[1.17 Development]

1.17t89

Still on a good path for performance. Adding features back in one by one and adjusting. 

[1.17 Development]

 

 

 

[1.17 Development]

 

 

[1.17 Development]

1.17t83

 

[1.17 Development]

1.18t80 / t81

While we are shaping cloud types we disable several items and filters so just like any other post I have made take it as work in progress. I know many of you want to know how much is left and when we release but I still won't give ETA's. So I'll update with the Nürburgring analogy

We're right here:

We're at the (1) mark. Or maybe even a bit further. Things are moving fast these days.

So yeah. It's been a while but most of the time that has passed since 1.16 update has been occupied by day-job and life in general that has been more demanding than ever. Now that there has been time for xEnviro we're racing towards the finish line. We still have a lot to finish but the recent progress has been very fast and very visual. 

Have some more teasers:

 

(I've opened up for commenting - but I do want to keep this thread to still be about the update. So any other conversations will be deleted. I will be strict on that one  )

[1.17 Development]

 

 

 

[1.17 Development]

1.17t76

[1.17 Development]

xE 1.17t75 The first video of our shaping test runs. This is taken on a laptop with a 1060. We're currently at between 35-80 fps
(not optimized so fluctuating a lot) So we're still well over our goal for performance.
This does not say anything about the end result. Still a lot to be done. But a lot has been done too so we're happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z5a8ZxCxig

[1.17 Development]

Progress. And a lot of it lately. 1.17 is shaping up well. I'll try to make a more detailed update this time. I usually don't have time for this but upon request I'll try to squeeze a couple in.

Following screenshots are work in progress. Blending, artifacts and so on will be mended. Performance is still at 15-20% even with the higher detailed clouds we have now. And it is foreseen to stay like this when we start mixing cloud layers. As mentioned before Spherical buffer unlocked seamless layer transitions. So we hope to be able to mix cloud types soon to execute one of the final proof of concept items. If it were to fail we're confident that Spherical buffer is the way to go regardless. But if it works we'll have cloud rendering on a level we didn't think was possible when we started out with volumetric clouds. Exciting times. 

In the following images ignore blending and artifacts. We're shaping cloud types. Initially we have planned eight formulas for clouds to form from.

1.17.t71

Details have been boosted pretty heavily from 1.16. We hope to not have to reduce that too much. If we get any artifacts like we had in 1.16 we will reduce detail. But so far we're well within our aim and we haven't even started optimizing yet. 

1.17.t71 above

1.17.t72 below

I can't stress enough how much work in progress this is. 

 

 

 

[1.17 Development]

More light, cloud and light scattering adjustments. (1.17.t70)

NOT TO BE CONSIDRERD FINAL - A lot still to be adjusted and implemented.

More cloud work (1.17t71)

 

 

[Frequently asked questions]

Frequently Asked Questions

Check Latest Updates Tab for latest updates. Also - you can ask questions here if you like. 

General

"Where are we now in development?
Check development of latest version in "Latest Updates" Category.

"What is planned next?"
Roadmap can be found here.

"When will the next update release?"
We never give ETA's (Estimated time of arrival).

"Will the price change with the next update?"
The price will not change and every update is free for existing customers. This goes for all updates within the 1.xx versions of xEnviro. (X-Plane versions do not affect our development path)

"Will xEnviro work in XP-12?"
As we have seen so far: An update of xE will be needed, but yes it will work. There are other ways to do custom post processing in X-Plane other than Modern3D (And yes - that update is also free)

"Where can I download the beta?"
Our beta runs are not public and never will be. We're too small to handle a chaotic public beta.

"Can I be a beta tester?"
If you want to be a beta tester you can sign up in the signup thread under announcements in this club. We pick up beta testers as we need them. Often we pick people with particular systems. Mor often than not we pick potatoes over bleeding edge.

 

More questions? I'll add them to this QA if I find them to be good

[1.17 Development]

Some screenshots of the past weeks progress

Atmosphere work.

