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FS2020: External Visuals for PSX - Current Known Info

Started by Gary Oliver, Sat, 22 Aug 2020 11:22

Gary Oliver

All,

The good news first... FS2020 supports simconnect...

The bad news... It doesn't support the external sim method of moving the aircraft around and so external sim is a non starter, until MS update the WASM interface to allow the Mark and Gary method of scenery injection.

In the meantime its possible to use the VisualPSX and WidePSX method of scenery injection, however...... there is a bug in the release version of MSFS that causes horrific stutters when using Simconnect (we go from 60fps to 18 stuttering to the point its not usable).

Once this is fixed its possible this simconnect method will be suitable for visuals, however we dont know how smooth this will be until MS and Asobo fix that bug.

In the meantime we have been having a look at setting up a non cockpit front view in MSFS.... The best way is to navigate to


C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-b7478i\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_B747_8i\model


and remove any .bin files from this folder and then edit the model.cfg file to change the last line to read


interior=



This removes both the exterior and interior models.

The next challenge is to get the camera to line up correctly for any flyelise warping...

Cameras.cfg in the aircraft seem to provide


InitialXyz = 0.13, 0.94, 4.725
InitialPbh = 2, 0, 0


which may allow us to use the FSX method.

We also then have the question of whether the weather lines up between PC's

So in summary still a long way to go, I suggest we use this thread as we as a community learn things about MSFS2020 for PSX.

I think its safe to say that once we get this all working MSFS is the answer for a single install visual generator without 101 addons to make it look good.

In the meantime its great to fly the 744 somewhere seriously in PSX and then jump in a piper cub for some sightseeing.

Cheers
G

GodAtum

Thanks for the update Gary. For anyone, to get simconnect you need to enable Devmode. Accessing the SDK can be done from Developer Mode in the "General" settings tab.  Then clicking Help.



however when I downlaod MSFS_SDK_Installer_0.5.1.0.msi it says Windows cannot install error.

JohnH

Even though that is bad news, thanks for the update. I'm sure if anyone can figure it out it will be Mark and Gary.

John


cagarini

Quote from: GodAtum on Sat, 22 Aug 2020 17:38

however when I downlaod MSFS_SDK_Installer_0.5.1.0.msi it says Windows cannot install error.

You have to accept the exception, going to Advanced. They haven't digitally signed the executable :-/... Strange for MS themselves to release code in this state of affairs ...

GodAtum

Thanks!

Using 0.5.1.0, it seems to work OK, I'm getting 20 fps which is the best my PC can do. I cant tell if the stutters are the usual ones I get anyway.

JP59

Hi Gary and All,

I am sure you will find a solution to make ExternalSim compatible with this new MSFS. I have also good and bad news regarding WidePSX.

First, the good new is : I tested WidePSX with the new MSFS and it "works". I ran some tests with the default MSFS 747-8, and... the aircraft is landing right in the middle of the runway, at the right position and elevation ! The bad news are :

- Due to the bug you mentioned in the current version of MSFS, every application using SimConnect, even the famous FSUIPC, is causing massive stuttering and FPS drop in MSFS. It makes this add-ons, including WidePSX, unusable for the moment, until MS fixes the bug.

- I can't figure out how to connect WidePSX with MSFS from a networked computer. Only local connection are working. So you need to run WidePSX from your MSFS computer (PSX can still be run on another computer).

- The offsets calculation system built in WidePSX is not working anymore, due to the new MSFS scenery system, WidePSX cannot compute offsets anymore. However, this system may become obsolete in the future due to the precision and runway slope rendering in MSFS.

So, some good news but a lot of work to come. I only ran some quick tests, but the feeling is good. I plan to have a deeper look ASAP. Maybe some features of WidePSX will become obselete and will be removed, or some will be added or modified. I can't give any schedule for the moment. We first have to wait for the MS bug fix.

