A new simulator

[Hiflyer 129]

X-Plane has had 3D roads and AI trains for years...

Yes.

Not taking anything from them since they were there first, but their implementation seems to have some weird Z-buffer or clipping problems that always makes me disable it after a while. Hopefully X-Plane 10 will be a bit less jittery in that respect. And hopefully AFS2013 can use DX11 to even greater effect.

How about using OpenStreetMap as a scenery source, like Laminar Research is planning for the soon to be released X-Plane 10? Crowd sourcing seems to work quite well within the X-Plane community as well: All of the taxiway layouts have been produced that way. The problem with that approach is, of course, that it only works well within a reasonably large community, and that quality varies widely. And, of course, your favorite airports tends to be lacking, or even missing completely...

Judith

All the better to spur peoples creative juices. I know the only thing that has stopped me from taking a crack at my own area in FSX is the roughness of the tools and the inherent inaccuracy of the default layout, which would be really hard to correct. Again, I hope AFS-2013 will have better geo-reference sources from the beginning.

As for the size of the community, I'm sure we're all hoping for the largest possible!

[jespergb 1]

If you need an absolutely great gameengine for flight sim, why don't you talk to outerra - it's so amazing what they've done. Looks so realistic and all the problems we know about FSX is not there - so you should really consider contacting them:

http://outerra.com/

Check their vids - WOW!!

[Hiflyer 129]

Continuing with the Idea of expanded libraries Ala' Ez-scenery, I often come across buildings with slightly distorted shapes, and the default FSX libraries having nothing to match. It would be interesting if the buildings in AFS2013 were "grab-able" in scenery design/modification/customizing mode so that you could "grab" a corner of a building and stretch and pull the edges, much like the scenery exclude box in Ez-scenery.

I suspect the polygons could do it easily, but I am not sure if textures would stretch as well.......

[bionicCrab 7]

textures use projected coordinates as well so stretching them is no problem,

[Hiflyer 129]

textures use projected coordinates as well so stretching them is no problem,

I am thinking more along the lines of "Intelligent objects" so that rather than stretching to the point of distortion, the objects would "know" to add extra windows after the object had been stretched a certain distance horizontally, or to add new floors when stretched beyond certain heights vertically........

I have seen stretched buildings in current FSX autgen and they are..... awful!

[Arista 64]

Another neat feature X-Plane has had for a while - it's called facades there... Static objects are more efficient than this kind of procedural geometry, though, so this might benefit from a pre-processing step at creation time. On the other hand, if this were implemented in a geometry shader, it might be even more efficient than a bunch of different static objects.

Judith

[Hiflyer 129]

Another neat feature X-Plane has had for a while - it's called facades there... Static objects are more efficient than this kind of procedural geometry, though, so this might benefit from a pre-processing step at creation time. On the other hand, if this were implemented in a geometry shader, it might be even more efficient than a bunch of different static objects.

Judith

Especially if you wanted to change colors for variety...... or add effects, or change the textures totally for winter, etc. Maybe on the fly, so the colors really could change more dynamically to match the incoming lighting conditions.

[demiboyx 2]

Especially if you wanted to change colors for variety...... or add effects, or change the textures totally for winter, etc. Maybe on the fly, so the colors really could change more dynamically to match the incoming lighting conditions.

yeah like building mode in the sims 2 and 3 that would be cool to add jetways where you want them and also windows and doors etc

[demiboyx 2]

can the airports be very detailed because if you've played FSX you'd have noticed that most african airports aren't very detailed and often have wrong runways or missing terminals

[captain13chris 54]

can the airports be very detailed because if you've played FSX you'd have noticed that most african airports aren't very detailed and often have wrong runways or missing terminals

Would be great but it would rise the pice too much.

Chris

[Saikrishna 0]

On the topic of airports, since airports change frequently, the changed airports can be included as part of an update. For example, if AFS releases in June 2013, then updates can be published every three months or so for the airports that changed since June 2013.

can the airports be very detailed because if you've played FSX you'd have noticed that most african airports aren't very detailed and often have wrong runways or missing terminals

If the airports were too detailed, then this would bring down performance.

