1.14 development

[Bakr]

Seriously, in 2021, there is a new hardware generational leap with Navi 20 and GTX 3080 TI promising extra 50% tflops, and faster cpu's IPC and clock speed .

This will give a lot of performance headroom, which would allow side by side to spice up the rendering pipeline to increase the quality, we are yet to see the focus road-map of laminar after they finish perfecting the Vulcan stutter-less implementation ... fingers crossed.

Serious simmers will have the investment worthwhile into a proper pro-level rig.

Edited July 18, 2020 by Bakr

[michaelmagdy]

Where is that 1.14 update....

[jfwharton]

On 7/21/2020 at 11:00 AM, michaelmagdy said:

Where is that 1.14 update....

They mentioned before that it probably won't be out before the end of the year.  In the mean time I"ll keep using 1.13 and at times switch over to another weather engine.
 

Edited July 22, 2020 by jfwharton

[Captain Kitten]

15 hours ago, jfwharton said:

They mentioned before that it probably won't be out before the end of the year.  In the mean time I"ll keep using 1.13 and at times switch over to another weather engine.
 

Completely made up. I haven't said anything of the sort. I don't give ETA's and that is still the answer.

[jfwharton]

7 hours ago, Captain Kitten said:

Completely made up. I haven't said anything of the sort. I don't give ETA's and that is still the answer.

Sorry, my bad.  I thought I had read something in this thread that a release wasn't expected before the end of the year.  Going back through all of the postings I could not find that statement so I was wrong with what I posted above.  Sorry.

[Captain Kitten]

14 hours ago, jfwharton said:

Sorry, my bad.  I thought I had read something in this thread that a release wasn't expected before the end of the year.  Going back through all of the postings I could not find that statement so I was wrong with what I posted above.  Sorry.

All good.

[Bakr]

We are eagerly anticipating the next appetite enticing progress update for XE 1.14 - inclusive of all technical wizardry -  (along with new royalty free screen shots to replace my current desktop background)

Edited July 26, 2020 by Bakr

[kastyr1]

1 hour ago, Bakr said:

We are eagerly anticipating the next appetite enticing progress update for XE 1.14 - inclusive of all technical wizardry -  (along with new royalty free screen shots to replace my current desktop background)

Most of us are...if you are human.

[Bakr]

On 7/26/2020 at 10:08 PM, Kris Thorsheim said:

Most of us are...if you are human.

I am an AI backed smart Robot, i can easily differentiate between school buses, motorcycles, cars, chimneys, crosswalks and traffic lights puzzles, but i need to train more on new cloud patterns in XE 1.14 

Edited July 28, 2020 by Bakr

[kastyr1]

It is going to be a great update for this addon. : -D

[Yorkshire]

I think one of the dangers is that some/many might start losing interest! From this thread it seems 1.14 was started on Oct 30th 2019. To quote Cpt Kitten in the first thread post 'If we were to get everything to where we want it to be before we release we would not be releasing for another 6 months at the earliest' It is almost 8 months now - and we have had to be content with a succession of images that 'may not reflect the final product'. And looking at what was not promised, the same post said:-

'So this update will NOT include:

VR
multi monitor
Night environment
or any other elements on the roadmap
free beer (sorry)'

And most importantly, somewhere in the thread it was said that this update would not cover Vulkan, that would wait until update 1.15 or 1.16.

Looking at the bigger picture, FS2020 is 3 weeks away. It has volumetric clouds that look the deal. P3Dv5 has been released and it's TrueSky incorporation has been done well and gives volumetric clouds and very acceptable visuals. And possibly/probably XP12 will be announced this Autumn, and they know what they have to do - and weather/clouds will be on their agenda. Vulkan is at beta16 and a release candidate will not now be too far off. When it goes non beta, I expect the majority of the XP community will then upgrade (I fly 95% of the time in the beta releases with few or no issues). So when 1.14 is released, who is it being released to? Personally, I don't want to go back to 11.41 and inferior frame rates & stutters that Vulkan addresses. We will then apparently have to wait for another few weeks/months for a workable upgrade to Vulkan? And the flight community may have moved on or be waiting for an XP12 release before Christmas - that is speculation!

I say all this not as criticism or to be negative, I think XEnviro is a terrific addon, but, given the bigger picture I have to ask - is it in danger of missing the boat?

[Captain Kitten]

4 hours ago, Yorkshire said:

I think one of the dangers is that some/many might start losing interest! From this thread it seems 1.14 was started on Oct 30th 2019. To quote Cpt Kitten in the first thread post 'If we were to get everything to where we want it to be before we release we would not be releasing for another 6 months at the earliest' It is almost 8 months now - and we have had to be content with a succession of images that 'may not reflect the final product'. And looking at what was not promised, the same post said:-

'So this update will NOT include:

VR
multi monitor
Night environment
or any other elements on the roadmap
free beer (sorry)'

And most importantly, somewhere in the thread it was said that this update would not cover Vulkan, that would wait until update 1.15 or 1.16.

