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MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

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mude123
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MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by mude123 »

Are there any news about Prepar3DV5
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Firebird »

What sort of news were you thinking of?
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by gsnde »

It has been released and I like it!
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Greg »

Well since this is the Matrix support forum, I'll assume that the news the OP is looking for is about Matrix compatibility with P3Dv5. ;)

There is no news at the moment, other than that I'm looking into it. LM caught me as much by surprise as anyone else.

Matrix wasn't written to support multiple platforms so it would require quite a bit of reprogramming, plus checking the actual content for compatibility issues. If I decide to make Matrix compatible with v5 it would still be a few weeks before anything is released.

I'll keep you all posted.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by mude123 »

Hello folks, thank you for your feedback.
Thanks Greg.
Gsnd,I have installed both P3DV4 and P3DV5. But it only works the V4 version.
How did you get the problem.

Greetings Mude
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by gsnde »

Sorry Mude, I was just pulling your leg :smt001
I have installed P3Dv5, and in addition my OrbX products and some sceneries. Not MAIW yet.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Greg »

I did some first testing of Matrix in V5. There's good news... and bad news. Which news do you want to hear first? :wink:

Okay so let's start with the good news: AI traffic from V4 works for the most part in V5. The only issues I have found so far are with addon AI sounds that play too loud (such as the ones for John Young's F-15) and prop textures that become practically invisible against the enhanced atmo sky (I know it's a beta feature but still... :roll: ). AIG has also found issues with effects versus PBR models but right now I can't confirm them yet.

The bad news is related to scenery. Because LM rebuilt all aerodromes with new data and new buildings, most add-on scenery that you copy from V4 to V5 will have the stock scenery sticking through. Some stock objects from V4 were also removed from V5 and new ones added, meaning that AFD files that rely on the stock V4 (/FSX) libraries may have missing objects. It's mostly noticeable with sceneries that still used the stock aiport terminal on the civilian side.

Some sceneries, such as Ian's Lakenheath scnery for P3DV4, work just fine because they used airfield wide excludes. But from the 10 airfields I checked as a random test that was the only one. All 9 others had issues.

For Matrix, this means going through all the ADE project files again one by one, once a V5 compatible production version becomes available for ADE. And even though we still haven't mangaged to convert all AFD's to P3DV4, that's still a huge task. By the time we're finished we may as well have to redo every airfield for MSFS...

So, way forward: I have started programming Matrix 2 from scratch. It will support both P3D V4 and P3D V5 and make it easier to potentially include MSFS support in the future. For both sims, there will be an option to install the full version of the region (with all paints) or a light version (with only 1 paint per unit plus special paints) or both with a toggle button to activate either full or light. Scenery will be a separate installation per region. For P3Dv5, there will be no scenery available from the start (or at least very little).

An alpha version should be available for internal testing in the coming weeks, followed by an open beta a few weeks later. In the mean time, there won't be any region updates for Matrix.

I'll keep everyone posted.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Manschy »

Thank you and all involved for all your relentless effort! I am sure that MATRIX will be as great as the previous version.
Oh, and a F-15 can not be too loud 8)
Regards, Manfred.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by TimC340 »

I'm sure you're aware, Greg, that Jon is fairly advanced with the dev edition of ADE to support P3Dv5, and it's been through several iterations already. As my faux pas with Randolph showed, there are - as you say - considerable differences with v5 which do complicate things, but Jon and others have demonstrated that there is a reasonably painless process of bringing v4 modified stock airfields into v5. Not totally without issues, but he's making progress.

P3Dv5 has several issues with hardware that will slow its uptake, so I don't anticipate that there will be an overwhelming demand for Matrix to be v5 compatible as yet. It may be worth annotating those MAIW downloads that have been found to be compatible without major issues in the meantime.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Greg »

Indeed Tim, I'm following Jon's progress on FSDeveloper.

In most cases it will probably be a simple process: load the ADE project file, load stock objects, delete the new stock objects (this creates new excludes), perhaps add 8.33 frequencies (many of our AFD's have fake VHF frequencies because in real life only UHF was available prior 8.33) and recompile.

It becomes more complex however if the AFD used stock objects that no longer exist, since then the object needs to be replaced by another one. Some airfields may now also be completely out of place because of the new vector data, so the airfield may have to be moved, or more exclusions created to remove roads, traffic, etc. Or the airfield may be so far from the new stock airfield that both are visible. Each airfield also needs to be verified in the sim and again after every additional change. Those are all things ADE can never do automatically for me.

