P3D V4 Announced

[theskyisthelimit99]

They (just hours ago) made a comment on their flight sim facebook post that they are still supporting all the platforms for FlyInside.. and that p3dv4 should be a few months out, so i guess its slightly delayed but still in the picture.

[jimh20]

They (just hours ago) made a comment on their flight sim facebook post that they are still supporting all the platforms for FlyInside.. and that p3dv4 should be a few months out, so i guess its slightly delayed but still in the picture.

Well, hopefully by Christmas then? Meantime P3D v3 is excellent via FlyInside. I'm going to try to forget v4 for now!

[Terrydew]

They (just hours ago) made a comment on their flight sim facebook post that they are still supporting all the platforms for FlyInside.. and that p3dv4 should be a few months out, so i guess its slightly delayed but still in the picture.

I could not find that post. Do you have a link?

[pidi72]

Can't find the facebook post, too.
The newest post there is from Aug.13th and it is about their new website for Flyinside Simulator.

---sigh---

If I missed it, a link would be nice.

Hopefully LM is working on it.

[denrainwater]

I couldn't find a way to save a link direct to the discussion, but it's presently the second post down the list on FlyInside's Facebook page. Here's a screenshot, if I can get it to work...

FlyInside.jpg (224.77 KiB) Viewed 16873 times

[denrainwater]

Here's the link to their FB page...

https://www.facebook.com/FlyInsideFSX/

[luke]

Another few months? Seriously? I think that's it for me then. FI brought me some real pleasure in p3D v3 after I had pretty much given up on the platform. Shame I only discovered it recently. However, 32 bit limitations prevent me from setting the sim up as I'd like and so V4 64 bit is a must. The event of VR has transformed things for me and I have no interest in reverting back to track IR or plain old 2D.

I just don't understand FI's mentality here, other than to suspect that they've sniffed out an opportunity to cash-in by releasing their own sim platform at the expense of their core product and the numerous customers who have placed their trust in them.

I'm obviously not the only one who feels very let down here. What a shame...

[denrainwater]

Another few months? Seriously? I think that's it for me then. FI brought me some real pleasure in p3D v3 after I had pretty much given up on the platform. Shame I only discovered it recently. However, 32 bit limitations prevent me from setting the sim up as I'd like and so V4 64 bit is a must. The event of VR has transformed things for me and I have no interest in reverting back to track IR or plain old 2D.

I just don't understand FI's mentality here, other than to suspect that they've sniffed out an opportunity to cash-in by releasing their own sim platform at the expense of their core product and the numerous customers who have placed their trust in them.

I'm obviously not the only one who feels very let down here. What a shame...

I feel frustrated and just a little betrayed, too. But I am hopeful -- though the egregious spelling errors don't add confidence -- that the promise that "We are {EXPANDING, hopefully] and adding ressources (sic)" means that the workload that Dan has apparently spread himself too thin on is presently acquiring (competent, I am praying) coding staff who can keep all of the areas FlyInside has committed to CAPABLY moving forward. Dan is obviously a gifted programmer with a great vision that has served us in the VR Simming community exceedingly well. It would be SUCH a shame for that bright start to flame out so quickly by succumbing to what ends too many brilliant entrepreneurs' careers prematurely -- trying to do too much at once!

[WebMaximus]

Not exactly the information I was hoping for when I came here today to find out the latest information about a P3Dv4 version of FI.

I hope we'll have some solid info from the developers in the very near future.

[admin]

Hi All,

We should've posted an update sooner... but better late than never?

So I'll start with the information you're all looking for. We've been making a lot of progress with P3Dv4. We have VR integration itself (stereo rendering, high-resolution rendering, head-tracking) working, along with our virtual window system.

The really good news is that we're already seeing significantly better performance compared to the built-in VR from Prepar3D. This may not hold true across all settings/configurations/systems, but on our dev machines, I'm getting 45-50fps FlyInside vs 30fps Prepar3D-VR on the same settings.



At this point, we have quite a few graphical glitches we're fixing up, and we're getting our interaction system fully interfaced with Prepar3Dv4. Given current status, we're hoping to begin beta testing in-earnest late August, with a product launch sometime in September. We're behind the schedule we originally wanted, but not too far behind.

So now to address some of the issues brought up in this thread:

1. Why behind schedule, why wasn't this launched months ago?

First off, Prepar3D V4 was a major change from V3. 32-bit to 64-bit, dynamic lighting, etc. Some aircraft updates took months, and aircraft developers are generally using the SDK for which Lockheed provided a nice upgrade path. Our software didn't have an SDK upgrade path, to add high-performance VR support we do a lot of things not supported by the SDK. Reading binary data, intercepting function-calls, and of course our graphics injection system, all needed heavy modification if not rewriting to support P3Dv4. All of this has been time consuming, but we're getting there.

2. Why the radio silence and lack of updates?

Personally, I hate giving updates without substance. Nothing worse than writing "We're still working on it, but it's tricky so nothing new to report." For the past month or two we've been stuck on getting our graphics injection system working, and been having major conflicts with the new tiled lighting system. It makes heavy use of compute shaders, and other tech we could largely ignore in P3Dv3. Quite frankly, we've spent most of this time stuck in the same place, trying to fix the same few crashes and glitches, which were proving extremely difficult to resolve. Any update during this time-period would've been "we're still working on the same crashes, nothing exciting to report, schedule slipping because we're making little headway."

As of yesterday, I'm proud to report that we resolved those particular issues, and we're back to writing features and fixing bugs at a normal pace. A week ago the software was completely useless. Today you can fly around in VR, even if it's missing some features.

I'll make an effort to be more transparent on progress.

3. What was with the Facebook post?

So that was written by my business partner. Although he's a very skilled businessman, he hails from France originally, so please forgive the typos/English. He's been managing the Facebook to help me focus my time on the code/development. Given that the dev team had been running into the above-mentioned graphical glitches without a clear resolution, he wrote "several months" to play it safe. I hadn't told him about our breakthrough at the time. Luckily his projection is proving overly pessimistic

As for our team growing, it certainly has been! At the beginning of this year, we only had two software developers (including myself). We've since added 2.5 more (a very talented intern included x0.5), and are working on adding another. They're all very talented people, and have been coming up to speed on the technology, while I come up to speed on running a larger team.

4. Why time going to the new sim?

I understand that some of you (and probably most of the people in this thread) are more interested in FlyInside for P3Dv4 compared to our new simulator. We didn't run some calculation and decide that the new simulator would be an easy cash grab. On the contrary, it's a huge investment, a bit of a gamble, but hopefully will be worth it in the long-run. Given what we've accomplished modding existing simulators, you can only imagine what we're able to accomplish with our own engine. The sim isn't about quick money (although as a company we're hoping it will earn enough to fund development), it's about allowing us to really innovate in-terms of VR technology. If nothing else, please give it a chance when we release it later this year.

5. I miss when you were more activate on the forum. Where'd you go?

Me too. When FlyInside started, there were fewer users around, just a couple of products, and I could answer most people personally. These days I'm managing development of FlyInside P3Dv4, FlyInside XP, our new sim, and FSX/P3D-classic. On-top of this I actually have multiple developers to coordinate, business concerns, and still write a lot of code. It doesn't leave me with much time to browse the forum, although I have Tony point me to the posts that really need me. I do try to answer e-mails as much as possible, so if you want, feel welcome to send one.

Anyways, hope this clears things up for everyone, and sorry for the radio silence. We are (finally) making progress, and should have FlyInside for P3Dv4 released sooner rather than later

Thanks,
Dan