It's been quiet...

[tlittle]

Just wondering how the progression is coming along, although I surely do not expect the TS team to frequent these forums and post updates all the time, it seems we haven't heard from them in quite some time.. did I miss something? The project is still alive and well right?

Does someone have links of other sites/forums similar to this one so I can bookmark them all?

[Driverman2008]

Yeah, the MSTS 2 website has been a ghost town for almost 3 weeks.:( Rick said they usually update it every friday. But I guess they're 3 fridays behind. I sure hope there's an update this friday that will be worth the 3-week wait.

[stonelance]

I believe what Rick said was, if the website is updated with content it will usually be on a Friday. It does not get updated every Friday. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong though :)

I personally haven't been posting much because other people on these forums haven't been asking as many questions, or ones related to some area that I could answer.

[MatthewS]

I believe what Rick said was, if the website is updated with content it will usually be on a Friday. It does not get updated every Friday. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong though :)

I personally haven't been posting much because other people on these forums haven't been asking as many questions, or ones related to some area that I could answer.


What do you think of DX11 and what it will do for TS2 and FS11?

In particular does dx11 tesselation support mean that we will see models with far more polygons than is currently the case?

[Company Notch]

We've got some new content about ready to go - vacation schedules and other tasks have kept things quiet for a few weeks.

Never fear, we have some cool stuff coming shortly... :)

-Rick

Rick Selby
Lead Game Designer
Microsoft Train Simulator

http://yardlimits.spaces.live.com

[BNSF4723]

Sounds good :)

[shortbart]

Yeah, i´m really lookingt forward to that :)

[stonelance]

What do you think of DX11 and what it will do for TS2 and FS11?

In particular does dx11 tesselation support mean that we will see models with far more polygons than is currently the case?

TS2 will most likely not use DX11. The main initial benefit of it for FS11 is better performance on multicore machines since we can do a lot more of the graphics on different cores that we are forced to do on a single core right now.

Eventually I hope that the tesselator will be used for terrain and extrusions to generate smoother geometry, and to take load off of the CPU. Right now the extrusions are extremely efficient in TS2, so there won't be much improvement there in terms of performance. A lot of time is spent in TS and FS generating polygons for the terrain, so that could be a huge win. We are doing some work already to reduce that time by taking advantage of the vertex shader in TS2.

[MatthewS]

A lot of time is spent in TS and FS generating polygons for the terrain, so that could be a huge win.

One thing about FSX is that coastlines and lakes can look quite blocky and straight edged if the number of points in the polygon use to define them is not very high. Would it be possible to have FS11 create more naturalistic coastlines by generating extra "random" points or even just smoothing out the pointy corners.

The same problem occurs with roads and railways in that corners are too sharp. Would it be possible to have FS11 make corners smoother instead of pointy?

If you can remove these types of sharp edges then FS11 landscape will be much more believable.

Oh did I mention cloud shadows too? :)

[kevinculla9]

So is the new sim going to offer any form of a profile for improved performance to those of us that have multi core processors and multilple video cards?

TS2 will most likely not use DX11. The main initial benefit of it for FS11 is better performance on multicore machines since we can do a lot more of the graphics on different cores that we are forced to do on a single core right now.

Eventually I hope that the tesselator will be used for terrain and extrusions to generate smoother geometry, and to take load off of the CPU. Right now the extrusions are extremely efficient in TS2, so there won't be much improvement there in terms of performance. A lot of time is spent in TS and FS generating polygons for the terrain, so that could be a huge win. We are doing some work already to reduce that time by taking advantage of the vertex shader in TS2.

[Driverman2008]

Well, there is an update on the website now. It's a PDF file of the quartarly newsletter.

[stonelance]

So is the new sim going to offer any form of a profile for improved performance to those of us that have multi core processors and multilple video cards?

The new sims will use your multi-core and multi-gpu automatically if you have them. The performance improvement should be better than what you see in FSX, but I don't have any numbers as to by how much since it isn't done yet.

[TrirailF40PHL]

The quieter it is, the more they're working on it ;)

-Kurt

[Driverman2008]

The quieter it is, the more they're working on it ;)

-Kurt
I agree with you 50% on that. Sometimes if it's too quiet, it could cause anxiety. And make you wonder if the project for the game is still being worked on.

[TrirailF40PHL]

I agree with you 50% on that. Sometimes if it's too quiet, it could cause anxiety. And make you wonder if the project for the game is still being worked on.

Oh, come now. At this point, it would be utterly foolish for MS to back out.

-Kurt

[Driverman2008]

Oh, come now. At this point, it would be utterly foolish for MS to back out.

-Kurt
I agree, that would be a foolish move to cancel MSTS 2 again.

[janda]

We've got some new content about ready to go - vacation schedules and other tasks have kept things quiet for a few weeks.

Never fear, we have some cool stuff coming shortly... :)

-Rick

Rick Selby
Lead Game Designer
Microsoft Train Simulator

http://yardlimits.spaces.live.com

shortly ??? almost month gone and still nothing...:D

brds

[kevarc]

Way to many gimme pigs!

[MatthewS]

Yes... can we please have a few screenshots or something? Anything please!

[SCrails]

You make a point, but how else are we gonna get our answers if we don't ask? I'm still waiting on a reply for the NS GEVO thread I started. It's already two pages long and no answer. Soon it will get old, and somebody will just come and start another one of the same question, pattern after pattern.

[westerngy]

Lets all calm down.The MS Aces team is hard at work developing a new sim so lets give them some breathing room and get on with your lives.Updates will come along when there needed.