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Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby wkitty42 » Fri Dec 11, 2015 2:12 am

I-NEMO wrote in Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:51 pm:I'm totally ignorant about Python, but I'm wondering if those Python scripts could be a source of info/inspiration to eventually port them in C++ ... or am I saying something silly?

imagine python like perl, php, ruby, early BASIC, DOS and winwhatever BAT files, and other similar ""languages""... they have to be interpreted before they can be operated on... mostly they're scripts... their runtime interpreter reads them, converts their mnemonics to some sort of "bytecode" and then executes that "bytecode"... other languages like C/C++, PASCAL, and ASM use a compiler to generate the "bytecode" all at once and make it machine readable and executable... no interpreter is needed or used... the main difference is in how and when the final "bytecode" is generated and how it is executed... executed directly by the machine or executed via an interpreter...

this is an extremely simple explanation... i've simplified it to hopefully help with the understanding of the difference between script code (aka python, perl, ruby, javascript) and compiled binary code... even java falls into this in some aspects because it can use what is known as a JIT compiler... JIT for "Just In Time" which means that the script is converted/compiled to "bytecode" as needed and then the "bytecode" is executed... but this conversion/compiling is needed ALL the time... not just once like with ASM, PASCAL, C/C++...

side note: when BASIC gained compilers that generated actual binary machine code, it approached the level of ASM, PASCAL, C/C++, etc...

as noted previously, this is an extremely simplified comparison... i won't be debating or arguing with others about it in this topic ;)
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"Why not?" said Gurder.
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Fri Dec 11, 2015 3:35 am

Thorsten,

I've probably missed your post (Dec 10, 6.46 pm).

You wrote:

"...we don't aim for easy modeler workflow, we aim for performance and performance only. There's no performance to spare to simplify your task - instead, we'd make your task yet more complicated if it buys us another 20% performance."


With all due respect, I won't comment this 'uncatchy', and quite peculiar, statement of yours.
Thank you for warning me, I will get back to my desk now. Case closed.

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby radi » Fri Dec 11, 2015 6:10 am

I-NEMO,

Really impressive pics, I'm looking forward to an update of the 777! If you re-model the wings, please consider cutting them into segments so I can glue them together with wingflexer.

Now, about Thorsten's quote: I don't think it was meant to upset you at all. Let me give you a somewhat related example: When I made the first version of osm2city, each building would be a unique object. That was rather straightforward to code, and performed reasonably well. Then someone advised me that in order to improve performance, we should have as little objects as possible. So I changed the code to merge many buildings into only a few objects, and indeed -- performance increased tremendously. Yes, the code is now somewhat more complex and harder to maintain, but the gain in performance is really worth it.

Edit: That doesn't mean that our rendering experts deliberately want to make the modellers' job harder for no reason. It means that if they find something that improves rendering performance by a significant amount, but complicates the modelling workflow, emphasis will be on the improved performance. Because in the end, that's what we're here for: even modellers/devs enjoy the occasional flight, and we want to max rendering performance so we can draw more trees, more buildings, terrain further out, and more detailed sky or aircraft.
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby Thorsten » Fri Dec 11, 2015 8:02 am

Now, about Thorsten's quote: I don't think it was meant to upset you at all.


No, it really wasn't.

To give a related example - the ALS opacity map for casting shadows on the aircraft interior. It's modestly complicated to generate, you need to do some extra work with blender, possibly post-process the result with gimp.

You can achieve a similar thing with Rembrandt without really having to do anything model-side.

The difference is: What we need to know to cast shadows in cockpit is where in the cockpit the windows are, aka where light can come in. You can compute this every frame with limited accuracy (no colored glass or stains or caustics) - but the computation is going to give you the same result every frame because the windows really don't move around. Or you can compute it once offline with high accuracy (colors, caustics, stains,....) and give the result of that computation to the renderer to simply look it up.

If you compute it per frame, you need another rendering pass, which (very roughly) doubles your performance footprint. If you pre-compute it, you need a texture lookup call which costs you close to nothing.

