XPAfrica

Indi, just for information, the team that was formerly running "xoverlays", the service that provides photoreal Gmaps based content for x-plane (now moved here: http://zonephoto.x-plane.fr/ ) for free, had contacted google about these matters and the implications of their fair use policy. The answers remained very vague, indeed we were absolutely certain that the answers were vague on purpose and google just didn't want to get involved as long as there was no true abuse. Google officially knows about these activities, and has not chosen to pursue anyone unless they use this freely accessible content in commercial products. Also google hosts the Gmaps developpement repository as it is a google-code project. I have read a lot of your comments on that matter here and elsewhere, i must say that i hardly share your position even if it is perfectly understandable. In my opinion these anti-abuse/fair use policies are made to protect google and the owners of the images from true commercial abuse, not to give them an opportunity to sue anyone who'd go against them without cashing money for it. There's another point that i may not comlpetely explain publicly yet, involving a well known developer for x-plane, a third party payware scenery producer and one of google's image providers for Google Earth. In the end, neither google nor the image provider have chosen to pursue the developper after having been tipped off gestapo-style by said payware developper - in my opinion that will be the case as long as people do not try to make money with other people's work.

xpfr.org just released a stunning scenery for the Society Islands (Tahiti, Bora-Bora, Moorea etc. ...) - it's free and it's just plain HUGE!

Hello Arti, very interresting stuff, and getting the sound in x-plane better is a very good goal. I have an education as a sound engineer myself so i'm particularly interrested in this subject. THe F18 Hi-G example is really cool and sounds very good already, although one would maybe have to use not only an EQ but also a dynamics processor to make the effect more real - i haven't extracted the audio from the real-life video you link on your blog yet, but i'd like to do so and study the dynamics, in order to get an idea on how they look. Your earlier video, where you expose the idea of using longer loops than the standard x-plane sounds do, reveals something that has annoyed me on some custom soundsets for x-plane planes, most notoriously heinz's Spitfire: longer, seemless loops are indeed something one should strive for, and that's what has been done with the Spit's custom sounds, but these custom sounds annoy me in flight - the fact that you have longer loops should imply that you have enough "stable" material from a spectral point of view, and that's what's been done wrong with the spitfire, where you find yourself listening to the same unwanted rumble in the sound (probably a vibration during recording) every few seconds, and where this artefact is logically pitched lower or higher depending on engine rpm setting in x-plane, which in the end results in something totally unrealistic. The contrary example would be Greg Hofer, who has put a lot of work into layering all the different sounds (engine, afterburner, vibrations etc....) of his CF-104 and that's in my opinion the best way to go to obtain realistic sound, instead of doing what's been done in the spitfire and decide to include the vibration the engine gives off to the mobile parts of the plane at a certain rpm setting with the engine sound itself, agai, resulting in unrealistic sound. In your video, the loops are longer and for some of the sounds it is a great benefit, but on some other sounds you get these "artefacts" coming over and over again, and if i consider my experience in flying, that's not realistic, as for example the afterburner: like some original x-plane loops, its spectrum sycles, i'd almost be sure that going the other way and using shorter loops with seemless looping points would be better (i have little time for x-plane lately, but i'd like to give that a shot sometime soon.). As for the original x-plane sounds, they're old, probably have been normalized (in my opinion the worst invention in digital audio yet), they lack definition and propper bandwidth (i assume they used to be lower resolution and have just been converted along the way when they were normalized), but they have a quality that makes them still useable: they're "stable" and you don't get odd vibration sounds that change pitch with your thrust setting. They basically suck, but in the mix, you don't notice the crackles and bad ooping points too much, at least on standard equipment. Furthermore, there are a few points to consider: everyone does not have a a good audio setup, something that reproduces the whole spectrum and dynamics like studio monitors do, so one should have to go through the same process you go when you produce music and finish a song's mix in order to make sure it "sounds good everywhere": mastering. Finally, what's the starting material - most important point in my opinion, a good recording is 90% of the work. As you can see i'm really interrested in your work and i'd relly like to knwo more: how do you work, what do you work with? what source material do you use ? etc.. ... Also there's a question i haven't found an answer to yet: what sound formats, definitions and sample rates can x-plane support and how do they affect rendering (eg. fps) ?

Great Scenery, on the same level as Tenerife or Corsica, definitely an all-tim-favourite already (for those who wonder, it's a photoreal Malta scenery with a lot of custom buildings and a great version of LMML)

It looks like XP9 developpement is coming to an end. X-Mas being only a few months away (and the release of v10 being estimated to occur around x-mas), i guess that's a feature that will come with v10. Then again, maybe it will be part of a final update for v9, as a teaser of what v10 can do.

Pilotman, did you try the XPFR.org version of LFPG ? it's native x-plane scenery, and it's a masterpiece in my opinion (and the frame-rate hit will be a lot less, since you don't have 5000 split objects...)

from what i see you're running a 64bit OS and reportedly there's been issues with that and v9.60 - i think there was a possibility to downgrade to the previous release (9.55 (?) ) which would immediately correct the problem. There's also a new beta online (9.61b1) which might correct your problem.

