April 15th, 2021 – Development Update

[pmb 5,139]

For those feeling the tree LOD is too small, Bijan is going to make his tree fix fit for WU4:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/announcing-4-season-pack-version-4-4-new-tree-lod-fix-is-coming/376161/304

Look at the video clip.

Yes, it's payware, but I found it worth the money, not only for the tree LOD fix but also for the beautiful trees we get to see in Spring like here at Osaka right now (taken before WU4, to  omit confusion).

And no, I am not a relative of Bijan.😉

Kind regards, Michael

[dtrjones 356]

10 hours ago, Chock said:

Nope, that'd be a red and certainly not a green or even a yellow. Something which occasionally works is more annoying than something which just doesn't work at all, because when something's bust, at least you know where you are with that.

My interpretation was the colour indicated the progress. So green implied a change had been committed to a branch (not necessarily the next patch), but the text itself described the scope of the change against the original issue.

[dtrjones 356]

4 hours ago, March Hare said:

I thought, in the most recent Q&A, they mentioned adding more sliders for trees in the future, and increasing LOD generally -- going beyond ultra settings.

Yep and just to add to that the focus for the graphics teams are on DirectX12 and initially the Xbox version before focus switches back to the PC, so there will be some rebalancing to be done because of this. I'm pretty sure they are aware of tree LOD as it's been raised in the forums several times. I think this stance is perfectly reasonable, we'll see what happens when DX12 releases when I'm sure the sliders will be rebalanced to accomodate the smaller more density packed trees.

[hanhamreds 592]

3 hours ago, Grindathotte said:

Is there a seagull density setting somewhere?

When you move the Hawk slider the Seagull LOD decreases.

 

what concerns me is the performance degradation we get every time a world update arrives and everyone descends on that area - so Paris now for example.

clearly the servers are struggling to cope with processing the sessions, which results in clients waiting for the ingested data to arrive and is the reason your system is sat (idle) with low CPU/GPU utilisation. 
 

When Xbox arrives with the cross platform MP this is only going to get a lot worse - what are the plans to alleviate this issue?

[Scottoest 1,613]

Something about this image makes me think of like a 50's drive-in diner

[fppilot 4,462]

1 hour ago, Scottoest said:

Something about this image makes me think of like a 50's drive-in diner

Reminds me of a movie set in a Disney animated movie.....  Or perhaps a Fisher-Price toy set.

Edited April 16, 2021 by fppilot

[rick celik 1,265]

I think the runway lights are too big tbh I think it’s been brought up before, have they acknowledged it? 

[Shack95 2,700]

Does anybody else have missing windows/glass textures at Rotterdam and Nice airport? In external view they‘re there but in cockpit view some of the buildings with glass cladding are completely transparent, e.g. terminal 2 at LFMN.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

32 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

Does anybody else have missing windows/glass textures at Rotterdam and Nice airport? In external view they‘re there but in cockpit view some of the buildings with glass cladding are completely transparent, e.g. terminal 2 at LFMN.

Yes.

[RXP 2,338]

9 hours ago, Shack95 said:

In external view they‘re there but in cockpit view some of the buildings with glass cladding are completely transparent, e.g. terminal 2 at LFMN.

You might have found why the game is stuttering like hell when moving the head in VR with this building in sight. Looking around the building (about 30deg) and it is ok, but turning the head and having this building passing in front of your view and all of a sudden it skips frames like crazy. Once the view direction is beyond the building again everything returns to "normal". At least this is what I've been experiencing there.

You might want to post a Zendesk if not already done!

Edited April 18, 2021 by RXP

[Shack95 2,700]

7 hours ago, RXP said:

You might have found why the game is stuttering like hell when moving the head in VR with this building in sight. Looking around the building (about 30deg) and it is ok, but turning the head and having this building passing in front of your view and all of a sudden it skips frames like crazy. Once the view direction is beyond the building again everything returns to "normal". At least this is what I've been experiencing there.

Interesting. I‘ve noticed that frames are not the best there in VR but didn‘t think of that. I‘ll try to reproduce it after work.

7 hours ago, RXP said:

You might want to post a Zendesk if not already done!

I will. I haven‘t done it yet because I first wanted to see if it‘s just a problem on my end.

[Dominique_K 10,156]

I read again the release notes of the last WU to understand how could they bring the new bugs ( stutter in MP/AI and axis at 50% with ESC) with what the notes say they did for the update. I couldn’t.  Nothing relates to the bugs... 

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

1 hour ago, Dominique_K said:

I read again the release notes of the last WU to understand how could they bring the new bugs ( stutter in MP/AI and axis at 50% with ESC) with what the notes say they did for the update. I couldn’t.  Nothing relates to the bugs... 

The patch notes are never complete. Several important rendering and back-end changes, like the new cloud system in Sim Update 1 as well as the DXGI chain swap and TAA adjustments in World Update 3, went completely undocumented. Even the G1000 and many other improvements in Sim Update 3 somehow failed to be included, but at least they corrected that later.

I really wish they would not leave stuff like that out, which in the end can cause confusion. I certainly appreciate Prepar3D's extremely detailed patch notes.

[Dominique_K 10,156]

22 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

The patch notes are never complete. Several important rendering and back-end changes, like the new cloud system in Sim Update 1 as well as the DXGI chain swap and TAA adjustments in World Update 3, went completely undocumented. Even the G1000 and many other improvements in Sim Update 3 somehow failed to be included, but at least they corrected that later.

I really wish they would not leave stuff like that out, which in the end can cause confusion. I certainly appreciate Prepar3D's extremely detailed patch notes.

Are the writer of the notes and the manager who authorizes the release aware of what has really been done ? All this smacks of an amateurish organization.

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

5 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Are the writer of the notes and the manager who authorizes the release aware of what has really been done ? All this smacks of an amateurish organization.

The FAQ posted in the forums following each patch release says this:

Quote

Why were certain bugs or issues not included in the patch notes? 

The patch notes don’t mention everything that has been updated.

So they are probably aware of all the changes but they deliberately choose not to include some of them. Sim Update 3 was probably an exception, where they said "Our team identified several fixes that did not make it to the Patch Notes when Sim Update 3 released".

Still, I think it's funny that the 1.10.7.0 release notes were advertising an improved TAA method, but nothing was said when they reverted to the old one with the UK World Update.