chris k

Beta 0.4 - Clouded Orthos Fixed for RWY02 (Thanks Florian!) - Edge taxi Grass Added to runways/taxiways - Working on putting the apron lighting in the right places - Testing XP10 global lighting as well. - All ortho PNGs converted to .DDS, now 171 Mb - CK.

Hi Tom, I'm using 76 tiles of varying resolution. Central ones (where your plane is on the ground, and you're likely to notice any pixelization) are 2048x2048, Tiles near the edge are are 1024x1024 or even 1024x512 depending on what I'm covering. (the original GeoTIFFs from LINZ were 4800x3600) Some tiles are even smaller in size, as they just help blend the scenery into the autogen scenery via alpha blend. (tiny tiles on the very edge) I'm now down to 171 Mb now, as I've removed unecessary alpha layers from tiles that dont have any transparency, and have DDS'ed the imagery for distribution. Still pretty big tho. BTW, Im now looking through all your new OBJs and Facades in the XP10 library. I even found all the new "Airport Lego Bricks" (Modern_airports > Facades > Terminals etc..). There's some really great stuff in there! I may be able to completely redo the Terminal and jeways with the new XP10 objects. I also found all your XP10 pre-made lighting for the tarmac, parking lots, and the like. =) Looks fantastic with HDR on. - CK.

Nope. The Ground stays firm and buildings do not sway back and forth in XP10 for me. Can you take a quicktime movie of what you're seeing? - CK.

"Don't do that! That one is the Mayor's Sheep!" - CK.

Ever since I installed XP10, my fridge is too loud. When I was using FSX, I did not have this problem. I hereby demand that all of you immediately drop what you're doing and assist me now. I will also provide you no information, and I have not performed any investigation or checking of my own. Once you do provide me help, I will not perform the actions you have recommended; and/or I will do them in the wrong order, and return to you non-sequitor results and make incorrect conclusions which have nothing to do with the original problem. I will then bump this thread until I have a satisfactory answer, or until someone with only 1 post decides to hijack my thread about something completely unrelated, so they too can get over the 3 post threshold, and open up a support request of their own; thus repeating the cycle. I will also not use any proper keywords nor a proper title so that the answer may not be easily searched - instead I will use titles like "help!?!?!" and "I have a question" and "XP10 ??!". Thankyou for your non-response, and your understanding.

Yeah - this was just me playing around. I'm gong to go back to the "edge of taxiways/runways" only. I've also lowered the height on the edges considerably (0.3-0.5m now instead of 0.8-1.2m) which is much more realistic. I'm going back to just trying to give a "slight impression" of edge grass now. Anyways - This was me trying to get a feel for the 'fill densities', and how it would affect FPS. Note the FPS in the screenshots.., it went from normally 45-50 fps to 11 to 19 FPS depending on distance/fill/density/etc... so yeah, large fields of the stuff are simply not attainable with good rendering speed, no matter how nice they look =) - CK.

Ok, it *does* look really nice, but yeah - as tkyler/simmo mentioned there's a huge FPS hit if it's too dense. I'm now trying to find a nice balance between speed/FPS and some kind of believable 3D grass.... i.e. at sparse/populated it should have very minimal impact, while at 'overgrown' or 'tree hugger' level, it should be generally flushed-out (thus allowing the user to control the density just as they do with all other forests). Still tweaking - but the effect is very nice. - CK.

...mowing Simmo's grass. - CK.

We got Grass! =) Courtesy of Simmo W's excellent example grass (.for) forests. Ignore the Low-res. I'm just testing edge-of-runway/taxiway grass. - CK.

Simmo - Your "grow your own grass" tutorial & Examples were fantastic. Here's the result, after a few hours of mucking around with different densities, randomness, colouring, and height. As per our earlier discussions, I put the grass only on the taxiway edges (so we dont kill the FPS), and it looks fantastic at virtually no detectable loss. The LOD is also calculated automatically (Thanks Tom), meaning that unless your 100m or so from the grass, you dont see it... FANTASTIC! Look forward to really adding some depth to NZCH now =) - CK.

