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chris k

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Posts posted by chris k

  1. Well, everything affects frame rate in theory. i.e. "draw this object" vs "dont draw this object".

    Im not too sure how optimized an .OBJ becomes out of planemaker - so yes, you may be in for a "world of hurt" if you export a very detailed/mass-triangled aircraft. All depends on the Level of Detail in the original .ACF per se.

    Best way to test is to "just do it" and have a look-see. Enable the FPS output in X-Plane 's Main window. (Data Output -> Display Frame Rate, click on 4th box -> display on Monitor)

    P.S. You can always ask around in the community for people who may be able to paint an appropriate livery/object for you. Lots of talent out there, many of which are more than happy to help!

    - CK.

  2. Yeah - Some are lower res. However, I've used many and look pretty good. (i.e. the YSSY scenery - all the statics are OpensceneryX).

    Yeah - some are also fictitious liveries. i.e. WestJet as never had a 767.

    The only Delta Ones I see in OSX are a 727-200 and a 747-400. You'd have to make your own paintkit for anything else and re-paint them.

    OR use PlaneMaker and export an existing *true* X-Plane .ACF aircraft plane as an OBJ.

    P.S. You sure you got your texture resolution turned up? =) Most statics I have look OK.

    - CK.

    • Upvote 1
  3. Remember you had to have selected a 'project' to work on when opening WED? That's just the scenery sub-directory from your X-Plane/Custom Scenery/ folder. This is where you do all your work, where WED saves it project, and where you export your scenery to.

    Lets say your WED Project is called 'MyProject' (i.e. you have a directory called X-Plane/Custom Scenery/MyProject/)

    So- When you Export Scenery pack - WED does the following:

    - It creates a new apt.dat in the Custom Scenery/Myproject/ Earth Nav Data/ directory

    - it creates the .DSF in the Custom Scenery/MyProject/Earth Nav Data/ folder in the correct subdirectory for that Geo Area.

    - If your scenery covers more than one 1x1 degree tile, it will create numerous DSF files in the Custom Scenery/MyProject/Earth Nav Data/ subdirs for you.

    The APT and DSF files - They're just normal files. Move them where you want.

    WED is simply putting them in the precise and correct location for the master X-Plane program to read them - should you happen to then immediately load XP10. Your scneery will then load up without having to copy any files anywhere.

    - CK.

  4. Roger! I'll probabaly cull the bridge. I can also thin out the cars, or put then into a higher-rendering-options category (supported in WED 1.2)

    I too get that every now and then.. I look in 1 direction, and I go from 35-40 fps to 11.

    I'll do ye olde trial and error soon to try and cull things for us.

    BTW - This is exactly WHY we do Beta Testing heh heh... =) We want this scenery to run as fluidly as possible on the widest set of systems; with the low-bar set at 512Mb VRAM. Also Makes us future proof into XP10_x64 and a bit of a "showcase" to the high-end users. (something for them to shoot for - i.e. think of it as a 'benchmark' much like KSEA is =).

    - CK.

    P.S. I'd love to see people saying: "Yeah, with this hardware, I get 35 FPS sitting on YSSY RWY 34L" =).. as public benchmark.

    P.P.S. There was no benchmarking tools in BeOS5, but there was an OpenGL rendered teapot demo included int he base OS, which showed FPS.

    We used to say "How many Teapots Per Second" you could get - as the BeOS5 benchmark =)

    • Upvote 1
  5. Tex: Very High

    Objects: Lots

    Roads: Tons

    Airport Detail: extreme

    Object distance: High

    Shaders: Global (light)

    1920x1200 16:10 (whats this 1080 stuff? You using a TV instead of a computer monitor?) =) -grin-

    Anyways - That's how it loads for me, daytime, sitting on RWY 34L on the EADT x737. Dunno - difference in driver? difference in plugins? difference in vehicles? No idea.

    How much over 512Mb are you? 30Mb or 1000Mb over? =) (i.e. are we talking "running with scissors" bad, or "licking plutonium" bad?)