 

Haze implementation

 

Some more cloud work too
(cloud shadowing)

 

[1.17 Development]

Some more tease shots from 1.17t58 to t60. Atmosphere is not in yet. And a lot of shaping and smoothening still to be done. We're still surprised at how well this performs and we hope we will keep the 20% performance increase we currently have (before optimization).

 

1.17t61
Atmosphere peek

[1.17 Development]

Some more teasers on formations and cloud types in 1.17. 

1.17t60 is in a raw state so STILL NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF FINAL - but here are some teasers:
( Proper atmosphere, lighting, shadows ++ still to come. )

[1.17 Development]

1.17t57 

Before I start

let me just say that we will not stop development with the release of XP12. We firmly believe that we will still be relevant in X-Planes future. The teaser shots released from Laminar proved that to us. I had a whole rant laid up after a discussion with Andrey about the screenshots Laminar presented. But I quickly scrapped that rant since it basically would be a long educational text on how light behaves in the real world and why the lighting model Laminar has chosen is completely unrealistic. XPlane12 still doesn't have atmospheric calculations for light scattering. Everything is coming from palettes. Photometric means "something metered". Metered in advance and represented as a statistical table. And Laminar's choice of the light source having a set color is just ..
This is why XPlane12 still won't have realistic lighting and will be dependent on addons to get sky colors and general light behavior right.

XP12 released teaser image
 

Where are we?

Here: 

• 

Spherical forward buffer is done. It's finally done! And it works!

First images in the new true full volume rendered environment based on spherical buffer. (1.17t57)

Not in any way representative of final result! A lot of the 1.16 code is obsolete and needs to be cleaned out. 

Spherical buffer has never been used before in this application and is a tech we are proud of pioneering in the industry. We were the very first with volumetric clouds in a major sim. And we are first out with this tech as well which we hope will open up some possibilities in X-Plane with all kinds of cloud formations and wanted features. We have good results. As it looks now we will have some possibilities I am reluctant to publish.

This is a whish list based on what we have seen - some items might be blocked later depending on the path we choose (And Laminar's access in XP12) but we're hopeful that all will be doable with time.

• General performance increase for all resolutions
• True full volume rendering. (this is already done and gives us a huge advantage)
• Unlimited cloud layers
  • Mixed cloud layers
  • Unlimited formations
  • Thunderstorms
• Cloud on cloud - and self shadowing
• High performance on high resolution clouds
• Wake vortex turbulence effects
• VR compatibility

Not all of this will be in 1.17 but the road to get to the items above is so much shorter now. And we won't add to the current future feature list now but we're dreaming of some possibilities now that we knew could be done before but with huge compromises we might not have any more. We're already at a 10-20% performance increase from 1.16 and we haven't even started optimizing the code. Where we end up is not a set figure. We'll see. 

We currently have 14 items left on our agenda. This can change if any of them gives us problems. But as it looks now we should have a set item list to finish. Light is observed at the end of the tunnel
 Back to work!

 

[1.17 Development]

Alright,

let me first say that I am sorry for not updating all of you for a while. I haven't had the time for it first of all and second: I don't believe in vacuum hyping. Which means hyping something for sales alone when you can't back it up. But I see that several people question if we're even alive - or if xEnviro is in a dead end. So here is an update to lay that ball dead. Some won't accept any form of "excuse" what so ever and will always demand an update to xEnviro regardless. Let me just start with answering those with the fact that you bought the version you got at purchase. Not a certain update cycle.

With that said:

We're still developing. It has taken a looong time and I am aware that this has been the case for several of the major updates so far. Development has been slow because of several factors. First of all we have day jobs that have demanded a huge chunk of our lives. Ever since Covid started several of us in the dev-team have what is called critical professions that are under high pressure and have been for a long time. Apart from that we have private lives that also demand it's time and in periods have made it impossible to concentrate on other things. xEnviro is developed by a small team and we're vulnerable to halts.

Image from 1.17t43

So where is development per today?

