Hawaii still has pine trees.

[Colin S]

I'm just wondering if any developers on here can give us a good idea of when the X-Plane art asset library will be closer to complete than empty. My main concern is the lack of diversity of assets - specifically, lodgepole pine growing in Waikiki and the same trees appearing in oregon as appear in Yellowstone National Park (being a dendrology student, seeing forests that are the same everywhere hurts).

 

Anyways, if anyone could answer this question - along with internationally appropriate assets, like houses that seem more right for London - I would appreciate this wonderfully.

 

Thanks! 

 

Colin

 

CYA - This was not a critical post, just a question with clarifying points.

[Jim Kallinen]

Taking a drive on google street view over the pass on Oahu I see pines growing on the ridge tops.

http://goo.gl/maps/Lyl6H

[Colin S]

Those are Cook Island Pines (Araucaria heterophylla) which isn't a true pine anyways. My point still stands. I've been to Hawaii (don't know about you, it's beautiful) and there sure aren't pine trees growing on the coast; primarily coconut palms. Most trees lining the coast of the major islands of Hawaii are of the family Arecaceae (palms) or broadleafs. Cook Island Pines aren't native to Hawaii, but yeah there are a few patches of them spread around the islands, they were introduced as there was no usable wood on the islands really. 

 

Anyways, don't just contradict until you know. I'm asking for a general explanation with a good solid example of an area in need of improvement. Yes, there are some patches of false pines, but those aren't even pines. The forests of Hawaii are clearly tropical rainforest or - in the case of the Big Island's saddle - closer to a steppe/wasteland. No temperate forests there. 

[Ben Russell]

plau·si·ble  

/ˈplôzəbəl/

 

Adjective

1. (of an argument or statement) Seeming reasonable or probable.

 

 

 

Seems reasonable that cook island pines could appear on another Pacific island.

[Colin S]

Yes, but only pines? I haven't seen any palm trees on Kauai. That's not plausible. The only area in X-Plane that is currently plausible is the USA, Canada and maybe small portions of Asia. Having a pine forest covering Hawaii is about par with covering Vancouver Island with sand dunes.

[alpilotx]

Colin, do you know how a Global Scenery is generated? I mean, especially keeping in mind how big our planet is, how diverse it is, and how complex it would be to cater for every possible local specialty?

 

The thing is, that we need to have ways to create it all in "automated" ways (without too much manual intervention), where we have to rely on existing (or usually improved / processed) data sources and complex algorithms to translate it in a - here comes the word Ben highlighted - plausible world. Everything else is NOT possible / feasible when you need to take care of an entire planet. BUT of course this doesn't stops anyone to create his own, regional sceneries, where he can take care of every tiny detail he wants to (the X-Plane engine and scenery system is open enough to give you almost every possibility you might dream of - but its of course a lot work, which doesn't comes via magic)

 

Now for the trees / forests ... Their type is not decided by biogeographic zones (which we have quite a lot on our planet ... especially if one takes a regionalized and not generic approach). That would be too diverse, if one wanted to do it in a perfect way .... For example take the WWF Global 200 ecoregion classification ... yes, it divides out planet in 200 different ecoregions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_200

 

This would mean, we would need to handcraft for each of those regions an own set of different forest (sparse and dense versions of deciduous, mixed and coniferous forests etc. ) ... and try to make enough (different) textures of all possible trees there. Definitely not an easy task (I know, because I deed the XP8/9 forest sceneries and had help from a good friend with crafting all the textures and forests .... some info about that is still on my site: http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/old-forest-downloads/ and http://www.alpilotx.net/documents/ )

 

... so, thats why we go the plausible approach, and "only" work with climate zones for the forests (and for the ground textures too). These are derived from high res - real -  climate data and are usually a combination of temperature and precipitation zones. This is then also the reason why you might see the same forests on Hawaii and Oregon ... obviously you  have similar climates in the given location OR that texture was used in more than one of the climate sets (it might be understandable, that we did not - until now at least - try to reproduce thousands of different tree species )

[HarryCYUL]

isn't Xplane10 a flight sim     or a Tree Simulator

[Colin S]

Colin, do you know how a Global Scenery is generated? I mean, especially keeping in mind how big our planet is, how diverse it is, and how complex it would be to cater for every possible local specialty?

 

The thing is, that we need to have ways to create it all in "automated" ways (without too much manual intervention), where we have to rely on existing (or usually improved / processed) data sources and complex algorithms to translate it in a - here comes the word Ben highlighted - plausible world. Everything else is NOT possible / feasible when you need to take care of an entire planet. BUT of course this doesn't stops anyone to create his own, regional sceneries, where he can take care of every tiny detail he wants to (the X-Plane engine and scenery system is open enough to give you almost every possibility you might dream of - but its of course a lot work, which doesn't comes via magic)

 

Now for the trees / forests ... Their type is not decided by biogeographic zones (which we have quite a lot on our planet ... especially if one takes a regionalized and not generic approach). That would be too diverse, if one wanted to do it in a perfect way .... For example take the WWF Global 200 ecoregion classification ... yes, it divides out planet in 200 different ecoregions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_200

 

This would mean, we would need to handcraft for each of those regions an own set of different forest (sparse and dense versions of deciduous, mixed and coniferous forests etc. ) ... and try to make enough (different) textures of all possible trees there. Definitely not an easy task (I know, because I deed the XP8/9 forest sceneries and had help from a good friend with crafting all the textures and forests .... some info about that is still on my site: http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/old-forest-downloads/ and http://www.alpilotx.net/documents/ )

 

... so, thats why we go the plausible approach, and "only" work with climate zones for the forests (and for the ground textures too). These are derived from high res - real -  climate data and are usually a combination of temperature and precipitation zones. This is then also the reason why you might see the same forests on Hawaii and Oregon ... obviously you  have similar climates in the given location OR that texture was used in more than one of the climate sets (it might be understandable, that we did not - until now at least - try to reproduce thousands of different tree species )

 

Thank you for the non sarcastic and informative response. I appreciate it. I only had a (tiny) bit of knowledge of how the global scenery was put together. Much appreciated

[fastaviationdata]

Still has a lot or few? I will get one and use it as a Christmas Tree! lol

[Sigmoid]

Well, still I think some fine-tuning might be in order, if we have pines on the coast of Pacific islands.

 

And though the lack of beaches lined by palm trees might be quite painful to all, the lack of all 800 geographic zones may only tick off dendrologists... but having American suburbs in Central Africa is almost Monty Python-level of absurd.  And I'm not dissing X-Plane, perfect scenery clearly wasn't a goal so far.

 

So really my question is, given that Laminar seems to be (and is professing to be) concentrating more on scenery now... is there some kind of roadmap for remedying the most painful problems with autogen? Like no socioeconomic or geographical city categorization. I won't throw a tantrum for the lack of teutonic cottages in Germany or Switzerland, but it has to begin somewhere... Say: North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe - Russia, Middle East, East Asia, Third World?

 

Also I wonder if the system allows for dynamic extensibility... Like if someone models the typical architecture of New York City, with lofts, X-shaped brownbrick residential highrises and somesuch, and marks up New York City into proprietary autogen zones that correspond to his specific configuration...

Edited October 22, 2013 by Sigmoid