If you want to try WidePSX with MSFS :

- Add the following entry (copy/paste) at the end of the Simconnect.xml file (located at C:\Users\YOUR USER NAME\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache), right above the very last line </SimBase.Document> :

    <SimConnect.Comm>
        <Descr>Static IP4 port</Descr>
        <Protocol>IPv4</Protocol>
        <Scope>local</Scope>
        <Port>29747</Port>
        <MaxClients>64</MaxClients>
        <MaxRecvSize>41088</MaxRecvSize>
    </SimConnect.Comm>

- Set Simconnect IP address to 127.0.0.1 and Port to 29747 in the WidePSX Network Tab. You must run WidePSX and MSFS on the same computer.
- Start MSFS, chose to 747-8, position the aircraft anywhere, and wait for the simulator to launch the flight
- Press "Ready to fly" button after the scenery has loaded
- Connect WidePSX
- Start the scenery generator bridge

Again, it "works" but we have to wait for MS to fix the Simconnect bug before to enjoy smooth flights. For any information or comments about WidePSX you can have a look at : http://aerowinx.com/board/index.php?topic=4558.0

Best regards,
Jean-philippe

GodAtum

Thanks for the info, what simconnect version did you have?

Unfortunately WidePSX is not is active development I think  :-[

Also, I don't believe WidePSX works with multiple sims. It never did for 3 instances of P3D.

JP59

Hello,

No WidePSX is not designed to work with multiple sims. The active development of the software ended because it became smooth and reliable, but the project is not dead. This new MSFS is a good reason for me to come back to WidePSX development and release a new MSFS compatible build.

Cheers,
Jean-Philippe,
WidePSX developer

David Palmer

Quote from: JP744 on Mon, 24 Aug 2020 17:20
I ran some tests with the default MSFS 747-8, and... the aircraft is landing right in the middle of the runway, at the right position and elevation !
Quote from: JP744 on Mon, 24 Aug 2020 17:20
- The offsets calculation system built in WidePSX is not working anymore, due to the new MSFS scenery system, WidePSX cannot compute offsets anymore. However, this system may become obsolete in the future due to the precision and runway slope rendering in MSFS.

This is great news! Removing the calculation of visual offsets will reduce complexity in development for other applications.

Regards,
David
Regards,
David.
a.k.a. 'The Commodore'

G-CIVA

Good & Bad news sadly, I hope for those hoping to change scenery generator platform our team of devs find a workaround. Keep supporting them & remember .... they give their time for free (mostly) although I would not criticise them for charging us a small fee for all their hard work.

My own 2 cents ... MSFS was never ... & I don't think it ever will be ... the platform of choice for the hard core like us.

My own reason for not opting to change from my preferred scenery generator (p3D) is now financial; with something like AUD$2.5K of scenery, terrain & other eye candy now installed & working seamlessly & silkily smooth I am not moving back across to another developer, no matter what (IMVVHO having watched some very mediocre power point slide show like demos online by end users) the hype is.

Opinions are as they say like **********

Good luck to those that take the plunge ... but beware of the eye candy & the MS hype.
Steve Bell
aka The CC

Gary Oliver

Steve,

I think unfortunately for the first time ever on this Forum I am afraid you might be wrong. Having been running since the start of the Alpha test I have had plenty of time to have a play, and the hype hasn't really got to me.

MSFS is the future for our PSX scenery generators (once the two remaining SDK issues are solved)

Get rid of the planes, and the cockpits and its exactly what we have been looking for.

Cheers
G

Toga

You may have invested large bags of sand into P3D but from what I'm seeing MSFS looks pretty damn good straight out of the box without the need for any additional addons. For the cost of an ORBX product you could just buy the next gen sim and have the whole world to explore with a global weather system that looks fantastic. It looks so real its frightening.

Kurt

Quote from: Toga on Tue, 25 Aug 2020 12:46
You may have invested large bags of sand into P3D but from what I'm seeing MSFS looks pretty damn good straight out of the box without the need for any additional addons. For the cost of an ORBX product you could just buy the next gen sim and have the whole world to explore with a global weather system that looks fantastic. It looks so real its frightening.

I completely agree - its not perfect close up with the AI/Bing generated features like roads etc but overall it keeps amazing me the more I fly. Its so incredibly lifelike scenery and weather that changes the game completely. Looking very much forward to use it as Scenery generator for PSX.