Spherical buffer is a complex transition and a new tech developed by us within noise rendered volumetrics. It will give huge benefits both in performance potential and visually. How much will remain to be seen. At launch of 1.17 clouds will probably not look very different than 1.16 (apart from artifacts fixes and performance). But xE will rest on a structure that we hope will give it a huge advantage going forward. This is the 5th performance path that has been mentioned in the past. Also in XP12 when that launches. But about that...

We're still waiting for some clear answers from Laminar in regards to if we get the needed tools to continue developing weather at this level in xp12. We know that xp12 most probably will get volumetric clouds but the tools have been very limited so far and this might be even worse in xp12. xE has always been independent of Xplane to a large extent and that will be our savior also this time around. We'll see if laminar wants to have 3rd party weather addons in the future but if not; we'll manage to brute ourselves in. As we have done for the entire xE life so far anyway.

Anyway, sorry for not having updated you and that this update is not of a "here's what we got" or with images of 1.17. We don't have that much to show anyway since the work is on the back end. 1.17 is over 90% done. But the remaining 10% doesn't translate in to time. I won't promise you an update soon either. I am currently stealing time from my day job to write this and I have to get back to that now. But if we have any news worth mentioning I will update asap.

 

[Very Quite Lately]

Sadly I don't have any news worth sharing.. 
Andrey has a schedule from hell at the moment, flying people back and forth in his country. This year has been hell for all in the dev team so far. And coding has suffered a lot as a result. but we hope things will normalize soon. When Andrey is back we will make a plan and I'll have more of an update (I hope). I'd say we're 85% - 90% done - but the last 15% can't be translated in to time. Sorry for not giving more info but this is the reality we live in atm.

[when is it from this series and where to download]

It will be released in this forum. If you find it anywhere else it is not a legal copy.

[1.17 Development]

hello world

1.17 task #1: Spherical buffer - ongoing

Status: 1.17.t30

• Spherical buffer initial proof of concept test - done
• Spherical buffer core code conversion (t01 - t28) - done
• Spherical buffer pipeline initiated (t29 - txx) - done
• Spherical buffer adjustments and adaptation - ongoing
• Spherical buffer evaluation - ongoing
• 1.17.txx test team push - imminent
• 1.17.bxx test team push - not started

(Image by beta test team member xE 1.16)

I have been pretty silent lately, so far this year in fact, and I apologize for that. In a sense I am eating my own words at the moment. "...but we are trying to get away from the huge gaps between releases."  1.15 was released 25th of december. 1.16 was the Vulkan hotfix and... Yeah. Time flies. But there has been a lot that has demanded the teams attention in real life both in regards of our day jobs and privately. So progression on the new update has been slow. Since we have some new users asking about the known issues we listed in 1.15 I'll repeat them here. Several of these will probably be solved by the spherical buffer conversion and if they persist we will have room for improvement in later updates. 

So here's the list of known issues

• Precipitation follows camera
• Snow coverage may appear in the regions where no snowfall encountered recently
• Default X-Plane night triggers lights artifacts
• Cloud edge artifacts
• In cloud artifacts
• Cirrus clouds may affect colorization of clouds beneath
• Low level clouds may be combined

You can find an updated list at xenviro.net

To add to the silence, there has not been anything interesting to show visually at this stage of 1.17 development. xEnviro has been in peaces again. 1.17 has just left pre' Alpha state which is just pure code. We are currently done with the code conversion and are now adapting all of xE code to the new tech. We are constantly evaluating if this is a sensible direction to take.

If you are wondering what spherical buffer is, you're not alone.  I won't disclose what spherical buffer is other than that it's nothing new. But as far as we know this has not been done before in this application, let a lone in X-Plane. So we're treading unknown grounds again but we're taking this risk because the benefits are huge if we pull it off. Treading new ground is nothing new. We were the first to go public with volumetric clouds in flightsim scale. We think that was the only sensible choice at the time and one of the best decisions we have ever made albeit controversial and demanding. 

As per usual I do not give any ETA's for the release but we have made progress and this is just an update to tell you all that we're still alive and working on 1.17.

