Linux-Friendly X-Plane 11 Flight Simulator Shipping Later This Year

[M@GOid]

Do you have any research paper to support that claim?

Well, if you cannot understand that very basic fact about 3D computer graphics, there is not point continuing wasting my time in this conversation. Have a nice day :-)

[M@GOid]

Yes, they could outsource the engine. But it also has costs.
Their engine is pretty good already (just look at the water from X-plane 9 -- the only one I have), and tuned to their needs. It also has little need for the unreal editor or this sort of stuff, which I think is one of the biggest selling points of those engines.

Factor in switching costs, reliance on an engine provider, and the loss of your personal visual "touch", I don't think the switch to another engine is so obvious anymore.
Debatable, maybe, but not obvious.

I look forward to this next release. And a word of caution: avoid buying it on Steam. I have read countless reports of things that don't work on Steam.
For example, some features require the executable to be launched two times, which Steam doesn't allow on DRM-enabled products. And X-plane is full of DRM (even though I seem to recall that it worked with just an iso I created myself); they even sell (or at least used to sell) usb sticks that you can use to unlock a copy (like if the DVD was present).

Also, this game takes a huuuge amount of disk space

Yeap, the engine is THE big deal in any game. I can see why so many developers prefer to do a engine in house, versus buy a license from companies like Epic or Crytech.

The advantage is that you can direct the engine to suit your needs and avoid the bloat for other things you don't need. And the source code is much more easy to understand because you wrote it.

The downside of doing your own engine is that is yours responsibility now to develop it to meet modern standards as the time passes by, and that takes a lot of manpower to do. The whole multi CPU and newer versions of DirectX and OpenGL support was not a easy task to implement, so many softhouses developing simulators few behind the times, without money to develop their engines to adopt new technologies. They have to tell lies to their customers about the motives of not adopting new features, like Matt Wagner from DCS, that one time said that they will not make their engine take advantage from multiple CPUs because it did not bring performance advantages...

I have been following the flight simulator scene for almost 20 years now. It aways being a niche market, with a lot of highs and lows, great adventures and big disappointments too. Unfortunately is also a costly hobby, and is frustrating how some developers ignore the desires of their customer base, following a path the leads to a slow spiral that finally stagnates some awesome projects out there.

[AdamOne]

X-Plane has been available (and supported under Linux) for a long time.... Since the 90s IIRC for the original X-Plane. I talk with one of their developers often about Linux matters.

I'I just wanted to illustrate how I've never heard of it since leaving Microsoft OS, since two years now? I actually had heard the title but never since switching. Unfortunate.

[starshipeleven]

Do you have any research paper to support that claim?

For a game engine the only thing that matters is total polycount of the rendered scene and effects (shadows, and stuff).

How "big" or "distant" or whatever is irrelevant, they are different starting numbers plugged in the same calculations.

So yeah, the bling bling "short distance" engines might very well be better than the engine here even if they are only tasked to make similar scenes due to obvious reasons.

[starshipeleven]

Also, this game takes a huuuge amount of disk space

Are they using procedural generation heavily already?

[M@yeulC]

Are they using procedural generation heavily already?

AFAIR (and this might have changed since), they are using some satellite imagery of the whole planet. X-plane 9 was using approximately 120GB of disk space on my computer, with only the default scenery for the whole world. It came with 6 dual layer DVDs for installation. On top of that, you can install some detailed scenery (last time I checked, it was around 10 GB for Great Britain) and airports.

Procedural generation was used for buildings, roads, bridges, etc... They have improved it quite a bit in the recent releases, but I don't think they apply it directly to the terrain. Steam lists 80GB free as both minimal and recommended disk space (which isn't extremely impressive anymore by today's standards), but you can enable/disable individual areas, as they are considered "DLC". There was also a tile system in the DVD installer, IIRC, where you could select the tiles you wanted.

As a side note, I would be curious to know if they respect the placement of cities, roads, railroads, electrics lines, bridges... in recent versions, since I am mostly interested in VFR.

[Amarildo]

Yes, they could outsource the engine. But it also has costs.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but where are you getting this from? At this point, I'd expect you either:

1) Have an internal source from Laminar that says it's viable;
2) Is making assumptions

Factor in switching costs, reliance on an engine provider, and the loss of your personal visual "touch", I don't think the switch to another engine is so obvious anymore.
Debatable, maybe, but not obvious.

Do you have any numbers of the costs, "Man-Hours", and so on?

I look forward to this next release. And a word of caution: avoid buying it on Steam. I have read countless reports of things that don't work on Steam.
For example, some features require the executable to be launched two times, which Steam doesn't allow on DRM-enabled products. And X-plane is full of DRM (even though I seem to recall that it worked with just an iso I created myself); they even sell (or at least used to sell) usb sticks that you can use to unlock a copy (like if the DVD was present).

I've had X-Plane 10 on Steam for more than 2 years without issue, and I've tested almost every commercial aircraft available for Linux. No problems at all.
Right now I only fly the FlightFactor 757 and the DreamFoil AS350 B3+. Sure, it requires activation, but that's totally fine, as fine as on Windows. In fact, I can do "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=4M" on my drive, copy the saved MBR from the previous install (from where I activated the aircrat), copy the activated aircraft folder, and use it again without having to activate. X-Plane's DRM is, to me, one of the best out there.
And I also never heard of this "having to open things twice". Do you have any reference links so I can take a look at it?

Also, this game takes a huuuge amount of disk space

Correct, but it's not a game ;-) It's a simulator.

[Amarildo]

Well, if you cannot understand that very basic fact about 3D computer graphics, there is not point continuing wasting my time in this conversation. Have a nice day :-)

I do understand more than just the basic fact about 3D graphics. I work with 3D modeling.
What I asked for is not for an explanation of how they work, but about the evidence that "the modern AAA game has the same amount of triangles as your flight sim". And it's not that I don't believe in your claim, it's that (with all due respec) I believe your making these claims up.

[Amarildo]

For a game engine the only thing that matters is total polycount of the rendered scene and effects (shadows, and stuff).

How "big" or "distant" or whatever is irrelevant, they are different starting numbers plugged in the same calculations.

So yeah, the bling bling "short distance" engines might very well be better than the engine here even if they are only tasked to make similar scenes due to obvious reasons.

I would love to see that happening.

[Amarildo]

AFAIR (and this might have changed since), they are using some satellite imagery of the whole planet. X-plane 9 was using approximately 120GB of disk space on my computer, with only the default scenery for the whole world. It came with 6 dual layer DVDs for installation. On top of that, you can install some detailed scenery (last time I checked, it was around 10 GB for Great Britain) and airports.

Procedural generation was used for buildings, roads, bridges, etc... They have improved it quite a bit in the recent releases, but I don't think they apply it directly to the terrain. Steam lists 80GB free as both minimal and recommended disk space (which isn't extremely impressive anymore by today's standards), but you can enable/disable individual areas, as they are considered "DLC". There was also a tile system in the DVD installer, IIRC, where you could select the tiles you wanted.

As a side note, I would be curious to know if they respect the placement of cities, roads, railroads, electrics lines, bridges... in recent versions, since I am mostly interested in VFR.

XP 10 uses ~61 GB's worth of default scenery.

To me, their roads are mostly terrible. I can't recognize any city I visit, no matter where it is. And my own city? It's not even there hehehehehe. However, most highways, train lines, and so on, are very accurate.