And even if that only takes let's say 15 minutes per airfield, there are about 200 airfields to start with so that's 50 hours of work for a sim that, as you say, may not generate overwhelming demand. I think some people don't realise the scale of our packages and Matrix.

We'll see how things go, one thing at a time. ;)
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by TimC340 »

Absolutely, Greg. I've found with my own stuff that the differences between stock locations, Orbx and Google Earth can be significant, and at some point you have to settle for whatever works best for you. Hopefully v5 will mean the differences are smaller if it uses a more accurate mesh and vectors (I've just seen reference on fsdev that the v5 mesh may be significantly better than the FSX/P3Dv1-4 mesh). When they sort out the issues with AMD hardware, hopefully I can find out for myself! In the meantime, I'll concentrate on v4.5 - I still haven't got my head round the materials that introduced!
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Tuskin38 »

I can confirm that all the Canadian air fields that come with the MAIW V4 installer (CYZX, CYOD, CYQQ, CYBG and CYTR) do overlap with the new V5 airport updates.

Which actually surprises me, I never thought LM would ever touch Canadian military Air Fields.

Side note they added some parking (not as much as the addon sceneries) to all of them, except CYOD, but still updated the buildings and such for it. Odd.
Last edited by Tuskin38 on 27 Apr 2020, 15:34, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Greg »

Thanks Tuskin. That confirms my suspicion that I'll need to recompile all airports.

Some more issues to add to the list:
  • Aircraft canopies don't display correctly against trueSKY (either too bright or too dark). They display okay with enhanced atmo turned off
  • Afterburner effects may display wrong colours (with or without enhanced atmo)
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Trevytt2004 »

.....And then along comes FS2020.....
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Greg »

I took some time away from testing another sim :smt047 to check the changes in P3Dv5 HF2.

Quite a few things were fixed. Some bugs remain open but overall it's much more enjoyable now. The application loading time in particular is simply spectacular. From 25 minutes with my Matrix test setup, full OCI and custom GA to less than 1 minute now. :shock:

Some bugs that were fixed:
  • Props and rotors are now visible against trueSKY clouds
  • The blueish shine on canopies when dynamic reflections were turned on is now gone. In fact, canopies now look better with reflections on, even if only on "low"
  • Blurry mipmap textures are now gone
  • The visibility of aircraft lights has improved
  • Cloud shadows from trueSKY clouds now look less blocky
  • Performance is now even better and the application loading time is almost instantaneous even with a ton of AI traffic
Some remaining issues:
  • Due to changes in the SDK, afterburner effects look bad and will require some rework
  • Tire smoke on landing is still excessive
  • Some custom AI sounds, like the sound package for the JYAI F-15, are not scaling to distance
  • Airfields will need rework
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by John Young »

That's interesting Greg, thank you.

The observation you made of the afterburner effects, was that with an embedded effect or one specified as a light in the aircraft.txt file please? Does what you have found mean there is a difference between how P3Dv4 and P3Dv5 displays the afterburner effect?

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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Firebird »

Greg wrote: 26 Jun 2020, 14:52 The application loading time in particular is simply spectacular. From 25 minutes with my Matrix test setup, full OCI and custom GA to less than 1 minute now. :shock:
That on its own will sell it to a lot of people.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by gsnde »

It tells something about my current work life that I learn about the HF2 this way. I will package Gavins latest conversions this weekend, and I guess I make the screenshots on a new platform!
Cheers,
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by Greg »

John Young wrote: 26 Jun 2020, 15:35 The observation you made of the afterburner effects, was that with an embedded effect or one specified as a light in the aircraft.txt file please? Does what you have found mean there is a difference between how P3Dv4 and P3Dv5 displays the afterburner effect?
I first saw it while looking at your F-15's at Lakenheath, using fx_JYAI_F15_ab_P3Dv4 as a light source. The effect is very blue and a large blue halo appears around the aircraft after a few seconds. More testing is required to see if the effect is different with other settings and with embedded effects. It is known that LM made changes to multiple effect values in v5 but I'm not an expert so don't really know what to look for in the SDK.
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Re: MAIW and Prepar3DV5 ?

Post by John Young »

I don't have P3Dv5 myself so I can't explore what's happening with afterburners. If people could keep an eye on that and say a bit more that would be useful please. I don't have any P3D Typhoons made yet so there's no hurry. I'm hoping that I won't need P3Dv4 and P3Dv5 versions with different AB treatments.

John
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