NORCAL Flying

[Cameron]

Hi, all,

Testing NORCAL still. These shots are from the same flight at various times of day along the route. All shots except for the two at cruise (7,000 ft) are about 3,000 ft or less. Enjoy!

[jsnapp]

I do enjoy.  I will really be sure to try and get everyone flying through ZOA airspace on vatsim aware of this gorgeous scenery!  Can't wait to recreate this flight myself.  Cameron, with the stuff you have on your computer (unreleased scenery and planes) it is like you are flying in a totally different simulator from the future.  X-aviation should have a paid alpha-beta-early-adopter subscription program. haha. I am only one-fifth joking. :-)

[YYZatcboy]

I hope the reason the colours are so washed out is because of the process of taking a screenshot. The ground from the air has much more colour depth in real life.

[Cameron]

I hope the reason the colours are so washed out is because of the process of taking a screenshot. The ground from the air has much more colour depth in real life.

*sigh*

I think this is going to end up coming down to preference. Considering most of these are taken in low light situations to near evening, that may have something to do with it.

In the end, the beauty of the addons are this: don't like it? Don't buy it.

Honestly, though.To me it's an awesome flying experience that cannot truly be appreciated without flying it first hand.

Have a good one, Joe! Sorry we couldn't please you this go around, but hopefully the majority will enjoy it as much as we do when flying around!

[YYZatcboy]

Don't get me wrong, I know that x-plane modifies some stuff when exporting the screenshot, and I can tell from the colours on the 777 (which we have seen elsewhere) that there is some washout on the whole picture. I'm certainly going to try it out first hand, I'm not the type to not give an add-on it's fair chance, and just criticize based on screenshots and reviews.. I'm just commenting that on all of my jump seat time one of the remarkable things I've noticed is how many shades of green there are visible from the air, and in the SCREENSHOTS so far it seems to be missing. That does not mean that they are not there in the sim, and I look forward to trying it.

[Ben Russell]

...I'm just putting the finishing touches on per-tile downloads and packaging so that you guys can buy the areas that matter most to you to get a feel for how much you like it.

I think you're in for a pretty amazing experience after all the work that's gone into this release, you'll be getting night imagery of unprecedented detail that, as far as I know, doesn't exist in any other image database, anywhere, for any price.

The reason is that it's been synthetically enhanced using a complicated and well evolved algorithm, one that only Real Scenery and X-Aviation have.

I've been watching the imagery evolve, it's pretty awesome, I wish I had the machine to run it.

[YYZatcboy]

Don't worry Ben. When I get it I'll brag about it to you . Really man, buy a new computer LOL.

[MaidenFan]

Nice pic of the triple seven. One of my favorite birds!!!

[GlowWorm]

Great teasers, only makes me want it more. Can't wait.

Question: in some of the screen shots of this new scenery package I notice that the contrast levels are quite high compard to the XP environment. Don't get me wrong, when the scenery is viewed by itself without any XP-object / planes, it looks great. The XP plane itself also looks great. Once combined in some scenery areas it becomes clear that 1 is out of place. I know it's a challenge to mix computer generated views with photo-material. Would it make sense to align the scenery contrast levels with the XP levels, so that the objects of XP don't pop out that much?

[Cameron]

Hi, Glow,

One thing important to note: Many of the older screenshots in the NORCAL preview forum are from either the older version of NORCAL (never released and trashed in lieu of this one now) or pre-processed (which we would state in the topic description/body. Be aware of that! Many of those older images are higher contrast and not what will ship.

The above, however, is what will ship. The following is also included in that: http://www.realscenery.com/flash_galleries/ca/norcal.html

X-Plane can be tricky with ortho imagery. A lot of times the varying environment light can make certain times of day much different than others, but just to let you know...NORCAL pretty much seamlessly integrates in with the default scenery textures to the point the transition is nearly seamless. We ensured contrast and gamma was the same to make things a little easier, and you can play around with your gamma settings in sim to make adjustments globally.

Long story short: After a year and a half of development, this product is done.

[GlowWorm]

Can't wait, can't wait!!!

And, thanks for the background info on gamma settings.

GlowWorm