Captain Kitten

1.14 Release Announcement 1.14 goal #1.0 - Performance boost for the general user: done 1.14 goal #1.1 - Performance boost for lower end system users: done 1.14 goal #1.2 - Performance boost for 4k users: done We're here! Let me start off by saying that 1.14 took a hell of a lot of time! I have updated, both here at the forum and on the Facebook group along the way and our trusted followers have known what has happened all along the way. This was supposed to be just a performance update. Which it is! But we met some restraints early in 2020 that we did not expect and took the chance of rewriting the core of xEnviro. We did not know when Vulkan would be released at the time. Some might say we took the wrong path but I assure you the only sensible thing was to develop for a stable platform and not develop xE on top of a X-Plane11 beta run. So here we are with 1.14 for X-Plane11.5x OpenGL even when Vulkan came with XP11.50. If you want to know more about Vulkan, read on. It's explained further down. Performance As part of the performance update we have added three sliders that directly affect quality/performance. These can be adjusted live while flying! This way you can adjust the quality/performance for any given situation. NOTE! ULTRA IS CONSIDERED SCREENSHOT SETTING AND NOT FOR FLYING! We may regret adding the ultra setting since everyone wants to crank it up to 11 and then we get performance complaints 1 - Clouds Static Quality Adjusts the cloud quality - low may experience BWC (Belgian Waffle Clouds) and other artifacts. 2 - Clouds dynamic quality Movement artifacts (ghosting) is a thing - hide it with this slider. 3 - Clouds detail range Static quality for distant clouds - this is a fps hog! PLEASE READ THE MANUAL! http://xenviro.net/manual.php Known issues 1.14 is released with some known issues which will likely be the case for every release. Though, I'm announcing this now since some issues might seem like something that should have been fixed before release. Luckily, many of these issues will likely be gone once we released the update to 1.15 (Vulkan). We're done fighting X-Plane in OpenGL so we're drawing the line here and moving on. But - by going over to semi full scale rendering in our core code rewrite we have unlocked a plethora of possibilities. Which we will be exploring in the versions to come. Below is a list of some known issues. Our beta testers and the team are completely aware of them so please don't report them to us again. As I mentioned, many of these issues will be short-lived with 1.15 on the horizon. Issue Explanation Fix Report to support? Blue mountain snow At certain times of day and at certain angles snow becomes unnaturally colored. This is a limitation of X-Plane light reflections that are yellow when returned from ground textures. Compensating for this makes snow less ugly but weird. Turn mountain snow off No Snow at places that have no snow Places that do not have snow in real life has snow present. This is due to snow line data on the server being set too low. Turn off seasons Yes please Season too intense Same as snow in places that shouldne't have snow seasons can be a bit strong some places. Use seasons slider / turn off seasons No Wet apron where there is no rain Note: rain accumulates and evaporates on the server. This means that apron and surroundings can be wet without rain. This will dry up. Turn off wet apron feature No Cloud Shadow jump Sudden shift in shadows and quickly restored. Can be perceived as fast weather change - but it's just a shadow shift. No fix for you. We're still chasing this No Cloud edge artifacts When moving through a cloud layer (not necessarily even through a cloud) Artifacts will appear. No fix at present time No BWC (Belgian Waffle Clouds) Grid visible in clouds. Cloud grid is visible in certain conditions and certain view angles. This is part of the new rendering system and will be refined, maybe even eliminated in next update. Can be adjusted with quality sliders. No Cloud artifacts Clouds can have "low resolution" artifacts. Vertical and horizontal lines. Increase Cloud Static Quality (CSQ) and/or blur No Banding Clouds at medium and far distance get "chopped up" or bands going over them. Visible under certain conditions. This is part of the new rendering and will be refined. Increase Quality Detail Range (QDR) No Precipitation follows Camera As it says - this is going to be fixed in later version None No No snow in reflections Windows of buildings don't reflect snow or seasonal changes. None No AI aircraft has "ghosting effect" MTL/CSL Vatsim traffic has a ghosting effect None No 1.15 - 1.xx || What's next Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan After Vulkan we'll probably have a look at multi screen support, VR compatibility as soon as it's reasonable to do so. Under which version these fall, we're not sure yet but soon after Vulkan release for sure. With Vulkan we will probably see another headroom for fps but do NOT expect too much here! xEnviro is a GPU eater so if you're GPU limited you will probably see 80fps default and come back to roughly 1.14 level of performance in 1.15. So if you're at 40fps in 1.14, you could see up to 40fps drop in 1.15 from default. That feedback will be fun. Going forward we will concentrate on one item at the time. The past updates have been way too broad and complicated and thus took so much time. Which they had to be given the challenges we faced. But that should be mostly behind us. So Vulkan (xE1.15) will NOT take another freaking year. Rough idea outline for the road map is as follows: 1.15 Vulkan 1.16 Spherical buffer 1.17 Low level fog 1.19 Precipitation volume | Atmosphere shadows 1.20 Thunderstorms 1.21 Night environment Seasons in Vulkan no longer dynamic.. Dynamic Seasons will be gone in Vulkan version of xE1.15. If we manage to convince Laminar to give us access to what we need in Vulkan, then we will add that in as soon as we have it back! As it stands now that is a discussion we don't have the energy or time to take now. The advanced Static seasons function will work as prior to xE 1.13. And we are keeping both OpenGL and Vulkan pipelines working so you will be able to use dynamic seasons in 1.15 on OpenGL. Again, we're sorry for the abyss of no updates between 1.13 and 1.14. The next update will NOT take that long. Our current code should not be too difficult to port over. But as per usual there will be no ETA but I will update you all on progress! We're not done. Back to work! Get xEnviro here: https://store.thresholdx.net/products/xenviro

