Announcing TerraMaxx - Seasons for X-Plane!

[Cameron]

Ok Cameron, since our last conversation I had time to run to the theatre and conduct (I am a professional orchestra conductor...) the Rite of spring for the ballet here in Montreal (les Grands Ballets Canadien they are called) and came back home at midnight still totally full of adrenaline... if one doesnt know the Rite of spring please check it out, it is the most brutal and exciting piece of music... and then: Lo! Just dowloaded it and played a bit with it: it is brilliant and very beautiful, thanks so much!!!

I had to ask the (perhaps) stupid question: why no spring?????

 

thanks again, great product as ever!!

I think the answer is that spring leading into summer from an above earth perspective is really going to look mostly the same. The summer textures satisfy that, so they get put to use, unlike autumn, which justified having a set of its own for the unique colors that time of year.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the product!

[jsperl]

Download is taking forever...and that's a good sign!  

[rdtv]

Flown first 2 flights with it and here are my observations:

 

-The long pause is an absolute killer; tbh I've had to set it manual and then not change it again during the flight as it takes so long (I've got a decent i7, SSD and 1080TI and still takes a while/ freezes the sim if I click or do anything)

-Missing Spring - I read what you wrote above but I feel if its an addon advertising 'seasons' then it should be in there; also not all winter is snow so should also have a winter with darker textures, barren trees and so on.  Just look at what ORBX have done for P3D/FSX series; I was expecting something along the lines of proper season representation; especially for $40....

 

Overall it's okay but I don't really feel it's worth the price tag; the textures are ok but not stand out and only massive difference is if you're using hard winter/ snow - Maybe with some updates/ patches to improve loading speed and add more season variety then it'll become worth it but at the moment I feel personally that it falls short a bit.

[FlyAgi]

I bought it last night and think, for a beginning, TerraMaxx is okay. I say that because I am not satisfied with your vegetation assets for the most part but I also know that this can be easily updated as TerrMaxx heavily makes use of the XP library system - and that is really great, everything seems to be costomizable by scenery designers and making scenery compatible seems to be not too hard. 

So... I'm digging deeper into it but I did not find the demo scenery package in the files. The manual mentions the SeasonsXP library and I did look at it already, but I still have some questions regarding seasonal overlay orthophotos and their propper implementation. Where do I find the demo scenery? 

Edited March 18, 2018 by paradoxagi

[JohnMAXX]

28 minutes ago, paradoxagi said:

I bought it last night and think, for a beginning, TerraMaxx is okay. I say that because I am not satisfied with your vegetation assets for the most part but I also know that this can be easily updated as TerrMaxx heavily makes use of the XP library system - and that is really great, everything seems to be costomizable by scenery designers and making scenery compatible seems to be not too hard. 

So... I'm digging deeper into it but I did not find the demo scenery package in the files. The manual mentions the SeasonsXP library and I did look at it already, but I still have some questions regarding seasonal overlay orthophotos and their propper implementation. Where do I find the demo scenery? 

It's in the works, this wasn't planned for our release......

 

Just be patient, I want to make sure the tutorial is complete... 

[JohnMAXX]

Oh another side note, the recently released UM v3 has a library.txt you can use as a guide for scenery creation....

[JEFX]

7 hours ago, Cameron said:

 

 

I think the answer is that spring leading into summer from an above earth perspective is really going to look mostly the same. The summer textures satisfy that, so they get put to use, unlike autumn, which justified having a set of its own for the unique colors that time of year.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the product!

I dont agree with you Cameron.

I am a pilot (despite very modest Private Pilot flying Cessnas) and spring seen from the air can be soooo beautiful! 

I live in Montreal and the winter is very hard (there are still tons of sonw and this morning the temperature is close to minus 15 (with beautiful sun and blue sky).