Thanks guys for the responses. tkyler - understood. Yeah I wont know till I try it in terms of it's rendering impact. Perhaps I could LOD it so that it shows up only when you're pretty close. Simmo - Agreed - however, the nice thing about using this 3D grass is that although XP10's grass is nice, it's still 2-Dimensional. There's no 'height' to the default XP10 texture. Your files will allow scenery creators to give some depth/3D to the scene. What I'm really interested in - is an .STR of the grass object, so that I could make just a 2 dimensional grass edge along taxiways. I've seen this effect done (i.e. in the FSX conversion of Philadelphia KPHL here ( http://forums.x-plan...&showfile=11513 ). In that scenery - they use a 2D grass 'object' embedded in the edge of all taxiways and runways. It's a relatively 'cheap' effect (in terms of rendering, as it's just 1 object repeated over and over - instancing anyone? heh), but gives the scenery some depth and detail when taxiing around. Again, only 2D, but 2D "vertically" =) Anyways - looking forward to any new items (textures/obj/str/for/fac's) that are coming in XP10 to help out the community quickly turn out great looking Airport scenery. - CK. P.S. would it be too much to ask for a "dark asphalt" default runway/taxiway texture? Newly paved asphalt is always very dark - Makes me wonder why the X-Plane default texture is almost the brightness of concrete. =) This way, we could have "light asphalt" and "dark asphalt" and use each accordingly. PPS Happy Bday Simmo!

Thanks Theo, Yeah - We're still chugging, since there's alot of cleanup work needed on the orthos, hence why we're doing betas for now. (There's a giant cloud right on the threshold of RWY 02, which is why I havent shown that side of the airport yet, as an example =)..) Taxiway edges, Taxi lines, markings, lights, signs, etc.. didn't line up with the orthos either, neither did building positions, ramp starts and the like. It's taken a while to re-position everything properly (and all 'by hand' so to speak); such as re-drawing every bezier curve (the originals were mostly points...) for rendering optimization. Likewise, FlorianR is working w/Photoshop to remove some nasty graphical artifacts, and things like planes sitting on taxiways. Basically, I don't want this new NZCH to turn into a "slideshow". =P I'm also concerned about VRAM usage - the "first pass" (0.1) took over 500Mbytes of VRAM by itself.. It's taken a while to get it down to 273. Also alpha-blending and edge work so that we don't draw useless parts of the scenery which XP itself could handle. (dont write the same pixel twice). In terms of buildings, the orthos are current as of Feb 2011, so whatever is there on those images is what I have to work with... if there's new buildings I'll try to work them in, where they;re not covered by RoyalOak's package. I'm actually going to NZCH in a few weeks (Jan 26-29th) for a quick getaway from YSSY. I'll see about snapping a bunch-o-pictures to use for textures. If you want to see how things are progressing, send me a PM, and I'll send you a URL to download the latest beta. - CK.

Thanks for the support guys.! This is turning out to be a really fun project. Hope to have some more pics up soon as we continue our development. - CK.

Thanks Carlos - yes - that's exactly the video I was thinking about...! - CK. /me scurries off to add grass .for and possibly .str's out of the grass on taxiway edges..... =)

+ and - are "zoom" (field of view) now. < and > are move. before, you couldnt move away, and then "zoom in" (i.e. tight field of view from a far away - i.e. telephoto lens effect) - CK.

I got the joke =) - CK.

hehe. there's more than 1 thing wrong in those photos 1. Clouds 2. Off course (i'm not, im right on the flyway I put in 3. D-ABBF call sign, when I'm flying the x737 VH-EZE (Qantas QFA) livery. Sigh =) - CK.

Dumb question, pls excuse my ignorance here.. I remember a while ago a member made what looked like a nice field of grass using small objects of a few blades of grass, then creating a .for file for it. The result was a field, which had blades of grass shooting up from it, and it looked really good.! Is there a pre-made 'grass' object somewhere in the library system and/or a .for file which scenery designers could use to make a field of grass? (which the density would vary based on the user's preferences, same as 'number of trees')? I cant seem to find any.... If not - perhaps a new XP10 'default' object (tkyler I'm looking at you =)) should be built to help us newbie scenery designers to quickly add 3-d grassy areas using WED to our airports? (Green Grass, Light Green, and Dry Brown Grass as the 3 default objects/.for file) Thanks in advance. - CK. P.S. If not, I'll have to see about creating my own.

Uh, "move towards/away" (< and > keys), the new XP10 default keys. - CK.

1. Put your view to the new chase-view in XP10, where your frame follows the pitch of the aircraft. (Shift-8) 2. Fly to 39000 Feet 3. Add some turbulence. 4. Watch the Hilarity!! (2Mb .mov file): Why_The_New_Chaseview_Sucks.mov - CK.

Yep - The "New Clouds" suck. Reminds me of "New Coke" in the 1980s - Bring Back Coke Classic... err I mean "XP10 Clouds Classic!" - CK.

0.3 Build Lines up very well with both XP9 OSM roads, and the XP10 OSM roads: Fixed all taxiway lines, traced all roadways, taxi lines, 'picasso lines', etc.. Plus .PNG image optimization down to 273 Mb of VRAM now (very acceptable), also various fixes: Hummin' along! - CK.

Thats Beautiful, dude! - CK.

You can load more scenery later. Just run the DVD Installer again - It'll detect XP10 already installed, and ask you if you want to install more scenery. - CK.

"The first hit is free" =) - CK.