Captain Kitten Posted November 23, 2020 Share Posted November 23, 2020 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kastyr1 Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 Good morning Magnus, slept well on this? Great news indeed and definitely a good start to the day! So for now its only OpenGL of .41 and .50+ right, and Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan Vulkan next!? (you did say it so just repeating what is already stated) Sense of humor I see, but I know, there's nothing funny about hardwiring such a product. Can't really imagine the sear difficulty and head scratchers along the way 1.14 stable release. One word to sum up: Amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrTheoNoob Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 I see no performance boost 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
juliettoscar Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 I went from 30fps to 10fps with the new update so back in 1.13 again.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tom2h Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 I went from about 60 fps over the atlantic to 10 fps on medium to low settings. A greater FPS drop than 1.13. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Kitten Posted November 24, 2020 Author Share Posted November 24, 2020 You using reshade? if so then don't. Not compatible. And use the sliders. Check for other addons. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Captain Kitten Posted November 24, 2020 Author Share Posted November 24, 2020 Also: try to restart x-plane if this is your first satertup. SOme users experience bad performance on first startup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BiologicalNanobot Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 (edited) It looks so damn nice, congratulations! Also, a quick reminder for people: ReShade completely breaks xEnviro 1.14 - For those who's getting like 10 FPS - uninstall ReShade completely by removing the opengl32.dll in main X-Plane directory. Edited November 24, 2020 by BiologicalNanobot 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrTheoNoob Posted November 24, 2020 Share Posted November 24, 2020 4 hours ago, BiologicalNanobot said: It looks so damn nice, congratulations! Also, a quick reminder for people: ReShade completely breaks xEnviro 1.14 - For those who's getting like 10 FPS - uninstall ReShade completely by removing the opengl32.dll in main X-Plane directory. I dont have Reshade installed, so the problem is not reshade but xenviro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetset Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 Any news&tips from the development team regarding the huge frame rate drop several users reported or/and the grispy clouds as in my screenshot? And yes I read the manual and yes I tried several settings and no I dont have any reshade or other plugins/lua scripts installed. Thx Mark 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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