Hawaii Photoreal Development

[Colin S]

20 minutes ago, paulharing said:

Hope your trip to Spain went well and are now home back working on your Molokai update release from ver. 0.9 for X-Plane 10.  The scenery is great but it really killed my framerate and flying experience. Didn't have this degrading effect with your Lanai and Niiihau releases. Any suggestions for a temporary fix until your next update comes out?

Aloha, PDH

All I can really say is that Molokai is way bigger than Molokai. The file size alone should be testament to that. Also try disabling SMP if you have it, that can really eat frames alongside HP. Mostly, it's in the same rendering range as Lanai, so if you were originally happy with Lanai, that's not surprising. Then you install Niihau and are happy with the rendering ability for such a hig-res mesh and orthophoto. Then you go and put that super-hi-res mesh with dozens of ortho tiles right beside a pre-existing ortho area and two new airports... you've gone form a 2/10 drain on the GPU to an 8/10 drain with one scenery install. If you don't have a high-end system (I use a GTX780 and it barely cuts it), I recommend against having all the islands installed simultaneously. Another option is to not install the HD mesh (as that appears to be a major drain on performance), although this kind of defeats the purpose of the project. All I can say is that with rendering maxed out on a machine with 16GB RAM, 3GB VRAM, GTX780 and Quad 3.xx Intel processor (I forget which and I'm working from my "new" avionics laptop in setting up my home cockpit), I can run it smooth (with SMP rendering a few clouds) at around 20-30 FPS. And I mean nearly maxed out. Textures full, objects full, draw distance maxed.

Give me your specs and a screenie of your settings (and a screenie with your destroyed framerates in the top corner if you know how) and I'll try to speculate a bit more I will try my best to help

EDIT: As for the update to 1.0 (plus version), that could take a while longer - I got asked to start work a week earlier than anticipated because a brilliant co-worker broke their arm and it's a physically demanding provincial park job. I'm sitll on it though, but I'm taking some time to celebrate my admittance into the final three years of my uni program ("final three years" haha it will never be over in reality...)

Edited May 22, 2016 by Colin S

[paulharing]

Colin,

My computer is an iMac( Retina 5K, 27-inch, late 2025). Processor 3.2GHz Intel Core i5. Memory 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3. Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M380 VRAM 2048MB. You refer to "SMP" and "HP".  I'm not familiar with these abreviations and their meaning.  Please clarify.  I have tried running X-Plane with the pre-set rendering option at "Low" with cloud rendering set at 52%.

Paul

[Colin S]

2 hours ago, paulharing said:

Colin,

My computer is an iMac( Retina 5K, 27-inch, late 2025). Processor 3.2GHz Intel Core i5. Memory 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3. Graphics AMD Radeon R9 M380 VRAM 2048MB. You refer to "SMP" and "HP".  I'm not familiar with these abreviations and their meaning.  Please clarify.  I have tried running X-Plane with the pre-set rendering option at "Low" with cloud rendering set at 52%.

Paul

SMP = SkyMaxx, HP = Hawaii Photoreal. I'm guessing the real downer here is your Retina. I'm going to be blunt here: running X-Plane at 5K with only 2GB of VRAM is going to hurt. Big time. I recommend running at reduced screen resolution (or getting a second monitor with lower resolution) as running HD with high specs already puts a load on XP10. I can honestly say that unfortunately, as pretty as your system sounds, it looks like it needs an upgrade under the hood (jealous of the 5K though, that would be AMAZING for flying in 3D cockpits because you wouldn't have to zoom in to see every little word). 

I'm guessing your downfall is your low VRAM with a 5K monitor. I've heard of 4K with X-Plane and it runs slow, 5K would be difficult to optimize. If you do have a spare monitor, plug it in and disable your normal monitor to see if it helps. That will confirm my suspicions regarding the 5K monitor. Really just an issue of too heavy a truck with too little power. My medium-to-high end machine can render HP at nearly maxed out (HDR will destroy it though).