[edit]: sorry for the big images, i hope it's not against forum rules/guidelines - if it is, i'll resize i'll leave that up to u if you don't mind i'm alone with my 8 months old daughter today, it's kinda difficult to stay online more than 10mn. at a time. Yes, indeed there is - have a look at these screenshots here: first, the beginning of a normal, custom scenery apt.dat in BBEdit(taken from XPFR's LFOM): You can see that the text editor numbers each line of the document but also provides a line-by-line layout, regardless of the text encoding used while creating the file (unlike notepad). here the end of the file: notice that a second airfield is mentionned in this apt.dat (5022 Portbail-for ultra-lights only) and that there is no apparent sign of the ending of one airport info, just a couple of empty lines and the info for 5022 Portbail starts with "1 " before the whole apt.dat ends with a line containing "99". now to the global apt.dat: In this screenshot we see the Global apt.dat open in BBEdit, where i performed a search for KSBD as an example. The text editor took me right there and is highlighting the first line of the apt.dat info for KSBD Now, again, when you have multiple airport described in one single apt.dat file, the info for each airport is marked with a clear beginning, but the end is open and the only thing that truly ends the info for one airport are the lines that start the info for the next one. And that's how you can jump from the first line (in our example KSBD) to the last line: by searching for the next occurence of "1 " as displayed in the screenshot below: it is stable enough for me (i'm using computers for over 25 years, i have the "save-every-five-seconds" reflex in me) and frankly it does not hang much anymore when you're not working with huge loads (editing DSF and apt.dat in WED with a lot of objects and a very complex apt.dat). It does quit without warning sometimes, for no apparent reason but it's fairly rare. It looks like it's intended to replace OE to a certain extent, but the one thing WED does not do and which still makes OE a must-have tool is the fact that you can view "in 3d" in OE, not in WED. Both tools are complementary in my opinion, even if i use OE less and less, but i still use it to check out my objects and the way the whole thing sticks to the (incredibly crappy) x-plane mesh, which is always important and that WED cannot do at all. Give it a go, just make sure to save regularly and most importantly make backups of your files every day, not because WED might mess them up, but because handling all layers of a complex scenery in one software makes you prone to make errors and forget stuff, especially since you'll be using the very usefull "show/hide" options to keep a clear overview of your work, and that hidden stuff in WED will not be exported with the rest when you finalize your work.

Simon, just a quickie about the newsletter i just got about the screenshot with the apt.dat open in notepad: To search in a text file, replace, edit and display propperly (which eases a lot of processes when you work directly in apt.dat's, .obj, .for etc. ...), it's best to use a good, "pro" text editor. It makes it easy to find the faulty "line 344" in the 20.000 caracter dsf when you get an error message in x-plane, easy to serch for a particular airport in the global apt.dat (just open the apt.dat, do a search for KJFK (for example), and it takes you right there), or search and replace a certain command or value in several .obj files at once - in short, it makes it all waayyyyy easier. Personally, i got myself BBEdit (on mac but i guess it exists on Win as well), but there must be a load of other good (possibly free)^ text editors for windows as well. In my opinion it's a must-have tool when you want to work in such data files. I haven't looked at all the newsletter yet, if something else pops into my mind, i'll post back. [EDIT]: oh, and i'm sorry, i have to insist once again ( ;D ) WED is definitely the tool you want to look at a bit closer - it takes a bit of time, but once you get the principle and your patience is trained for the occasional bug (in 1.1b1 they're pretty scarce, but still: BEN we want it final !!!) you'll do apt.dat's in a flash and lay down vegetation like you're sowing sunflower seeds...seriously. For working with .for or .pol, WED is just plain amazing, not even mentionning (for US airport builders like you) the terraserver option. [EDIT-2]: Ok, now about Sketchup and texturing - instead of just orienting and widening/collapsing the texture on the surface you're targetting, you can do a single click on one of the four pins, drag/move it to one of the corners of the "sector" in your texture file that you want to use, do the same for the three other pins (in order to have one pin at each corner of the part of the texture file that you want to apply to the surface) and then shift-click on each pin to move it to each corner of your surface, thereby stretching and pinning your texture over said surface and pinning the corners to the surface's corners, in order to obtain a perfect result.

i've been messing around with it for a bit and i have to admit it eases a part of the process, but only a part... In my opinion one is better off taking the time to get accointed with SketchUp or even Blender (which seems more and more like a true pain in the butt, as i go forward into trying to learn it) if one wants to make more than cubes. I've found i work faster in Sketchup to make a more complex hangar than in GBC, provided i have created a propper texture file in photoshop prior to that.

For info, the spanish tiles are already pretty old if i'm not mistaking, i even found some on my HD (which i believe are the same versions that are now proposed for download) that do NOT use the texture paging option, which also makes these older tiles very heavy to render. This being said, it's easy to apply texture paging, and yes, some of the spanish tiles are just as good as the other ones.