[bionicCrab 7]

Hiflyer: sure .. I guess with a standard building you could stretch it until a second window fits, when that happens you now have two identical windows using the same texture. Everytime you stretch you add the texture again. Might be usefull in a scenery tool.

[MatthewS 32]

Please give us 150nm (or more!) max visibility at altitude like with FSX.... don't make the mistake of XP and limit us to 25nm!

[Lollipop 1]

This looks mighty good as a flight sim:

[Python 9]

Not sure how relevant that is too a flight sim as such but it looks mighty impressive in its own right....

[Hiflyer 129]

Something very important that either MS did not care about, or let get out of control:

1) Measurements! No more trees the size of small skyscrapers, or buildings with nearly random scaling!

No cruise ships the size of imperial star destroyers or telephone poles from hell.

2) No more free-for-all on mesh requirements! I'm tired of one scenery wanting mesh settings at two meters, in a surrounding area that barely looks good at 38 meters. In fact, user alterable mesh settings should probably just be killed once and for all.

3) The Sim itself and all third party add-ons should all adhere to one set scale, and nobody should be allowed to deviate!

In fact, maybe to cut the mesh problem off at the pass, the base Sim should start at the highest level of mesh accuracy that is affordably available

4) No more water crawling up the sides of walls! (goes back to the mesh issue)

5) No more horrible distortion of textures on steep canyon walls! (there has just got to be some way of addressing this problem.......)

End of the random thoughts for today.

[Saikrishna 0]

1) Measurements! No more trees the size of small skyscrapers, or buildings with nearly random scaling!

I haven't seen trees the size of small skyscrapers. In fact, I think they may look a bit small, but that may just be how it is in real life. As for buildings, they look of reasonable height and scale.

2) No more free-for-all on mesh requirements! I'm tired of one scenery wanting mesh settings at two meters, in a surrounding area that barely looks good at 38 meters. In fact, user alterable mesh settings should probably just be killed once and for all.

3) The Sim itself and all third party add-ons should all adhere to one set scale, and nobody should be allowed to deviate!

If you didn't have settings for textures and mesh, then you will be cutting out a huge portion of buyers who don't have high-end gaming machines and just want to have some fun. Then there will be no use creating such a software if very few people buy it.

That being said, if the scale is at a low setting (ex. 38m or 76m), then those who have better computers and graphics and bought them to meet FSX requirements won't have any advantage of those with lower-end computers (maybe besides loading textures faster). Then they will be angry for not having good textures and for wasting their money on an high-end computer.

[Hiflyer 129]

I haven't seen trees the size of small skyscrapers. In fact, I think they may look a bit small, but that may just be how it is in real life. As for buildings, they look of reasonable height and scale.

It depends. I have been playing with instant scenery a lot recently, and believe me the scale of the buildings is all over the place, specifically between autogen and other types of building objects. Next time you are flying, take a closer look at those wide, low warehouse type buildings with the collapsed roofs. You will find that they scale all over the place, (as does much of the other autogen) sometimes with doors two stories high! I think its maybe not until you actually try to place objects that you bump into the almost painful scale issues. It would be nice if the new Sim established a base scale system right from the beginning that everyone had to follow. Something like the international bureau of weights and measures, so that everyone stays on the same page.

If you didn't have settings for textures and mesh, then you will be cutting out a huge portion of buyers who don't have high-end gaming machines and just want to have some fun. Then there will be no use creating such a software if very few people buy it.

I have seen it said many times that except on very low spec machines, the mesh and textures have only a modest effect on frame-rates. On the other hand, they have a huge affect on how the Sim looks, and right now if you try to follow a specific scenery designers recommended settings, you wind up having to change things almost every time you go to a different location with scenery from another vendor!(sometimes from the same vendor!) One base setting that everyone could live with could solve an awful lot of unnecessary slider fiddly widdling.

