The X-Plane team were the last, but certainly not least of the presenters to take to the #FSExpoFriday stage this afternoon in Providence, RI, where they showcased a new weather update for the popular flight simulator.
First though, the team recapped the recently released version 12.2 for X-Plane 12. This update fixed the notorious “dark cockpit” bug, as well as a bunch of atmospheric lighting and rendering fixes. It also came with updates to aircraft braking, airport ground textures and stability improvements.
Next up was Alex on the X-Plane team to talk about the Gateway Asset Update. Alex said that the X-Plane team wasn’t always sure what to create for updates to the Gateway, but that following community suggestions the team is now working on a list of items. A comprehensive list was shown on screen, but among the models actually showcased during the 20 minute presentation were airport service vehicles, police cars and fire trucks, construction vehicles, “because who’s airport isn’t always under construction”, and more ramp lighting options. Justin, a.k.a. Mr X is one of the new artists recently hired by Laminar Research to bring some of these models into the sim, an announcement which received some applause in the room.
Peter from the Laminar team has also been working on bringing some new hangars into the Gateway Asset Update, and the team said there were over 600 combinations users could make with these objects combined.
Finally as part of this segment we also saw the new Zermatt heliport scenery, built by Christiano from the team.
Next, the team moved onto the X-Plane weather update. This is bringing what the team described as “the most advanced weather radar ever shipped in a flight simulator” to the Airbus A330 and 737, among some other base-game X-Plane aircraft. The weather update is shipping with an API so that other third party developers can use it in their products, along with some texturing and system enhancements for the A330 and G1000.
X-Plane’s weather radar is completely GPU based. The team were keen to stress some of the advantages to this approach. Not only does it mean the CPU is not taking any additional load as a result of the weather radar’s addition, but the GPU shouldn’t take much of a hit at all either. This is because the GPU is already responsible for drawing the 3D clouds that you can see out of the cockpit window, and so the team compared the radar to “just another shader” the that GPU has to draw of those same clouds. The new weather radar also gets a ground map, which means it will accurately show ground radar reflections.
The screenshots of this show the working weather radar in both the A330 and the G1000. The team have also built what they believe to be a first, which is vertical profile of the cloud, allowing the user to scan the weather from top to bottom for an idea of where the cloud base and/or ceiling is relative to their current altitude.
All of the functions traditionally found on the A330’s weather panel including gain, tilt and mode are also adjustable and available to users as well as third parties. The system also has the capability to warn users of on-path adverse weather, and will not prompt you to any non-threatening weather. Predictive wind shear warnings should also now work if the user flies through a microburst, for example.
A330 Updates
Next up was a detailed look at some of the updates coming soon to the A330. The plane now has an improved glare shield, which was too dark, enhanced brake effects, added dirt and weathering, and improved metallic surface materials. Some of the preview images showed these new effects, including a brake fire.
New detail textures are also coming. These use the decal system that was previously used exclusively with X-Plane’s scenery to bring paint effects on fuselages, surface details in the cabin, carpet effects in the cabin, and surface details on the cockpit. Preview images again showed some of these new details and decals.
Enhanced interior lighting is coming to both the cockpit and the cabin on the A330. We saw some ambience coming off the screens and some edge glow, as well as improved flood lighting with extra spill. This was most obvious in a preview which showed all of the annunciation lights on.
Then the show was passed on to Philip who discussed some improvement’s to the aircraft’s FMGC. This is for the Airbus but also for the Citation, and improvements include the ability to load a secondary flight plan and freezable sensor probes. The team has worked to integrate company message functions with the in-game ATC. Not just this, but there is a better autoland system, improved auto brakes that don’t slam down the brakes anymore. There’s a real parking brake, improved VNAV, realistic cruise fuel burn.
The art that Alex talked about is going to a public beta next Friday, and the Airbus and weather radar stuff is going private beta next Friday too.
Performance Improvements
Then the team spoke about performance improvements. They have made improvements to the multi-core utilisation of the simulation, after receiving user feedback that the sim was too single-core dependent. This, according to the team, has lead to a 30% FPS improvement at Frankfurt Airport, one of the heaviest sceneries on processing power in the sim. The team have also improved GPU and VRAM utilisation, meaning the sim is less likely to run out of memory and crash.
Then the team briefly covered upcoming changes to the X-Plane store. They have made some big headway on the X-Plane identity system, which paves the way for users to have a simple username and password rather than a long ID number to make transactions. Backend payment processing has also been integrated into the shopping cart for a more seamless experience in the shop. But there will be more to share on this later in the year.
