The future of the sim..?
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Agreed. A DX 11 update, though being a GFX code re-write, would be the best way to go. And, DX 12 has no major GFX enhancements from DX 11. It allows different GFX cards, with different instructions, to work with each other AFAIK. So, a DX 11 would be ideal IMO. But getting BMS to even DX 10 will be a big undertaking. I think this team is up for that. Time will tell.
This is not really correct. DX12 is the first and only DX API that allows you to leverage multiple CPU cores during the render stage. The pipeline is a little more clustered from the developer standpoint, but in the end it results in a much more efficient transition through the pipeline stages. It also has some native buffer replication functionality which improves performance during the swap. The problem with DX12 right now, is that most developers are still writing the back side like it’s 11, which results in a performance hit, instead of gain.
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Well, I’ll admit that I’m almost totally not familiar with DX9, but DX11 I do know to some level of knowledge, and I don’t understand what you refer to by saying that it would be slow to update CBs before draw calls.
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What I did heard though is that DX10/11 are much more sensitive to Render states changes, so unlike DX9 one should be careful when designing large engines to take care of this stuff specifically.This is why I said earlier it would require a complete GFX rewrite and not just an adaptation to the new API. It’s tedious, but well worth the effort in the end.
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This is why I said earlier it would require a complete GFX rewrite and not just an adaptation to the new API. It’s tedious, but well worth the effort in the end.
Yea well… you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. So if we like it or not, a rewrite will happen at some point.
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Agreed. A DX 11 update, though being a GFX code re-write, would be the best way to go. And, DX 12 has no major GFX enhancements from DX 11. It allows different GFX cards, with different instructions, to work with each other AFAIK. So, a DX 11 would be ideal IMO. But getting BMS to even DX 10 will be a big undertaking. I think this team is up for that. Time will tell.
IRC DX 12 allows for better CPU scaling as well as the number of objects and details can increase. I too would like to see BMS to go to DX 11 just for VR support if it’s possible. I would be great to see a commercial effort but I understand the IP issues. I’m sure most of us would be willing to pony up for a fully supported product. Heck I’ve already paid well over 200 bucks for BOS BOM and BOK.
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I think immersive VR is the way ahead.
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The looooong future…
VR has a long way to go until it has enough client base. Now its what 1%? Or lower among flight sim users? So waist ultra resources for something that will be mainstream in x years? Doesnt seem efficient. Sure i would love to have vr and tomorrow bms to release a vr exe but…sent from my mi5 using Tapatalk
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redesigned MFD system that will allow for different types instead of f16 fits all
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IRC DX 12 allows for better CPU scaling as well as the number of objects and details can increase. I too would like to see BMS to go to DX 11 just for VR support if it’s possible. I would be great to see a commercial effort but I understand the IP issues. I’m sure most of us would be willing to pony up for a fully supported product. Heck I’ve already paid well over 200 bucks for BOS BOM and BOK.
Ok, more scaling and objects. But not a big GFX improvement was my point.
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This is why I said earlier it would require a complete GFX rewrite and not just an adaptation to the new API. It’s tedious, but well worth the effort in the end.
Very interesting discussion, folks.
If a complete gfx rewrite is on the cards (pun intended ;:)), could we please consider a cross-platform engine like OpenGL or one of its successors?
For BMS to become completely “free” in the true sense of the word, it needs to be untied from the windows platform (and in a proper way, not by using some WINE hacks that don’t work for half of the people half of the time).
IMHO (or, in this case, not so Humble opininion), win10 is dead as a valid and legit gaming platform (too many issues to mention here, and also I don’t want to derail the thread). so ithis would be a major step forward towards making BMS a cross-platform sim.
All the best, Uwe
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so ithis would be a major step forward towards making BMS a cross-platform sim.
BMS is not all of the cake … you totally forgot the controller hardware (Cougar, Warthog etc.) that must also run on the client machines. Unter windows it’s already a PITA to get the whole bunch running, under Linux it would be a nightmare :shock:
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OpenGL is not an option.
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BMS is not all of the cake … you totally forgot the controller hardware (Cougar, Warthog etc.) that must also run on the client machines. Unter windows it’s already a PITA to get the whole bunch running, under Linux it would be a nightmare :shock:
I’ve had good results so far with my HOTAS Cougar (dx mappings only), the a10 tablet and the TM MFDs without hacking too much on Linux (Mint 18.1). 3d performance is on-par with win7, headtracking using linuxtrack works nicely too (delanclip).
Warthog supposedly works in DX mode on Linux, too (haven’t tested this yet)
I agree though it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem… but maybe hardware vendors will be finally smelling the coffee (and the gfx manufacturers already do) and improve or step up their Linux support.
Again, I’m not meaning to derail the thread with a win vs. XXXX discussion, but I’d consider cross-platform a major point in BMS’ favour over the next decade.
X-Plane does it nicely, so does flightgear, so it’s not exacty impossible nor a nightmare, more of a wet dream hopefully coming true one day (FG devs getting together with BMS for truly modular, cross platform sim… hmmmm :D)
All the best, Uwe
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OpenGL is not an option.
