Today, an interview with X-Plane developer Ben was published on flightsim.com. Ben is the engineer responsible for graphics, with over 10 years of X-Plane development experience, having participated in the programming of the terrain engine for versions 8, 9, and 10. Below, I will introduce a few topics that I personally found interesting.

Regarding Autogen It seems that the automatic terrain generation system, Autogen, is Ben’s favorite. This is because in X-Plane 10, this system does not merely display a 3D model; instead, it projects elements like roads and houses onto the terrain in real-time, so the realism brought by this system is very powerful. The development team is currently developing a new generation of buildings; many things are being redone, and they are committed to performance testing and fixing bugs.

Regarding Regional Terrain In X-Plane, no matter where you fly, all buildings look the same. For example, the Chinese terrain is filled with European-style villas, completely lacking a regional feel. The development team recognizes this as a highly requested improvement, but due to a shortage of manpower, this issue cannot be resolved anytime soon.

ATC Issues Everyone is full of complaints about X-Plane’s Air Traffic Control, and the development team deeply agrees. However, the priority now is to fix a large number of bugs. New features after the fixes might include support for VFR (a feature I am very much looking forward to!), operation modes, instrument approaches and departures, as well as improvements to processing performance. In the future, it is also possible to open parts of the ATC system to third parties.

Weather Engine Very beautiful clouds make the system very slow, which is a feature that has received a lot of criticism. The development team is fixing many bugs, and also has some ideas on how to improve performance, especially in 3D cockpit mode, when HDR, clouds, and anti-aliasing are all turned on, the impact on the system is greatest. If you are not satisfied with X-Plane’s built-in clouds, you might consider using SkyMaxx Pro, Ben considers this to be an excellent product.

Support for Seasonal Scenery The team has discussed this issue, but there is no complete plan yet. In the future, it may be divided into several updates to gradually support scenery that changes based on time and season in the engine, and this will be opened up to third-party developers.

Future New Features No comment on XP11, but support for the built-in GPS will be enhanced in 2014. Since navigational units like the G430 are now very widespread, and even general aviation small aircraft are equipped with them, the team needs to improve support for full-featured GPS navigation instruments to facilitate training for these pilots at home.

Oculus Rift The team has noted Oculus Rift and has already started working on supporting it.

End