- #IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT UPDATE#
- #IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT CODE#
- #IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT MAC#
- #IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT WINDOWS#
So _all_ other use cases have better alternatives and need to be ported. The bridge is only for actual native drawing.
#IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT WINDOWS#
Given the bugs we've found on Windows with plugin bridging and the OS-specific parts, I have to consider 3-d bridging to be untested compared to the rest of Linux.ġ. If anyone out there _is_ writing a Linux weather add-on, they should ping us, but we just don't have the real world test coverage. The issue with the 3-d drawing callback is that the weather add-on guys we have in our program are Mac/Win (SkyMaxx) and Win-only (圎nviro) so neither of them have tried the bridge on Linux. Those devs have definitely caught and reported Linux bugs. This surprised us at first - we knew there'd be "extra Linux" but we didn't expect that much. I'd guess we might be 25% linux inside the private beta, which is devs-only. The thing to note is that Linux is a tiny fraction of our overall user base (< 2%) but represents a disproportionately large part of the beta program because a lot of third party devs are using Linux as a dev environment. Linux _is_ in the private beta – the private builds are for three platforms and there are a lot of Linux users. Our plan is to have detailed guidance on what technique is best for developers by the time we are ready for public beta. Other techniques like adding objects to the sim and drawing markings are better handled with other APIs. The new 3-d drawing callbacks are really only meant for custom drawing like clouds.
By requiring plugins to opt-in when they _really_ want 3-d drawing in Vulkan, we should get better performance. We’re making this opt-in because, during the beta, we’ve found a lot of add-ons using 3-d drawing callbacks inappropriately, and 3-d drawing callbacks are no longer free.
#IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT UPDATE#
2-d Drawing Just Works 3-d Drawing Requires a New Pluginįor plugins that draw in 2-d we’ve gone for a “just works” level of compatibility while we have seen some plugins that need to update due to illegal techniques and bugs, our goal is that a well-authored add-on just works even when Vulkan and Metal are in use.īy comparison, OpenGL drawing inside Vulkan is going to require plugin authors to sign up for a new 3-d drawing callback. Native Vulkan rendering by plugins is an incredibly complex SDK problem, and not something we are looking at for 11.50. To be clear: on Windows what we are supporting is 3-d OpenGL drawing by plugins inside the Vulkan renderer, not native Vulkan rendering by plugins inside the Vulkan renderer. (We would revisit this if Apple introduced a new API but I do not expect this to happen.) This isn’t something we can fix with some future bit of cleverness – it’s a limitation of OS X’s APIs.
#IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT MAC#
The technique we are using is not available on OS X, so running a cloud plugin on Mac will require the OpenGL driver, not Metal. The Details: Vulkan, not Metalģ-d drawing compatibility will be available for Vulkan, but not Metal. No more having to pick – you can have your third party clouds and Vulkan at the same time. Those pics are a special build of SkyMaxx running in 11.50 in Vulkan mode. I am pleased to now be able to say: it works! The Skymaxx and 圎nviro developers are in our private test program and have been great about jumping on new builds while remaining radio silent while we test this new tech. This means we can now support OpenGL-based weather/cloud plugins from inside a Vulkan render, which we did not think was possible before.
#IS SKYMAXX PRO WORTH IT CODE#
We found one unexpected result from this redesign: when we finished rewriting the bridge, we ended up with code that could, in the case of Vulkan only, be used for 3-d drawing. That rework of the bridge is now done and things are looking quite a bit better on all fronts. We also realized that we needed to change the design of that bridge to get much better compatibility. While the initial bridge to connect OpenGL-based plugins to X-Plane worked pretty well, compatibility wasn’t perfect and we had a few bugs.
For the last few weeks we’ve had the Vulkan/Metal version of X-Plane in a private test program with third party developers, letting them kick the tires to discover the limits and bugs in our plugin compatibility code.
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