MikeT707 Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 I would be fine with the Object Flow stripped out for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Howard Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Thank you JV. Your honesty and your explanation are greatly appreciated. Howard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kulbit Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 (............) In all honesty the fault is mine: we should have developed the OF tech in-house, not rely on a third party out of our control. Lesson learnt, it won't happen again. these are the words, which you always want to hear from a great manager .... these are the words of a leader. Thank you for your professionalism JV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Misha Cajic Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Personally I am going with Plan B at the moment and making versions of my airports which do not require OF, instead users must switch seasons of objects through the control panel. Minor inconvenience, but I think it's better than nothing. Of course you lose some unique dynamic functionality, but remember, OF is only an object controller, you will still be able to see people flow animations and all that, they just won't dynamically appear depending on the time you have selected in the sim (so for nighttime flying you'll have to uncheck the PF in the control panel) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Graham Eccleston Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 It is not just OF that is an issue. Any airport with a ground poly will end up with aircraft and scenery items embedded in the ground surface. this is because there is an issue with ground polys in P3D V2 not honouring hard surfaces. YBBN is a particular problem as the smaller aircraft there only show the cockpit above ground. This issue has stalled P3D V2 conversion work on airports such as Canberra, Brisbane etc where OF is not used. Add to that the non functioning windsocks, the placement shift problem where everything placed at one point in FSX will sit anywhere up to 3 metres away in P3D V2. The last issue has already been changed between V2.0 and V2.1 and I believe will be shifted again in V2.2. I could go on but you get my point. P3D V2 is not a reworked version of FSX as P3D V1.4 was, this is a completely new sim and much will need to be done to our scenery to get it to work properly. But more importantly than that, LM need to get P3D V2 to a stable position so developers can become serious with their products for that platform. At the moment, there is great fear that we will do considerable work to have something functioning properly in V2.1 only to find it does not in V2.2. Merely porting a FSX product over to P3D V2 is not a solution as P3D V2 will not use FSX files efficiently and will not accept FS9 files at all. The bgl code was rewritten for P3D V2 to provide more functionality and run more efficiently and that unfortunately broke a lot of backward compatibility. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Harris Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Due to this object shifting bug Graham mentions above (I consider this the big issue, not Objectflow)..... I could spend a week (unpaid) working on conversion tasks, and then after the next LM update... have all my work rendered completely useless, as a self employed developer this is something I'm not willing or able to 'test' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Venema Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Indeed I *wish* OF was the only issue facing us as airport developers. The object-shifting problem is a massive issue and as Tim says above is a reason enough to hold off on beginning any serious porting work. Surely there are many airport developers out there facing the same sorts of problems? You must also remember that we pushed FSX/P3D really hard! We overcame limitations by going outside the normal SDK to extend functionality. This is not something that can be just dismissed and rolled back during a porting exercise. Also remember that most FSX/P3D airports by other developers are not very sophisticated. They stay within the boundaries of the FSX SDK and do very little more than display a ground polygon and static objects. It matters not that they are large mega airports - they are for all intent and purposes much like FSX default airports with nicer textures and a ground poly. However, to Orbx's vision they are dull, lifeless and offer very little sense of immersion. Any developer who strove to add more depth and immersion to airports with external DLLs is facing the exact same issues as us. There is no easy simple fix, and you cannot use a subtractive approach, pulling functionality out of our products to make them work like 2009-tech. Sorry, not our mission. At the worst case we're going to allow some airports to move OF to CPs, but that is a compromise IMHO. You can rest assured we are in this business for the long run: P3Dv2 is not just some flash-in-the-pan, it's the only platform which will benefit from a live development team moving it forward. But that comes at a price. We'll face massive porting issues all over again perhaps when PD3v3 moves to 64-bit. Expect perhaps a year or more for Orbx to provide 64-bit editions of our products. As someone said, it's slightly unfair to complain about a BF3 level not working in BF4, as a comparison. In the meantime, I am rather perplexed that those who bemoan the lack of P3Dv2 airports, who do not have FSX installed side by side. I run this scenario on a humble Macbook Pro with a comparatively 'tiny' 512GB SSD which is solely dedicated to FS and dev work. Perhaps the easiest and cheapest solution for you all is to invest in another HD or SSD and run FSX+DX10 Fixer in parallel and enjoy the fruits of our labour while PFDv2 settles down a bit. I won't ask "how high?" when people tell me to jump. Yes, I'll communicate effectively, but we will move at the pace our resources and team (and LM) allows us too, not any faster; and certainly not because how loud you all yell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jrrbolkin Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 The way I see this is the products ORBX release work fine ..ok an occasional hiccup here and there,.