Latest Comments by Mountain Man
Vulkan support is not far away now for the flight sim X-Plane 11, physics & flight model updates coming
16 Oct 2019 at 8:37 pm UTC Likes: 2
But before you declare MS Flight Simulator 2020 the king of graphics, the trick is actually very simple: orthophotos, a trick that has been around for years, and you can add for free to X-Plane 11, assuming you have the time to generate them from publicly available satellite imagery resources, and the several terabytes of hard drive space to store them. My hunch is that MSFS 2020 will not store the considerable amounts of data on user's hard drives but will be an online-only title that will pull down the data only as needed.
And while orthophotos generally look good, they come with certain problems, such as textures sometimes being oddly stretched over surface geometry, "baked in" shadows that don't match the in-game lighting, dynamic roads not lining up with the photos so that you end up with oddities like cars driving through buildings, generated 3D structures that don't line up with the photos leading to flattened buildings, visible seams between photo textures where they don't perfectly line up, and so on. And, yes, every single one of these problems is visible in the MSFS 2020 trailer, but the deliberately fast-paced editing makes them hard to spot.
16 Oct 2019 at 8:37 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: ArdjeThe bigger question for the flight sim world is when does MS 2020 come out, which is the only title that will bring me back to Windows for gaming if it does not run on Wine/Proton and which looks bonkers amazing and which could make XP 11 somewhat irrelevant...If all you care about is eye-candy then X-Plane might become "irrelevant", but X-Plane has always been the king of physics and flight dynamics.
But before you declare MS Flight Simulator 2020 the king of graphics, the trick is actually very simple: orthophotos, a trick that has been around for years, and you can add for free to X-Plane 11, assuming you have the time to generate them from publicly available satellite imagery resources, and the several terabytes of hard drive space to store them. My hunch is that MSFS 2020 will not store the considerable amounts of data on user's hard drives but will be an online-only title that will pull down the data only as needed.
And while orthophotos generally look good, they come with certain problems, such as textures sometimes being oddly stretched over surface geometry, "baked in" shadows that don't match the in-game lighting, dynamic roads not lining up with the photos so that you end up with oddities like cars driving through buildings, generated 3D structures that don't line up with the photos leading to flattened buildings, visible seams between photo textures where they don't perfectly line up, and so on. And, yes, every single one of these problems is visible in the MSFS 2020 trailer, but the deliberately fast-paced editing makes them hard to spot.
Vulkan support is not far away now for the flight sim X-Plane 11, physics & flight model updates coming
15 Oct 2019 at 4:54 pm UTC
15 Oct 2019 at 4:54 pm UTC
Quoting: GuestThey had talked about preliminary tests and some improvement in performance actually. They also said miracles should not be expected. It was long ago. :)X-Plane 11 is actually extremely well optimized at this point. In fact, it runs better for me than X-Plane 10 ever did. So in my case, Vulkan could only deliver small improvements.
Total War Saga: TROY officially announced and it will be coming to Linux next year
19 Sep 2019 at 3:22 pm UTC
As for me, I think the market is over saturated with Total War games. The only thing different between each of them is the setting and graphics. They could just sell the Total War gaming engine and then sell "scenario packs" offering different eras and military technologies.
19 Sep 2019 at 3:22 pm UTC
Quoting: TcheyToo bad it's going to be "historical", and not "mythological" with beasts, gods, etc.In that case, you want Total War: Warhammer.
As for me, I think the market is over saturated with Total War games. The only thing different between each of them is the setting and graphics. They could just sell the Total War gaming engine and then sell "scenario packs" offering different eras and military technologies.
Weekend Deals: grab DiRT Rally completely free to keep and more not to miss
14 Sep 2019 at 9:18 pm UTC Likes: 1
14 Sep 2019 at 9:18 pm UTC Likes: 1
I've gotten so many free over the past few years that it almost makes it pointless to buy new games.
Beautiful open-world action adventure Pine is releasing next month
13 Sep 2019 at 5:16 pm UTC Likes: 1
13 Sep 2019 at 5:16 pm UTC Likes: 1
Has a very strong resemblance to Breath of the Wild.
Manjaro levels up as a serious Linux distribution
9 Sep 2019 at 1:45 pm UTC Likes: 2
I've also heard it said that one of the worst things about Linux is the amount of choice the consumer has!
9 Sep 2019 at 1:45 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: pbI used to love KDE, using it all the way through v2 and v3. When they released KDE4, I promptly switched to gnome 2. Then came Gnome 3 so I switched to Mate. With Mate losing momentum in favour of Cinnamon, I switched to XFCE and I never felt the need to switch again (though I have sometimes tried other DEs, including newer versions of KDE). The worst thing about open source is that all the time people break something that is working well, and the best thing about open source is that there are always plenty of alternatives to switch to. :PI've heard it said that one of the best things about Linux is the amount of choice the consumer has.
I've also heard it said that one of the worst things about Linux is the amount of choice the consumer has!
Manjaro levels up as a serious Linux distribution
8 Sep 2019 at 8:56 pm UTC Likes: 2
8 Sep 2019 at 8:56 pm UTC Likes: 2
Quoting: Whitewolfe80I've heard this argument before, but it makes little sense to me. As the saying goes, empty RAM is wasted RAM. I've been using KDE for years, and it has never been anything other than fast and responsive for me, even when I'm running a RAM intensive piece of software like GIMP, so I've never understood the frequent complaints I hear about KDE "bloat" and "inefficiency".Quoting: ShmerlWould be nice if they also focus on KDE as the primary supported DE, and will help speeding up its development.Personally I would rather xfce became their primary and only de but thats because I like the fact its very memory efficent and i have plenty of ram i just dont like bloat code that comes with a vanilla kde base.
openblack is a FOSS game engine for Black & White currently under development
3 Sep 2019 at 2:47 pm UTC Likes: 3
3 Sep 2019 at 2:47 pm UTC Likes: 3
Quoting: TcheyI can't believe after all these years, no other game manage to catch the same feeling from Black & White.You mean that feeling of disappointment when you realized that Peter Molyneux blatantly lied about a number of promised features, and that the game was little more than a short-lived novelty?
Great looking retro-inspired FPS Ion Fury is out now with Linux support
16 Aug 2019 at 12:18 am UTC
But, yeah, this game is definitely a labor of love.
16 Aug 2019 at 12:18 am UTC
Quoting: ShmerlLot's of small hidden interactions. Trying to interact with a power socket gives an electric shock :)Pretty sure that was in Duke Nukem 3D, too.
But, yeah, this game is definitely a labor of love.
Great looking retro-inspired FPS Ion Fury is out now with Linux support
15 Aug 2019 at 3:36 pm UTC Likes: 13
15 Aug 2019 at 3:36 pm UTC Likes: 13
Quoting: DuncMy only niggle would be that the price is maybe a little steep for something based on 20-year-old tech...What does that matter? The team at Voidpoint still put hundreds (thousands?) of hours of work into it, and they're charging less than half of the current going rate for a new AAA release. I think it's more than fair.
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