1. Deer & Birds On/Off – I get home from work and have a limited amount of time to sim before tending to other responsibilities. Maybe I’m trying to keep up with some online pilot buddies. I decide to execute the full cold and dark startup in my favorite addon airliner, on the PilotEdge (or other ATC) network. I spend 45 minutes enjoying firing this bird up and getting my clearance. I finally advance the throttles after being cleared for takeoff, and just as I rotate I smash through a herd of snickering deer / vacuum a flock of seagulls through my CFM56-3s – FLIGHT OVER. When there’s no time left for a do over, or you just wanted to keep up with your friends in the group flight, an easy checkbox to zap nature’s airspace violators sure would have been convenient.

2. Flatten Airports (Off by default, On option) – Needed for two reasons: A) I have some scenery mesh and this runway that is following its crazy contours has a 2 foot vertical wall 2800 feet down the runway. I don’t see it on approach until I’m already on the ground applying brake pressure. By the time I do, no speed left to lift back off again, so I hope for the best as I collide with it. B) “UAL 576, 25R via C, C5, B, follow the Southwest 737.” I’m trying to spot my other buddy in the Southwest, who maybe is in XP 10.51, or P3D/FSX. I get lucky this time and see his V-stab “shark finning” through Bravo’s asphalt, but even that’s short lived as they disappear beneath the surface of my taxiway that rises up to follow contours. Going in to the advanced menu to flatten my airports sure would be nice right now instead of hoping the airport author did it in WED. (average sim pilot… “What’s WED?” or “I have to edit a text file?”)

3. Road Density (OFF, 1, 2, 3, 4) – The ability to independently shut off roads allowed me maintain 30-55 frames per second on a mid 2011 iMac all the way up through X-Plane 10.45 (never tried .51 on it, was on a new machine by then). Those of us who were able to afford a new hardware upgrade for v11 might thirst for this ability down the road, and those that blew their hard earned cash a year ago will benefit from this option now. The good news is that today’s photo scenery allows us to see those roads during the day anyway, and even though they’ll have no cars it won’t matter much once you’re above 5000 feet!

You might have had that special case at some point, but I noticed in 10.x the default cloud shadows were a lot lighter than previous versions, hinting to me that maybe the special case “de-shadowing” wasn’t quite working. So making the shadows almost invisible fixed them showing up on the plane at higher altitudes.

I’ll continue to mess around with them though and keep track of my settings.

+ 1

But if I DID land on an airport then the logical “resume” location would be this airport. C-Plane even remembers this, puts it in the logbook.
Starting where I STARTED last time is not “resuming” at all.

I definitely have a “todo” to do a lot of tuning on shadows. If you find settings you like, please let me know. In terms of the cloud shadows, I’m not sure what’s going on there…I thought we had a stupid special case to de-shadow the airplane at high altitude.

My apologies – I cannot see the V-depression in XP11, only in XP10. Not expert enough to be able to explain that.

I like OpenGL 🙂

I like what you’ve done with most options hidden. I think it’s easier than reading multiple guides on how your hardware works, and having 1 million different options. I also like that you let us continue to tweak via other means if us ‘hardcore’ users that read this stuff really want to.

Having said that, I’ve been playing around with some art controls regarding shadows. Are there any plans to change the way cloud shadows are implemented? Currently, while under a cloud layer, shadows appear on the ground and in the cockpit like the sun is out. But if using the art controls I darken the cloud shadows, they look GREAT on the ground, but then they continue to show up in the cockpit and on the plane even while flying above the clouds.

P.S. I hate to say it but I’m also keeping the shadows around longer when the sun goes down.. and I love it! It makes the cockpit really come to life at dusk hours. 8k shadow map helps with that too. (love my GTX 1080) =)