Sorry mate

[paulharing]

Colin,

Good news! After lamenting about your prognosis, I decided to determine if my perceived frame rate problem source (HP scenery) might be in error.  It was.  My planes were unflyable not because of the scenery  load on my computer's VRAM limitations, but because of poor USB connections between my CH yoke and pedal hardware and my computer.  My yoke and pedal hardware is about 8 to 10 years old (I've been flying X-Plane since version 4) and I live in a salt air environment near the ocean here on Oahu.  After cleaning my USB connections with a electronic spray solution and re-calibrating my controls, I took off and flew around Molokai, Maui, and Lanai with nary a problem and great views.  Attached are some screen shots of Molokai's north shore area and my rendering settings. Sorry to have given you some angst with my earlier e-mails and thanks again for your prompt response to my concern.  Looking forward to downloading your Kauai and Oahu island scenery packages when you get them completed

Aloha,

Paul .   

[Colin S]

2 hours ago, paulharing said:

Colin,

Good news! After lamenting about your prognosis, I decided to determine if my perceived frame rate problem source (HP scenery) might be in error.  It was.  My planes were unflyable not because of the scenery  load on my computer's VRAM limitations, but because of poor USB connections between my CH yoke and pedal hardware and my computer.  My yoke and pedal hardware is about 8 to 10 years old (I've been flying X-Plane since version 4) and I live in a salt air environment near the ocean here on Oahu.  After cleaning my USB connections with a electronic spray solution and re-calibrating my controls, I took off and flew around Molokai, Maui, and Lanai with nary a problem and great views.  Attached are some screen shots of Molokai's north shore area and my rendering settings. Sorry to have given you some angst with my earlier e-mails and thanks again for your prompt response to my concern.  Looking forward to downloading your Kauai and Oahu island scenery packages when you get them completed

Aloha,

Paul . 

 

Those are some spectacular shots! Maybe I'll get you to do our screenshots for the future islands I'd love to see more of your 5K shots, those ones looked bloody amazing. Glad you solved the issue, I certainly wasn't expecting that! Something new for me every day  Do see if your computer can bump the texture resolution up a few notches, it will make the scenery twice as high resolution every time. If I recall correctly, every decrease in the "texture quality" setting takes you down a full "texture notch;" that is, in X-Plane textures start (descending) at 4096, 2049, 1024, 512, 256, etc. Happy flying! Glad to see someone enjoying this. Just settling into my new job, but hopefully later this week the "plus" version will be underway along with Maui. Maui is huge, definitely won't be done before summer's end.

[paulharing]

Colin,

As you suggested, on my subsequent flight test,I set my Texture Resolution to Extreme High to see the results. I've attached three screen shots to show the results.  All were taken flying along the North coast and South East end of Molokai.  On the one shot you can see Lanai in the distance.  Your HP scenery of the islands makes a world of difference in the simulator experience. 

Mahalo (Thank you),

Paul

[Defiance_co]

Wow !

Tony

[Colin S]

Development is currently suspended indefinitely. Any further notice will be posted here.

[paulharing]

Hey, what's happening?  Why suspended indefinitely?  What a hugh disappointment!

[Defiance_co]

For a guess he's pushing on with his home built cockpit, hopefully nothing to do health/family

Tony

[Colin S]

17 hours ago, paulharing said:

What a hugh disappointment!

Hugh is always dissapointed. Sorry, I had to do it.



Defiance_Co, you're just about spot on. Also, my partner hasn't sent me any further files to process and I haven't heard from him in a while. For the time being, I'll focus on the cockpit. I have no intention of backing out of this stuff but for now we're taking a break. 

We'll hopefully have something to show for ourselves by the end of the summer. I'm working on a secret X-Plane project myself at the moment. 

[paulharing]

Sorry about the topo error, HUGE not hugh, but I was in a deep funk after reading your post when I wrote my initial response. Your video clip captured my feeling of despair exactly.  Hopefully, the project will resume in the near future as I already paid the full fee and was really looking forward to completion of the entire Hawaii island package. Live and learn.

[Colin S]

6 hours ago, paulharing said:

Sorry about the typo error

Cheers When I poke fun at typos it's in good humour, never in a grammar-Nazi trolling kind of way. Sorry if I seemed to be.

