How do they do it?

[gojozoom]

Hi guys,

I guess this goes to the ones who are more familiar with aircraft modeling than I am - which is pretty much most of you.

My question:

How come that some developers manage to create beautifully detailed and textured VCs, system simulation with extra features (think Aerosoft Twin Otter/Catalina, Manfred Jahn's Basler, Qualitywings 146, etc) while still keeping the planes very frame-rate friendly (FPS close to the default planes), but other developers just can't (eg Justflight's "simple" Viscount takes 10 FPS off my average)?

What's the black magic behind it??? You might say poly-count, or texture resolution or system depth, but than how can you explain that QW146 runs a stable 30 FPS while the CS737-200 can hardly reach 20?

What's the trick here?

Cheers
Dan

[Ian Warren]

That would be an interesting question that maybe could be answered by Adrian Brausch, a good example is his Seasprite cockpit texture mod, its all in the texture sheet sheets and how they are applied, it is the same with scenery builds, making models, have one hi-res sheet to cover many more area's.

With the Just Flight Viscount for example was very probmatic to paint, but in recent years they have changed the plan on a single face making it easier and also frame rate smoother.

[jpreou]

Its also in the systems processing. Take the ORBX RV4 - using the EFIS panel consumes way more resources than the basic panel, and frame rate may suffer as a result. Even in the EFIS panel, frame rate will vary depending on what you ask the EFIS to do. So if you have all the flight data, engine data, mapping and everything = hungry hungry Horace!
This, I suspect in many aircraft, in combination with other factors like textures, VC raindrops, all that kind of stuff affects frame rates. I guess some devs are also better at writing efficient code than others. I personally suspect the size of plane and quality of textures to be a minor part, simply based on what I have seen over the years. There are some truly awesome and detailed paint jobs out there on some large a/c which still retain good frames.

EDIT: I just re-read this and it sounds a little derogatory of the ORBX RV4. Not meant to be. I love that plane and it runs great on my system with the basic panel, higher frame hit but still functional on the EFIS panel. I was just illustrating the difference. Trouble is, people want highly detailed and complex aircraft flying in and out of highly detailed and complex airports and scenery and frankly the current FSX / P3D flight sim code and hardware isn't really up to the job of maximum everything at the same time fo the vast majority of people, especially those with less-than-uber systems. As always, the sliders are your friend and you need to make compromises that are acceptable to you. I have low expectations, so I'm generally usually pretty happy anyway! :-)

Blue Skies and Tail Winds

[Splitpin]

"What's the trick here?" ...... you can post pages of science , but what ever it is ..... just keep doing it
As a great man once said ... "there aint half been some clever bastards "