So by making the modeler workflow more complicated in asking to pre-compute this, we get a more realistic result which hardly costs any additional performance as compared to a per-frame solution which can not achieve the more subtle touches of such shadows and costs a lot.

I'd do that kind of trade-off any day, and if you find that offensive, then I'll have to live with it.
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby swampthing » Fri Dec 11, 2015 9:11 am

My system crashed looking at the screenshots :)
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Fri Dec 11, 2015 2:49 pm

radi,

thanks for your appreciation. I'll do my best to get a nice and low-poly model, trying to achieve a better look for the 777, with a spray of visual 'Quality' .
Regarding the wings' sectioning: yes, It's already in my agenda; I've discussed with Hyde about that, and we'll try to make them flexible.

Regarding Thorsten's "lesson": I'm not offended, at all.
Please, allow me to go off-topic for a moment: I just observe things while they happen, since before being a 3d modeller, I'm a human being, as we all are on this beautiful planet.
As an old sailor, I plot my boat's course according to what I see and learn.
Behaving and expressing ourselves - even on a Forum - by a simple, gentle, and natural Philosophy in everyday life is what might give "us" a solid route to better 'human' relationships, whether you're an acclaimed Guru in something, or an uncultured savage coming out from a forgotten mountain.

"I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men.
Lao Tzu, VIth century BC"


Best regards,

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby Thorsten » Fri Dec 11, 2015 3:46 pm

Not sure I get the point of Lao Tzu here, or why it'd be a 'lesson' in quotes - anyway, I've tried to give you the information and the context on what is possible and why things work the way they work, I feel confident to talk about rendering largely because I've done a lot of it (I also have a history way back raytracing with POVRay) and know some of the pitfalls from getting it wrong myself. I've spent my time in this thread because I respect excellent modeling work and want to make sure we're on the same page on what we can and can't expect in FG and that's worth some of my time - that's really all.
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby abassign » Fri Dec 11, 2015 10:56 pm

@I-NEMO

...avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men...

I think it is also necessary to remember this phrase:
Memento audere semper (Remember always dare)
from: Gabriele D'Annunzio.

I also want to remember this sentence because, among developers of FGFs, some forget that FGFs is a wager and wagers will win only if you dare, otherwise we will continue to fly only in gray skies.
Who has wagered to make a good system to achieve the beautiful clouds, has made something good that other programs envy us, who wanted to make ALS, she has made something good, and so much more.
We can only dare explore new worlds, otherwise we become like all business enterprises, careful to reduce risks to increase their profits!
For this I am excited by the challenge of I-NEMO which surely will produce something good!

And you want to remember, for those who have already forgotten a test I did a few months ago, this ball is flying with almost 500,000 vertices ... in an environment with ALS active configured with all options full r advanced weather, trees (5 ) etc .. Despite all the display performance are only slightly lower than those of the UFO...

Image

Of course I have a board of high-level, but in Computer what today is upscale, tomorrow (1-2 years) is standard! To produce a good airplane takes at least 1-2 years, so if we start today is good to think about what will be tomorrow.
So it is great that we will want to do good things, that we will want to squeeze through and through the performance of modern graphics cards and CPUs up to where it is possible to be encouraged to improve the code and to include new algorithms for happiness all of us who believe in this project!

Finally I want to point out that several years ago the A10 had a landing gear very complex but not alter the overall performance of the program, for example:

Image

Image

Image

Too bad that the fuselage had not been made with the same quality, but this remains for me one of the better made landing gears !
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby CaptB » Sat Dec 12, 2015 1:39 am

You could make two versions. First an FG targeted hi poly model ( higher polycount, but possibly not as much as you'd have for the blender renders you've shown) and then a reduced polycount version based on that. Let the user choose which to use.
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby Pakistan-1 » Sat Dec 12, 2015 2:54 am

Nice :) Guys when will the paint kits will be available I want to start working on the liveries ASAP
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:02 am

Hi Thorsten,

if you cannot get the point of Lao Tzu's wise advice in that precise context, then I'll have to live with it.
Anyway, nothing to be worried about: I sincerely respect and appreciate your competence, your explanations and advices.
On some instances, I have different opinions; as it should be considered normal and equally enriching in a virtual place which we like to name as a 'Community'.

