Comments on: X-Plane 12 Development Update – March 4th, 2022

By: Rob de Lange

Rob de Lange — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 15:12:20 +0000

Are there big changes made to the performance and overall utilization of system resources? For example we run simulators using an AMD 16 core 5950x combined with a RTX3080 and get about 45fps on 3 screens(1080)
all the while Xplane CPU utilization is 10% and GPU utilization is 40%.
Xplane just does not use the available hardware and it would be mega appreciated when this is utilized better on a 3+ screen setup.

Thanks and kind regards,

By: Petr Cenek

Petr Cenek — Sun, 13 Mar 2022 06:40:33 +0000

Dear Ben, have you seen this fantastic plugin : XTextureExtractor created by Wayne1234 (https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/files/file/42612-xtextureextractor/)? This plug-in basically extracts the textures for the HSI, ND, EICAS, and CDU displays, and renders them in separate windows that you can place anywhere within X-Plane, on external unused monitors, and on separate computers or tablets via a network protocol. This tool is really great for cockpit builders. The only problem is it works only in cockpit view and cockpit builders are usually using external forward views (ctrl+W). My question is : would it be possible to allow X-plane drawing those displays textures even in external view? I know this behavior is intentional (to increase performance in external view) but maybe you may introduce some special dataref to control this. Thank you for all your and the team work. XPL11 is awesome and looking very much forward to upcoming XPL12 release!

By: Dieter

Dieter — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 22:10:34 +0000

In reply to Ben Supnik. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and the detailed answer.

By: Bob

Bob — Sat, 12 Mar 2022 14:05:50 +0000

What about city night lighting ? Will it still be tied to those ugly boxes of loaded lights with small visibility which makes cities look extremely underwhelming at night (and pretty much invisible from high altitudes) or will this be improved so we can see a proper sea of lights at nights from any altitude?

By: John

John — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 18:44:34 +0000

When Austin gets his Mac Studio 20/64 128GB (you know he has to have ordered that) can he make a video demoing x-plane 12 performance on the ultra?

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 16:01:43 +0000

In reply to Dieter.

I’m not sure it’s going to make any difference that anyone can see? X-Plane’s assumption is that it _has_ to be able to run asynchronously and hide transfer latency (e.g. not have FPS be limited by transfer latency).

So cutting transfer latency isn’t going to e.g. improve FPS. I’m also not sure how great it would be to have the CPU write _directly_ into VRAM via the BAR – CPU is a resource we care about too, so the current design (write to system memory that is device visible, let the DMA engine schlep the data, run the GPU out of VRAM) has the advantage that (in return for that long latency) neither the CPU nor the GPU are running out of non-local memory.

In theory we could put streaming constant data in host-visible VRAM – I don’t think it’ll be a huge win though because modern GPUs have memory hierarchies and caches just like the CPU, and it would be shocking if .e.g the transform stack wasn’t in cache on the GPU.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 15:54:43 +0000

In reply to Marco.

Every aircraft in the v12 fleet will have FMOD sound, yes.

The C-130, KC-10, B-52, SR-71 and the 747s are _not_ in the default fleet in 12.

The MD-82 and Cirrus are getting FMOD sounds, as well as the other V11 aircraft still in the fleet that didn’t have FMOD in 11.

By: Paul MCDough

Paul MCDough — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 09:00:30 +0000

Hope there will also be a demo for XP 12
in order to check the performance!

By: Pierre GEAGEA

Pierre GEAGEA — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 05:42:40 +0000

Do we have a firm date for XP-12 release to the general public?

Seriously, I can’t wait too long. I’m so excited to see how close to realism, the graphics, etc…

Best regards,

Pierre GEAGEA

By: Teryn DalBello

Teryn DalBello — Fri, 11 Mar 2022 02:40:03 +0000

In reply to Pierre. This will not be a boat simulator