One question that people have asked me about the X-Plane developer’s conference in Mallorca: what did you guys do there (besides drink)?
The conference was attended by a number of MSFS third party developers, a few X-Plane third party developers, as well as Austin, myself, and Aerosoft management. So the audience was mostly technical people (developers) and mostly MSFS, not X-Plane developers.
The sessions covered two basic areas:
- Boot-camp, e.g. Austin and I did our best to rapidly introduce the MSFS developers to the X-Plane-specific parts of development, e.g. you know how to model, but how does a model get into X-Plane. Most X-Plane third party developers already know this stuff, but for MSFS developers the question is: where did you guys move the furniture in this new room?
- New features, e.g. we described a number of the new things X-Plane 10 can do that are new to both X-Plane 10 and flight simulation in general. Some of this stuff hasn’t made it out to the public yet, due to me not getting docs out fast enough. McPhat studios were present, and they had all sorts of nice looking camera equipment, so we may be able to get some video posted.
For me, the most useful aspect of the sessions was the interactive aspect. Being able to have artists with significant 3-d experience ask me questions about X-Plane in real time really helped me understand what parts of the scenery system are important to authors and which are not; I am working on a new set of documentation that should hopefully be much better tailored to artist’s needs.
The experience also has changed my view on the scenery tools. In my past work on WED and the ac3d exporter, the tools have provided a more or less direct wrapper around the capabilities of the scenery system. This has two problems:
- In some cases this means more work for the author, because the tools don’t provide a layer of simplification, automation and abstraction around the low level system and
- In some cases the tools make it possible (or even easy) for the author to make non-optimal scenery and models; the tools really should make it hard to do things the “wrong” (but legal) way.
For the upcoming US developer’s conference (in Columbia in April) the sign-ups so far look like a more mixed group, with some very experienced X-Plane people and some totally new developers coming over from the MSFS world. We will be tailoring the content to try to meet the needs of both audiences.
If you attend, bring your content. Austin and I are very happy to sit down with your add-on and X-Plane (perhaps with debugging) and take a look at performance.
What are the dates for the US one? Where can i find more information?
Marty posted this on avsim, but I can’t find a way to link to one article in the feed…
Laminar Research (X-Plane) will be holding a technical training conference on April 19-21st in Columbia, South Carolina. The purpose of this event will be to work with 3rd party add-on developers to create and convert their upcoming, current and future flight simulation projects to X-Plane 10 Global Edition. Aside from covering topics such as aircraft creation and scenery development in formal sessions, participants are invited to bring their projects with them on laptop for personalized hands-on assistance from Laminar personnel.
There is no charge to attend the conference for qualified flight simulation developers. Space is limited and signup is on a first-come basis. For more information contact Laminar at the following email address: xplaneconference@me.com
The only way to win the war in flight simulation, is by recruiting an army of third-party scenery- and airplane developers. There is still a lot of untapped talent in the X-plane community and I really appreciate that Laminar is investing in the right development tools and manuals/tutorials. Keep up the excellent work!
It was nice to exchange views on Mallorca. Very educational for me. Thank you!
LOL – educational as in “I learned those LR guys really ARE crazy”. 😉 Anyway, I’m glad it was useful!!
just a quick comment on the post mentioning the way to “win the flight sim war”. There is no war anymore. not with Microsoft Flight anyway…
as for my real comment now: does XP10 allow third party developers to touch water ? (colors, textures, waves ?) originally you’ve answered no. But does any 3rd party developers at this meeting mentioned anything about it ?
thank you
No third party SDK for water right now.
once again —> 🙁 :-(. This is so sad actually. Flying in and around tropical islands, with the new HDR and the new clouds, would be simply extraordinary with tropical water textures… but that’s OK. We can’t have everything…. we already have a lot and find ways to complain!!!
Ben and Crew,
I have been playing around with the new scenery system in XPX for some time and right now many of the changes you have programmed aren’t apparent in the sim. I am sure as development in-house and third party warms up more the look of XPX will change drasitcally.
I’ll be glad when you do get this new documentation released. Right now I have been messing around with “Normals” on the ground terrain and have run into a few snags. But as luck would have it I performed an Alpha layer trick, on accident, and I really love how the specular highlights can make a big, minimally expensive change to the ground textures.
Check it out: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYWAMkNT_Ys&feature=player_embedded
XPX has huge potential for development in the future and I look forward to being a part of it!
Nice use of specularity! All of our in-house guys really get a lot of leverage out of specular and normal maps – you can create a lot of depth with some careful texturing.
There are some more tricks in the sim that we need to doc. You can “de-amplify” the power of a normal map, allowing normal maps to be used for ultra-small deformations of a surface without precision problems. Once you do this you can get very subtle specularity, like the reflections of light on a building.
In HDR mode you can also fade out your normal maps and albedos separately, which means you can burn in ‘normal map’ bumpiness _outside_ the visible range of an overlay.
Im like a kid in a candy store! Good stuff 🙂
I’m terrified! Such awesome capabilities are only keystrokes and mouse clicks away. So much to learn….and I want it all!
mmm unfortunately MS hasn’t given up the fight – they’re attempting to segment the market into hard-core vs “fun” simmers, and people are taking note – see xplane10.wordpress.com for views.
By principle I won’t touch MS, and by “heart” I love XP, but I’d reiterate the above comment – a lot needs to happen, quickly, for XP to really win the hearts of the majority of the sim community. It’s a better product, by far!
I have to say the grass and weeds detail I saw in some shots of Aerosoft XPX airfields was fantastic – I love that, particularly for landing helos! And missions … layering on missions and learning programs (Khamsin’s T-28 Trojan is on the path) would bring so much more involvement to XP.
Keep up the good work, fight the good fight, but don’t let down your guard – ever! The sim economy is attractive enough for the beancounters at MS to authorise the MSF investment, but I reckon XP should have their lunch.
Actually Ben, the first video is up! Feel free to plug it, yours will be coming soon! Nice meeting you…
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=goY_QEkBow0
Cool – thanks for posting that!
To those who were not there, the McPhat guys were not messing around…multi-camera, separate audio, etc. As an ex-audio/video guy I appreciate the production values. 🙂