Infact as I said Aerofly keeps an advantage even accounting for that. Just as I think that DCS engine is more modern than XP/P3D. But I highly doubt that DCS with all those effects enabled has comparable fps with Aerofly, where scenery complexity between the two would be ideally matched. Maybe DCS is the kind of performance one should expect from a visually modern sim, not the Aerofly one. Would still be better than what we have now for civil flight sims, of course.

Anyway bit of a moot point. Until there's not a minimum of a living world and decent weather, Aerofly numbers are gonna be what they are, just as XP were for decades (and unsurprisingly, those same two lacking features are probably the reason XP still isn't the most used sim to this day).

Edited August 9, 20196 yr by Murmur

6 minutes ago, Murmur said:

Infact as I said Aerofly keeps an advantage even accounting for that. Just as I think that DCS engine is more modern than XP/P3D. But I highly doubt that DCS with all those effects enabled has comparable fps with Aerofly, where scenery complexity between the two would be ideally matched. Maybe DCS is the kind of performance one should expect from a visually modern sim, not the Aerofly one. Would still be better than what we have now for civil flight sims, of course.

Hmmmmmm..... I have not really paid attention to my FPS in 2D in DCS since I almost never play 2D, but they are very smooth. I do know that in VR, just as with Aerofly, I have no problems maintaining the required max headset FPS, which is a joy.

For DCS using VR and the user expecting smooth 45fps reprojection, many of  us (not all of us have a 2080ti ) have shadows off or flat, minimal total SS, MSAA at 2x or off, SSAA at 1.5 or off, minimal object options and best not fly near complex airports or cities, and generally reduced graphic options. I have a 5Ghz 9700K and a RTX2070 and just barely stay mostly smooth in simple scenery areas with no clouds.  Just check the VR forum for DCS to verify - many are hoping for a major VR optimization.

https://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=497

 

 

 

Edited August 9, 20196 yr by whitav8

4 hours ago, whitav8 said:

For DCS using VR and the user expecting smooth 45fps reprojection, many of  us (not all of us have a 2080ti ) have shadows off or flat, minimal total SS, MSAA at 2x or off, SSAA at 1.5 or off, minimal object options and best not fly near complex airports or cities, and generally reduced graphic options. I have a 5Ghz 9700K and a RTX2070 and just barely stay mostly smooth in simple scenery areas with no clouds.  Just check the VR forum for DCS to verify - many are hoping for a major VR optimization.

https://forums.eagle.ru/forumdisplay.php?f=497

 

 

 

I'm always sorry to hear that when my personal experience is so different. I actually didn't/don't even care so much about the new speed improvements they are working on, because the experience is already satisfactory for me. All I can do is hope that whatever new graphics card nvidia comes up with drives down the price of the 2080 significantly so more people can have (greater) fun in VR! (In sims that actually take good advantage of such cards)

23 hours ago, edpatino said:

Yeah, excellent graphics snd smoothness. The best VR performance out there. Regretfully the AFS2 world is still too quiet, no traffic, no ATC, no winds and true weather, no rain, no water effects. Some day...!

Cheers, Ed

By the way:

https://www.aerofly.com/community/forum/index.php?thread/14254-aerofly-life-project-1-0-demo-available/&postID=82412#post82412

Quote

 

Just a quick message about the upcoming 'Aerofly Life' project update (version 1.5). I wanted to hint at what to expect.

* aligned the traffic to the roads better

* added night lighting (headlights/tail lights, etc.) to all vehicles

* added airport vehicle life with night lighting and reflections

* added more vehicles to certain roads to better simulate the real-world location

And if I can get it finished up soon you might even see an aircraft or two flying around, and maybe even doing some touch and go's 

 

This project is a lot of work so please be patient. I will also be adding a tutorial on how this is all done soon!

Happy flying!!

 

 

12 hours ago, Murmur said:

For the record, XP devs said that Vulkan will make it much easier for them to make the engine really multithread friendly. Won't happen from night to day though.

Regarding Aerofly engine, remember that it lacks terrain shadowing, water reflections, and above all dynamic lighting. None of them can be completely disabled in XP. But Aerofly engine seems to have an advantage in performance, even if we account for all of these things lacking.

 

I hope so. I like X-Plane and I'd like for VR to be usable in it, i.e. 60 - 90fps.

One thing I'd say in IPAC's favour is that they only release new features when they're well optimised and have a minimal or managed performance impact. All the things you list* can be done in efficient ways that don't necessarily kill frame rates. You see those features on XBox games where there is significantly less graphics horse-power available than even a mid-range gaming PC.

* There already is some terrain shadowing from trees, buildings and other objects, just not from clouds.
The Florida DLC has a test area with shimmering water and there's no performance hit.

13 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

By the way:

https://www.aerofly.com/community/forum/index.php?thread/14254-aerofly-life-project-1-0-demo-available/&postID=82412#post82412

 

That's been around for some time now. Still a long way to go, but it's a beginning, at least.