(the caveat), I currently only use FSX .I dabbled with P3D 1.4 and found it to be clunky in the interface and no better, on a properly tuned system than FSX ,in some respects worse. Now the new kid on the block. Ver 2.1 has been released and as seems to be the case LM have made drastic changes to the code that currently rule out some of the features of Orbx,hence for me I will stick to good ole FSX and wait for the dust to settle with P3d, from what I have seen and read it aint worth the fuss. Those as want to fart about with a half assed program feel free to big it up,I have no issue with that.But if it doesn't run with the stuff I want ie Orbx I will maintain the status quo and bide my time. Maybe in about 5 years time P3d will be worth looking at,sooner if they release something that works without too much tweaking,hell I aint finished tweaking FSX yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vozko Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 I offer my respect to John Venema for acknowledging responsibity for the dearth of Orbx products that are currently available to P3DV2 users. I miss all of mine and am considering his suggestion to revert to the world of FSX DX10 fixer. I think the Orbx boys will sort it before too long. However, I would not be surprised if the passionate flight simmers on these forums were to suss a soulution. I would code if I had a clue. Regards, Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GregJ Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 JV your honest and transparent leadership is refreshing... regardless of the problem, you seek solutions. Hey all you other development companies out there... take a page from JV's chapter on how to do things right.... Thanks. That is all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davenicoll Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 Another excellent,honest post by not only JV,but Graham and Tim. I wwas considering putting FSX back in. After all this information my mind is now made up... FSX install here we come... There is one downside though..Credit card will take a hit for all the recent releases Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmiG Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 The way I see this is the products ORBX release work fine ..ok an occasional hiccup here and there,.(the caveat), I currently only use FSX .I dabbled with P3D 1.4 and found it to be clunky in the interface and no better, on a properly tuned system than FSX ,in some respects worse. Now the new kid on the block. Ver 2.1 has been released and as seems to be the case LM have made drastic changes to the code that currently rule out some of the features of Orbx,hence for me I will stick to good ole FSX and wait for the dust to settle with P3d, from what I have seen and read it aint worth the fuss. Those as want to fart about with a half assed program feel free to big it up,I have no issue with that.But if it doesn't run with the stuff I want ie Orbx I will maintain the status quo and bide my time. Maybe in about 5 years time P3d will be worth looking at,sooner if they release something that works without too much tweaking,hell I aint finished tweaking FSX yet. I'm running P3D 1.4 and I'm very happy with the sim. Everything works great. For the interface, SimLauncher is better than the FSX native launch screen ever was. Compatibility is a non-issue as well thanks to OrbX native installers and the Estinoia Migration Tool. In what way do you find it worse than FSX? One thing that has made me re-consider FSX is the DX10 Fixer and DX10 mode, since it adds cockpit shadows and supposedly improves performance and reduces VAS usage. But as I understand it, there are still issues with this mode? I don't think P3D v2 needs 5 years to mature, however it will probably take many months of development. I'm kind of on the fence about requesting a refund. The money could be spent buying Redding and the new Alabeo C195 Then I can buy the sim again around version 2.4 or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spirit_66 Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 Now spending most time with P3D v2.1 in the Tongass area which I installed with EMT. I'm waiting now for the ORBX sceneries like PNW, SAK etc. to be compatible. My priority is much more tied to the NA areas than any airports. Of course would it be nice to have KHQM or CBB7 working in P3D v2.1 too. By the way PAPI (Sitka) is also nice in Tongass and works fine. Spirit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmb Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 I respect ORBX will need time to sort things. I also respect management faults, unfortunate, but who can say he's errorr-free? However, I walked through all the stony upgrade path from FSX to P3D2.1. Today, I enjoy a system exploiting my recently bought state of the art DX11 graphics card displaying scenery like NCA and FSDT airports in a really shining manner with excellent performance. And now I am asked to invest a few days of work into re-installing an ancient 2006 simulator based system? While I appreciate people with a fully equipped FSX installation going on to use it, downgrading from P3D2.1 to FSX can't be the solution for me. I am well willing to help. I am ready to test things für P3D2, if there's a need. I already stated, I am also willing to pay an upgrade fee for P3D2 ready products. I am not willing to downgrade to FSX, though. Kind regards, Michael Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Routley Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 I think this has probably covered it. It is being worked on, and an alternative solution is being sought from Lockheed-Martin also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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