    Note that unused textures get swapped out of VRAM to system RAM anyways, so the scenery should all fit within active VRAM now. XP10 loads extra textures it *might* need as part of it's main load, but isn't rendering at the time, so those'll get swapped out.

    - CK.

  6. Ok, Cool. Thanks for the update!

    Was hoping that the YSSY release might, by pure luck, co-inside with a re-cut of the .DSF at the same time as part of 10.10 =). I suppose that would have been just icing on the cake for us.!

    No worries - "It'll get done when it gets done" is a perfectly fine answer. Our tiles are already pre-alphaed out for where the water goes; so we're somewhat 'future proof' for that. I added a beach exclusion already - so when the tile is re-cut, we'll have a clean edge on the ortho.

    Cheers!

    - CK.

  7. Call for another object!

    We have need for a LIT billboard, 1 sided, which sits on the ground. Skyflyer has done one on a stand, which is 2 sided. Sky, can you edit your existing one, or does someone have one thy can share?

    We'd like to put up some "advert billboards" on the main roadway north of YSSY (as in reality, there's some rather large billboards lining the street. Should accept a 512 x 256 pixel image.

    Here's some example photos:

    billboard1.jpg

    billboard2.jpg

    Doesnt have to be exact, doesnt have to have the fancy truss work....

    - CK.

  8. Woot! Hehe, the Gangs all here. =)

    You may all Know Skyflyer as the Maker of the McDonalds and the Hungry Jack's were using in the Scenery. (See Sky? I kind of hinted I'd be needing one soon late last year, which is why I asked for one all those months ago when you did the Burger King! Heheh.)

    Just need Nickster to flop on over at some point.... If he's not too busy doing his own amazing scenery. =) (Man, that guy has some awesome objects too).

    - CK.

  9. Hey Bennet!

    Hmmm! WMKK - I don't know - I'd have to check into the Malaysian Govt's websites to see if there's some free orthoscenery for it. Generally, I'm looking for easy-to-access-and-download imagery that has little to no cost, and has no copyrights associated with it (or, has copyrights, but is some kind of creative commons license so we may re-use it in a scenery pack). I don't see any Kuala airports for X-Plane either. Ruyjo did an FSX conversion for his video on Youtube, but don't think he was allowed to redistribute. We'd have to find someone willing to allow us to convert their work. (again, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel).

    So, if we want to go down this path, if you can find:

    1. Royalty Free Geo-referenced Orthophotos of the Airport at less than 20 cm resolution (10-15 is better); and where we can download them. JPGs are good, GeoTIFFs are better. =)

    2. Any existing FSX scenery we could use, and/or convert and/or derive redistribution rights to; or other such objects (Sketchup?)

    I highly appreciate your offer to help out! In terms of tasks of "The Merry Band of Volunteers"... we have a few areas I see that always need covering for any project so far:

    1. Photoshopping of Tiles - Removing Airplanes and other chaff from the photos, so they're nice and clean. (Ropeless and Fenriz are doing a great job on this so far, and Simon also helped)

    2. Object Creation - If we need a custom object created for a specific scene, or general things like checkered huts, custom billboards, jetways, etc. Seth, Henry have helped in this regard. Goran has also offered to help.

    3. Object Texturing - Many times a Public Domain Sketchup object already exists, and need it converted from Sketchup to X-Plane. Needs redoing the textures into 1 file and then using the SU-2-XP scripts. Again, Seth was my man here. Goran has also offered to help...

    4. WED, WED, WED. Taxi lines are massively occupying my time. Any help in tracing out taxiway edges, markings, lighting, entrances, centrelines w/bezier curves, signage, etc.

    Basically, the tasks break down to those 4 items above (well, at least as what I can think of off the 'top of my head' =) heh.

    Any of those interest you? I have need of someone for item #3 right now for YSSY to texture up the harbour bridge. I already have the 3D object ready to go.. but any help in any of these is always appreciated. Even just doing basic research (finding useful objects, finding existing objects/scenery we coiuld use down the road, etc..) is also good!

    - CK.

