Xplane 10

[Oliver]

I think it's still far too early to point out any criticisms in XP 10.  If it was ready, it would be on the market.  V9 went from 9.2 to 9.6 and is still being improved. 

What you are seeing is most likely not the final version. 

AFAIC, I think it looks spectacular and can't wait to get my hands on it.

Agreed, only 3 screen shots cannot determine how it will be, taking into consideration how early it is as Goran mentioned

[Lukasz]

I'm amazed. People literally "stand on their heads", to get any tiniest sample of information regarding next incarnation of X-Plane. Finally, after long waiting, that information becomes available. I'd expect some positive feedback, like "Finally!", "At last, thanks Austin " and more along that line. At least that's what I've been thinking while reading e-mail from Austin and looking on screens. Instead, I see whining over lack of antialiasing and other "defects". It's just like to go to Hawaii in a middle of the summer, lay on the beach and whine all the time, that's it's so darn hot! Good Lord! Who cares? New X-Plane is almost there, wake up people! On top of that, probably like half of us will turn AA off or lower it considerably anyway, to save on fps...

[dpny]

I'm amazed. People literally "stand on their heads", to get any tiniest sample of information regarding next incarnation of X-Plane. Finally, after long waiting, that information becomes available. I'd expect some positive feedback, like "Finally!", "At last, thanks Austin " and more along that line. At least that's what I've been thinking while reading e-mail from Austin and looking on screens. Instead, I see whining over lack of antialiasing and other "defects". It's just like to go to Hawaii in a middle of the summer, lay on the beach and whine all the time, that's it's so darn hot! Good Lord! Who cares? New X-Plane is almost there, wake up people! On top of that, probably like half of us will turn AA off or lower it considerably anyway, to save on fps...

There are people for whom enjoying simulated flight is the main thing, and so other things--how much eye candy, how much anti-aliasing, etc.--are less important. And there are people for whom texture fidelity and being able to run all the eye candy at the highest level are the important things, and the simulated flying is only a way to play with shiny plane models.

The second group reminds me of audiophiles: spend hours telling you that the $1,000 speaker cables they bought make the music sound better, but can't tell you what key a song is in.

[YYZatcboy]

DPNY, That's because audiophiles are not always musicians. Lots of engineers and techs in there too.

[Paraffin]

Read what I posted again. This isn't whining about what I personally like to see in a sim. It's more a concern for how it will look to people who don't fly X-Plane yet, and are keeping an eye out for any news of v10 as a reason to consider jumping ship from MSFS. And yeah, eye candy is a part of that, like it or not. Do we want the X-Plane community to grow, or not? Growing a larger X-Plane user base means showing your work at its best, when presenting new information. That's all.

[Ben Russell]

Cutting edge artwork competing for your dollar.

[Simmo W]

Indi, what's that pic from? I hope not Flightgear :-)

[WombatBoy]

It's Call of Duty Black Ops.

[Ben Russell]

...it's from a game due out in about a month or two... Call of Duty, Black Ops.

Let's talk about ..state..of..the..art.., shall we, dis-assembly intentional. It's not a buzzword, it's descriptive sentence.

What is the state of the art-form known as X-Plane payware content today...

From the best of the best, definitely competitive.

Especially when budgets and life constraints are considered, throw in the fact that we're all spread out all over the planet and not condensed into one floor of an office building with -every piece of new hardware we'd like- -thrown at us- and I think we're doing pretty well.

(Look up the DICE Battlefield Bad Combat team HQ video...)

Slide down the bell curve a little and the bar starts to slip pretty quickly.

I would like more reviews and trial versions so that we can all have a look at everyone elses payware product and see if any of us have the right to talk smack the way we do. All sides inclusive.

I don't think there is anyone that can lay claim to having truly looked at ALL the "best" payware.

Anyway. I'm done recharging my solar and O2 stores, i'm going deep and silent again.

Cyaz.