Looking at the bigger picture, FS2020 is 3 weeks away. It has volumetric clouds that look the deal. P3Dv5 has been released and it's TrueSky incorporation has been done well and gives volumetric clouds and very acceptable visuals. And possibly/probably XP12 will be announced this Autumn, and they know what they have to do - and weather/clouds will be on their agenda. Vulkan is at beta16 and a release candidate will not now be too far off. When it goes non beta, I expect the majority of the XP community will then upgrade (I fly 95% of the time in the beta releases with few or no issues). So when 1.14 is released, who is it being released to? Personally, I don't want to go back to 11.41 and inferior frame rates & stutters that Vulkan addresses. We will then apparently have to wait for another few weeks/months for a workable upgrade to Vulkan? And the flight community may have moved on or be waiting for an XP12 release before Christmas - that is speculation!

I say all this not as criticism or to be negative, I think XEnviro is a terrific addon, but, given the bigger picture I have to ask - is it in danger of missing the boat?

What boat? Clearly X-Plane is dead and you will be moving on and not look back at any of this. Next updates are free so what would we miss? What are you missing when we update?? If you want my thoughts on MSFS and the impact it will have listen to the "Inflight 23: Let's Talk FS2020" podcast. You're NOT looking at the bigger picture. In fact you're narrowing it down considerably. You'll know why I say that when you have listened to the podcast.

Take my answer as straight forward and no "feelings" attached if it feels blunt. People tend to get hurt and call me a wounded ego when I answer straight up. But the constant MSFS doom announcements are getting tiresome as hell. I'm fed up with constantly defending the fact that we don't just do "x" or "y". When none of the suggested paths make any sense. IF we even get suggestions of a path forward. And not just some criticism of being late. Which is valid. We are late. This update plainly takes time we didn't think it would, since it has halted on problems we didn't know existed.

MSFS is coming regardless of what we do. So if we were to take that in to any calculation for what this update is about, we would be complete idiots. In fact, if we were cynical about it we should now wait until after the release of MSFS and let the hype die down before we even consider releasing. That we won't! It's like everyone believes that MSFS is the end of all other flightsim platforms. I'm under NDA from Microsoft so I can't talk much about it but there will be a usage for all other sims for a time to come. Visuals is not everything. Just like visuals isn't everything that we try to vcreate in xEnviro either. People tend to forget that we make this for proffessionals. The end goal is a tool that we want to be able to use in the long run. This is not a quick buck for us! If it were we would have charged for every update.

I have kept everyone in the loop on what challenges we have faced so you all know exactly why it is taking this long. The 1.14 update items is not something that we can ignore or just push aside. All development further depends on it. Vulkan included. You can use 11.50 in Open GL mode. If you don't want to do that and stay with Vulkan then that is fine. To be honest I can't care about who "can wait" and who "can't". Development is in a set path regardless of how you or any one else might "feel about it". It's like yelling to someone to finish their homework while they're clearly neck deep doing it.

If we were to change course now - what would look like?? Revert to 1.13 and go with that to Vulkan? Then what? Start over with what we have to do anyway to even be able to develop further? (Which we are doing btw)

And what about XP12? Is that something we're supposed to fear as well?? When LR starts to look at weather they will be forced to deal with the same obsticles they don't want to fix for us. So we'll be there. 10 steps ahead of them at every turn they take. And we'll welcome them to the fantastic wonders of noise rendered Volumetrics.

So, what am I to do? I know exactly what to do. Press on , finish 1.14 and update you all here on the progress and challenges we likely will face in the next updates as well.

[Captain Kitten]

I hope to have a thorough update soon. Just had some time off and we're very soon back at it as usual. We have had some breakthrough on the tearing issues but I'm hesitant to say that we're through that hurdle. Once that is done with we'll be speeding towards beta assembly though.

In the meantime - some screenshots from the layest test flight. Winningen to Innsbruck in the fantastic SR22 by Torquesim!

[michaelmagdy]

who do i contact to reset my xenviro serial key ?

[bokepacha]

48 minutes ago, michaelmagdy said:

who do i contact to reset my xenviro serial key ?

http://www.xenviro.net/support/

[Bakr]

Re-attaching, after fixing exposure via Photoshop --- WOW

Edited July 29, 2020 by Bakr

[Nathos]

xEnviro is the addon of the future, and it will always be.

[Yorkshire]

 'Clearly X-Plane is dead and you will be moving on and not look back at any of this.'

