tkyler

This is not an easy question gentlemen. One could easily argue that this is just a flight sim hobby and they would most definitely they would be right....but none the less, the org is a American run company, practicing monopolistic behavior and censorship, acting in the best interests of the owner, not the community which founded it, nurtured it and made it valuable. "What's the big deal?" is one of those questions that people usually ask too late. Imagine you eat healthy to avoid a heart condition...and you go your whole life and never have a heart condition. Now if you never had a heart condition, then why did you eat healthy? You absolutely can't prove it was because you ate healthy because somewhere in the world is a guy who didn't eat healthy and lived to be 99....but none the less, you did what you thought was right to prevent something you didn't want to see. That's why I remind people about the org's practices frequently, to keep it in the forefront. I don't want to wake up 3 years from now and be paying 40.00 for a product that should be 20.00, getting no customer support, no quality assurance, only getting news about products sold at the org and nowhere else just because the org has no competition. I joined the org, contributed to it because it was a community where I gave and people gave back to me and I wanted to be able to know about x-plane related things there. Well it's not like that anymore, you don't get the full x-plane picture there and it's because it was hijacked . People tell me ...you can go to x-pilot or AVSIM and you don't have to go to the org and my response to that is, "you're exactly right....because some of us are making sure you not only have an alternative but that you also KNOW of an alternative. Leaving the org alone is tantamount to letting them run over everybody for their own gain.....not me man! It's a cronies club over there. It's not right for x-plane users who trust the org to keep them informed about x-plane related things....just as the moderators said ...er lied....and I'll continue to say so as long as it's so. -TomK

What forums posts? I went over to x-plane.org....THE place for xplane news (see screenshot below)...and there's no news on the front page or in the news section...just a bunch of news about .org payware. Does the org even know that XP10 is about to come out? I bet if they weren't selling it, they wouldn't even announce it's release.....pfff. One of the biggest releases in x-plane history and "our" own 'org' community isn't even bothering to share any news about it. Why is the staff even there? ...to get free stuff? There is no way you're going to sit back and give me any good reason why there's a link at x-plane.org sending everybody over to AVSIM to get news for x-plane 10....are you kidding me? ... and people wonder why we started x-pilot. The administration behavior at the org is a disgrace!

There are some things though that won't change no matter what.....so focusing on control towers is still viable. If I had to give any temporary recommendations, it'd be to get the UV map in to a rectangular form...with the idea of being able to cut and paste it into a master texture with contributions from other authors. Any polygon that can share the same texture space...DO share texture space and get your UV maps smaller. The new lighting engine in xplane will handle the night lighting and you don't need much in the way of LIT textures...generally just the "inside" of windows. Now in the context of dirt and grunge...this means that sometimes one polygon that is the same as another....say two identical doors except that one door is dirty. In that case, you need two doors in your texture, one clean and one dirty, BUT if both doors can look identical, then only put one door in your texture and make your model such that you can use the same texture space to UV map both doors. It takes a fair amount of practice to see how to construct your model to 1.) be UV friendly and 2.) be friendly to tiling. Here's one of the default textures....2048 x 1024. It makes heavy use of shared UV space and lets the new lighting make it look stellar at night.

Hey Ola, sorry for the slow reply. I've thought about it a lot and there are indeed several challenges coordinating work while trying to maintain a specific standard...there are just too many diverse ways of working amongst artists I think. Therefore, what I have in mind now are video tutorials showing the workflow and process along with some blender templates and PDF references. All the important information will be on Laminars wiki, but I can assure you making sense of it and connecting all the dots is a real chore. Being a volunteer effort, the best we can do, hopefully, is agree on a common goal and work towards that. The integration between modeling, UV and texture is so intertwined that I have no idea just how realistic it is to get some people modeling and others UV and texturing. As I said, I think I'll pour my experience out in videos and see how that flies.

Thanks. As nice as it is, it's still relatively low resolution IMO. I have about 3 1/2 2048x2048 to contain the entire airport library. Imagine what we could do with about 10 of them (providing good planning

well don't do this one....its shipping with xplane 10!

It only has to be organized and exported from Blender Ola. You can model in lightwave, generate a nice compact texture map and export that out as a wavefront, LWO or even xplane obj...whatever gets it into blender with UV/texture intact is fine. There have been occasions where I've received some work from other laminar teams and I basically import the 3D and cut/paste their texture into a master texture...adjust the UVs, set up the required parameters and viola!. So you don't have to use blender at all if you don't want to...but in such a case, you'd be handing your work off to somebody who is to be exported to the library.