[dpny]

Read what I posted again. This isn't whining about what I personally like to see in a sim. It's more a concern for how it will look to people who don't fly X-Plane yet, and are keeping an eye out for any news of v10 as a reason to consider jumping ship from MSFS. And yeah, eye candy is a part of that, like it or not. Do we want the X-Plane community to grow, or not? Growing a larger X-Plane user base means showing your work at its best, when presenting new information. That's all.

Two problems intertwined: you're assuming anyone switching from MSFS to X-Plane will do so mainly for eye candy, which is treating the MSFS community as if it's homogeneous, which, of course, it isn't. People fly MSFS for all sorts of reason, and it's the same with X-Plane. Some use X-Plane to keep up on their skills, some to look at pretty, shiny things.

Secondly, the focus of X-Plane will never be eye candy, because it's Austin's baby, and he's an pilot and an engineer first.

[Paraffin]

Two problems intertwined: you're assuming anyone switching from MSFS to X-Plane will do so mainly for eye candy, which is treating the MSFS community as if it's homogeneous, which, of course, it isn't.

I didn't say that, and it's not what I'm assuming. I do think that even those who cherish accurate flight models over eye candy, are still capable of caring about some level of eye candy. It's not a binary world, and it's not so easy to place people in these discrete categories. I fly this sim instead of the other flavor because I like the way it feels when flaring over the runway, and the way helicopters work. But I'm not immune to eye candy either. Again, it ain't binary.

Secondly, the focus of X-Plane will never be eye candy, because it's Austin's baby, and he's an pilot and an engineer first.

Here's Austin talking about the screen shots he posted (from the .org forum portal page), which we're discussing here. These are not the words of someone who doesn't care about eye candy, as well as everything else:

ooo..... pretty....

http://www.x-plane.com/v10-pix/2.jpg

when you see this in motion.... wow.

http://www.x-plane.com/v10-pix/3.jpg

[scubajuan]

Ben Supnik published 3 videos on his blog that show dynamic lighting (Global Ilumination) in action and heat blur from the engines, and elaborates stating that it will be a rendering option selection. Here are the links to the videos:

http://dev.x-plane.com/download/self_light.mov

http://dev.x-plane.com/download/global_illum.mov

http://dev.x-plane.com/download/custom_illum.mov

Edit: here is the link to the blog:

http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/

[Wynthorpe]

Exciting stuff indeed.

[AnonymousUser68]

Going back to the ORBX comments on page one, I have been trying. I have contacted John from ORBX. He lives in the same place as me and Simon W. I have tried to get him to convert to X-plane but he is not budging. I told him about Carnedao and REX but he just said that REX for x-plane has not even made it into the top 15 on some Australian flight sim sight with every FSX product you can think of. I have told him that I own FSX to and I prefer X-plane. I have even told him about x-plane's blade element technology but he still wouldn't budge. Also don't try to convert the scenery because its illegal or something like that. Oh well we will have to live in a world about X-plane.

Andy

[djt]

Going back to the ORBX comments on page one, I have been trying. I have contacted John from ORBX. He lives in the same place as me and Simon W. I have tried to get him to convert to X-plane but he is not budging. I told him about Carnedao and REX but he just said that REX for x-plane has not even made it into the top 15 on some Australian flight sim sight with every FSX product you can think of. I have told him that I own FSX to and I prefer X-plane. I have even told him about x-plane's blade element technology but he still wouldn't budge. Also don't try to convert the scenery because its illegal or something like that. Oh well we will have to live in a world about X-plane.

Andy

I wouldn't waste my breath it will just fall on deaf ears.

I had a conversation with John from ORBX a while back and he was still under the disillusion that FSX has a bright, wonderful future despite the fact that the game engine is unfinished junk and it's development team has been disbanded.

I've got a lot of ORBX add-ons for FSX but the problem is their scenery is like putting a silk hat on a pig.

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[Simmo W]

Going back to the ORBX comments on page one, I have been trying. I have contacted John from ORBX. He lives in the same place as me and Simon W. I have tried to get him to convert to X-plane but he is not budging. I told him about Carnedao and REX but he just said that REX for x-plane has not even made it into the top 15 on some Australian flight sim sight with every FSX product you can think of. I have told him that I own FSX to and I prefer X-plane. I have even told him about x-plane's blade element technology but he still wouldn't budge. Also don't try to convert the scenery because its illegal or something like that. Oh well we will have to live in a world about X-plane.