That being said, if the scale is at a low setting (ex. 38m or 76m), then those who have better computers and graphics and bought them to meet FSX requirements won't have any advantage of those with lower-end computers (maybe besides loading textures faster). Then they will be angry for not having good textures and for wasting their money on an high-end computer.

Right now there are just too many scenery's with wildly different recommended mesh settings, and what works well for one, can stretch and distort and make another look awful! There has got to be some standardization, because right now its the wild wild west. The only other solution I could think of is that as you traveled from area to area, the scenery automatically adjusted itself to the recommended settings, or gave some sort of warning...

Or continue like now, and have all sorts of possible distortions due to the settings being not what the scenery designer intended.........

Scenery object density and vehicle/airplane density I suspect has much more effect on frame-rates than mesh and texture, (somebody can correct me on that if I am wrong) and I am not advocating taking away the ability to control those.

[Quaxx 1]

I think a flexible mesh resolution is necessary for two reasons:

1. Raw data for the whole world is not available or affordable in the same level of detail.

2. If we want to have sloped runways (and I think ALL of us want them), we need a very high resolution for the airport area.

[Saikrishna 0]

I have seen it said many times that except on very low spec machines, the mesh and textures have only a modest effect on frame-rates. On the other hand, they have a huge affect on how the Sim looks, and right now if you try to follow a specific scenery designers recommended settings, you wind up having to change things almost every time you go to a different location with scenery from another vendor!(sometimes from the same vendor!) One base setting that everyone could live with could solve an awful lot of unnecessary slider fiddly widdling.

Right now there are just too many scenery's with wildly different recommended mesh settings, and what works well for one, can stretch and distort and make another look awful! There has got to be some standardization, because right now its the wild wild west. The only other solution I could think of is that as you traveled from area to area, the scenery automatically adjusted itself to the recommended settings, or gave some sort of warning...

Or continue like now, and have all sorts of possible distortions due to the settings being not what the scenery designer intended.........

I hadn't considered about that, and you are right. What Ultimate Terrain recommends is different from what Flight Environment X recommends. In addition to the suggestions you listed above, if there was no fixed settings, but there could be multiple settings, then that may solve part of the problem. For example, all the Ultimate Terrain scenery files have a setting in them with the recommended settings and FEX has their recommended settings. Then, when its displayed in FSX, they are displayed with the recommended settings, and no setting changes are required.

Then again, the solution I listed above has its own drawbacks. For starters, this will mean a new scenery file/folder format, which may raise problems for developers depending on the degree of the change. If, for some reasons, you want to change one scenery's settings, you may have to do ti through the scenery's software or maybe a text file in the scenery folder, and then restart the Flight Simulator.

On a side note, if there is standardization, then it shouldn't just be one company setting the standard. A group of flight simulators and developers should come together for a middle ground for settings.

[Mike Strasser 6]

...Another issue which was never solved would be the possibility to have an afcad where one runway has one side closed for landing and the other side closed for takeoff or even for both operations or none of them. Schiphol is a good example of how you can never do a real afcad with just one file in order to reproduce all possible weather conditions.

A third issue just for now, would be possibility of pushback trucks for all AI aircrafts. It is very ugly that you can make your pushback with such a brilliant program like AES but you still have to see all other aircrafts making strange turns after pushback and before taxi.

harpsi

Regarding the AFCAD (or how it will be called then...), it also should be possible, to assign taxiways for only one direction like a "one-way-street". With this additional feature it would be possible, to define real traffic-routings for the AI-traffic (e.g. Paris-CDG around Term.1...)

[Kenneth 18]

http://outerra.com/

[klimchuk 5]

http://outerra.com/

Looks great!

[klimchuk 5]

My 2 cents regarding new simulator:

As long as you don't want to support anything besides Window I'd like to see the full functional web server inside the simulator.

That way add-on developers could create intranet/internet based solutions like EFB which will work on any platform.

[janda 3]

HI,

is there any progress on this project?

- there is silent for long time..

brds

Martin