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So this is it? (post 1.10 release comments)


Captain Kitten

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Nothing new - just a summary

I have just come home from vacation after the FSExpo in Orlando. Which was a blast by the way! I still have to get back to my day job routine and get some work finished there before I am back in the saddle on xEnviro. Same goes for most of the team really.

Reactions
Since the decision on releasing xEnviro 1.10 with known issues we knew that the reactions would be mixed. Once the initial storm laied down the positive feedback we have received has surprised me. Apparently a lot more people understand what we are trying to achieve and accept that this is a starting point. xEnviro is volumetric. The first noise rendered volumetric weather engine for any major sim. 

I'm unsure what to say in addition to what has already been said in previous announcements. I'll repeat some of the previous statements from "Where are we and where are we going" (under discussions) and try to explain them in more detail. And also add some that I had left out. xE is very complex and has many features that both depend on each other or affect each other in one way or another.

These are some of the compromises:
(unwillingly implemented or tolerated features by design)

  • Haze blending on mountains
  • Haze blending and covering the edge of dsf (which is hell to get right in x-plane)
  • Haze covering clouds
  • Clouds cutoff with depth test
  • Clouds depth test with airframe
  • Entire pipeline depth test with aircraft lights
  • Gap between xE horizon and XP horizon
  • Grain artifacts and banding
  • Limited cloud layers (Cloud optimization)

Here is the list of known issues:
Known issues or bugs are there because we need to move on and some were discovered too late. We just don't want to go back to beta and xE is usable as it is now. You have waited long enough and 1.11 won't be far off.

  • Precipitation follows camera
  • Unnatural cloud formations at high levels or squared sectors of clouds
  • Snow coverage may appear in the regions where no snowfall encountered recently
  • Default X-Plane night triggers lights artifacts
  • Performance is heavy but better than 1.09 (4k users will get a significant hit)
  • Some experience contrails make haze transparent.

With some exceptions that are plain limitations in the X-Plane11 environment all of the compromizes will improve over time when performance increases. For instance xEnviro is capable of showing unlimited cloud layers. Your computer is not. Not at this stage. That is why xEnviro automatically limits your sim to as many layers as it can cope with. Hence most people only see one layer and some people see two layers some times. One benefit of our planned path for performance increase will be the option to turn cloud optimization off, grain will be less defined and cloud definition will increase  The isisues are being worked on but Performance will not be part of 1.11 or 1.12. This will take time.

Things we will never implement:

  • Demo version
  • Custom weather
  • Offline version

These are security breachers. xE is yet to be found in torrent sites. The reason for that is the security we have in place. Especially the custom weather surfaces now and then and believe me when I say this has been discussed internally and we have tried to find solutions that don't breach security. There aren't any.

Vulcan
The test bed of Vulcan for developers is not ready yet. We do not know how much Vulcan will benefit xE. One huge misconception is that Vulcan will be the savior for all things X-Plane. One thing that we can hope for (but don't expect) is for LR to open up some parts of X-Plane to give head room for xE cloud renders. An API for depth data is needed but hard eould massively improve performance and enable our unlimited cloud form mixtures and unlimited cloud layers. Which are in the pipeline and just waiting for more room to come out and play. But this isn't as easy as it seems. For several reasons that we have respect for (but won't disclose here) we understand if LR are reluctant to give access to all areas xE would benefit from. Some areas are crucial for performance though. We'll see what happens. We're optimistic.

Austin has tested xEnviro. Not exactly something I was prepared for and thus wish I had prepared him for what to expect. So the video is somewhat misleading, but a fun one to watch none the less. Austin liked what he saw and that matters a lot to us 😃

I'll round this off here and get this out. I'm back at my day job and need to get back in to the daily routines. Keep your heads up, more info on next update coming soon.

 

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Would custom presets be possible? Few pre-made weather presets by you that would allow VFR if the IRL weather is bad or IFR practice if it's nice outside. This could still be possible by having multiple "weather systems" on your server, or am I wrong? Having few presets like CAVOK, few clouds with random slight wind, overcast, fog would be a good compromise to custom weather if that would be possible.

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14 hours ago, POM said:

Would custom presets be possible? Few pre-made weather presets by you that would allow VFR if the IRL weather is bad or IFR practice if it's nice outside. This could still be possible by having multiple "weather systems" on your server, or am I wrong? Having few presets like CAVOK, few clouds with random slight wind, overcast, fog would be a good compromise to custom weather if that would be possible.

what you're saying is basically custom weather...

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7 hours ago, qwqaholic said:

what you're saying is basically custom weather...

It's not, custom weather means basically infinite possibilities of different weather, what I am saying is having few presets. That is something completely different.

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On 6/25/2019 at 3:08 PM, jg175 said:

Sounds like custom weather guy

Custom weather: set any wind you want, any clouds you want, any temperature you want... basically infinite possibilities

Presets: few of options with all the stuff above preset for you -> like 5 possibilities.

It's like in X-Plane, you have a few presets and than you can create your custom weather, is it really so bloody difficult to see the difference -_-

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