ADMIN ACTION: This post has been moved to SAM club. Forum support topic is for support regarding the forum only.

@trellbrown23 You have been warned before. This is your last.

Some screenshots while we wait for things to normalize. They will soon. And once we start back up - we will be pretty close to rc1.

How did I forget to post this here? The announcement one week ago... If you haven't read this, please read it all: We are in the final stages of beta but life has caught up with some of the team members and development has halted completely for the time being. My own situation is with illness and severe pain - but I'm getting better and am recovering. But this is not what is stopping the progress. I didn't want to go public with the current circumstances since we got a backlash last time, when Andrey was directly affected by the cinema fires in Moscow right before the release of 1.10. Imagine even getting a backlash from people for something like that; not developing because of recent trauma.. But I'll enlighten you on the current situation since I realize that those of you who have a common sense, the majority none the less, deserve a progress update and a reason for the low activity: The loss of a very close family member recently and circumstances surrounding this makes development impossible for at least two weeks. With respect to the mourning team member I am not going in to further detail on this. As I said, this is a week ago. Things aren't really back to normal yet but I'll keep you all in the loop as we know more. Beta is in its last stages so once we're back to normal we should be seeing good progress towards RC1.

Latest beta tester screenshots. We have a couple more items to get through and test. We hope these will be easy to fix and to move on to final beta sessions. RC is coming closer.

From todays stream

Lets talk performance What performance gain can you expect from 1.14 (OpenGL)? Well, that depends on your system. The lower specs your computer has, the more of a benefit you'll likely have. 4k users will see a good boost as well. Mentioning numbers is not really beneficial since it is very individual and I want to avoid giving too high expectations. But one new feature we introduce to 1.14 are performance sliders. This comes with a huge warning! Ultra is NOT playable at any setting for 99% of users. Ultra is only available because we want to give you the option. Use these settings with care and don't use the below image as a guide Adjust these settings to your quality / performance likings. Clouds static quality This slider increases the cloud detail Clouds dynamic quality This slider decreases ghosting effect of clouds during movement. Clouds detail range Sets static quality of clouds at desired distance What performance gain can you expect from 1.15 (Vulkan)? None. Vulkan is a performance gain primarily for CPU loads. So since xE is GPU dependent you will most likely not see any gain. You might, but it's not a given. Few people will understand this concept and we do expect comments like: "I get 90fps vanilla and 15fps in xE! That's a 75fps drop!!1!" Well, yes nothing chaged with GPU dependency and on Ultra settings you will be choking your GPU to a point that you should be brought to court for abuse. As a last comment - we're still in beta: NO, there is no release date NO, beta is not public YES you can apply in a thread in threshold forum club but NO it's NOT a given that you will be taken on board when you apply I have a twitch channel where I will stream the beta now and then. Search for my name on Twitch - I'm not going to link to it. (Latest Images are close to how it will look at release - we're not done with the visuals after 1.14 this is a constant development where we do what's possible with the headroom we got --> performance / visuals)