Andy

I wouldn't waste my breath it will just fall on deaf ears.

I had a conversation with John from ORBX a while back and he was still under the disillusion that FSX has a bright, wonderful future despite the fact that the game engine is unfinished junk and it's development team has been disbanded.

I've got a lot of ORBX add-ons for FSX but the problem is their scenery is like putting a silk hat on a pig.

Agree, why waste effort. They've invested a lot into MSFS, are having great success and good on them! It's my assessment that they alone may keep the corpse from stinking for a few more years, until they announce their close collaboration with Aerosoft. Whoops, did I guess right?

[tkyler]

he was still under the disillusion

In John's defense...there are probably a good 1/2 million or more MSFS users..I once heard MS sold over 1/2 million copies of FS in one year....and if you can make a good 100,000, 200,000 or more on your scenery now, I'd say I wouldn't care what the fate of FSX future is.....give me the money now.  So while you're speculations on  MSFS future might be spot on, people tend to be more reactive and it's probable that until the revenue has dried up on the MSFS side (assuming that it will), I don't expect many to move over to x-plane just yet.  Might as well milk that cow now!

[LA]

I wouldn't waste my breath it will just fall on deaf ears.

I had a conversation with John from ORBX a while back and he was still under the disillusion that FSX has a bright, wonderful future despite the fact that the game engine is unfinished junk and it's development team has been disbanded.

I've got a lot of ORBX add-ons for FSX but the problem is their scenery is like putting a silk hat on a pig.

I usually reserve Avsim & Flightsim com. for my X-Plane versus MSFS thoughts. I split time between these two sims quite evenly lately, but as a long time MSFS user...........I am NOT one of these "I've seen the light........and am totally switching to X-Plane" type of people.

I do get a bit annoyed, when I see this constant banter of "blade element theory" as being totally superior to look up tables. And lookup tables (MSFS) being referred to as a "pig". If they were a pig, I wouldn't be using the sim at all. I'd have jumped the MSFS ship years ago, even if I didn't think X-Plane was perfect at the time. But I did think that MSFS was lacking all the way through FS98. It wasn't until MSFS released it's combat series, that I began to really appreciate it. In fact, the combat series and the next release of it's flight simulator had many of the ground interactions with airflow, that have been partially removed today.

But..........as a pilot/plane owner that I am; and as one who has flown quite a variety of GA aircraft, as well as aerobatic, mountain courses, etc..............I wouldn't just discount "lookup tables". They've been manipulated rather well, with designers that have been doing this for years. If they're believable, look right, give a sensation of feeling right, and hit the numbers............then that's what counts IMO. And.........they do!

LA

[djt]

Might as well milk that cow now!

And boy are they milking the cow or should I say milking customers who don't know any better and well let's say don't get out very often.

Take a look at some of the comments in the ORBX forums from users who are excited that they are seeing 15 fps with their new i7 setups. They'll even argue with you that 15-20 fps is smooth game play, lol.  The majority of them have never seen what a real game engine that properly takes advantage of system resources is capable of and ORBX seems to thrive off of this.

It just goes to show you how much “SIMULATOR” has taken a back seat to scenery eye candy.  It might as well not even be a flight simulator it's turned out to be more of a pretty screen shot utility.

If they were a pig, I wouldn't be using the sim at all.

My use of the word “pig” was referring to FSX's game engine.

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[Paraffin]

Take a look at some of the comments in the ORBX forums from users who are excited that they are seeing 15 fps with their new i7 setups. They'll even argue with you that 15-20 fps is smooth game play, lol.  The majority of them have never seen what a real game engine that properly takes advantage of system resources is capable of and ORBX seems to thrive off of this.