Brief Update

This happened way faster than expected: I have all the files necessary for work to start on Maui. It's unlikely much of it will be done before Summer's end, but I will be putting as many evenings into it as possible. However, I've realized that I need a second hard drive exclusively for Hawaii Photoreal work, so development won't start until I get myself one of those. Thinking about SSD to cut down on loading times, but I really do want a terabyte, which I can't afford in SSD at this point. Paul, don't worry about the plus version - I don't need any shared resources for that, and it will be pumped out before the end of July, guaranteed. Thank you for your patience (and everyone, for that matter). Molokai hasn't proven nearly as popular as I hoped, and if Molokai doesn't prove as popular... well, I'm praying it does prove more popular. It's the first of the four mainstream islands we have. 

[Colin S]

So I heard you folks want Maui...

...Me too. And it's going to be a while. This is the ultra low-resolution version (about 16x lower resolution than it will be in the end), and it's only one of six quads inserted. Not even UHD mesh yet. Going to start work on that later, I have a song to record for now. And a cockpit to build after that. And a beach to go relax on after that. Man, the schedule it packed today. Such a stressful weekend.

[Colin S]

Wait for the end. Very pleased. Yay. I'm an odd one out, Froogle featured freeware scenery.

[Defiance_co]

Hiya,

Yes, well done

Does look stunning

Tony

[paulharing]

Colin, re: your Maui scenery preview, all I can say is TERRIFIC! Looking forward to its release. Now by adding Maui to your equally well done Lanai, Kahoolawe, Molokai and Niihau island scenery pacs, I'm flying in heaven here on earth.

Aloha, and THANKS!

Paul

[Colin S]

13 minutes ago, paulharing said:

Aloha, and THANKS!

Paul

Cheers Paul, thanks for so many kind words. You've been one of those people who makes it worth it to keep working on this stuff

[poodster]

@Colin S Just saw you have started maui. It's looking amazing! I've been to maui on vacation before and  I can't wait to fly around the island and do island hops to lanai and molokai. 

[Colin S]

25 minutes ago, poodster said:

@Colin S Just saw you have started maui. It's looking amazing! I've been to maui on vacation before and  I can't wait to fly around the island and do island hops to lanai and molokai. 

Glad to hear you're enthused! I'm pumped to get this done too Thanks for the kind words!

[mcros7]

As a private pilot and Hawaii resident of many years, I am thoroughly enjoying the addition of Hawaii Photo Real Scenery in X-Plane. Kahoolawe, while not particularly beautiful to look at, is interesting in that as an uninhabited island, it was once used as a military bombing and gunnery range. During my Navy service, I spent many hours aboard ship doing live fire exercises on Kahoolawe. I am very much looking forward to the release of Big Island scenery and hope to see that soon. Mahalo and keep up the outstanding work.

Edited August 17, 2016 by mcros7

[Colin S]

University and Delays

Hi to the few people who check this/follow this. First of all, university is actually fairly reasonable this year, considering I'm in six full-time courses. That being said, reading Plato is kind of like trying to snort sawdust. So why haven't I turned out anything over the entire summer, or even given some empty promises like usual? I'm doing something pretty huge on the side, which will hopefully be done in about two weeks. That means that it's two weeks until Hawaii starts again. I'll give a hint regarding what I'm up to right now: It's not freeware, and it sure as hell isn't in the Pacific. That's all I'm willing to say. 

Thanks for everyone's patience through this. I've had my patience tested this summer a few times, so we're on the same page. Don't worry. 

Cheers, and stay tuned.

[paulharing]

Colin, thanks for updating your blog followers on your university and Hawaii Photoreal project status.  Whatever you can push out on your Hawaii Photoreal project is greatly appreciated.

Paul 

[paulharing]

Colin,

Please provide me and other X-Plane Hawaii Photoreal users a progress report on your Maui and Oahu island download files.  Much appreciated.

Paul Haring 

[Robert149]

Development on this project seems to have vanished, I think you need to go to the Hawaii Photoreal site for info