 

 

[1.17 Development]

Spherical buffer = Perf upgrade nr 2

This update is basically another performance update. This was one of the 5 performance paths we had in the 1.14 update plans. We did not implement it then since it will take us at least a month to implement and test if it even works in the X-Plane environment. We decided to add it later so we wouldn't delay 1.14 longer than necessary. Fingers crossed that we're not in a dead end. The reward will be great if it works and so far it looks promising!

First ever image of Spherical Buffer in X-Plane. And in any sim as far as I am aware.. Don't quote me on this
Yep - Minecraft comes to mind. It's the tech that counts at this point.

With the Spherical Buffer we hope to be able to get to the point where we can start adding more features like thunderstorms, multi screen support and VR. If you wonder what Spherical buffer is - read up on space observation tech. How we implement it and parts of it's functions are trade secret at this point

With a bit of tweaking we're back to more familiar clouds. But with some huge tricks up their sleaves I seriously hope we can exploit. Crossing fingers and toes that this will turn out well in the end. We just won't know until we add back all features in the next test runs.

Let me explain in short what happened in the past updates:

1.14

• Major performance update
• Additional functions and features as a result of a complete rewrite of the core
• This was the incredibly long update that took a year to finish... 

1.15 

• Vulkan update (11.50 compatible)
• Dynamic seasons only available in OpenGL since the needed access is not available in Vulkan.

1.16

• X-Plane 11.51 hotfix (X-Plane 11.51 and above)
• Not compatible with earlier versions of X-Plane (in Vulkan)

 

A comment on dynamic seasons
I see that there is confusion about dynamic seasons. And as much as we want dynamic seasons ourselves, it has never been a part of our feature list. It is an experimental feature because we could add it in our pipeline and get it to work. In OpenGL. We will try to convince Laminar that X-Plane needs dynamic seasons and MAYBE we will get the access needed to actually execute that feature without the flaws it suffers under in its current state in OpenGL. So far we have had a closed door but we will continue the talk. (We have a poll running in the facebook group where you can add your vote for our seasons - so maybe Laminar will see the community whish for such a feature.) You can also address this to Laminar directly. Any pressure from the community will help us in getting the access we need.

But I repeat: dynamic seasons has never and will never be promised as a feature in xEnviro. And we are running two pipelines of development currently to keep your whishes for this feature active in OpenGL. How long we can keep this up is a huge question mark though.

 

[No clouds.. nothing works 1.15 Vulkan]

On 1/1/2021 at 7:15 PM, speedbird1229 said:

Hi!

Happy New Year!

So I also happened to update to 11.51 and clouds are gone... Is there any way to roll back a stable release in Xplane? Or maybe it's just one file that needs to be replaced or something... Seems like otherwise flying is suspended until you figure out the solution

1.16 is released and is for 11.51

[xEnviro 1.16 release]

xEnviro 1.16

This is a xPlane 11.51 compatibility hotfix. Download here

[X-Plane 11.51 compatability (Vulkan) fix in the works]

UPDATE ON 11.51 hotfix:
We have the fix, still ironing other minor bugs that appeared alongside - and testing hotfix beta. I expect it to be out while still writing 2020.
Until then You can still use xEnviro in OpenGL

Server update today from 12:00 zulu
We will be updating the servers one by one today so downtime can be an issue. This should not last for longer than 2-4 hours.
(Image from beta tester in hotfix test)

[X-Plane 11.51 compatability (Vulkan) fix in the works]

IMPORTANT

AS LAMINAR NOW HAS UPDATED TO 11.51 WE WILL GET TO WORK ON OUR UPDATE FOR IT AND HAVE IT OUT ASAP.
IF YOU WANT TO USE XE UNTIL THEN, DON'T UPDATE OR USE OPENGL VERSION!
(Change to opengl by unticking vulkan option in graphics settings in X-Plane).

Just be careful updating to 11.51, Several reports on 11.51r1 crashing their sim on load.

[No clouds.. nothing works 1.15 Vulkan]

It's not compatible wit VULKAN version of 11.51 (which just released) We are working on that. In the meantime you can use the OpenGL version.