Claviateur

I will make a guess or two: Google or Facebook owner(s) And I am still amazed and puzzled when I hear many live in the illusion that P3D is the sequel or a replacement of FSX meant to entertain them...

Watching the MS aka Xbox conference... If anything would be mentioned regarding the peaceful flight simulator we love, it could be that some company bought it to become an Xbox title... No just my intuition... I am just watching and waiting for possible news... Probably it will simply be a press release... Who knows...

Paul J, in fact someone explained to me that the way FS or similar old generation world engines for simulators, were designed in terms of world rendering and its content + skies + 3D elements handling, it relies allot on a database of large textures, layed out in terms of tiles based on some rules in order to build the world... This technology and software architecture was fund on CPUs and not the yet to come powerful GPUs... Allot of effects were also based on textures and not dynamic GPU effects rendering... Now without boosting the textures sizes, they are all around... Now I am not too techy about FS engine details but the VAS issue as far as this gentleman explained it to me, is related to the way the software is designed vs the PC technology of its time... The complexity of the add-ons we have today was not a requirement in the mind of the developers. Thus the engine was not ment to digest and to build the virtual complex default texture based world as well as complex add-ons such as the ones we have today... In any case, this person even if he is not a flight simmer, works in the virtual reality development field and was part of level D simulator visual systems etc. He also describes the visual systems of motion simulators of having a not so modern architecture and very demanding to maintain... However he is very familiar with the way FS, P3D, XPlane were designed... All in all, he is the one who told me about Unigine as an example of a modern world simulation engine and the way it was built. It seems, as far as I understood, that the modern simulation engines are procedural code that builds the world in a completely different fashion from FS or P3D or even XPlane... And they leverage PC ressources in a completely different way. More GPU I believe Cheers Michel

I agree WarpD, this is a demo with a limited world however, as far as my benchmarks tests went with this engine, I can say that an entire earth is possible with it, and it should not be a problem loading its sectors real time at x y altitudes... However, can we confidently say the world of this engine is built in the same fashion as P3D or FSX is? Same technology? Does it rely on large textures to create the earth, the skies and all its elements? Does it use Virtual memory in the same fashion? Does it rely on CPU only ala FSX? (I donno about P3D)... And does it leverage the PC ressources better than P3D or FSX ? All in all, is the architecture of the procedural world engines such as this one or the basic (for now) Outerra the same as the architecture of FSX or P3D ?

Thanks for the clarification WarpD, No X-Plane can't be compared to P3D and Outerra is indeed a modern engine but still early shape. What do you think about this one:https://unigine.com/products/valley/ https://unigine.com/news/2013/10/16/article-on-procedural-content-generation2

WarpD I agree with you on the 4096px, but we agree that a 4GB is easily consumed by a level of scenery complexity that is beyond the scope of the ESP architecture when it was programmed (for the systems demands of back then...) Modern simulation / world engines use a completely different architecture...

Thanks for the info... Yes indeed, I can start reading the topics addressing the OOM CTDs in V2... It's really sad to see this early 2000s sim engine still being used as is in terms of core code... Personnally I don't think the switch from FSX is worth it as long as the core engine is the same. And I don't think with the PCs today, one needs to lower the sliders as it was the case in 2006 to avoid OOM as I hear the classic "lower sliders" advises here and there.... The ESP engine should fly on the gaming PCs of today with heavy add-ons and without any glitch but unfortunately the code is 32bit and the 4GB VAS bottleneck is a show stopper for massive add-ons enjoyment :-/ Cheers Michel

Hi, Does anyone know if P3D brings a solution to the VAS issue in FSX and P3D V1.X? I do not know if V2 is a 64bit code, I doubt it is but in case anyone got a spec about it? IMHO if the 4GB virtual memory limitation is still there in the engine, the DX11 rendering tricks or any visual boost not only are not enough to make V2 fly far but will bring it even more down to its knees with the complexity of add-ons :-/ Cheers Michel

Just want to clarify that I did not Buy any DLC but since I was in the beta team, MS gave me for free the Hawaiian expansionI tried it once and that's itCheers