What I am proposing to developers is the option to participate in contributing to a new x-pilot sponsored scenery library using workflows and techniques I use with laminar. It's well proven and certainly compatible. Laminar's library is limited by texture budget and manpower whereas the community is not. Developing the most optimal library that uses new V10 tech and does not suffer from OpenSceneryX's growing pains requires a bit more organization and discipline from developers and conformance to specifications; therefore,this isn't for everybody. I'd like to get this ball rolling during 2012 and will be setting out the specs independent of whomever participates. So this is not some official call in the sense that we need a certain size team to accomplish a very specific task....this is a call more like, "we're going to build a library in THIS way and whomever wants to help can". Time will take care of the rest.

I agree there is a misunderstanding Arno. My reference to the XPFR model is not one of skill management, but rather one of pursuing a unified goal...and not one so broad as to be unmanageable like "let's model the world". As to whether or not you have competition of skills, that is only relevant dependent upon work scope. The XPFR scenario does not apply in the scope of work that I am proposing. Just what it is that I am proposing requires a bit more explanation which I'll give a little bit later.

The deal with using Blender 2.49b is that all the scripts that leverage V10 tech are written for 2.49b. That is not to say that they won't be ported to 2.5+ in time; however, 2.5 does not offer any significant tactical advantage as far as features go in my opinion...but I won't discount "comfort" for those who are happy with 2.5 either. It's inevitable the scripts will find their way to 2.5 eventually, but I have no idea when. Re sketchup. I can't say I've honestly seen what a sketchup built model looks like in x-plane, nor how the textures applied in sketchup come across in Blender. Until I get my hands on a UV mapped sketchup model, I really won't know. I'm sure it's perfectly capable for modeling though....and if some authors don't mind modeling up some stuff and passing off the texturing, then that's a potential win-win; however, there are significant features in the Blender 2.49b workflow that HIGHLY encourage us to get all our 3D into blender at some point.....I'd even go so far as to say that everything needs to ends up in blender. It's perfectly OK to build stuff with other software, but whatever is used, it needs to find it's way into Blender to leverage the new export and attribute options BenS provided in the scripts. We should definitely investigate workflow and if anybody has a model they built in sketchup and have got it into blender, I'd be interested to get my hands on it. I'll talk more about these blender features later. I will be going over some of the standards that I have adopted relatively soon here to things rolling...and also include a few screenshots of some of the V10 development work so that everybody can get an idea of how we're doing things at laminar and also the general direction I'll be pushing here. I will say up front, that the main areas of development strategy will be in the areas of shared UV space, minimum texturing resolutions by "type" and tightly packed textures. Authors will need to get their UV maps/textures as rectangular and and small as possible...packed tight like some puzzle. I'll post examples later. Because we'll probably be wanting to combine people's work together into single textures, it will be important that textures can be easily cut and pasted into larger textures. For those who are unaware, x-plane runs more efficiently with fewer large textures than a whole lot of small ones. So what comes next from me will be a general description here, with screenshots, of work that demonstrates some scenery building techniques I've used for V10 and the advantage of using them. In this way, people can make some conclusions about their work and whether or not they want to work in this way. As far as the logistics of copyrights, how we share this stuff and redistribute it, well we're working on that. As I said, I'm not after any particular time-frame, only wanting to share some techniques....and those who want to learn can benefit, but the main thing I'm pushing here is a x-pilot centric effort that will be our own and fully managed for quality control. As another heads up...if I had to choose some place to start something like this, I'd probably start by suggesting that control towers for the top 50 biggest airports get done. Another effort could go towards doing famous landmarks around the world...and yet another effort at building nothing but hangar variants. It's too early to act on any of this mind you as some up -front planning is in order, but these are the kinds of things we'll be wanting to do. I'll try and get the more informative post with screenshots up as soon as I can. EDIT: Simon, no clue on the 2.5 > 2.49 thing....offhand I can see no issue but prudence would dictate a few tests to be sure.