That's amazing. So much of the feel of flight simulation is dependent on silky frame rates. It's basically what got me into X-Plane a couple years ago. I had been away from civilian flight sims for years, and was starting to get the itch again. I had an older machine and was sure FSX wouldn't run on it, so I stopped by one of the chain software stores in a mall, intending to pick up a copy of FS9. They were out of it, but had an X-Plane box. I picked it up as an impulse buy. I couldn't run it at full eye candy settings (not that there is much eye candy at all, in the stock sim), but it ran amazingly smoothly on my older hardware. I could feel the ground effect in a flare, the helicopter ground effect, etc.

A few months ago I upgraded to a hot quad core machine and it's even better. Often the frame rates are in overkill territory at 50 or 60 fps, but that's just performance banked for whatever might be coming down the road, in future versions of X-Plane and the add-ons. But I sure don't want to be flying at 15 or 20 fps. The quality of my touchdowns starts to degrade at that point.

It just goes to show you how much “SIMULATOR” has taken a back seat to scenery eye candy.  It might as well not even be a flight simulator it's turned out to be more of a pretty screen shot utility.

I think there is a sub-group within MSFS that spends at least as much time cruising around in camera view at ground level as they do flying, so the frame rates aren't that important. The video demo on the ORBX site for their Concrete Muni WA scenery even starts with a drive around town in a car! I call it the "model train scenery syndrome," and there is a similar lack of actual people in the scenery. It looks like a  ghost town after the Neutron Bombs finally hit. I know that's endemic to flight sim scenery, but it just looks weird to me. Once you get to that level of detail, I want to see people moving around.

Speaking of which.... when it comes to representing reality at street level, none of the ORBX stuff compares to what you can see in a good videogame these days. I've been playing "Mafia II" on the PC. The game itself is so-so, but the look and feel of the 1940's era New York is amazing. Not just static buildings, but people walking around, cars driving around... people slipping on icy sidewalks, kids hawking newspapers. It feels alive, instead of lifeless like flight sim scenery. We may eventually get that kind of thing as atmospheric ground level scenery in a flight sim, but it's years away, and I can't ever see it being a priority over details that apply to actual flight.

One thing X-Plane could adopt though, is the feel of driving around icy and snowy roads in Mafia II, including transitions from packed snow and ice to deeper, crunchier snow. The feel of X-Plane once the wheels are on the ground still needs a lot of work.

[Baber20]

Sure it does, and so do a lot of other things. But it still rocks in its present condition  

[AnonymousUser68]

Yeah I agree with everyone here and John just wont make the swap. My emails to him are like debating at school. I failed at school so if their is anyone who thinks I should say something different to change his mind I will give it a go. Me and John will battle until I get him running on X-plane. He wasn't even convinced by this.

[djt]

Yeah I agree with everyone here and John just wont make the swap. My emails to him are like debating at school. I failed at school so if their is anyone who thinks I should say something different to change his mind I will give it a go. Me and John will battle until I get him running on X-plane. He wasn't even convinced by this.

Well actually in his defense looking at those screen shots wouldn't convince me either they don't really tell much about how capable the game engine is. Info on how (if at all) X-Plane 10 will take advantage of OpenGL 4.1 and up to date hardware would be more like it.

I understand that if a developer has already put all their eggs in one basket that's it's not going to be easy to take on something new, but to flat out state that the FSX game engine has a lot of future potential smells of some serious B.S. And there's a lot of individuals in that forum who seem to eat it up. 

Unless ORBX got a hold of the source code and started to rework the game engine (which we all know isn't going to happen) piling up the scenery detail is doing nothing but breaking the donkey's back.

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[Simmo W]

isn't it nice for us Aussies to get these updates at a civilized hour.

Sweeeeeet!

FromAustin

I have a write-up a mile long of all the features already done for X-Plane 10, but let's save all those details for later.

Other than a gajillion various flight-model and scenery over-hauls and a near-complete internal re-write to make the code more object-oriented and thus easier to modify and debug, let's look at the fundamental requirements I have laid out for my team for X-Plane 10, all of which are being developed now:

In a sentence, X-Plane 10 will have a plausible, scalable, dynamic world.

Here is what I mean:

Orthophotos are garbage. I see this all the time. I am zooming along in an airplane looking that rooftops of WalMarts painted flat onto the ground.