Nice questions, straight to the point...I was in the beta team and it was clear how Flight business model is shaped from the first time I played the beta. Unfortunately many other beta testers were building castles in space and dreaming about a release that brings FSX features or future DLCs that makes it FS11....And I could not have any motivation to play and test it beyond the very few short sessions i did. I tried hard but could not find any real appeal in it... Therefore my beta contribution was almost non existent. I was more on FSX during that period...It was clear MS wants to 1) sell Add-ons exclusively and make money beyond the one fee retail box price therefore control and adjust the future of the game 3) reduce the game to narrow regions and limited options to reduce head ache of performance issues FSX had... Hence they removed the whole living world FSX brought in (A.I planes, cars, boats etc)... I never saw a game engine stripped out of its innovative features 6 years later, so the commercial objective was superior to innovation or anything like that...Also at the end of the beta testing days, MS was kind or intelligent enough, or both, to give me the Hawaii expansion with the aircrafts etc saying that I was one of the most active testers... oh well :) I hope that others were also given these little gifts because they might be using them much more than I am... I installed FLight release and the expansions given to me for free, opened it once again and that was it... i do not touch Flight at all...My instinct and my reading between the lines of the answers, drives me to say that MS has a plan B sleeping and might be applied in the future... If Flight fails to meet the business expectations (drawing a wide audience and selling DLC) then MS might simply release a DLC such as patched package of FSX features: ATC, Flight Plans, a rough global world scenery and an SDK to the hard-core old FS fans and try to salvage the fate of Flight with this method. Of course only speculations but the answers give the hint of such possibilities depending on commercial resultsThe present state of Flight is opened to all kind of decisions and MS can change its strategy on the fly as for what will and what will not be Flight...IGN review is the most severe I read to date

Interesting to know because this contradicts clearly the MS public announcements to appease the FS enthousiasts :) Marketing was playing it safe when saying in the press releases that it will please both new and FS enthousiasts or something like that...I also think MS would want, to try at least, to pull the life tube of FSX, I have the feeling that with the public announcement as well as the other marketing strategies for Flight, MS will try to end the healthy add-on development market of FSX and make its supporters shift to Flight.And I feel that if MS fails to do so (attract us FS enthousiasts to Flight as planned), the whole saga could become a funny competition between MS Flight and FSX... Can you immagine in the upcoming months, MS competing with its own product that got out of its control (FSX I mean)?! Or more precisely with the add-ons of its own product, FSX ... :)It could be a very interesting situation to watch!Cheers

I was also part of the Beta team although I was not the hardcore beta tester but contributed as much as my interest could guide me through the one build we received of Flight.Many of the beta testers I met on the test forum were unfortunately sort of dreamers, continuously convincing themselves that we will get more builds to test and these builds will contain more features until the full FSX features appear in the release version... They were certainly disappointed big time when the beta testing phase was over with only what we saw available in Flight...Others were convinced that although we were not testing the "FSX features" they will be there in the release version... You can imagine their disappointment as well when the game was available the 29th...Now there is a 3rd category of dreamers, those who will say that DLC will bring all what FSX had... A whole world to fly over? Detailed weather? ATC and Flight planning and an animated world with cars, boats and birds and A.I planes and and and...I am also afraid the 3rd category will be disapointed. I hope I am wrong this time!Flight concept is certainly smart, they feed the audience one bite at a time, and look and see how their "stomach" digest it... This way MS can have full control on the future of the game, they can finetune what to release as DLC based on the market response. Hence MS is not commiting itself to any promise or any announcement regarding long term DLC type... because I think, it is not certain and DLC decisions might be changing continuously...And now the question is, will Flight find a successful and profitable future in the big gaming scene as MS wishes to... I hope so for the survival of the flying entertainment PC genre but I doubt it will... Any civilian flying game can have fans among the aviation enthousiasts... FS or a simplified version of FS needs a spirit who loves flying... And if these spirits exist in the general gaming community, they are already either using an FS version or an XP one...What I still think might be a fair audience, are the young ones who like aviation but are intimidated by the technical simulators we use...A scenario among others: Could it be possible that after hitting the wall (from one side non interested harcore simmers and from the other side gamers who are non aviation fans) and of having a not so big community embracing Flight therefore not allot of money flowing and therefore no points of making DLC as limited regions vs missions, and maybe i say, that MS will try to find a slavation ground for FLight and then change its strategy and release a plain big world with FSX plain airports, some SDK tools, FSX ATC salvaged with other little options brough from the 6 years old simulator?!.Could it be that with this scenario, MS will find that the old faithful MS FS fans/geeks (like me :) ) are the only ones who could make its title avoid a big flop commercialy and also as a marketing reputation of some kind...Here I am another type of dreamer :))Yet it's a scenario and other than drawing scenarios in our heads, Flight is and will remain an obscure yet smart marketing scheme that can shift one way or the other and who knows, that can simply stall or even crash...To be back to the review, it did not bother me, it had some mature thoughts but at the same time, it reminded me of the thoughts of many beta testers whom I had the chance to meet on the Flight beta forumAs for the game concept: I have nothing against DLC games or against the fact the MS decided that Flight is a simplified version of their FS... However my major problem with Flight is that it was stripped from the engine advancements that FS got until FSX... In other words, the satatic world of FS is back with no life or animation on earth. Nothing moves... And of course this can help performance... Yet this is something that I never saw in games engines evolution! (i.e: reverting back to the primitive aspect of the engine to help performance)... How can it be that MS chose this shortcut? Well there is a clear answer that everyone might know: To help performance and make FLight avoid the FSX issues and therefore make the prospects avoid being scared... However again, in my opinion, stripping a game engine from a series of technological evolutions to help a new version of the game gets positive performance is certainly a sort of cheating!!... We usualy optimize for performance, we rewrite part of the core code but removing innovative ideas, that Laminar XP for example are now starting to implement is really sad... And a cheap shortcut...I wished if the reviewer had addressed the previous point... He mentioned it but did not comment on it at all...And by the way, I have to mention that MS was nice to give me at the end of the beta testing phase, even if I was not the most involved among testers, all the DLC content available for purchase now, for free. So I installed it and I tried to give another chance and like Flight with this content but unfortunately my flying session in it was short... Just like during the beta... In fact, I had also to close it and rush to install Outerra engine that was released as a demo. And I spent more than a couple of hours amazed at the beauty of this primitive but breathtaking Outerra world... A world that will hopefuly be the birth nest of a future flight simulator... And its authors are clearly taking it toward this path... Until now at least...All in all, Flight is not for me, for now...And yes, I still use FSX as my only salvation for now!Cheers!

