X Plane 12 Wish List.
X Plane 11.50 looks to be the last update likely for this current generation. X Plane 12 is definitely in the works with a recent comment made by Austin Meyer the creator of X Plane.
X Plane 12 has a lot to improve on from Version 11 to catch up to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. The newest games engine and a lot of ground breaking improvements in visuals although I still don’t feel the flight model is anywhere as good as X Plane.
The X Plane 12 Wish List.
The dream list for X Plane 12 is certainly long but now we have Microsoft Flight Simulator to compare to and know what’s been achieved its unacceptable for X Plane 12 not to deliver on its followers needs. Technology as well as already included updates to the whole sim like the Vulcan API addition no doubt is what was holding back many of the graphical desires of the programmers and simmers alike.
3D Clouds – Weather – Seasons.
This is certainly one of the most desirable improvements for X Plane 12 to be full realistic having winter as well as the constant summer we currently endure. The better adaption of weather as a live real-world representation need to be more fluid and not just one minute be clear then all of a sudden cloud filling the screen and lightening start flashing.
The clouds need to be volumetric and not the sheets od mist we currently see. Again, dare I say it MSFS has made it a reality so we should expect this to be achieved as part of the new release.
Lightening and Atmosphere.
The addition of better lighting effects and even god rays through the clouds are something that should be included. The ability to have different types and layers of clouds as well as mist that has different depths is also required for the morning fogs.
The ability of moon and sunlight to reflect off the top of clouds while the bottom can remain dark and thick with rain should be achievable and yes MSFS has done it. This is an apparent theme I appreciate. The ability of clouds to be cast on the ground is another effect which should be available with a better lighting engine.
Scenery and Textures.
This is an area where PBR textures have bought the aircraft textures forward and in this area, there is a pretty fair playing field between the simulators out there. Id say in the default and freeware aircraft I have seen its pretty good across the board.
The ground scenery area is where X Plane and even MSFS don’t quite make the grade at this point. MSFS has with the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) been able to place the generally correct type and height of buildings except for a few highlighted bugs but all scenery can have these, and they are corrected on being identified.
Currently the ground buildings in MSFS and X Plane 11 still need some work to make them realistic. How practical updating textures on buildings depends how much the GPU needs to do is always going a question of computer power for this to be implemented, I believe.
TREES & GRASS.
An area which has lacked in X Plane is the very poor tree representations being two flat plains at 90 degrees to each other. These have been a disappointing part of the default scenery. There are certainly better versions available if your downloading libraries and building your own scenery with WED (World Editor). With this program you can update your default scenery and create new scenery for free but I’m more concerned with the out of the box scenery in this context.
Grass is another improvement that you don’t get in default scenery in X Plane 11. Again, you can use some nice libraries and manually update it yourself. What we want to see is optimized trees, grass and flowers making our taxi out to the runway feel realistic with wind effecting the grass and trees. Is that to unrealistic?
WATER AND SEE TEXTURES.
Water and sea textures are important and to date MSFS has shown the way forward with some pretty good waves and water clarity as well. X Plane 11’s water although it has improved does not have wave caps or grow even if you program a huge wind. You can program 10 ft waves and land in a sea plane to find the sea ripple. Not quite the desired effect so let’s home they are able to get some improvement in this department.
RTX and Technological Improvements.
RTX Ray Tracing Technology would be an amazing addition now that Vulcan is ray tracing capable. This would give us a lot more in the ambiance in scenes. It has to be implemented by the game creator directly so lets home it gets a thought by Laminar Research.
DLSS Deep learning super sampling is a very new technology available with Nvidia RTX graphics cards which enables much better quality picture by up scaling to 4k then reducing the image back to your native resolution. The AI withing your RTX graphics card will learn and adapt the performance and quality for the best balance of clarity and performance.
Conclusion.
No matter what we get I’m sure we will be happy with the technological advances in X Plane 12. I certainly expect a lot and a lot has been hinted with the move from Open GL to Vulcan being the first step towards what we would call a modern flight simulator with realistic and awesome graphics as well as playability.
Separate of the sim we have some additional included tools like WED and Plane maker. Wed is so easy to use and certainly gives some amazing results.
I guess my other wish was that plane maker which I’m sure your aware is included could be simplified. Having watched Austin create a plane with it and it took so long as well as being very complicated when it seems there really isn’t the need for it to be so. This would be amazing if it could be made modern with a better UI.
Author.
Brendon McAliece is a multi lingual-expat who brings over three decades of flight simulator/PC building experience as well as over two decades of real world jet fighter experience as a weapons/egress technician. He holds a sport pilot certificate giving him real world flying experience. Hi travels have taken him from Europe to the Middle East, Asia and his home of Australia. He has a passion for travel, languages, Flight simulation as well as Guitaring and Coffee. You can read more in his blogs below.
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DreamingGuitar.com – DreamingCoffee.com – LetsFlyVFR.com
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