As initial V10 development comes to it's end, I'm starting this thread as a sort of informal "meeting room" to talk about V10 scenery with active x-pilot community members who are interested in development and to answer any questions they may have or help prepare those interested. I am also interested in establishing a unified method for scenery development among the x-pilot community, i.e. establishing standards that developers will follow....because what I have learned developing for Laminar over the last year has resulted in a very consistent and quick workflow. The purpose of the standards are to ensure consistency and maximize efficiency of created scenery. The standards derive from my experience on default airport scenery for V10. The standards include such things as Blender file setup, Blender layer and scene organization, texture naming conventions, texture resolution and folder organization, Photoshop / GIMP layer structure and layer modes. Organization and planning is the key to developing for V10 and the Blender scripts that will be available to the community require a very strict following of structure within the blender file. It's the price to be paid for using blender as our scenery authoring tool but we can achieve things we have never been able to do in the past. So to begin, a few questions: 1.) Who is interested in developing scenery for V10? 2.) Who is willing to adopt a unified approach and workflow to scenery development? (this means blender 2.49b for now) 3.) What do you feel is your best development skill: Modeling, UV mapping, Texture painting? 4.) Who is willing to take "assignments" as part of this effort....i.e. "Model skyscrapers, model landmarks or airport towers, convert planes, etc. As XPFR have demonstrated, with teamwork and coordination, you can achieve some really spectacular results and I am ready for x-pilot and it's members to take the lead in scenery development for x-plane...but I need to get a feel for the "volunteers" first. For those that are wondering, "what is the matter with the OpenSceneryX way"......well plenty. It has it's place though and is not obsolete, but it is not optimal and it is showing some signs of strain with it's size. The new lighting and shadow technology in V10 actually allows easier and more compact scenery development but at a cost of more careful UV and texture planning. These are the kinds of things I want to talk about here. This is not some effort to have a project with a beginning and and end, but rather, start the ball rolling for continual scenery development and contributions in a steady manner. Scenery is about to enter a new era for x-plane and I am very excited for what's to come. I hope others are too.

That didn't take long. BTW, this is the problem Cam is talking about. http://forums.x-plan...showtopic=54175

Good to see Cameron. The communication / information will be good to know. Wonder if the org will copy this too. Congrats on leading the pack with innovation!

Sorry to butt in. Deniz. I notice you're in New York. I just might be that way in the next month for XP10 related stuff. Can I look you up and come see you and the sim if I make it that way? -Tom

I bet it flies just like the real thing too!

I don't think so. I'd hope to see it during V10 some time though, I do know it's on the feature list...but obviously sits behind higher priority features.

The problem with diversity is the amount of texture space. I'm cramming in all that stuff into about 7 2048 x 1024 textures and they're filling up fast. The question will be , "will laminar add more texture space?"We have a budget and I can't just "add another roof" if there's no space. Doing so means loading up video cards at a "base level". With custom scenery, users will accept the burdern because that kind of addition to one's scenery stable is "voluntary". If laminar has extreme VRAM requirements in a base install, then customers will be none too happy. It is possible to diversify wall types, but you won't find as much diversity in "color and texture". We can add new shapes all day long as long as we map them with the same texture. Custom scenery developers wont' be bound by such things though. I'm sure as time goes on though and such limitations of RAM and performance wane...that might change. The idea is to seed the scenery landscape. Folks will want to do custom stuff pretty quick when they see they can get a lot of "free" stuff like hangars / FBOs and a few filler pieces. Also, you have to keep future users in mind, who will want to see something at an airport, even if it is a repetitive approximation. We have some ideas here to really push scenery creation. There is no way we'll get the diversity we want without lots more texture space and manpower....Laminar will only be willing to go so far in how much detail they'll 'officially' support....so the best we can try and do is guide the developers, give some guidelines and see if we can't start a movement here of some organized scenery development.

BenS posted a bit on this xplane blog about some scenery developments http://www.x-plane.com/blog/ There are efforts, independently of Laminar, to set up a type of "developer university" with some tutorial vids targeting various levels of development. Laminar is not so much attempting to do all the 3D scenery as it is attempting to enable to community to easily do the 3D scenery itself...and leverage the community workforce. We're probably far enough along where I could answer any technical questions anybody has within reason. If any of you are interested in dabbling in scenery, then this forum is the place to be.

That's good illustration Hampster..the backbone of good tutorials. That and not skipping steps We're glad to have contributors who feel at home here and hope we can get folks a place to put their contributions soon.

As usual, anything is possible with the x-plane SDK. The SDK provides the necessary tools to do these kinds of animations. The key is to animate a very large range of motions and to be able to tie one motion into another smoothly. It would take a fair amount of programming to come up with AI logic for all the situations one may desire. I have no idea how in-depth orbx interaction is or how deep it's AI goes. It could be that a character might walk around a building non-stop. I'm sure the videos tend to show the best possible situation to "sell" the product. Ben Russell did a character animation of a ramp worker waving a plane in. It was basic but demonstrated proof of concept. Heck, he did it before orbx probably even tried it's people flow. For this to make it to x-plane, it'd take some very dedicated work and money. So until x-plane gets more market share and the money flows in this direction, I wouldn't expect to see it for a while. It's possible orbx could port this to x-plane one day dependent on how they structured their code. I'm only speculating but vectors and physics are vectors and physics and it seems they have a lot of work already done. I've said it before and I'll reiterate it here. X-Plane has the technology to do just about anything that FSX can do, x-Plane has the fundamental technology built it.....we just don't have the manpower yet. Somewhere, sometime, someone will be driven by this single task and we'll see it eventually.

