8 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I agree with you that as of now, MSFS clouds are still better.

it is not only how the clouds look, but their effect on lighting or casting shadows underneath.  If I fly into or under a MSFS cloud deck, I can feel how it gets dark in and around the cockpit. in the x-plane video that effect was totally missing. In real life and in MSFS though, descending and flying through a hole in otherwise bright clouds can be terrifying and frightening if it suddenly gets truly dark and black like descending down into Hades (underworld). that effect is very convincing in MSFS, I have not seen that in any other simulator.

6 minutes ago, turbomax said:

it is not only how the clouds look, but their effect on lighting or casting shadows underneath.

I suppose you haven't seen this yet.

Or this...

 

Always happy to throw in more screenshots if you remain unconvinced and want to keep mentioning MSFS in an X-Plane forum.

 

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by GoranM

54 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Really, who cares? It’s a game. I couldn’t care less. 

Thats why so many peoples info gets sold. Once upon a time the had to crawl through your garbage bin, Xplane a game you might upset a few.

25 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Ok, but that wasn't the point.

it was my point and the original poster's when he said "If this is a preview screenshot, wow", so the point was indeed graphics. 

 

8 minutes ago, GoranM said:

I suppose you haven't seen this yet.

Or this...

better than xplane11 no doubt about it, but I meant the light effects while "In real life and in MSFS though, descending and flying through a hole", that's were MSFS is shockingly real.

 

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by turbomax

3 minutes ago, turbomax said:

but I meant the light effects while "In real life and in MSFS though, descending and flying through a hole", that's were MSFS is shockingly real.

Actually, no...it isn't.  It might look good.  But MSFS does not have PBL (physically based lighting).  PBL takes REAL world values of real world lighting and is implemented in the sim.  XP12 now does that.  Meaning it casts realistic shadows using real world lighting physics.  MSFS takes values from, for example, 0 to 1 (0 being fully dark or black  and 1 being full brightness).  This is NOT realistic.  

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by GoranM

4 minutes ago, GoranM said:

PBL takes REAL world values of real world lighting and is implemented in the sim.

PBL, PBR whatever the underlying technology may be. it is the effect and immersion that counts. If xplane12 gets lighting in and under a cloud deck around the aircraft right this time, more power to them. I just have not seen that in any of their videos of xp12.

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by turbomax

1 minute ago, turbomax said:

PBL, PBR whatever the underlying technology may be. it is the effect and immersion that counts. If xplane12 gets lighting in and under a cloud deck around the aircraft right this time, more power to them. I just have not seen that in any of their videos of xp12.

Did you not look at the images I posted??  Can you not see cloud shadows there with the light reflecting off the ground from the gap in the clouds?  Would you like me to circle them for you?

3 hours ago, GoranM said:

Does MSFS use physics based lighting?  The lighting looks vastly different in MSFS, and I'm thinking the colors are overly saturated and occlusion overly done just to make it look better.  Physics is physics, and the lighting can't look different between sims if they BOTH use PBL.

Yes it does - it is pretty much standard practice today. The difference in lighting is caused by post-processing. In short, after all of the physically based lighting calculations, the resulting brightness values are all over the place, ranging from a few nits to several million. Obviously you cannot put that into a monitor as it can only display a fixed range (SDR), so a process called tonemapping is used. Tonemappers map the HDR values (which have no fixed range) into SDR values (which are between 0-1) monitors can display. It is quite clear that MSFS and X-Plane are using different tonemappers, causing the difference. Another thing that adds to the difference is color grading, which is used to further tweak colors after tonemapping as some information always lost during tonemapping, for a simple reason - one cannot squeeze the infinite brightness range of HDR to SDR. Even simply looking at their sky colors and cloud lighting, it is quite obvious that they are using physically based lighting. They have had mentioned that in their several streams as well.

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

16 minutes ago, GoranM said:

But MSFS does not have PBL (physically based lighting).

It does, read above for more details.

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

Then it's a case of being told 2 different things from 3 different people.  1 of them a scenery dev for MSFS.

8 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Then it's a case of being told 2 different things from 3 different people.  1 of them a scenery dev for MSFS.

did a search on google couldnt find any reference to such Any one got a link?? Probably a myth.

4 hours ago, GoranM said:

Just a guess, but this could be a performance saver.  swaying trees take up CPU usage.  Reverting to billboard trees past a certain radius will keep performance far better than having all trees in an infinite distance moving dynamically.

That is true but it shouldn't matter for us end users - you will not be able to make out the difference between billboard and 3D trees when you are far enough. They have mentioned that they revert to billboard drawing themselves too, but it is again perfectly fine as the difference is only obvious when you are close.

Lighting in V12 looks great, not sure what the criticism is about, can't wait to watch how this looks with a 4K HDR monitor:

 

Edited September 26, 20214 yr by akita

2 minutes ago, akita said:

Lighting in V12 is great, not sure what the criticism is about, can't wait to watch how this looks with an 4K HDR monitor:

 

Clouds look ‘ok’. But that runway looks stunning. I wonder if the wheels interact when going through the puddles

2 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Didn’t except anything else. I’ve just logged on this morning and read all of this and just watched the XP-12 videos. It looks pretty good. Really hard to judge though until one actually has it running on their PC.
Of course you have the hardcore XP fans in here, xplane till I die type. And then the same MsFs till I die fans. I am not sure why the two have to argue. Complete waste of energy. 

😂 😂 😂 Its funny watching the usual suspects