Thanks

C
Best regards
Kurt


G-CIVA

I'm not closed off to changing my mind, nor am I afraid of admitting that I might be wrong. I will reserve my personal judgement until things have had time to mature & "bed in" so too speak.

I'll sit things out but watch with keen interest upon my large 'sandbag' for a while yet. My scenery generator PC has the 'grunt' but at the moment I'm in a real sweet spot & I'm just enjoying my PSX experience too much to change things once again.

Best of luck to Gary, Mark & Jean Philippe in their work.
Steve Bell
aka The CC

andrej

Gary and the team,
thank you kindly for your continuous efforts to make FS2020 go-to visual generator for PSX community. I am certain that with as time passes, all hurdles will be ironed out. Donations to charities is very nice way to support your cause.

What I have seen so far, the FS2020 has a huge potential. I never expected for default planes to be on high fidelity level, but what I am amazed is the scenery detail and weather effects. Since my FS98 days, this level of detail was never achieved and this alone, makes FS2020 great. We can, for now conduct VFR flights, straight from the box/download. This was never achievable before. Yes, VFR was possible, but one never 'felt' right there. For IFR we have PSX. :)

From what I gathered, I believe that the release was rushed a little. From non complete SDK, to modeling and scenery hick-ups (e.g. non working windshield wipers, weird structure placements, etc.). The product will get better and more optimized with subsequent updates, but it should not be the case. For product that can cost USD 100+. I wonder, how X-Plane will respond, but I do hope that it will maintain its relevance. After-all, a competition is good for us all.

Two years ago I shifted from P3D to X-Plane. I try to support the community by purchasing good add-ons, and I have invested in my new sim (as I have done previously in P3D). Since the announcement of FS2020 release date, I stopped expanding my payware library. I intend to purchase FS2020 (mainly for PSX scenery) and potentially A320 sim (such as FS Labs), once it is available.

There are few questions regarding the sim.
Are seasons rendered? I understand that there is a snow, but is there a difference between fall, spring, summer, and winter textures? Given the fact that the scenery is based of Bing Maps, I assume no (or not yet). This is not a major thing, just did not find proper answers.
Weather effects are amazing, but how is the weather system modeled? Will we need to purchase Active Sky (or any other weather add-on)?
Is flying different than in P3D versions (i.e. more like X-Plane)? Once I switched to X-Plane, I could not enjoy P3D as much.

Thanks again for teams efforts!
Andrej

Gary Oliver

Quote from: G-CIVA on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 04:51
I'll sit things out but watch with keen interest upon my large 'sandbag' for a while yet. My scenery generator PC has the 'grunt' but at the moment I'm in a real sweet spot & I'm just enjoying my PSX experience too much to change things once again.

Dont get me wrong! Same with my sim... Its got P3DV4 working absolutely perfectly... Not touching a thing!

2020 will probably end up being a standalone install on a new drive with a new windows install so I have a rollback plan.


cagarini

I think that, at least for now, MFS is above all an excellent scenery / visuals generator, unfortunately not so easy to couple with an external sim than P3D and XP are...

MFS (and XP too) is for flight simulation ( flight model pov ) like Urban Sketching is for Art...
I do like urban sketches  :-). A close friend started doing his sketches some 8-10 yrs ago, and he got into a level of quality that really makes his work very interesting.

So, from an Art pov one can't say Urban Sketches aren't great and they actually bring emotions up when you look at one of those and "feel like there"...

MFS's approach to flight modeling looks a bit like that in that on their commitment ( MS commitment ) to make the core flight simulation totally backward compatible, they asked ASOBO to find a solution, at the same time allowing for competition with their main competitor - X-Plane, and they went the "sketching" way too...

