astronauts. They don't need to be, it's about science, math, aerodynamics and hitting the numbers. So you shouldn't "weep" over the fact software engineers, who are also very good at aerodynamics, might not be certified to fly the actual aircraft. Besides, they are developing for all helicopters, it's a (highly complex) flight model. Which one would you prefer they get certified in first? Bell 208? Boeing CH-47 Chinook? The fact they are taking the time to take lessons at all is impressive.

This is wrong. It's actually the other way around.

This is precisely the issue. The way the technology works is it renders everything at a lower resolution and then uses neural networks to upscale the entire image. At present, you can't say "please leave this square over here alone", it's just not the way it works. It's completely not a Microsoft / Flight Simulator bug, it's just the way DLSS works.