Is raytracing the future for flightsim

  • I have been looking at the launch video for Nvidia's new professional GPU cards. The big thing is raytracing and the expectation is that the consumer GPUs will take on these features soon as well. The next gen may even be called RTX instead of GTX. RTX 2080 is being talked of for next week's launch.

    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    The way raytracing handles shadows is very impressive. We know good shadows are difficult and even with all the hard work of IPACS it is still an aspect of FS2 which currently leaves a lot to be desired. Flying in the Netherlands shows this more than ever when you look at the flickering shadows of all those wind turbines and buildings, especially with a low angle of sun. Does IPACS see raytracing as being the final solution to this? Is it near future or far future for us?

  • I believe the new cards are slated to be introduced next week. Providing that the prices are not completely outrageous, I'll be interested in getting one and seeing how aerofly responds!

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • The rumors are firming up and they will be called 2080 and 2080Ti (what will be available starting Monday). There is box art and photos of cards at videocardz.com.

    They will be beasts. The Ti has 800 more CUDA cores than the 1080Ti, 11 GB GDDR6 VRAM, and all the 2080s and 2080Tis have VirtualLink USB-C alt-mode connectors on them (so far) for next gen high res VR. That connector can push four 4k streams at 120 Hz. Nvidia also did away with SLI connectors and now has backwards NVLink connectors. The bridges are expensive, though, for the Pascal line of NVLink bridges - $599 each. We don’t know what the Turing bridges will cost but since they did away with SLI, it’s hopefully significantly less than that for consumer cards, and also hopefully, they allow one card per eye and just work. Having to have the app do the support is what basically killed VR-SLI.

    There’s been lots of leaks and this generation looks short-lived but that’s speculation. There’s supposedly a die shrink coming that will make even these seem slow. The short generation is why the computer rags think the strategy is to skip Founders Edition cards and just let the AIB manufacturers have at it as well as releasing both the 2080 and 2080Ti right out of the gate. 2070s might wait another month though. There just hasn’t been anything leaked about those yet and all the buzz is on the 2080s for now.

    Prices are rumored to be in the $800 range for the 2080 and around $1000 for the 2080Ti. There have been clues that there may even be a Titan direct from Nvidia.

    Orders are supposed to open Monday but don’t know when shipping will commence. Possibly Monday or maybe they are preorders. Also no real benchmarks. The only real benchmark was Jensen Huang showing about a 6x speedup using the ray tracing cores instead of CUDA on the 10 series as shown in the video above at the 1:00:00 mark. Other than that, speed improvements are anywhere from 20% faster to 6 or 8x faster depending on what you are doing.

    They look like very nice cards that not only support the next gen VR - and start the race to formally bring them to market since they can now be driven and there is a sufficiently fast interface to do it - but allow ditching some of the crutches we've had to use in flight sims. For sims that are CPU limited, it allows more time for the CPU and also takes some of the pressure off.

    I know what I'm doing Monday afternoon...

    Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, MFG Crosswind pedals, 2 dof Motion, Valve Index

    Edited 2 times, last by Zed (August 19, 2018 at 12:01 AM).

  • IMHO relying on real time raytracing on a flight simulator is a huge gamble as this technology is not yet adopted by anybody and only pushed by Nvidia to push AMD and game devs. Knowing the performance penalty of the non-raytracing cards, AFS2 would risk one of it's key selling point, namely the decent frame rate.

    Since AFS2 apparently aims for the casual VR flyers and not hardcore simmers (I'll revise my stance when all stock aircraft is system/feature complete, most of you know what I'm referring to), realtime raytracing would be a high-risk low-reward goal (VR needing twice the juice). Remember, this is a feature Vulkan can't compensate or raster cards. Flight simulators like these can't provide a visual fidelity,in general, that would benefit enough from RTRT (to counter the massive performance drop on cards you can still buy new for a fortune), which could not be done rasterized. Shading is a problem that can be and has been solved in most of video games and simulations, so finding a hardware solution to a software problem (flickering shadows) is IMO not the way to go. Not mentioning that even if one thinks that getting a Turing card is enough, the PC itself might have to be upgraded as well to feed it.