ASOBO created the "MODERN" fdm concept.  It's really an ingenious idea although imo it makes a rather crude sketch of your fixed wing aircraft ( XP allows for additional granularity, even if not so many points at which the various aerodynamics forces are actually calculated in the simulation cycle as in MFS ), modeling the fuselage as a toroid ( just as in XP ) and having a single wing, and a tail composed of a pair ( horizontal stab + elevator ; vertical stab + rudder ), while XP allows for more variants to be represented, as well as additional structural elements like gears and engines ( with their associated pods ) and object contact points and load stations and then they pick the augmented aircraft.cfg, now called fligth_model.cfg, and I mean "augmented" because it actually brought back variables that had been eclipsed in the transition from fs9 to fsxand start that "normalization" process...

Basically they - at session start - run a series of "virtual wind tunnel" tests over the aircraft sketch to determine their own stability derivates ( based on the virtual 3d sketch ) and then they compare the derivates with those that are defined ( or not ) in the original / legacy / augmented CFG and iterate this for a discrete set of AoA values, then a discrete set of alfa, beta and gama values until the "Guessed from the aircraft sketch" stability derivates converge towards the preconized ( .CFG ) values. They then have a new representation of the model on which they can now calculate stuff that was not possible to calculate in FSX like rolling, yawing and pitching moments due to asymmetry of lift, drag, thrust, prop / jet wash effects, surface aerodynamic shadowing effects, etc...

That's why it can now potentially show the effects of getting pushed by a gust that hits only a section of the aircraft. They calculate this for the mentioned 600+ points including the interference and shadowing effects of structures like the wing, gears, engines, etc...

Just like X-Plane, DCS, Flight Gear, FSX, P3D, AEFS2 and most probably also IL2 they don't apply any fancy fluid dynamics calculations / simulation over the wing but instead they take that info out of the CFG where the tables of Cl vs AoA and others can be defined.

An interesting and unique feature MFS Developer Tools that come with the 3 versions released on August 18 brings is the access on-the-fly to the virtual wind tunnel that allows users to fine tune the aircraft models by changing some of the reference CFG values and watch the repercussions on the various lift / drag / thrust / moments and other variables and systems.

X-Plane uses a different, but similar approach and allows for higher granularity in the definition of an aircraft
with multiple panels composing the wing(s) as well as other bodies, visible or invisible, that talented devs can use to fine tune what the flight model doesn't properly calculate.

Yet! in X-Plane we still don't have a way to fine tune the calculated stability derivates
The core engine calculates it all, dumps it into a text file, or to the screen output, and we can look at it, but can't touch it - only way is to manipulate, through some of the parameters of Plane Maker or by editing airfoils, some of the components of the aircraft.
Systems modeling wise MFS is almost 100% FSX, with some tiny details having been recoded or fine tuned. Reciprocating engine model still very buggy, turboprop and turbofan / jet engine models still very limited...

IMO MFS was developed this way to:
1) Be able to "compete" with the way X-Plane is usually announced as being unique in it's flight modeling approach;

2) Guarantee backward compatibility and "rapid prototyping" for developers that want to bring their legacy models into the new platform;

Imo none of the approaches is better or worst than the other. Even aircraft like a glider for instance which is "rather simple" because there are no prop effects, in X-Plane, designed using the exact data from the aircraft specifications - the AS K21 is a good example - can perform miserably in some aspects in that sim, as I had the chance to test again the default AS K21 in 11.50 RC1, and some aircraft can actually perform closer to rw numbers under most flight configurations in MFS provided the data in their CFGs is detailed enough.

No winner here again, IMO and still, the combat flight simulation games, such as IL2 and DCS, which follow similar approaches, do a better job in many aspects...

philmw

Thank you for this.  Can I ask what I hope is not taken as heretical question.  Has PSX the best flight model for the 744?


Gary Oliver

Quote from: philmw on Wed, 26 Aug 2020 10:43
Thank you for this.  Can I ask what I hope is not taken as heretical question.  Has PSX the best flight model for the 744?

100000% - Every single person that comes and fly's my simulator, whether they are a real pilot or enthusiastic amateur are blown away with how 'different' (and in the case of the real world guys 'just like the aircraft') it feels compared to the other offerings.

The good thing is Hardy can concentrate on the 744 variants only in his model, he doesn't need a flight model that can work with a C152 or a C5 Galaxy.  It's all custom for the 744.  Brilliantly pleasing.