BUT!: 

 When FINALLY all that snow melts and  this magical moment of spring comes, when the very pale green tender baby leafs bloom on the pretty dark wet earth background it has a feeling and a beauty seen from the air that is incomparable!  I think that you whould really add spring to a SEASONS package!

my 2 cents

 

JEFX

[JEFX]

I would add to that: if ever you can get to it in further development, the most realistic would be several states (according to the date and latitude) for each seasons (like people is proposing and like YOU are doing a bit with 2 shades of winter...)  One can imagine Autumn with full colored trees and another period of autumn with no more leafs and very brown feeling, etc...  also, seasons could be adapted to the latitude.  Northern countries have so little leaf trees and mostly evergreens, so seasons look obviously different.  Even further, if one wanted to dream a bit, imagine that your snow cover would follow the real weather snow falls... I know from experience from the air that the land looks quite different after a big snow storm (I am not talking about the dull repeating fields, of course, but the roads, the hills, etc..).  Frozen rivers or not?  and, as was discussed earlier in the thread, based on temperature, snow cover on top of mountains at the dewpoint temperature... that is a dream.  X-Plane (that we all love) has been so DULL all these years regarding all those aspects and your plugin must be the door to all that! (one can look at what they did in DCS world 2.5 that just came out, the seasons are sunning!)  Anyway...Just some thoughts!

JEFX

[FlyAgi]

4 hours ago, JohnMAXX said:

Just be patient, I want to make sure the tutorial is complete.

I have my onw trees working perfectly fine now. I'm just thinking about a solution for orthophotos without the need of creating library entries for every single tile (some of my sceneries have about 300 of them)... but maybe I already have a solution for creating those entries somewhat automated. 

So, as it seems I can't embed screenshots here, I have a link to my screenshots demonstrating my HD trees seasonal prototype:

https://flyagi.de/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27

 

Further, I have a question: Is it possible to create a single library.txt for my scenery that can be used in an untouched XP without TerraMaxx and at the same time providing seasons for users that have TerraMaxx installed? 

 

4 hours ago, JohnMAXX said:

the recently released UM v3

What is UM v3? 

 

[stolowski]

58 minutes ago, paradoxagi said:

I have my onw trees working perfectly fine now. I'm just thinking about a solution for orthophotos without the need of creating library entries for every single tile (some of my sceneries have about 300 of them)... but maybe I already have a solution for creating those entries somewhat automated. 

So, as it seems I can't embed screenshots here, I have a link to my screenshots demonstrating my HD trees seasonal prototype:

https://flyagi.de/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27

 

Further, I have a question: Is it possible to create a single library.txt for my scenery that can be used in an untouched XP without TerraMaxx and at the same time providing seasons for users that have TerraMaxx installed? 

 

What is UM v3? 

 

UrbanMaxx V3 for TerraMaxx - http://maxx-xp.com/urbanmaxx-v3-tm

[wain]

Can't wait to try this, unfortunetly after 19hrs of download I still have 7 hrs to go, my download speed says70kbs, extremely slow but only with you....never mind I am sure I will get there in the end........wondered if I had a bad connection to your server but I guess if I interupt the download I have to start again, normally a download this big I put on over night and it is done no problem........any screenshots anyone?

[FlyAgi]

Holy... awesome... I will get it instantly. 

 

And, I start loving TerraMaxx... :-)

[wain]

29 minutes ago, stolowski said:

UrbanMaxx V3 for TerraMaxx - http://maxx-xp.com/urbanmaxx-v3-tm

looks impressive.........

[JohnMAXX]

2 hours ago, paradoxagi said:

I have my onw trees working perfectly fine now. I'm just thinking about a solution for orthophotos without the need of creating library entries for every single tile (some of my sceneries have about 300 of them)... but maybe I already have a solution for creating those entries somewhat automated. 

So, as it seems I can't embed screenshots here, I have a link to my screenshots demonstrating my HD trees seasonal prototype:

https://flyagi.de/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27

 

Further, I have a question: Is it possible to create a single library.txt for my scenery that can be used in an untouched XP without TerraMaxx and at the same time providing seasons for users that have TerraMaxx installed? 

 

What is UM v3? 

 

http://maxx-xp.com/urbanmaxx-v3-tm

To answer your question, once the scenery package is setup properly, when you turn off TerraMAXX the REGION_DREF command should be ignored.  There is no need to create a separate library.txt, just make sure the original version  is still intact......

 

As far as editing those files, Ive found BULK TEXT editing software helps tremendously in streamlining the process.......just a pro tip  

[JohnMAXX]

https://flyagi.de/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=27

 

Loving the trees BTW and Im smitten that we are already seeing enhancements! 