    Going over to RTRT would cause a massive decline in user count.

    Best Regards

    Balazs

    Ryzen 2700X, HyperX 32GB, 2060 Super 8GB, win10/ubuntu19

    Saitek X52 HOTAS, Logitech G920 pedals

    freetrack/opentrack
    X-Plane 11, DCS modules: A-10C, Ka-50, FC3, Mirage 2000C, F/A-18C, Persian Gulf

  • IMHO relying on real time raytracing on a flight simulator is a huge gamble as this technology is not yet adopted by anybody and only pushed by Nvidia to push AMD and game devs....

    Going over to RTRT would cause a massive decline in user count.

    Have to agree on the first point at least to a first approximation. We all know how well VR-SLI has done and how widely adopted it is. IPACS is small and has their hands full for now anyway. Bigger fish need frying for now at least.

    But presumably it could be an option instead of a requirement just as setting image quality is now. Shouldn’t have to exclude those without RTX-capable cards.

    Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, MFG Crosswind pedals, 2 dof Motion, Valve Index

  • Okay, Jensen says that the new 2080 series Geforce cards have six times the performance of the 1080 series. Any super techies here able to break that down? Looking at any individual aspect of the spec you wouldn't come up with six times.

    I guess it will run the Pimax 8k well enough though?

  • That 6x performance applies to real-time raytracing performance. Based on other stats like memory size, speed and execution unit count, it can be still a remarkable improvement, but only if the host PC is able to feed the GPU to 100% (and if someone was actually planning an upgrade). The faster GDDR6 of the new cards allows shorter frame times assuming the same host system (CPU, memory etc.), also the higher CUDA core counts will yield less rendering overhead. Shorter overall frame rendering time will translate to higher frame rate with higher CPU load (that is, if the CPU couldn't have fed the 10-series card to 100% GPU load already), but for rasterized graphics, nowhere near 6x times.

    Remember, all we know about these cards are only specs NV states. We have yet to see real-world performance in raster mode. Also keep in mind that when dealing with GPU manufacturers, some of the things they say turns out to be a lie. Sitting on raytracing hardware with no actual real-world applications is not the best investment IMHO.

    Best Regards

    Balazs

    Ryzen 2700X, HyperX 32GB, 2060 Super 8GB, win10/ubuntu19

    Saitek X52 HOTAS, Logitech G920 pedals

    freetrack/opentrack
    X-Plane 11, DCS modules: A-10C, Ka-50, FC3, Mirage 2000C, F/A-18C, Persian Gulf

  • I agree with Kisvakond. It’s likely an unfair comparison. It’s like saying a front end loader can lift more cars than I can. That’s true, but I don’t go around trying to pick up cars.

    I don’t see any way that the 2080 line is that much faster than the 1080s if you just look at the structures they have in common. There could be more advantage, though, if structures like the ray trace engines and tensor cores can also be used for current tasks. But if they can’t, any real advantages will need to wait until the new features take over some of the existing tasks due to devs supporting them.

    At least for now and until the new features require the 2080s, it’s looking more like at least a 25% performance boost according to pundits. That may or may not be enough to justify the prices but it’s all we have until we get real benchmarks using fair comparisons with the 1080 series.

    I have a 2080Ti on preorder from Amazon but can cancel at any time. I'll be watching closely for benchmarks and either keep it if it benches well, or cancel it if it doesn’t. The only other reason I’d get one otherwise is for new headsets that need the VirtualLink connector.

    Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, MFG Crosswind pedals, 2 dof Motion, Valve Index

  • After finally watching the presentation I'm pretty convinced that we're going to see some amazing looking games in the future. Its not cheap though and will probably take quite some time before the average gaming computer is equipped with these powerful graphics cards.