Cheers, Ed

1 hour ago, edpatino said:

That's been around for some time now.

We have different time scales. I consider a feature like that taking a few months (first release was march) by somebody working on it on their own in their spare time between programming mainline features to come (And Jeff also has a day job as the chief technical officer in charge of a large states computer system) as just about par for the course.......

12 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

Hmmmmmm..... I have not really paid attention to my FPS in 2D in DCS since I almost never play 2D, but they are very smooth. I do know that in VR, just as with Aerofly, I have no problems maintaining the required max headset FPS, which is a joy.

On youtube videos (I think it was the german guy with the 5k+) DCS performance was significantly lower than Aerofly (although as you said I think better than XP). Which is to be expected since DCS graphic engine is significantly more advanced in terms of available effects, compared to Aerofly. Hopefully MFS will have a performance comparable to DCS, which could be a realistic target for a sim that is visually complete.

1 hour ago, nickhod said:

* There already is some terrain shadowing from trees, buildings and other objects, just not from clouds.

I was referring to terrain self shadowing. The lack thereof makes for a very flat looking terrain around mountains when the sun is low. Compare with DCS or XP or even good old FS9 (if I remember well).

But yes as you said hopefully some sim will have all those effects and keep a good performance. Good thing is there are at least 3 of them that could do it in the near future (12-18 months), i.e. Aerofly, XP, MFS. Hopefully at least one of them!

 

49 minutes ago, Murmur said:

(although as you said I think better than XP)

I purchased my 2080ti (and a whole new computer to go with it) pretty much cackling in anticipation of finally having a system that would tear even X-plane a new one, Fps-wise.

NO sim would have anything but stellar fps with MY new system......... (arrogance speaking)

Here's what I actually got, as my plans for conquering XP-VR were hit with the cold winds of reality, (At least not at anything approaching what I find to be acceptable settings)

You'll note that even at max settings the sim is still not fully utilizing the gpu, and lately thats gotten to be even more the case as I swear sometimes it's actively ignoring it, I presume because it has issues with me. (Me and XP have to have a talk) 😃

On the other hand, with 10,000 views, its my 2nd most popular video ever, so there's that......

 

7 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

I purchased my 2080ti (and a whole new computer to go with it) pretty much cackling in anticipation of finally having a system that would tear even X-plane a new one, Fps-wise.

NO sim would have anything but stellar fps with MY new system......... (arrogance speaking)

Here's what I actually got, as my VR planes went on hold, at least temporarily.

How is X-Plane VR performance with your spec CPU and GPU? Can you dial back settings to get it acceptable yet still looking good?

1 hour ago, Flamingpie said:

Adding 'real' AI all over the AFS2 world will have more impact for sure than this extremely little demo does.

We'll see.

Blanket declarations like that always make me slightly nervous though, as I always feel like they're kind of pulled out of thin air, mostly from experience with FSX/ESP/P3D, (and maybe XP) which I'm not sure is entirely relevant several decades after the cpu-centric technology of those sims were first created.

To me it seems too much like insisting that a suitcase sized cell phone circa 1970 should somehow be the defining reference point for the state of current Iphone technology.

Only in an enthusiast community would that make sense.

I believe both X-plane and P3D are moving as fast as they can (from update to update) to modify legacy code so they can more efficiently take advantage of modern hardware and software potentials. Honestly though, It's odd to me that we expect so much from those efforts (and from vulkan) on our legacy sims, while not quite acknowledging what effect of that tech might have on a sim specifically designed for it.

1 hour ago, Flamingpie said:

compared to 'real' AI as we know it from other sims. (Correct me if I am totally wrong!) Adding 'real' AI all over the AFS2 world will have more impact for sure than this extremely little demo does.

The use of the term "AI" for traffic here is misleading. The road network data comes from OSM. Vehicles follow paths and some randomisation allows them to turn on to other nearby paths.

There's some CPU overhead in doing that, but not much more than following pre-baked animation paths like in Jeff's demo.
GPU load is effectively the same, you're just moving a model along a path.

1 hour ago, Flamingpie said:

Problem here is that this traffic demo is a personal project indeed and not an official IPACS one. And the demo only gives traffic in an extremely small area. At this pace it will take YEARS to manually add preprogrammed traffic (so not even AI as we know it in other sims!) in all available area's. Jeff is planning on creating a tutorial so users can create 'traffic' themselves but even that will take ages and just as with other freeware AFS2 stuff quality will be different everywhere. I rather had IPACS creating something that works all over the globe.

Apart from all that: one of the reasons it doesn't hurt performance is that the traffic is preprogrammed in 3DS Max so if you see a plane flying around it actually is a simple animated model which, so it seems to me, doesn't use much resources and can't be compared to 'real' AI as we know it from other sims. (Correct me if I am totally wrong!) Adding 'real' AI all over the AFS2 world will have more impact for sure than this extremely little demo does.

Couldn't agree more. But anyway, don't expect everybody to be happy with these statements, as we speak.

Cheers, Ed