Comments on: X-Plane Is An All You Can Eat Buffet

By: simon

simon — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:45:12 +0000

Ben, for a change, no quibbles…you guys are doing an amazing job! 60gigs…well, it is a rather big world. Opensceneryx should be a compulsory install too, that adds so much, as seen in my last shanghai vid in the org forum. My Core i7 920 runs xp verrrry sweetly, thankyou. Simon W

By: alloycowboy

alloycowboy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:55:39 +0000

Thanks for answering my question. But know I have another one. I will admit my knowledge of how x-plane scenery works is limited but I did have an idea.In fact you might be using it already. If X-plane renders scenery using triangles or polygons would it be possible to assign each triangle a numeric code that would tell the triangle its slope,elevation above sea level, its climatoliogical zone, the amount of moisture it recieves….ect,ect,ect. Then you could have a scenery JPG file for each numeric code.

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:29:32 +0000

X-Plane dynamically loads and unloads the scenery according to the airplane's flight path. That is, there's a lot more 3-d detail near you than far away. To see this, pause the sim, go to free view, and go FAR away – note the lack of airports and roads.

We do not adjust for airplane performance – rather we constantly try to maintain a buffer zone. If you get a really fast plane, a lot of scenery, and not a lot of cores, the 3-d can "fall behind".

By: alloycowboy

alloycowboy — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:22:32 +0000

Benjamin,

Does X-plane adjust the scenery for the performance of the aicraft, or it's flight path?

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:59:20 +0000

No because that requires a scenery reload. And changing the fog + LOD at the same time causes oscillations. We tried it once.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 16:57:02 +0000

The fog in X-plane is pretty aggressive. It it possible to have the auto-gen automatically reduce itself to a lower setting in heavy scenery areas such as NYC? And if it needs further reduction you can add fog at that point.

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:43:29 +0000

Right – we don't provide the option because we don't want your system to crawl. It's a support issue – once the sim gets slow, the flight model starts doing huge piles of horrible things that users refer to as bugs and splatter at tech support.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 15:16:49 +0000

The irony is you give us the choice to jack up all of the sliders to a ridiculous level but you don't give us the choice to natively remove the fog (I have to download a plugin … that's no fun). If I want my system to crawl to a halt for benchmark purposes, at least remove the auto-fog.

By: Dozer

Dozer — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 05:02:33 +0000

Haha, that's very profound!