    What I would like to see is how light scattering in clouds could be simulated and how scenes would look in foggy conditions, with volumetric lighting, sun rays, etc. That's probably even more expensive than surface shading, reflection, refraction and sub surface scattering.

    There are even more renderings in this video:

    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

  • I'm still dithering over pushing the "buy" button.

    On the other hand, I'm really curious about how Aerofly will respond to the extra power.

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5

  • I myself see no use for one of the new cards because I run AFS2 at 1920x1080 with all sliders maxed out and fps refuses to drop below 120 or so. ;) The extra's these cards offer, like the raytracing, won't be used in AFS2 at all so... I am saving my money. Who needs an minimum fps of 150, costing a thousand bucks, when you've got 120 already. 8)

  • I'm still dithering over pushing the "buy" button.

    On the other hand, I'm really curious about how Aerofly will respond to the extra power.

    All the Ti's seem to be gone for now. Benchmarks are said to be coming available September 12th though.

    There have been some new reveals that performance may be even greater in the 20 series thanks to larger and faster caches as pixel pipelines that do more per clock so just multiplying cores times clock isn’t the whole picture.

    Thrustmaster HOTAS Warthog, MFG Crosswind pedals, 2 dof Motion, Valve Index

  • Those of you who may have head of Nick N. over at sim forums. He generally say you should wait for the second generation or refresh of tech , that means skipping this and waiting hopefully not too long for "the refresh" just like in the past when newly released cards are much better next time, usually with better tech and cooling implemented. Nvidia may have changed this type of releases though..

    I generally think they made a big mistanke with NOT upping the VRAM amount to at least 10-11 GB for a non 2080Ti instead of only a 2080 with 8 GB of VRAM, the only change seems to be going to GDDR-6 ?

    BUT again this is Nvidia, they controll Everything right now(even prices) without real competion from ATI/AMD...:/

    BTW I wondering if the increase in performance compared to 1080/1080Ti is due to the New Anti-aliasing(DLSS ?) they are talking about? But right now no games/Flightsims support DLSS Anti-aliasing :rolleyes: only "NEW" games.. sadly:(

    I REALLY hope for a big performance jump for VR with this gen cards, because the more bigger 4K screens will be avaliable to use in Flightsims.. :)

    (Pretty please don't start a Nvidia vs ATI/Fan-war.... =O ) It does not come anything good out of those ever...

    Jet-Pack, I think this is allready possible with something like Truesky ?

    It support all of those features, FSW failed with their implementation of Truesky, because of the old inefficient Graphics-engine of FSX, but Aerofly has the most efficient engine around... ;);)8)

    The IPACS weather can only be better.. ;)

    CPU: Intel i7-975 Extreme Edition @3.33Ghz (unclocked) | RAM: 14GB DDR3 | MAINBOARD: Ausus P6T Deluxe V2 | GRAPHICS CARD: Nvida Titan GTX 6GB

    OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit OEM, Servicepack-1 |  STORAGE: WD Black 750 GB 7200rpm HDD, V-Raptor 300 GB 10.000rpm HDD

    USB HID-DEVICES: CH Yoke, CH pedals, Saitek radio-panel, Saitek Switch panel | MONITOR LCD: 32" inch Philips 2560x1440p

    SOFTWARE: Aerofly FS2: Florida DLC, New York DLC, ORBX DLC | FSX-Accecelration | LM Prepar3D V2 & V3

    Edited once, last by Rune-ENHD (August 30, 2018 at 10:12 PM).

  • Jet-Pack, I think this is allready possible with something like Truesky ?

    My guess is that IPACS will eventually create their own weather rendering engine which will allow us to get the best performance whilst being compatible across all of our supported platforms. Of course we are also looking into the option of using some existing external tech. But from experience this is usually not as flexible in the long term. For example: our current clouds are not flexible enough to be placed exactly where our simulated thermals would reach the cloud base. And we can't optimize them further to increase the rendering distance of clouds. These are the sort of limitations that come from using external libraries. If we create everything on our own it may take a lot more time but then it runs completely optimized and then if five years later we need to adjust something (e.g. open gl no longer supported) we can easily tweek our own code.