And the rooftops are blurry.

And pixelated.

And with a magenta or purple tint.

And with big blurry shears right through the middle of them when they fall between offset satellite passes.

It looks just terrible.

Then, to make the 2-dimensional, blurry, pixellated, mis-colored, distorted roof of a WalMart painted on the ground look even worse, if you throw in some REAL roads or auto-generated buildings, they invariably fall ACROSS the roof of the WalMart painted on the ground, compounding the wretched orthophoto with an Escher-like rendering-error.

This looks terrible, and is not even plausible.

Enter the plausible world for X-Plane 10.

We will build every city in X-Plane UP FROM THE FIRST BLADES OF GRASS.

Here is how it works: We will start off with grass or field textures for THE ENTIRE WORLD, INCLUDING THE CITIES, and then build up from THAT. We will take each individual parking lot and place it on top of the grass. We will place each building on the parking lot, in 3-D. At no point will the PAINTING of the ROOF of a building appear on the ground. This will NEVER happen. EVERY building will be a real 3-D building, planted by an algorithm in a location that is at least physically possible. Do we know where every building on earth is? Of course not. But, we DO have incredibly detailed road databases, and we have the algorithms to place parking lots, sidewalks, buildings, etc all alongside these countless roads. This means that our artificially-intelligent city-planning algorithm will build PLAUSIBLE cities. Cities where you would fly over them at 5 miles per hour, 10 feet above the ground, in a helicopter, and NEVER see anything that looks 'impossible'. Everything will be completely 3-D. Every city built from the first blade of grass. There will be no discoloration, blurriness, satellite mis-alignment or 2-D Escher-illusions… all of the cities will be completely plausible. If you turn down your rendering options to zero, then New York will be empty green fields. If you turn them up to max, then it will be a sea of 3-D roads and buildings at a level of detail that you could DRIVE in a driving sim, and Central Park will NOT be an overlay… it will simply be a part of the field that they have not put buildings on! This is the plausible world, and it is the first step towards a really detailed and convincing virtual reality.

As well, X-Plane 10 will be SCALABLE. While you will be able to taxi right down the roads, with plausible intersections at every crossing and only 3-D buildings off of either wing, you will be able to zoom out all the way to space and see the landmass from orbit. You will see the reflections and lighting of the land and sea from space, with smooth transitions all the way from space to sitting in someone's front yard, never with any sudden switch-over to a different rendering technology. Everything is done with level of detail that delivers smooth transitions from street-view to orbit, all in 3-D. The WEATHER system will be detailed enough that you will see cloud whisps right around your plane as you fly through clouds, but will go HUNDREDS of miles in every direction WITHOUT any repetition. This will let you have fronts and thunderstorms, areas that are VFR and IFR, clear and cloudy, all at once, depending on your location. If you want to fly like you would in reality, you will work through/over/under/around those thunderstorms and fronts getting from one place to another, since the weather is NOT homogenous or repetitive. It scales from local detail around your plane clear out to region-wide fronts and storms visible from orbit. Totally scalable across a tremendous range.

As well, the X-Plane 10 engine is DYNAMIC. I have now, for X-Plane 10, made it so that EACH FLIGHT MODEL RUNS ON IT'S OWN CPU. Here is what that means: If you have 20 processors, then you can run TWENTY AI PLANES WITH BASICALLY ZERO FRAME-RATE HIT. Crank the number of planes up to 20 in X-Plane 9 and watch what happens to the frame-rate. Try it now: Set the number of planes to 1 and look at the frame-rate. Then set it to 20 and look again. See the hit? That is because all of those flight models are running on ONE CPU, one after the other, in order. With X-Plane 10, each flight model can run on it's own CPU, all at the same time… if you have 20 CPU's, running 20 planes is no slower than running 1. Now, most of you don't have 20 CPU's, but if you have a quad-chip dual-core (per chip) Mac like I do, then that is EIGHT cores… and they can handle 20 flight models while hardly breaking a sweat… the frame-rate impact of 20 planes is small: We have eight cores splitting the work! As well, we have optimized the RAM-use of each airplane to be considerably lower. This means that there is less RAM impact to having 20 planes flying at once, making it much more feasible to have 20 planes at one time. So, X-Plane 10 will use less RAM, and give more frame-rate, than version 9 when loaded up with planes (all other settings being equal, of course). So why do I care about all these OTHER planes so much? Well, we have hired a full-time programmer JUST for the new ATC code for X-Plane 10. This new ATC will control ALL the planes in the sky, including yours, to deliver incredible ATC realism. Using pre-recorded WAV files, you will HEAR the controller giving instructions to the OTHER planes, and see them following those instructions on your TCAS and out the window. The other planes will all take-off, land, taxi, stop on the ramp, miss approaches and do touch-n-goes, all while taking commands from ATC, all of which are audible on your radio.