So weve reached 1.14b24 We have gone through and ironed out a bunch of bugs and issues. Closing item after item day by day. How many more versions we burn through before we're ready to hit the public, we're not entirely sure. Beta team has worked well and we work with a lighter mood I did the first stream today and will probably do a couple more in the time to come. Not sure if I'm going to announce the streams here and make them as public as I did before the 1.13 launch, but we'll see. We're getting there Here are some screenshots from todays stream

No worries Regardless of where we host it you will find it here in one form or another.

We'll probably not go public with a specific date.

After we go Vulkan seasons are gone since Laminar has effectively shut that down. So 1.14 will be the last one with the current seasons and it will only work in 11.50 OpenGL

I have never said that beta is public.

Towering clouds are in, just not at that scale. Thunderstorms will be developed as soon as we have headroom. Vulkan will give us some. In addition to this performance update.

So you didn't read what I wrote? 11.50 has OpenGL in it - there is a switch. And there are reasons to why we don't go Vulkan yet - we need to finalize what we started first. Or all this time would have been a waste. Vulkan conversion won't take too long though.

What?

1.14 is in Beta "When will it release?" We never give ETA's (Estimated time of arrival). But we're in Beta now. So we are seeing the end of the tunnel. "Will 1.14 be for Vulkan?" No, reasons are several: We never anticipated that it would take this long and did a LOT in OpenGL that we just had to get finished before we get it all over to Vulkan. To add to it LR are not openiong up for us to hook in where we need to to keep all we have made so far in OpenGL. We will loose seasons, dynamic snow and wet aprons once we transition to Vulkan. Laminar has shut that door for us. We will probably be able to get that back in but it will demand a fair amount of work and an update on its own later. "Will it work in X-Plane 11.50?" Yes, 11.50 has OpenGL in it. It's a switch in the graphics settings. 11.50 has both Vulkan and OpenGL. "When is update for Vulkan coming?" 1.15 is the Vulkan update. So, after release we start work on this immediately. "1.14 took its time." Indeed it did. This has been a hell hole in so many aspects. Several of the team members have dayjobs in "critical infrastructure" and we lost a good two months on that while adapting to the new life we partly still have. In addition we had so many challenges thrown at us from X-Plane and some old xE code that had to be rewritten. "What's performance like in 1.14?" 5-10 fps. This update will benefit lower end systems more than higher end systems. It will benefit 4k users as well. Some lower end systems (GFX970) have reported a 20-30fps gain... BUT! DO NOT EXPECT SUCH NUMBERS! Keep your expectations in check. We now have a couple of performance sliders. You will be able to crunch your gpu quite heavily in 1.14 and trade visuals for performance. "Is the grain gone?" Let me be honest. Like any weather addon, xE1.14 will have its moments and it will have its not so fantastic ones. I don't want to talk any weather app down so I won't mention any. They all shine when they work and look off when not. We're of course aiming for the best visual experience and this will be worked on further for every update. Vulkan will give us some more headroom. "Will the price change with this 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. "Where can I download the beta?" Our beta runs are not public. "Can I be a beta tester?" Maybe. If you want to be a beta tester you can sign up in that thread under announcements in this club. More questions? I'll add them to this QA if I find them to be good Here are some tease shots:

Yeah, if you're not nice you have no room here in this forum though. There are plenty of reasons why people stay on XP10. Economy being one of them. Everyone is allowed to ask questions and you are not moderating this forum. So chill.

Tearing is confirmed behind us. Closing items one by one now. Yes, still not final look - thing is - last work before locking down will be a detail pass so artifacts will occur until the end of the test fase.

We're actually seeing the last corners of the track.. I don't even dare to say that we're lifting the gas pedal at Tiergarten getting ready to break for the shicane at Hohenrain... Those of you have followed along know what I'm talking about. Sorry for the low resolution on these. Images. More to come. Soon.