Development Update #10 - “Breaking The Silence”
Hi everyone,
We are welcome you to our new Development Update.
Hope you are doing well. We have passed this most difficult period and are ready to tell you about what awaits you in the coming months.
Earlier, we was so silent, and working to bring the new features and ideas to the Flight Simulation, specifically, over the approaching launch of long-awaited xAmbience Pro.
THANK YOU TO EVERYONE
First of all, we would like to say thank you to all those who supported us during this difficult period.
Thanks to all who purchase our products. Thanks to all those who believe in our ideas to make the simulator better and shine.
Trust is a strong mandate, which we highly appreciate.
We will do everything in our power to justify your hopes not only in the field of xAmbience Pro & Environment, but in the field of Flight Simulation and beyond.
xAmbience Pro. The most long-awaited item.
We will start by saying that: we have entered the beta stage.
xAmbience Pro is in beta testing. So far, everything is going as we planned, important issues are being caught that are being resolved in order to ensure the softest launch and maximum comfort for users when using the product. We caught almost 30% of the bugs that would be important if there was a launch today and are already working on a solution. The feedback snapshot is still closed to the public. We will publish it in the next update.
What’s happened with xAmbience Pro? It seems to be available in September?
As we said earlier, during the final testing, we found critical issues in cloud rendering.
We have killed about two months to solve this problem.
The main problem was that upon reaching a certain altitude, the clouds were not drawn to the horizon. They were just hiding.
We made different decisions to fix this, but it didn't work for us for a long time and we had to resort to rewriting the code and changing the functions of the weatherman in order to get around this limitation.
We rewrote about 50 thousand lines of code in the Weatherman (Our own Weather Engine), separated the weather and its management under our complete control, redesigned the Weatherman (Our Weather Engine) interface, and introduced a bunch of innovations to make use possible.
It's all for the sake of one thing - to provide high-quality realistic and beautiful rendering of clouds.
New Things in xAmbience Pro
Over the entire period of code rewriting, we have introduced a very large list of brand-new things.
This will be available with the v1.0 release. We had planned to implement this before, and we had the code to do it, but we needed to change the rendering for these changes. Since the rendering changes have been made in recent months, these things are also here :)
Explore full list of changes in xAmbience Pro below:
COMPLEX CLOUDS FORMATIONS
Added thunderstorms, towering cumulus and other complex formations which not available with Default X-Plane.
More info in next update.NEW CLOUDS RENDERING STRUCTURE & CLOUDS TYPES
Added completely reworked clouds rendering structure, new format of types, and etc.
More info in next update.UPGRADED IN CLOUDS VISUALS
Added brand new visuals for clouds passing effect. Now you will have realistic high-definition immersion when you fly through clouds.
More info below.UPGRADED SKY VISUALS
The body of the sky has been changed, the defects in the lower atmosphere have been removed. Fixed cyclical colors, etc.
More info in next update.UPGRADED CLOUDS VISUALS
Removed repetitions in rendering, added the ability to "soft" render when the cloud layer collides with irregularities, such as mountains. Clouds clarity has also been improved. More info in next update.TUNED USER INTERFACE FOR MORE SOFT OPERATION
Miscellanious change, but here it is.
More info below.
NEW BRANCH OF SCREENSHOTS COMING! CLICK TO IMAGES!
VIDEO CONTENT WILL BE MORE NOW!
You asked - we did. We admit there was little video material about xA Pro development before. Meet - Showcase Video Series.
These videos will be released every 3-5 days on our YouTube channel.
Let’s go!
xAmbience Pro | The Showcase: User Interface Overview
xAmbience Pro | The Showcase: Soft Weather Changes (From Clear to Stormy)
When it will be released?
We don’t want to say dates. But we plan to make a public launch in Q4 2020 - Q1 2021.
Stay tuned for updates! In next dev update comes more interesting info & shots at xAmbience Pro.
Other Information.
We published updated SDK, which available HERE.
We published a roadmap for future, which available HERE.
New Website Launched.
If you read this article, you at the our brand new website: hst.aero.
Stay here for updates and more! highskytech.com are down forever, with highskytech name of company.
Now we names: HST Simulations.
3D Clouds Development & Other News.
Let's start with the most significant part: developing 3D clouds.
This is what we managed to make noise about in 2020.
Of course, the development is in full swing, and at the moment I can say one thing: we are confidently moving towards victory in this direction. The team works well and smoothly, and we have some success in this direction. Unfortunately, we will not be entering the market with this in 2020. xA Pro will be the first to enter the market, after which this business will enter the market. But don't despair!
The first video about lighting in our 3D clouds has arrived:
BE SURE. VISUALS WORKS IN PROGRESS. THIS IS EARLY PRE-ALPHA PREVIEW.
On top of that, we also have a bunch of news. Firstly, it prepares for testing RealView 1.6 with support for virtual reality and new effects. It will be released in 2020.
Secondly, a full-scale update of the entire product line is being prepared with the transition to a new update system. The work is going on in all directions.
We Are Hiring Right Now!
We announcing for the first time a large-scale recruitment to our family.
In the coming months, we are going to implement one of the next-gen ideas and we need you for this.
HST Simulations - this is union of worldwide teams with only one goal: provide the most quality products to Flight Simulation Industry.
If you want to join us, learn more about it HERE.
What type of project will be next? Guess & Win!
As you know, HST Simulations is a union of several teams. And each product has its own team.
A few weeks ago, a new team was formed that will work in a new direction for us. And this team has already started working on a new product.
Do you want to win one copy of the brand-new product? Then guess the type of this product.
Try your luck, try to guess what the next type of product will offer HST Simulations to the world community. Click HERE to participate.
Thank you, for reading all this longread.
See you at next week in new regular development update.
Stay tuned!
Kind Regards
HST Simulations Team
hst.aero
