Letter from ED Redux

Any ideas?

On paper. In practice, not enough developers have managed to make enough games running on all to prove that.

In fact, it’s not at all uncommon to have to test each new title to see if DX12/Vulkan is worth running over DX11. Sometimes it’s too buggy. Sometimes performance is too unstable (ie higher top/averages but detrimental hitching/spikes to low fps). Sometimes it depends too much on driver versions/OEM so while it’s better on AMD it’s worse on nvidia.

When a game runs worse in DX12 than DX11, I shake my head in sorrow. Then there are games that already run so well that it doesn’t matter what you choose because it looks just as good and runs super fast either way.

So far, Sniper Elite 4 is the only title I’ve played where DX12 ran faster and looked better than DX11. Most others DX11 was clearly better
because consoles are DX11. Vulkan in DOOM was unnecessary. Same appearance, performance difference was irrelevant. Maybe if I was running with 3 monitors @4k I would’ve seen something, but I don’t have that kind of space.

Also, while in many games the video is so demanding it stalls the game, in flight sims so far we’ve not really experienced a gfx bottleneck. My 1070 is more than enough for what goes on, the bottleneck is single-threaded code getting stalled. A good example is the cluster bombs in DCS/LOMAC where you don’t even need to have them on screen to get a severe slow down. Another is turning to look in the direction of a town with a lot of units, which you can’t make out at the range you’re at, but the slowdown happens anyway. All CPU based.

So while I’m satisfied that they’re not sitting on DX11 and declaring it a sufficient goal, I don’t think it has been the impediment. Getting better multicore/thread usage out of their engine is what really will give a boost.

As for this comment:

We were very surprised to find that the investment vs. generated revenue has been excellent for the World War II aircraft. In fact, the P-51D Mustang has twice the cost effectiveness of the A-10C Warthog.


am I the only one not surprised? A WWII bird seems to me a natural to not only generate more sales (due to the lower complexity of the systems) but also to take less resources to create.

Taking a page from the film industry (just because I know those numbers well off the top of my head), while you can spend $1m or $5m on a film and make only $10m, you can also easily make $100m or even $150m, giving a phenomenal ROI. But if you even make just $50m, that’s a win.
Meanwhile, if a film cost $150m and makes $200m
ugh. In both cases, you made $50m. However, if you spend 1 to make 50 that’s far better than spending 150 to make 200–because you can make a lot more 1m films than you can 150m ones. Rule of thumb is you should make double your money, so if you spend $150m you BETTER make at least $300m.

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Ok another try:
What bothers me is that they remain very vague.
I hope they show us a few things soon, especially gameplay related things. Up until now it looks like “just” a graphics update.
Fingers crossed for my favourite sim.

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The timescales talked about in the letter seemed to suggest quite a short wait, so we’ll see! :slight_smile:

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I, too, would like an F-16. I’m hoping that next fixed wing aircraft is indeed the Viper. I know it will create a lot of ripples, but I believe multiple sims of a given aircraft can exsist in this universe. It would also be cool to have my favorite ac running in the same engine.

I’m also hoping for a dynamic campaign too (of course with scripted, triggered, elements to add some excitement).

I’m excited about the news and patient enough to wait and see. I’ve been simming for so long it really is nice to see how far we’ve come.


my random thoughts,
–T

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Yup, same thought, didn’t see that one coming.

This is ridiculously exciting.

I learned today that the dev team for the WW2 birds is both the junior varsity and one of the biggest revenue generators. Every company in every sector hopes for that dynamic to be in play. Long term growth is built on the replacement pool being both skill-set manageable and financially viable.

I get this, and I too often find myself getting a beer and wandering over to the Wary Section to watch the game. But consider not the lack of content so much as the release as a whole and who it is coming from. For ED this is equivalent to a comet in the sky that is a portent of things. Drama I know but they gotta be feeling close.

Lastly from me -

Hey ED, If the P-51 is a revenue generator, the P-47 is ready to dive bomb you with cash


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@Sryan - I added in the source for the quote to the ED forums - hope that’s ok, and just wanted to let you know it wasn’t a ghost or something. :slight_smile:

The letter. Some thoughts:

  • Good to see community communication like this. With whole forums existing wondering what Wags had for breakfast then this ‘where we’ve been, where we are going’ big picture stuff is nice.

  • Very interesting to read about the graphics engine, and very happy to see Vulkan being planned. While the ‘Great Merge’ has been the focus, it’s nice to see what sort of future enhancements are coming. Faster renderer, more VR :vr: :slight_smile:

  • The talk about investment in the team was new, in that a lot of the WWII stuff being a way to grow the skills of the people in at Eagle Dynamics. With IL-2 BoX brewing then it’s great (from a consumers perspective) to see lots of competitive action in this area.

  • There was a FC-17 mentioned in there you know. :slight_smile:

  • The ‘two weeks’ thing. I personally would have been tempted to never ever say a timeframe, ever. :slight_smile: Just sort of release it with ‘Boom, Ladies!’ :boom: Anyway, it does seem soon and I’m very excited to see.

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Shush you. You got your -47 elsewhere. I still want my F-4/6/4/F/U

If I get a double wasp, so do you


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But why do we need a Pirate in game?

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Shut up and take my money!

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Here, here, right you are old chap.

^^^^^^^
This.

It has been said before but I’ll repeat it again
once a stable, relatively bug free 2.5 is in the consumer’s hands, the flood gates will then be open and we’ll see more third parties diving into the fray, a more systemic release of modules along with a more varied show of modules including new maps. We will all have to make sure we have plenty of SSD space to accommodate our fun.

Good for ED! Looks like I’ll be getting my new computer just in time. :wink:

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Actually, I’m looking forward to not having two installs going forward as well.

I’ll take off 1.5 but put on Straits of Hormuz I guess. :slight_smile:

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I’m still in the middle of some Caucasus based A-10C training (err
there might be rust on my plane by now) - I wonder if the 2.5 will also include third party campaigns made compatible, or if that will require each campaign maker to basically make that adjustment.

Sooo the big question is. (aside from the obvious F-111 related wishlist)

Who is going to be the first to stitch all the maps together to make one huge caucuses + nevada + normandy + hormuz mega map??? !!!

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The Aristocrats!

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That’d be pretty funny- with nothing but an infinite sea of grey goo beneath you until you reach the “great nothingness” corners of the actual maps.

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