Of course, all of the other planes will use the same accuracy flight model as your plane, so you will see them move perfectly realistically across all phases of flight, from flying right down to taxiing. Put in a strong wind or turbulence and see how they handle it. It might not be pretty, but it WILL be realistic. Set enough wind and an icy runway, and they will all blow right across the ramp. Watch out.

So, THIS is the plausible, scalable, dynamic world that we are building for X-Plane 10, all of which sits on top of an object-oriented, RAM-optimized, CPU-optimized, multi-core-capable code-base. You will SEE these results as X-Plane 10 reveals incredible detail, motion, and accuracy at all scales … while the activity bars on ALL your CPU's run up into action.

NOW, if you only have ONE CPU and a LITTLE BIT of RAM, you will still be able to run version 10 just fine... in fact you may see it even run FASTER and with LESS RAM than Version 9! BUT, you will have only ONE airplane, and the cities will be simply grass fields, and the air traffic controller will have very few people to talk to. BUT, if you get the 4 gig of RAM to load up the rendering options, the 8 CPU cores to run 20 AI planes with full flight-model at once with minimal frame-rate hit, THEN you will start to see the whole world enrich and come alive. But there is no way that is happening with 2 GIG of ram and one CPU. This type of world is all about parallel-processing: A lot of stuff happening at once. No surprise it will eat up all the CPU's and RAM (up to 4 Gig) that you can give it.

If you want to see a few pictures, go here:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=47604

And click on the small pictures at the bottom to expand them to a nice big detail.

OK next order of business: We are now starting to see the big commercial add-on developers from MSFS switching over to X-Plane.

The most recent switchover is Carenado, with a really nice little Mooney.

See it here:

http://www.carenado.com/ecommerce/buscador.php3?id_producto=86

This plane has the detail in physical appearance that people are used to getting with the high-end planes for Microsoft, but now that it has been made for X-Plane, we continue the great visual detail, but now get it with the X-Plane flight-model… a HUGE step up. Any MSFS user that has ever flown a real airplane and then flies a nice add-on plane in MSFS, and then tries X-Plane to see the difference in flight-quality… well… any pilot gets it. The Mooney that Carenado is selling flies very nicely. It is a very nice plane for X-Plane, and the visual model and 3-D cockpit are of course great. We have recently hired someone to go convert ALL the MSFS add-on makers over to X-Plane, and the Carenado conversion is only the fist of many. Carenado already has their next 5 or 6 conversions from MSFS over to X-Plane planned. Look for some Pipers from them next.

Anyhoo, as X-Plane gets ready to ship around the end of this year, you will want 4 gig of RAM and 4 or 8 CPU's if you want to crank everything up to see all of this, and you can expect more and more high-quality planes to start moving over from MSFS o X-Plane.

austin

PS: OK here is a little video that is maybe kind of cheesy to self-promote, BUT it's for about the best cause I can think of and gives a tiny little peek into my office while I talk about dogs and cats in the pound, of all things. It has nothing at all to do with X-Plane, but if anyone wants to see what I look like, this gets the idea across. And if anyone wants to get a pet, I can remind you to get it from a pound, not a pet-store... the pet will be just as good or better!

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:

 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xplane-news/

[Leumas]

Link for the video is: http://projectssite.net/projectpet/video/