Respectfully, you are wrong on that one - and thank you for the link - which I have listened to, and found it a very interesting conversation. I have not pre-ordered FS20 and have no plans to do so. I was fortunate enough to get on the Alpha program on the 2nd trawl so have had it on my system since January. Respecting the NDA I am under, I won't say why I won't be buying into it, however I had already come to my own conclusion with the question that the Podcast started with - is it ready! Whether I will indulge myself sometime in the future remains to be seen, but it's not a priority. I did buy into P3D v5 some months ago but XP is my sim of choice and I spend over 95% of my flightsim time in it, and know because of all the features that it has got right, will continue to do so. 

I sincerely hope you and the team manage to resolve the remaining issues and can release the update for all, myself included, who are waiting. I can quite understand the challenges you are under in as much that it must be almost impossible to create an update when the goal posts move week by week, as well as battling against limitations set by XP itself. I wish you well, and I am still with you.

[Captain Kitten]

12 hours ago, Yorkshire said:

 'Clearly X-Plane is dead and you will be moving on and not look back at any of this.'

Respectfully, you are wrong on that one - and thank you for the link - which I have listened to, and found it a very interesting conversation. I have not pre-ordered FS20 and have no plans to do so. I was fortunate enough to get on the Alpha program on the 2nd trawl so have had it on my system since January. Respecting the NDA I am under, I won't say why I won't be buying into it, however I had already come to my own conclusion with the question that the Podcast started with - is it ready! Whether I will indulge myself sometime in the future remains to be seen, but it's not a priority. I did buy into P3D v5 some months ago but XP is my sim of choice and I spend over 95% of my flightsim time in it, and know because of all the features that it has got right, will continue to do so. 

I sincerely hope you and the team manage to resolve the remaining issues and can release the update for all, myself included, who are waiting. I can quite understand the challenges you are under in as much that it must be almost impossible to create an update when the goal posts move week by week, as well as battling against limitations set by XP itself. I wish you well, and I am still with you.

I salute you for a constructive conversation. I do tend to talk to not only the one who is writing these comments but a "broader audience". A bad habit I guess from "defending" our choices and explaining for the 100's time why we have chosen the paths we roll down. Personally I will be using MSFS as well. But I will be using the sims very differently and development of xE will continue as planned.

I'm caustiously optimistic that we have solved our main problem atm and that we are approaching a better overview towards beta assembly and that the assembly won't deliver additional surprizes. So no real update yet.

[Bakr]

Based on the last snapshots, i can see a level of cloud details never seen before , the formations of vapor(cloud) spread are more realistic - something that i knew you had it right from day zero mathematical formulas wise, but were not able to push in earlier releases unless you resolve on the performance optimization paths .... even though these are not representing final product, but congratulations .. the incremental effort is tangible over time.

Based on above screenshots, XE engine can produce these clouds easily (similar to below photo), albeit there are still limitations in rendering pipeline and lighting system in the x-plane that may be addressed in plugins that tweak the environment parameters to bring more vibrant color

[ashmanmedia]

1 hour ago, Captain Kitten said:

I'm caustiously optimistic that we have solved our main problem atm and that we are approaching a better overview towards beta assembly and that the assembly won't deliver additional surprizes. So no real update yet.

That’s great news @Captain Kitten.  Cross our fingers no surprises arise.   Images look powerful.

I as well use ms2020 now and still anxiously await 1.14 and xe work being developed.  Any weather is good weather and they have there differences. Keep at it.

[trq46]

hey ask asobo how to make it, they do better, and my guessing is about to go right, v 1.14 is released after msfs 2020 :DDDD , but still xEnviro great too for xplane, i'm glad owning it n will play it with xEnviro 1.14 soon, either fs2020 for scenery and weather, fair, both have proc n cons. 

Edited July 30, 2020 by trq46

[Captain Kitten]

9 hours ago, trq46 said:

hey ask asobo how to make it, they do better, and my guessing is about to go right, v 1.14 is released after msfs 2020 :DDDD , but still xEnviro great too for xplane, i'm glad owning it n will play it with xEnviro 1.14 soon, either fs2020 for scenery and weather, fair, both have proc n cons. 

We know exactly how they do what they do. Headroom and more resources is 90% of it.

[trq46]

Allright Nice, Cool Sir  

Edited July 31, 2020 by trq46

[ashmanmedia]

10 hours ago, Captain Kitten said:

We know exactly how they do what they do. Headroom and more resources is 90% of it.

I am shocked that LR and Austin himself live on youtube seeing xEnviro after that expo in miami.
Stating we certainly would help your xE team..

But then failing to open the doors needed.  x-plane has never considered the environment over the years so xE probably has to work around all the bs they are left with.  1 layer 2 layers tops eh?  

And vulkan has nothing to offer? its a miracle you guyz do what ya do and its still very impressive.