I am 100% in agreement with you and thanks for sharing your professional inputsI actualy enjoyed tuning dynamics back in the days for FS2000 with an MSFS user who is himself a retired flight engineer like yourself and he kind of told me the same thing regarding the topic...And I remember achieving with this gentleman fairly convincing flight dynamics using the straight forward tables of MSFS models...Actualy this topic always remind me of a famous quote by the late british actor Laurence Oliver who said once "no matter what acting technique you use, what's important is to convince the audience..."And I feel the same about the PC simulated flight dynamics, no matter how the code behind is fancy , the importance is the felt behavior on screen by the end-user...And sometimes, in PC simulators dynamics, and I can speak about MSFS, I learned that one needs to "cheat" with values beyond the acurate data of the real world equivalent, in order to achieve convincing results on screen... And to me this is ok...All in all, we must not be obsessed with the code behind or the data being pluged as is... The result counts and i saw MSFS models deliver a good show when it comes to convincing behaviorAnd I suppose the word "Accurate" should be removed from the PC simulators dictionary :)Cheers

Very nice work. Do you have a tool to manipulate the "Plausible World" in XP10?

I bought XP10 Global after trying the demo and I kind of thought I should have done more researches to underestand the philosphy of XP developement before buying it and I suggest you do the same. The demo alone does not show what is there and what isn't and what is half there and what is completed...I suggest you read posts on forums reagarding what is missing comapred to FSX and evaluate if it is important for what you enjoy in a simulatorI now just open XP10 to do some cessna or 747 circuits around an airport at night because I love XP10 night, first it is very realistic with the 3D plausible lit world and second it hides the flaws and missing parts :)But I decided that for now I will keep enjoying FSX maxed with my O/C Sandy Bridge and very satisfied. In FSX I can simulate an airliner flight IFR / Flight Planning / ATC in a stormy Canadian winter with an immersive world of snow yet I will never compare the dynamics of FSX aircrafts to the real ones, the Wilco Airbuses I always like to fly convince me and entertain me. I can live an immersive virtual reality experience with FSX.XP10 has great potential as many said, excellent ideas being implemented but it is a bit here and another there. None of the ideas are finalized.For example, to me it's important to have an immersive world in a simulator like seasons variations, they are not there in XP10 and I did not know that... I can download any snow storm with real weather in XP10 in the middle of winter but it will happen on a super green land...My suggestion: read on forums and see if XP is for you. As for the demo, it is not representative of the final product in my opinionCheers