Posts by whitav8

Yes it could be Z fighting but I wouldn't think from 1000 feet altitude or less above airport buildings and static airplanes on the ground that we would see that. I know that in other flight Sims, shadows of trees, buildings, and aircraft are fairly steady. All I know is that it is quite annoying and removes immersion particularly in VR

As I said in the original post, one example of shimmering shadows is simply to look down at the shadows of buildings and static aircraft at any airport but my example was Reno. You can see them best if you are in the air doing tight circles in an f18. Obviously the shadow mid day should be fixed just somewhat stretched shape of the aircraft and not fluctuating in degree of opacity. I expect the edges to be wavering a bit but not dramatically. If you are seeing something different and more constant then some of us are having problems. I have tried several different drivers and I have a Nvidia 970. I noticed this in normal monitor mode and with the VR mode but I think it is worse than it was a month and a half ago.

Since I fly DCS World, War Thunder, P3D, as well as FS2, I'm not sure about this but it seems that the building and static aircraft shadows are shimmering quite a bit in FS2 and not semi-opaque dark enough - seems worse than it was a month ago?? What do you think? I am testing by flying low (1000 feet RALT) over Reno, midday sun, looking down at objects at the airport in the F-18. I have tried both ULTRA and Medium settings. I have a Nvidia 970 running 375.86 or 368.69 drivers.

The filename is mission_progress.tmp - but wouldn't it be nice to use left/right arrows on the UI to select which lesson we want

Jet-Pack (IPACS),
Sounds good - how do we do that? Where do we click or what keyboard keys. I do see in light gray a lock which underneath says "Play preceeding missions" or something like that - how do we unlock that?

Thanks

Dave

Well, I can get AP1 and ATHR on when off the ground but ATHR isn't available for TOGA (engines spool up at start of takeoff)

One simple thing that is helping me feel less "alone and lifeless" is to have some ATC chatter going on in the background audio. Try this website and choose a busy airport even though it isn't near:

http://www.liveatc.net/flisten.php?mount=ksna2&icao=ksna

I would like to have a few AI aircraft flying or taxiing around even though a full ATC isn't developed yet - of course, I might run into them?? It's clear from the number of static aircraft at bigger airports (KSFO) that the graphics isn't loaded down by the aircraft models.
Personally, I like the oceans/lakes to have some reflection sheen as well but I can do without car traffic. I would like some night lights and a landing light. Of course, there are many things we all want but I can easily say that the VR experience with FS2 is already wonderful because of the high performance and very clear photorealism.

Dave

IPACS Support,
Thanks for the quick response. That alone speaks well of your team!

I'm happy with the image quality as is - with Render Scale being set to 1.4 or so (which adds about 3.5 milliseconds in frame time on my PC (4.2 Ghz i7 with Nvidia 970) - it looks great in VR. I imagine others would like to try different AA and Aniso settings in the Nvidia Control Panel or Inspector - I haven't tried them - maybe it works already. As long as I can have FPS continue to stay at Rift Vsync - I'm good.

Dave

IPACS Support,
It seems that I already have reasonable Anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering when flying Aerofly FS2 - especially in VR - but I wondered if the application is setting those graphic settings on its own or are we supposed to set them with either Nvidia Control Panel or Nvidia Inspector. The game UI doesn't offer us any choices.

Thanks for the best sim graphics

Dave

IPACS Support,
Thanks for the feedback on the Nvidia SMP mode - too bad it is difficult to use that approach - but I am very glad you thought about it. Keep up the great work and thanks for the additional 10% headroom that is coming. I hope you can add much of the additional functionality that folks want (ATC, AI, ...) by using other cores so that the graphics rendering loop can stay as blazing fast as it is now. Having worked with 60Hz FAA certified simulators for many years at Boeing, I was finding it hard to live with FSX and P3D at 30->40 HZ. Now with 75->90Hz in VR+FS2, the movement is so fluid and immersive because of it. BTW, are we supposed to set MSAA and Aniso ourselves or do you do that?

Thanks again

Dave

HiFlyer,
Thanks for the pointer to the earlier discussion - hope the Devs can trial implement it easily!

BTW, is there any performance difference between Oculus VR or Steam VR execution options? I still have a DK2 and except for the obvious screen door, it works well, runs cool, and provides a little more frame rate headroom (75Hz vs 90 Hz). I really don't want any ASW/ATW to kick in, but I wonder if any of that is actually happening in either Oculus VR or Steam VR for my DK2.

Thanks to all for the expertise shown on the forum and from the Devs

@Devs,
I realize that you are already swamped with requests for improvements. I really appreciate the quality and performance of what you have done already. Regarding future performance improvements (making it faster), I hope you are considering using the Nvidia Pascal (1080 or similar) hardware feature called Simultaneous Multi-projection. I don't know how hard it would be to add it as an option for us that love your VR mode. From measurements on my 4.2Ghz PC with an Nvidia 970, each eyepoint view with a 100 deg FOV, seems to take about 4 milliseconds. So doing two for stereo and then using a 1.5 factor Render Scale (which takes about 3.5 msec. ( a 2.0 factor takes over 10 msec on a 970)), that runs to 11.5 msec which corresponds to the 90 fps target for CV1. If the Simultaneous Multi-Projection mode could be activated, it would save one of the 4 msec eyepoint views since they would be done in parallel, and the result would be we could probably increase our Render Scale factor considerably or have more clouds and buildings, etc. Anyway, food for thought. You have the fastest render engine for VR right now (FSX/P3D and DCS World are about half the performance - thus requiring ASW/ATW to help even though the flight sim generates stutters and ghosting in the side views) WarThunder is close in performance but focuses on WWII.