Things do happen, everyday.
Quite few people, though, really enquiry themselves about the 'why' something happened.
The world we've built teaches that the Ego and Logic are a safe anchor for our doubts. Personally, I've never shared that teaching.
In my humble opinion, that kind of healthy enquiry it's a private matter, intimate. And certainly not to be shared publicly in a Forum.

So let's get back to our nice FG, which - first of all - is a wonderful Game of 'mutual' expertise and competence.

Should you like, eventually, to dialogue - not discuss - about Lao Tzu, or anything related to a relaxed exchange of ideas about my opinions or yours, ... well, ... just PM me. I'll be glad to meet you.

Thank you, best regards

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:08 am

Hi CaptB,

yes, that would be a possible solution, albeit I'm quite confident that the 3d model I'm developing should have a fair Frame-Rate; anyway that's why we'll conduct some deep testing in various conditions.
I need to finish the model and the animations first, though.
Once those done, me and Hyde will try to finalize the new Seattle at our best.

Thank you, best regards

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:12 am

Hi Pakistan-1,

Glad that you like the Blender Renderings.

As you may imagine, the Final Paintkit won't be ready shortly.
I still have a huge amount of things to be finished about the 3d modelling, and then Texturing.
Once me and Hyde will feel confident that we have reached a stable and satisfaying model, we'll publish the Paintkit.

Thank you, best regards

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:49 am

Hi abbasign,

thanks for your interesting considerations.
I really hope that some major progress will be conducted on FG by other 3d modellers as well: in my opinion, a model should be complete.
By 'complete', I mean well designed, modelled, textured, and optimised to the current FG Simulation engine's standard: that makes Quality.
We all fly using brain for manoeuvring while flying, and our eyes to enjoy that flying.
The Visual impact has its relevance in modern Flight Simulation.

Regarding the Standard: I remember a post exchange with Hooray some time ago, where I pointed out that in my opinion FG lacks a stable Standard.
Let me explain: of course the Core code side always tries to enhance performance and new opportunities.
That's absolutely correct, so to ensure technical growth of the whole platform.
I still think, though, that an effort to have stable versions, and a sort of fair calendar so that other people might have time to adapt the existing model to the new opportunities offered by the technical growth should be considered a priority for a proper overall growth of the FG Simulation platform.

I know that it's difficult, since we all 'work' just for passion and not for money: still, I get sometime confused because of the continuous rate of change from the technical standpoint.
I do of course appreciate it: but to put hands back into the .ac models, the required .xml files, the nasal, and so forth is extremely time consuming.
Sometimes too much 'coding' is required in order to see the model flying again in the new framework updated to the latest technical standpoint. Which, in turn, makes the aircraft's fleet completeness erratic; sometime a model just lies abandoned, for several reasons.

We do grow, but sometimes in too wild a grow.
That's a key factor to ensure FG a consistent fleet of models (complete models, as I wrote above) flyable (I mean enjoyable) in a better technical framework.

But, as said, these are just opinions, my personal opinion.
For any community to evolve, a strong and serious and continuous commitment to the cause by the many is required.
Which is extremely difficult both on common day life and in a virtual world.

But dreaming and daring is the proper key to the goal...

Thank you, best regards

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby Thorsten » Sat Dec 12, 2015 8:02 am

I also want to remember this sentence because, among developers of FGFs, some forget that FGFs is a wager and wagers will win only if you dare, otherwise we will continue to fly only in gray skies.


FG a wager? No, it's not, never has been, I've never seen it advertizes as such on a mission statement or in any discussion. It's a flight simulation.

The point of all this seems to be - no matter what a feature request is, the real reason we don't get it is always the developer's attitude. We could do much better if we just dared, if we weren't stuck in our ways, if we'd just be more visionary.

Well, newsflash: In the real world, graphics cards work a certain way. Just dreaming that the hardware would support different operations doesn't make it so. In the real world, the majority of users has too low framerates for their taste. So if you'll excuse me, I'll go deal with the real world and do what's possible and leave the rest to the visionaries.
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