Hello, I-Hawk.
I was following this interesting discussion, when I’ve read your last statement.
For me, not an expert or a skilled developer like you are instead, would you kindly explain your point of view?Thanks in advance, with best regards,
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That’s not what I meant. It just seems that people are responding with things like “what happens when we run out of ideas? We’ll never run out of ideas”, and I don’t think that’s what he meant when he posed the initial question. I think he meant sooner or later the project is going to get to a point where the continued development will no longer provide the satisfaction to those of you keeping it going, or there will be aspects that need attention that are beyond the limits of the current teams technical expertise (That’s not a dig or a slam, I’m a coder too and we all have our limits and specialty areas, and lets face it DX is just a pain in the A no matter how much experience you have with it), or when the imposition it causes in your personal lives gets to the point that you have to/want to do something else. Maybe I misunderstood what he meant, but that comment was not meant to be a dig at BMS or say it won’t keep evolving. I just think he meant that the game has come a long way, and sooner or later you reach a limit to how much you can change things from the original without having to do other major overhauls, which cause problems with other modifications, etc, etc, big circle and so on…
That’s pretty much what I was talking about. I love the game and know that the team has lots of features that they can and want to implement. I guess I didn’t understand that it is a labour of love and that their work is not prohibiting another dev team from making another F16 sim. I just thought that they would eventually get to a point where they would much rather devote their time to creating another sim . Such a sim would allow them to make use of the latest DX/OpenGL/Vulkan API from the start to to implement all the features and systems that they are, technically, unable to add to Falcon BMS.
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IMHO (or, in this case, not so Humble opininion), win10 is dead as a valid and legit gaming platform (too many issues to mention here, and also I don’t want to derail the thread). so ithis would be a major step forward towards making BMS a cross-platform sim.
All the best, Uwe
err You can play Xbox games on Win 10 now - mayb just me but this doesnt look like MS are moving away from gaming on Windows 10.
Still once bms/dcs/sf2 and all the hardware drivers have been rewritten for one of the X variants of Linux there might be a case for it being more than a VM on my desktop - not looking likely is it
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I believe that. I know that we will be graced with 4.34 one day, the BMS team thus far in 6 years has not failed to deliver and the surprise of finding what’s in the latest update is part of the fun. I do miss very much the “3 to 4 weeks” jokes in regards to 4.33, it was almost a community identity for a loooong time. Can we get that going again, I-Hawk?
Please sir, tell me when 4.34 will be released tounge in cheek
Oh, 3-4 weeks you say?
4.3-4 weeks. “3-4 weeks” has been around a lot longer than that
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That’s pretty much what I was talking about. I love the game and know that the team has lots of features that they can and want to implement. I guess I didn’t understand that it is a labour of love and that their work is not prohibiting another dev team from making another F16 sim. I just thought that they would eventually get to a point where they would much rather devote their time to creating another sim . Such a sim would allow them to make use of the latest DX/OpenGL/Vulkan API from the start to to implement all the features and systems that they are, technically, unable to add to Falcon BMS.
You are wrong
Technically we can do EVERYTHING we want in BMS
do you think people believed implementing a 100% new physics model was possible in 2004 ?
Our possibilities are UNLIMITED , only our competence could limit BMS. Not the other way around
Only one thing is sure : achieving the level of current BMS from a white page is probably not feasible within a reasonable time frame
You need to remember that Falcon4 code has been developed since 1992/1993 with uninterrupted coding
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I am curious on that topic. There is a lot of reference to technical debt in discussions with the developers about Falcon BMS, but opinions seem to vary on how much of an issue it really is.
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I am curious on that topic. There is a lot of reference to technical debt in discussions with the developers about Falcon BMS, but opinions seem to vary on how much of an issue it really is.
What do you mean about technical debt ?
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Hello, I-Hawk.
I was following this interesting discussion, when I’ve read your last statement.
For me, not an expert or a skilled developer like you are instead, would you kindly explain your point of view?Thanks in advance, with best regards,
I’m sure he will respond in his own time, but if I had to venture a guess it’s not as simple as just graphics. DX gets used for a lot more than just putting pretty pictures on the screen. Controller interfaces, text rendering, debug information, audio processing, and some of the Math functions are likely being used in other areas of the game as well. All of which is available in other Graphics APIs, but now you’re talking about rewriting the entire game engine, and not just the GFX engine. It may also be a matter technical knowledge, I-Hawk stated he is familiar with DX, specifically DX11, there may not be anyone on the team who has experience with OpenGL, and BMS is not the scale of project you want to try to learn an entirely unfamiliar graphics API on, at least not from scratch. If the game were already coded in OpenGL, you could use it to learn, but trying to learn it while actively developing a 5-10k line GFX engine would likely be a disaster, it would be like asking someone to learn C by developing a fully operational Linux distribution–not impossible but not really feasible for the most part either. I have little doubt this has been discussed in the past internal to the team, and his adamant response indicates there are probably other reasons why it wouldn’t work as well. Not trying to answer for him, just offering some insight based on my own personal experience.