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snagar

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snagar last won the day on February 4 2022

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  1. Agree with the Garmin display issue, although if Laminar G1000 integration in the C172 is good, I don't see the reason why it could not be on par with Thranda case. I guess we will have to wait for future build from LR and the same from Thranda.
  2. I think I'll pass this one, the Islander by Thranda was a surprise since we already have two version of this plane. I guess Thranda wanted to their first native plane in X-Plane 12 to be simple. I'll watch out for their next big release.
  3. Thanks for the review, I have still not decided which plane will be my first XP12 one, although tempting I might wait some more. In my experience, VSKYLAB never disappointed me with their plane support, I know they prefer to stick with what X-Plane/Plane maker provide instead of writing their own plugins and systems, I guess this might be part of the reason they are sticking to "simpler" planes. I wish they will implement something more complicated like the PC12, would have bought it day one.
  4. Thanks for another long and nice article. For the coming X-Plane 12 and also for MSFS I have upgraded my machine from Intel 8700K, 32G DRAM4 and NVIDIA 1080ti to Intel 12700K, 32G DDR5, MSI 3080TI and EVGA 1000 PSU. I know we had a debate regarding which CPU/GPU to upgrade too but I thought that Alder lake is quite mature and almost end of life before Raptor Lake will arrive and NV3x prices went down so I purchase from Amazon for 9xx$ exclude taxes. Yes I invested quite a bit because I want to fly in VR in X-Plane and MSFS. From my subjective benchmarks (prior to MSFS update 10): MSFS VR flying is quite smooth although settings are set to high, FPS is around ~25-30 but it feels as if it is 60, I guess it is the motion reprojection magic. I flew in clear and clouded skies and the feel was quite good using stock planes. When I tested with the Carenado PC12 I think there were few spikes but overall felt great, like I'm flying a new simulator. On X-Plane 11: VR was just great, smoooooth all the time, no jitters, no frame loss an exceptionally good and stable experience. On X-Plane 12: VR is a mix bag. You probably can't fly it without activating FSR, no kidding, as of build 12b4. Unfortunately FSR is a double edge sword, once you enable it, gauges text and numbers are blurry (not as sharp) so you can't read or it is harder to read them in VR mode, it is the same in 2D mode. You need to sacrifice gauges readability at a glance over smoothness of flight. Since smoothness of flight is more important to me, I have to use FSR to fly in VR, there are long hiccups if you set FSR to OFF, and if I need to read from the G1000 or G5x/G4x gauges I lean in or zoom momentarily (I sent Ben/Austin a question if this is a bug or feature so I'm waiting for their answer before reporting a bug). The new airport textures are just great, at first it felt like I'm in a first person shooter, really no joking, the bumpiness on the concrete is first class especially with the lighting, in my opinion, and I hope the community will modify the default gateway airports with the new textures and objects in order to have a consistent high "fidelity" airport feel around the world. My suggestion for a new rig, buy the latest tech you can put your hands on or wait for the new version of NVidia/AMD/CPUs and then buy the high end previous generation to save some money I almost went that route, but I had to buy a new PC since I gave mine to my younger son (so you see... I was forced to upgrade ) I will wait for you ATC review, I tried IFR and it went nicely until I reached the destination airport, unfortunately I was never hand over to the target airport tower for landing, so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or it is a bug (probably the first), for a test I picked a ~50nm airport to test this, so it was a short flight. Keep the great work, you probably have plenty and let's hope Laminar will be able to deliver a stable XP12 in the next 3 months and a better scenery in 2 years. [FSR on - Ultra Quality] [FSR Off - best texture quality you can have] The blurriness a bug or feature ? [edit] After consulting with Ben Supnik, this is a feature and not a bug. FSR blurs screen textures as a whole and currently they can't pick which ones to apply FSR on and which not. So for VR it is a blessing but at the price of texture clarity. I'm still not convinced that a 3080ti won't be able to deal with FSR off, I'll have to do more tests and prove otherwise. Cheers Saar
  5. well, it is Aug 30, 2022 and there is still no sign for X-Plane 12. Oh well, few weeks can be 4,8,10... Continue waiting... Keep up the great work. Cheers
  6. Hi, @Medellinexpat, You can check Laminar Facebook page, there are some references to planes and sceneries that will be compatible with XP12, but I guess we won't see the full list since they seem to gradually release this kind of information until publishing XP12 to the public. I also think it is worth to check the X-Plane org forums and see if there is any compatibility topic for your preferred plane maker. One thing regarding compatibility between version, I think it is a double edge sword for the studios, on one hand it is great that your plane can fly on the new version of XP12, but expecting a full fleet of planes to be updated to the latest version for free is not an easy thing to swallow, my opinion is that a symbolic tag price should be added to an updated model. Regarding Carenado and JustFlight, I think they have a passion for aviation (and money) and XP12 is a potential growth market, they will probably want to invest in it, the question if they will do it through new planes or as you stated before, updating the plane to the new simulator and charge money for that (not an easy decision). @Stephen, I think you nailed most of the issues of the new XP version in this article, especially: Problem is with code is, "push more in here and it pushes more problems out there" - spot on. Regarding the payment, I think that 60$ is also under payed, but after listening to Austin in the interview with FSElite, I think that once they will be transitioning to "always online" mode, there might be subscription change, but that is probably in 2-3 years from now. Saar