I'm very happy to see that there seems to be a general consensus coming up on this subject, also very happy to see how everybody here is keeping things cool and not getting into useless passing of some kind of personal frustration towards the one or the otherperson/developper/forum/whatever. Very happy also, to see Cameron and Tom issue clear, positive and open minded points of view about the subject (not that i have doubted it but it's always nice to see that happen.). In short, i'm very happy things turn out for the best and to read that Simon and Chip will keep on going - your work is useful and those who don't see it today will definitely end up seeing it sometime soon. cheers

Keep on reviewing - before xplane10's blog, selling a payware item for lpx-ane would rely on a couple of screenshots, a description in a forum and maybe a couple of enthusiastic beta-tester comments. In the past, i've bought payware content that i should never have bought, just because of that. I understand the sadness, i've read most of the comments at the .org about the reviews and frankly it's so low that it doesn't even deserve paying attention to. As for telling someone not to talk about his products, that is censorship in my opinion. Plus, i've never had the feeling that any product you have reviewed made the oher one look bad, be it free or pay, quite the contrary actually. As i said to chip in private earlier, you guys are just the beginning: in the future and with the expansion of the community, the x-plane developpers will have to face reviews and critics even by paper magazines, like it is today in the FS world, and the impact of those, as well as the reviews that will be posted on big FS sites likely to turn to X-Plane, will be far superior to the influence xplane10 may have on sales or image. Then they'll be facing the "usual" practices from any other such business (in my experience, the music press): "You buy a quarter page publicity in my magazine, i write a review, you buy half a page, i write a better review, you buy the centerfold, you'll get the best review and a fat title on the frontpage." ... For the rest i'm completely in line with Kesomir's recommandations, especially the pdf thingie - it would be great to have the review on the site and be able to dowload it in pdf. keep 'em coming!

please also note that most of the XPFR sceneries (at least the one created since 1 1/2 years) are made to fit exactly these Photo Sceneries, as they've been concieved using them.

That would indeed be a possibility, but simply converting via FS2XPLANE wouldn't do the trick in most cases, at least not to offer high quality payware content. Converting a large scenery from FS to X-Plane might require reassembling objects and retexture them (and therefore assembling texture files, implying having the skills in Photoshop/GIMP), changing object altitudes etc. ... If the FS devs are ok to provide their source files (mainly the 3D objects and textures), it may be easier to do.

Oh, believe me, i've done that with some of them already - the answer is actually pretty often the same: they have a solid platorm with FS and are affraid of being forced to follow Austin's workflow and update schedule, especially the companies that also produce aircraft. Then again some of them show real interrest...wait and see....

Thanks for the info guys, i had bought some of these a while back for FS, so i'll try converting again, but my days of buying FS add-ons are over, so for the other ones, i'll wait for propper X-Plane versions.

ok, thanks for the info - i had Tampa's TNCM on FS, but the converted scenery i did a while back did not look that good..i'll have to try again

Thank you pilotman - any clue as to what versions of these FS sceneries these are ?

FS2XPLANE definitely is agood friend what are these sceneries you converted in your screencaps ? I think i recognize TNCM in the first screenshot, but i don't think i knwo that version...

it's really a great idea for a tool, i'll give it a try ASAP!!! thank you for that

@Simon: Yes, it seems Torsten has (too) strong spam filters on but you can download SBXP from his site - as long as you don't use it commercially (for payware) it's free. As for WED, i got the v1.1b1 from the x-plane.com scenery central beta page and it is a fabulously powerful tool, i almost never open OE anymore. It is true that it takes some getting used to, but WED is imho the best tool out there yet, especially if you work with orthophotos as ground textures. @Kesomir: I heard so too from the french guys who went to the last two congresses in France, it seems this will be kind-of an autogen tool for airports, using a building library and allowing quick layout for airports, but that will hardly replace today's scenery tools, unless im wrong (which i truly hope). Fact is, x-plane's scenery system is somewhat esoteric to say the least, but once you start getting into it, it becomes just brilliant - the possibilities are just plain HUGE. As long as you don't get into low-level dsf mesh editing it remains humanly readable, yet allowing very complex operations.

i agree that turbulence from the x-plane weather is too strong and pretty annoyingly "cyclic" or constant - it has just as much randomness than the vibrations my washing machine sends through the basement walls. That's one hing Austin could maybe consider enhancing a bit.

i don't want to be the smarta**, but considering this you're developping payware scenery yourself, so reading the readme's of the file i downloaded from the org, i feel like i'm not getting the whole picture here. @pilotman: no, there's no way to convert autogen from FS to x-plane, but there are some interresting technological progresses involving .fac files that came up lately, maybe we'll soon have a way to create good autogen. (consider having a look at SceneryBuilder XP - some of its features are stunning) Converting scenery from FS also has one major drawback: most FS sceneries have objects which refer to multiple texture files (for example: one for the roof, ne for the facade and another one for the back of the building) and FS2XPLANE will split the objects in as much parts as they have textures because x-plane can only handle one texture file per object. This results in scenery that is pretty heavy to load considering its original complexity and it is therefore very valuable to learn how to use 3D tools to create native x-plane scenery (which will therefore allow more complexity for the same ressource usage).

i'll wait for greg's version, i love greg's planes, in fact, i think i love greg :lol: - seriously though, the CF-104 is incredible and if the F16 is just half as good, i'll be a client for this one immediately!