girivs

Thanks for the explanation. How about staggered automata generation? Split the generation into say 20 parts, use a millisecond timer to force the generation to stop and resume next second or so. It will then take about 20 seconds for all the clouds to be built, but in the meantime, replace every newly formed cloud shape in the next render cycle. This would slowly update each cloud and over 20-30 seconds completely replace the clouds. Just thinking out loud. Shankar

I have a friendly suggestion to keep the frame rate more or less constant. At the moment, what happens is periodically, the clouds get redrawn (maybe when new weather is downloaded or based on some other event loop). When that happens, the fps drops to single digit, all clouds get redrawn and fps picks up again. What could be done: 1. Shared VBOs and fill in the vertex data from another thread, with a different context 2. Staggered drawing over multiple draw cycles to prevent sudden overload of the CPU. Also, with medium settings, even with the draw distance set to max, the clouds are forming in front of the plane as it moves; may not be able to do much about it, just checking if this is the expected behavior.

Thanks Dave, I've been working on adding gates and jetway support. With some much needed bug fixes, I finally got this done. At last, we have the necessary infrastructure in place for a class bravo airport. It is by no means complete, but airports are looking more and more crowded now. Here's what I got out of the tool for KDTW (Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport). Again, it is completely unedited by hand, directly out of the tool. If we can build this in 10 seconds (time taken for the tool to run), imagine the amount of time saved in designing X-Plane sceneries! Scenery designers no longer have to start from scratch because 85% of the airport is done already. As always, comments and suggestions are deeply appreciated. Shankar

Tom, I would like to get your opinion on a tool I just made, called OSMAirportsX. It takes OSM and OurAirports data for a particular airport and generates the airport file (apt.dat) and scenery files (.dsf) for objects within the airport. For the apt.dat, it generates airport boundaries, runways, taxiways, taxi lines, aprons, beacons, PAPIs, Frequencies. For the scenery file, it generates airport terminals, fences, hangars and other buildings. For the scenery objects, it uses OSM data to extract the 2d footprint and then uses an appropriate facade to generate the scenery object. The results look very promising. Here is a picture of an airport generated using the tool. This was completely tool generated without using WED, Overlay Editor or hand modifying the apt.dat / .dsf files. Since I use OSM data, the runways, taxiways, building placements are very very accurate compared to real world. In fact, I overlaid an orthophoto on the airport I made, and found that the placement was perfect, no alignment changes were required. I use random ranges for facade heights as well as building types, so what would really help are a lot more facades (office buildings, terminals, parking lots, control towers). More the available facades, more diverse the scenery can become. The tool can also be used as a starting point for a new scenery developer. From nothing, a complete airport can be made in a few seconds. All that remains are a few tweaks (some airports come out perfect, some require tweaks, especially the taxiways), depending on the quality of the OSM data. In particular, I couldn't find a facade for a control tower (I tried out a class bravo airport and the lack of a tower was glaring). Does the X-Plane 10 library already have one, or is it planned for the near future? I don't want to use an obj because I want the object to match the OSM 2d footprint for realism, so my reliance on facades. The tool will be open sourced, once I fix a few bugs. Shankar