[CaptCWGAllen]

Well I must say I am totally smitten with TerraMaxx. Have been flying the three new  seasons up in Alaska. I love the overlays, and the detail using the normal maps option is stunning. Also love the way the light changes with the seasons. I think the subtle hues are just gorgeous.  Brilliant addition. Thank you. Game changer !

Peter

[dcboyinva]

Hi Maxx team...I really appreciate your efforts here.  I do like the program, but I wanted to make sure my scenery order in the ini is correct.  I didn't see in the manual if it mattered where the scenery entry was placed?  I have placed it under the airports...and I downloaded UrbanMaxx as well today...sorry if this is a newb question

All my airports

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/SeasonsXP/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/UrbanMAXX_V3/

Libraries and other stuff

Thanks in advance.  Appreciate your taking a great first stab at FINALLY having seasons in XPL!!  Take care.

 

John Bartlett

[jsperl]

52 minutes ago, dcboyinva said:

Hi Maxx team...I really appreciate your efforts here.  I do like the program, but I wanted to make sure my scenery order in the ini is correct.  I didn't see in the manual if it mattered where the scenery entry was placed?  I have placed it under the airports...and I downloaded UrbanMaxx as well today...sorry if this is a newb question

All my airports

SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/SeasonsXP/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/UrbanMAXX_V3/

Libraries and other stuff

Thanks in advance.  Appreciate your taking a great first stab at FINALLY having seasons in XPL!!  Take care.

 

John Bartlett

It's a library so scenery order doesn't matter, I believe.

Edited March 18, 2018 by jsperl
clarify

[Thomas1]

Following earlier suggestions within this topic, I would highly welcome spring textures as well.

As TerraMaxx definitely has a high potential for further development, a great goal - and my suggestion - would be to have 2 textures per season (like early and late spring, early and late summer, autumn with colours and with (almost) empty trees, and (as already existing) light and deep winter.

Doubtlessly, this would cause a lot of additional work to the developers: I imagine already up to now it was a huge amount. However, if my suggestions would be implemented in TerraMaxx one day, as well when other add-on sceneries (most add-on airports, mesh etc.) would be covered, I would be willing to pay a higher price for TeraMaxx: maybe the regular, existing "standard" version with the current price-tag, and an "extended" (or luxury) version even at double price. It would be worth in my view, as it would be an USP (unique selling proposition).

Anyway thank you for the great effort up to now, and looking forward to keeping you motivated! :-)

[ikanber]

I'm fine without spring. Only thing they need to work on talk to LR find out a solution to reduce reload time at auto mode imo..

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[FlyAgi]

2 hours ago, JohnMAXX said:

There is no need to create a separate library.txt, just make sure the original version  is still intact.

So far it seems if I have to build two library.txt per scenery, but maybe I missed something. Putting the non-terramaxx library content into the library makes X-Plane use this content instead of the seasonal content - otherwise it's fine. I will investigate further. For now I am very satisfied with the results as I could replace most of my sceneries vegetation in one go with a new library so there are only the orthos left. 

 

2 hours ago, JohnMAXX said:

Loving the trees BTW and Im smitten that we are already seeing enhancements!

Thank you very much. :-)

It's fun to use TerraMaxx for this kind of stuff... I messed around the whole day and can't stop. :-)

 

[FlyAgi]

Well... I finally managed to get everything right in just one single library file. I had to put the default content at the bottom and below all seasons (and using a new region 'default'), now it seems to work with and without TerraMaxx. 

[tappex]

Is it possible to tweak the seasons? If I e.g. wanted to use Autumn ground textures for "mild winter" and mild winter ground textures for "hard winter"?

(Not only would I hope to save some precious SSD disk space by this... I would also perceive it as more realistic when winter isn't snowy at all times.)

[JohnMAXX]

1 hour ago, tappex said:

Is it possible to tweak the seasons? If I e.g. wanted to use Autumn ground textures for "mild winter" and mild winter ground textures for "hard winter"?

(Not only would I hope to save some precious SSD disk space by this... I would also perceive it as more realistic when winter isn't snowy at all times.)

It's possible,  not something that can be done easily and not something I'm willing to offer right now...You're asking a broad question so I'm going to refrain from offering up a solution, it's easy to really mess up the scenery....it involves editing the library.txt....

[signmanbob]

Long pause on loading is a killer for me too.  I'll be shutting it off until some updates are available.