You have NO idea I'm seeing all these new releases and have to sit back and watch. I take solace knowing that I'm helping grow x-plane though. I've gotten so much experience in the last 2 years doing scenery and aircraft.....it seems to me that anything I look to do that I used to think would be difficult or time consuming just looks downright easy. I have more ideas for scenery and aircraft than I have time at the moment. I can't wait to start making (and improving) more stuff! As you can imagine though, it's downright crazy at laminar right now.....we're all moving through development non-stop. I'll probably be working a bit past the release date though putting finishing touches or addressing bugs that people find. The end is in sight though, that's for sure.

Scenery...is probably the biggest thing of all though. Flight simulation is mostly a visual experience and the more visual stuff, the better. My favorite line over the years is..."if all things were visually equal, users would choose x-plane every time"...because of it's smoothness and rendering. X-Plane 10 is setting out to change the visual landscape..and from what I've seen, it's doing a darn good job! More and more users will come to x-plane after V10 ships....many will find things to complain about just because they don't want to see Austin make progress...and their arguments will be opinions, not facts. The x-plane landscape is changing...literally (pun intended). ..and after the ixeg guys get their 737 out, I think x-plane will take top crown in simulation visual richness and functional fidelity. There are also some awesome scenery things coming down the way and scenery creation in x-plane 10 will spawn a whole new "club" of developers . We're going to work to make x-pilot scenery creation central.

As someone who likes to learn period...I like to learn C/C++ for "non-xplane" reasons and just the overall mental challenge so I continue to study it. Besides, if Ben dies or falls of the face of the earth or is abducted by aliens or something, then it doesn't hurt to know SDK esoterica either....... BUT for now I use gizmo exclusively for xplane when I need to get something done, the power is just stupid and fast. I agree the "how to begin" documentation is lacking and as a "typer" and a "talker", I'd like to write something up eventually. That being said, if your goal is to accomplish results within x-plane as opposed to "the journey", then in that case, I think you owe it to yourself to look into gizmo. I was a "slow converter" having written all my stuff in C on the MU2 and Falco, but having accomplished everything in gizmo/lua that I did in C now, I'm not looking back. No compiler, no compiler headaches, just a text editor and instant changes while the sim runs. If, however, you just plain flat-out want to learn some C for whatever reason, then we won't knock you for that either because sometimes you have to experience the challenge to embrace the solutions.

Kieran. I myself don't know the issue on this one offhand....sorry! Perhaps ask over at the org in Sandy's forum?....and brace for some obscure answer

Hey Kieran...I can very much remember when I started and the biggest frustration was dealing with the compiler and the error messages. For any given x-code project, the project file itself will have a LOT of settings associated with it that tell the compiler what to compile, how to compile, what type of processor to compiler for, what libraries to use and of course, where to find headers, etc....probably a hundred or more options. Anyhow, one of the settings is for specifying paths to header files. Pointing xcode to the SDK headers, especially when dealing with other's projects or source code...it's a pretty common action. The good news is doing that will probably fix this issue, the bad news is I'm on a mac without xcode at the moment and can't show you some screenshots as to where to set those...I myself can't remember; however, with some exploration you might hunt it down. On the left side of the xcode window is a "navigation" pane that shows source files, external frameworks, etc. On one of those bad boys, you double/right click and you'll get the project options to pop up. It's a really long confusing list at first. Anyways, somewhere in that list is a "path to the headers" option. You'll want to point it to the SDK Cheaders folder and make sure the recursive options is on so it will traverse into that folder looking for headers. If you do not have the recursive option, you have to point xcode to each header folder individually (there's 3) ...at least best I can remember. There's some many headaches I've encountered in the past I can't remember them all, but that's the place to start. This is a simplification since there are many better ways to go about it, but if you're just beginning, then pointing xcode directly at the header folder is a good start to get a "feel" for how xcode does it's thing and you can save the "convenience" methods for when you get some more experience. If you still don't get it, I'll try and grab some screenshots of the setting at first opportunity. -Tom