Switch to Deferred Rendering: The simulator has officially transitioned away from a Forward Rendering pipeline to a Deferred Rendering architecture. This structural change allows the engine to handle a significantly higher volume of dynamic light sources simultaneously without a massive performance penalty.
LOD Rework: The Level of Detail (LOD) systems were completely reworked. By optimizing how and when lower-resolution models are swapped in, the engine drastically reduces the overall number of triangles drawn per frame, resulting in a more stable and elevated framerate.
Simulation Stability: Significant under-the-hood work went into stabilizing the core simulation physics and state engine, providing a solid foundation for these heavy visual upgrades.
GPU-Driven Grass Renderer: The vegetation system was rebuilt from scratch, replacing the older CPU/geometry shader approach with a highly efficient, two-pass GPU pipeline:
Pass 1 (Compute Shader): Culls and compacts blade instances against the camera frustum, density settings, and exclusion zones entirely on the GPU, writing surviving instances to a Shader Storage Buffer Object (SSBO).
Pass 2 (Vertex/Render Pass): Draws only the surviving instances via indirect draw calls. No data is sent back to the CPU, eliminating redundant work.
Advanced Texture & Runway Blending: Runways, roads, and terrain now utilize advanced texture blending to merge seamlessly into one another. Road/runway spine segment data is passed directly to the GPU, allowing grass density to fade out smoothly across transition zones rather than cutting off abruptly.
Dual Grass Modes: The system renders a mesh-based 3D grass asset (with custom albedo and normal maps) for close-range detail, and a crossed-quad billboard mode for distant coverage. Both respond to wind, engine jet wash, and quality settings.
Volumetric Fog & Godrays: Added fully volumetric fog and screen-space/atmospheric godrays, adding realistic depth to the air.
Real-Time Weather & Veil Clouds: High-altitude veil clouds have been integrated into the real-time weather system.
Atmospheric & Night Sky Model: The physically-based atmospheric scattering model (Rayleigh, Mie, and ozone) was refined. The day-to-night terminator line transition is smoother, horizon haze is more accurate, and the night sky features improved Milky Way rendering, better star visibility, and a phase-dependent shaded moon disk.
Airport & World Lighting: Runways and taxiways received a major density pass, adding accurate edge and centerline lighting.
Self-Shadowing & Reflections: Aircraft now support self-reflection and self-shadowing (when enabled in configuration), vastly improving the visual integration of the plane into the environment.