Thanks much for an amazing flight sim

Dave

Ken,
You have enough CPU/GPU to run with VR - I highly recommend flying Aerofly FS2 in VR due to superior performance with fluid imagery. It runs easily at 90fps and makes flying so much better than P3D even though it doesn't have some of those features yet (ATC,AI, FMS,etc). If you just like some exciting flying over crisp photoreal imagery doing some mild aerobatics or just tree-top flying, VR and FS2 are great.

@bbrz,
Thanks for your excellent commentaries on this forum (on this topic and others). Yes, I realize that there isn't much published data but pilots are pretty good at remembering some of the rates - at least maybe if it is say 50% or more higher/lower than such and such of another aircraft. I realize that we will have to accept reasonable guesses, but if you and others (including the devs) want to make some estimates, it would simply help to put it in the above format so the devs can test it.
I was privileged to be a member of the Engineering Simulator development team for Boeing airliners in Seattle from 1980 to 2009 - we had access to all the flight test data that is needed. The Boeing 777 aerodata package alone had 100,000 data points in it - e.g. pitching moment as a function of mach, flaps, elevator, spoilers,stabilizer, etc from sea level to 40,000 feet. Unfortunately, none of that quality data is published - so we all get to estimate for our home simulators. Simulator manufacturers like CAE have to pay $1 million USD for that data package.

Thanks again

Dave

I usually adjust the Antialiasing and Anisotropic filters (maybe 8xQ and 16X or so) in every flight sim I use (FSX/P3D,DCSWorld, WarThunder,etc) and found it amazing that Aerofly FS2 looked really fine on my system - without any adjustments - especially in Oculus VR with Render Scale at 1.5. I wonder if FS2 just sets some of the graphics options as default - and maybe overrides any attempt by the user to set them either with the Nvidia Control Panel or Nvdia Inspector.

@bbrz,
We appreciate your comments about IRL performance - are you saying that you have actually flown these aircraft yourself or that you have read about their performance traits (flaps down - pitch up/down OR throttle movement torque OR...). If you are sure of your information then it would be nice to have a simple chart of expected/estimated angular rates starting from trim and then applying the control. What follows is simply an example chart.

Control Deflection______________Amount_________________Degrees per second from neutral trim with respect to last position
flap down_____________________5 deg__________________1.0 pitch down (relative to trim @0 deg flaps)
flap down_____________________15 deg_________________2.0 pitch down (relative to trim @5 deg flaps)
flap down_____________________30 deg_________________1.5 pitch down (relative to trim @15 deg flaps)

aileron/stick________________________10%___________________10 degrees per second along roll axis
aileron/stick________________________max___________________90

elev/stick__________________________10%___________________2 degrees per second along pitch axis
elev/stick__________________________max___________________10

throttle(from idle)__________________________10%___________________2 degrees per second along roll axis
in clockwise direction looking toward the nose
throttle(from idle)__________________________max___________________10

Maybe the OP just means the High Resolution Texture Pack for Southwest US (50gb or so) available as a free DLC download. This makes the terrain imagery that was lower resolution away from the airports now available at full resolution. It really makes the Grand Canyon look great!.

IPACS Support,
OK - I concentrated on looking at the wing textures (hit "1" until I am a passenger near a window) on the Learjet and was really impressed at the detail that probably comes from bump maps - the panel line rivets and then the undulations in the panel (the smooth cornered rectangular shapes and the slight imperfections in the paint job) - terrific attention to detail! Then along with true reflections of the clouds ( and ground when inverted) - very nice.

Thanks again

Dave

@Senior Members,
First off, I want to say that it is wonderful to have experts involved in the design and development of the FS2 simulator! The quality really shows and it is exciting to be able to show off this simulator to actual pilots using Virtual Reality equipment and have them come away feeling extremely impressed with the reality. Even though FSX/Prepar3D has some excellent terrain from ORBX and photorealistic vendors, it never feels fluid because the "ancient" code just can't provide a smooth enough update rate - especially in VR. No amount of ATW/ASW interpolation can make up for slow update rates.
My comments about pitch trim probably are reflected in the fact that my Thrustmaster HOTAS.X joystick has too much mechanical deadzone which makes careful movements about the center difficult unless I am very close to being in trim. I really like the separated throttle and joystick though with enough buttons for system control. I also can use voice commands if necessary. Perhaps I need to try more expensive joysticks that would have better switches for pitch trim and a higher precision around center stick.

Thanks again for the excellent flight sim - this is actually a better experience for me than my multi-million dollar Boeing airliner sims that I helped develop in Seattle.

Dave

The F18 control model has excellent flight characteristics as well as minimal pitch trim required while most of the other aircraft require it frequently. It becomes difficult to fly smoothly unless pitch trim is adjusted often due to changes in aircraft speed or configuration change. I just wonder why the F-18 doesn't require much - it's almost as if there is automatic trim

Thanks for an amazing flight sim

Dave