    But let's not drift too far of topic here, we already had a very long thread about weather and clouds in the past and there you will find the answers to most questions that you are thinking of right now... :)

  • 😀 BTW thanks for the GREAT Florida scenery! Would it be possible to launch a array of addon-airports for your coverage-areas thinking California and New York

    If you could maintain a Telluride COL or Marathon FL type of quality for a modest fee of 10 Euro pr airport/scenery, I would happily buy them,

    Some will perhaps be covered by ORBX, But there are some quite Nice airports made also by IPACS, Telluride COL was one of the better areas with a real sloping runway, great Job!! ^^^^

    Also consider a modest fee for higher quality updated ground scenery regions for like California , It shows a bit it's resolution now.

    Keep up the good work!! ^^

    --------------------

    Sorry for OT..

    CPU: Intel i7-975 Extreme Edition @3.33Ghz (unclocked) | RAM: 14GB DDR3 | MAINBOARD: Ausus P6T Deluxe V2 | GRAPHICS CARD: Nvida Titan GTX 6GB

    OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit OEM, Servicepack-1 |  STORAGE: WD Black 750 GB 7200rpm HDD, V-Raptor 300 GB 10.000rpm HDD

    USB HID-DEVICES: CH Yoke, CH pedals, Saitek radio-panel, Saitek Switch panel | MONITOR LCD: 32" inch Philips 2560x1440p

    SOFTWARE: Aerofly FS2: Florida DLC, New York DLC, ORBX DLC | FSX-Accecelration | LM Prepar3D V2 & V3

  • We are glad that you like our South Florida scenery. It was a lot of work and paid close attention to detail of the area.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • I think I have everything High-res you have released? Colorado & Switzerland is quite High-res ? Utah perhaps also?

    I Remember reading earlier that you might consider higher res groud quality on the covered areas, at a later oportunity, it was because of downloads size/ HDD requirements requirements you had used this size ?

    Thanks in advance

    CPU: Intel i7-975 Extreme Edition @3.33Ghz (unclocked) | RAM: 14GB DDR3 | MAINBOARD: Ausus P6T Deluxe V2 | GRAPHICS CARD: Nvida Titan GTX 6GB

    OS: Windows 7 Pro 64 bit OEM, Servicepack-1 |  STORAGE: WD Black 750 GB 7200rpm HDD, V-Raptor 300 GB 10.000rpm HDD

    USB HID-DEVICES: CH Yoke, CH pedals, Saitek radio-panel, Saitek Switch panel | MONITOR LCD: 32" inch Philips 2560x1440p

    SOFTWARE: Aerofly FS2: Florida DLC, New York DLC, ORBX DLC | FSX-Accecelration | LM Prepar3D V2 & V3

  • I think I have everything High-res you have released? Colorado & Switzerland is quite High-res ? Utah perhaps also?

    I Remember reading earlier that you might consider higher res groud quality on the covered areas, at a later oportunity, it was because of downloads size/ HDD requirements requirements you had used this size ?

    Thanks in advance

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/486110/Aer…n_USA_Free_DLC/

    Devons rig

    Intel Core i5-13600K - Core i5 13th Gen 14-Core (6P+8E) @ 5.5Ghz / G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB RAM DDR5 6000 / GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4070Ti GAMING OC 12G / Sound Blaster Z / Oculus Quest 2 VR Headset / Klipsch® Promedia 2.1 Computer Speakers / ASUS ROG SWIFT PG279Q ‑ 27" IPS LED Monitor ‑ QHD / 6x Samsung SSD/NVME's various sizes / Windows 11 Pro 64-bit / GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX LGA 1700 ATX Motherboard DDR5