X Plane Version 8 Scenery, first look.....
 
The latest version of X Plane has been released and will be hitting the retail shelves by Thanksgiving. This is the beginning of the version 8 and the big news is that it's sporting a completely new scenery engine. Those of you familiar with past versions of the program will know only too well that this is an upgrade that X Plane has needed for a long time now. Here's a rundown of the new scenery engine features:

Variable Density/Non-Uniform Terrain Mesh.

Customizable Vector Roads

Placed Objects instead of AutoGen

Easy Mapping of Textures to the Polygon Grid

New set of Open Source Scenery Creation Tools

Here are a few screen shots showing the new system in action. Please keep in mind that these are not taken at the highest object density that the new system is capable of but rather at the highest settings my XP 2800+/Ti 4200 system could run without dropping below 16 FPS. Clicking on any image will bring up a full resolution (1024 x 768) uncompressed view.
San Bernadino, rwy-6

 
Mountain Lakes

 
Peaks

 
From 30K

 
Rivers, roads and objects

 
Dense urban, LA basin

 
Building objects, highway interchange

 
General Comments......

There is no doubt that the new engine is a big improvement for X Plane. The general topography looks a lot better then in version 7. That said there are some problems with this early version. The biggest one is performance. Because the stability of the flight model will not tolerate frame rates in the 20's or lower, you really have to pull back on the rendering settings to get this to run on a mid-level PC. That includes keeping the FOV narrow (default is now 45 deg.), the visibility distance low and going light on 3D clouds. As outlined above, autogen has been dumped in favor of placed objects. This reduces the CPU load at run time but it remains to be seen if this is a practical approach to scenery on a worldwide basis.

Another problem is in the rendering of runways and taxiways. If you look closely at the first image at San Bernadino you'll see that the runway undulates up and down as it follows the terrain mesh. This results slope values that change as much as 4 degrees and elevation changes along the runway of 60 feet. This is obviously excessive and not representative of the real-world situation. In fact, crossing the more severe joints in both areas will often result in a crash.

The next release is supposed to include both performance improvements and a flatteng fix for the runways so that's something to keep an eye on. Overall this is certainly a step in the right direction although it's very much a work on progress. The system has the capability, at least for limited areas, to produce excellent scenery. Assuming that the performance problems can be fixed, 3rd party developers should be able to do a lot with the system..