  7. Nice article as always. In my opinion, regarding upgrading your PC, I suggest to wait and see how it will perform once XP12 v1.0 is out, I think you will appreciate the upgrade much more , further more I do not suggest to upgrade to the fastest Intel CPU, see X-Force suggestion in YouTube, pick the middle performer (1 notch down) for a more balanced price/performance. Regarding the "too hard to implement features", On that side, I think that I side with LR when it comes to graphical performance (world rendering). If I understand them correctly, it was only when they transition to Vulkan/Metal they got a whole new set of APIs that allow them to implement some advanced rendering technologies in an easier and stable way, dropping OpenGL is the way to move forward since the desktop platform they are supporting are abandoning this technology too as a main rendering API. My prediction, and I'm shooting randomly here, is that the textures day one won't see significant changes from what we see in XP11, but after the first year we might receive a whole new texture implementation (maybe it will be regionally and not for the whole world) once they will finish implementing their new texture technology for terrain rendering. Again this is probably won't be the case, but it is plausible since it is very hard and time consuming rebuilding the terrain textures while focusing on other time consuming technologies. Regarding City areas, I do not see LR investing in this part more than the minimal needed, they will probably continue relying on third parties autogen and scenery to fill in those areas. It will never be MSFS level, and in my opinion that is fine as long as there are good VFR point of interest implemented in the sim. Cheers Saar
  8. Hi, Great writing as always. I have one issue with your prediction and its the "streaming textures" feature, if I understood you correctly. What I understood from X-Plane blog, is that they are trying to make the Custom Scenery more hierarchical and better organized. I don't think they decided what is the "new/old" format going forward but they probably want to minimize the scenery conflicting issues etc. Regarding streaming textures, I don't think this is what they are going to implement, even as a feature, since as far as I understand (after few e-mails with Ben Supnik) this feature, if not used by LR, might seem as an opening door for illegal usage of that streaming feature. But if LR would have used this technique it might not be the case. Overall there is a legal issue and complexity of implementation. What is interesting is that many years back, I think there was a plugin that did the same for X-Plane 9 or 10, but it was banned by google for the texture usage, so it should be possible but maybe not as a built in feature. Cheers Saar
  9. Great analyze, If I may add, Austin did say they are ditching OpenGL, but this is just for the main world renderer and not for the plugin (confirmed with Ben Supnic). My concern is with the ground textures, although personally it is not a priority for me, I think that if they won't ramp up these textures they would be mocked although their other efforts in other areas. I guess only time will tell.
  10. Nice article, I do agree I'm waiting for Laminar Research announcements regarding the future of X-Plane but they have their own time bubble relative to ours I also think I'm one of those the focus more on the plane aspect than the visuals, this is why my scenery basket is light. I'll continue refreshing LR developer blog in the hope to see something new, but I guess the quite means they are working hard on the future of their product. Cheers
  11. @canuk_22 Wow, that is harsh, I think the youtubers made us expect for one thing and the delivery was, for some of us, other thing. My thoughts are almost align with yours except that I expected to an advance beta or release candidate simulator, just like XP11 when it first came out, unfortunately I did not waited for the first patches before investing in it, but my 1$ that I paid was not for nothing, like you I think the MSFS is beautiful, but it has its drawbacks since it is not mature enough, let's meet here in 1 year or so and have a second look at it. In the meantime, I doing my best to stay away from the youtubers that continue pushing it as if it was clean of bugs and issues.
  12. Hi Stephen, Loved this review, I think you sum-up everything that needs to take into account when buying your next simulation, I also think you were spot on when you described the current feeling is MSFS as hollow, it is a shiny but hollow experience and I also agree that not for long. Like you I think that MSFS is still in release candidate stage and like the release date of XP11 it will take few months until it will be stabilized and then some more to be mature. The order of new features I would like X-Plane to introduce in X-Plane 12 are (my opinion): Weather - this is the first thing you meet when you fly and need to cope with. Scenery - I fly mostly in VR and the patch work is obvious although not a show stopper. SDK & UI - I would love if X-Plane would have a better and modern set of SDK and UI widgets for developers, I even think MSFS uses an external UI library for the developers mode (although it is my assumption based on a video I saw - check 31:00min), I think they are using something like ImGUI, and if MSFS with all their knowledge and UI arsenal used such library, why not LR embracing it too at least their developers will have a default standard UI to work with. ATC - mehh, I liked the simple ATC in MSFS, you don't need to think to much and you can do some action manually before it did it for you. I don't think that on-line simmers will replace online ATC to A.I one (maybe in XP 14 ?) Let's see what Austin is brewing, we know he is working on a new weather engine which is great, the question is how the visuals will look, and I don't mind not having 3D clouds, really, as long it is fast and look like volumetric I can leave with it for another cycle. For now, I stopped flying the beautiful MSFS2020, I think I had enough of it right now, I'll come back to it in few weeks or months. Cheers Saar
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