    P.S. DEEP Apologies to others who have offered to help and I have forgotten..! (no, I dont forget our Singaporean/Montreal Habs Fan, Karinga). =) My ecxuse is its Monday night, it's late, and my Dog has eaten my brain instead of my old Homework.

  10. Beta 0.65:

    July 08, 2012

    - 7 tiles downsampled 2k -> 1k (2.8Mb to 700Kb each) to save 4x VRAM each in lesser used areas of the Airport

    Should be unnoticeable, as they're not in high traffic taxi areas - the VRAM savings are worth it. See below.

    - Cut northern tiles in half, saved more VRAM.

    - Found tiles with alpha channel that did not need it.

    - Another 15.7 Mb of VRAM saved - Every little bit counts at this point.

    - Lots more objects in the Northern International Cargo Area.

    - Replaced White Hash Marks with White Zebra Stripe Marks at INTL Terminal. Looks Crisp!

    - Replaced the classic1.fac with the modern3.fac for the International Terminal. Let me know if you like this one better.

    - More Taxi-line fixes and lighting.

    - The VRAM Savings are paying huge dividends for me. Texture resolution 'high' with compression enabled, I'm below the Magic 512 Mb.

    With "lots" of objects - and everything else "tons", I'm between 30 and 50 FPS everywhere! (Radeon 4870 512Mb)

    - If you have a 512Mb Video Card, you're in for a speed treat!

    - If you have a 1Gb Video Card… well.. you already know how fast it can go =)

    - Photoshopped Tile form Fenriz (11-4) received today - Cut, Converted, and added. Thankyou!!

    - Culled additional OSM roads south sie of the INTL terminal on the Parking Apron infield.

    - Excluded an autogen object south of INTL Parking Apron (a house showed up there).

    737_177.jpg

    737_173.jpg

    737_180.jpg

    ^^ Check out those FPS Numbers now. I'm flying the EADT x737 v4.6 at the same time (Highly detailed ACFT), with a full XP10 Install.

    File size: 166,078,937 Bytes (smaller and smaller).

    Mirror 1: Depreciated - See Beta 0.7

    Mirror 2: Depreciated - See Beta 0.7

    - CK.

  11. More cutting and re-sampling today. Probably cut a Beta 0.65 by the end of the day. =)

    We've hit a Magic Milestone! We're now below the 512 Mb VRAM Mark on XP10! (on 'very high' res, with tons of cars, tons of objects, heavy trees, and 2 AI 747 Aircraft all loaded). No More Texture Swapping on my olde 4870 card!

    very-high-full-xp10.jpg

    The Scenery at "extreme" (same settings) is still 1.3 Gb. Much work to be done =)

    - CK.

  12. Simon/Chip: Is this enough clutter / busy enough for ya? =)

    732_17.jpg

    Click for slightly Higer-Res

    737_124.jpg

    Click for slightly Higer-Res

    732_19.jpg

    Click for slightly Higer-Res

    "I’ve been using this flight simulator called X-Plane 10 – one of its cool features: it serves as a visualizer for WED 1.2 scenery"

    -
    Ben Supnik
    , Graphics Lead for Laminar Research and X-Plane 10

    - CK.

  13. Hello All,

    Since we're nearing completion of the YSSY Airport Photo Scenery Project, I'd like to get all of your inputs for the next project we should take on.

    The Airports listed above I have short-listed, since they all have 10-15cm royalty-free orthophoto tiles available for them. They also have existing X-Plane objects made for them:

    - YPAD and YMML we can derive permission from the AussiePak's/VOZ for inclusion.

    - CYYZ There is an excellent FSX conversion from 2007 which we could also derive rights to.

    - NZAA was done by the XPJets team back in the v7 run, and I have shown that they can be converted to XP8-OBJ spec for use in XP10; and would just need Robin/Dhruv's blessing to use.

    So, that being said, cast your vote. i would also suggest that if you vote for them, that you can also contribute somehow to the project (i.e. donation of objects, willingness to help Photoshop things, help beta test and give precise feedback (i.e. this line needs fixing w/coordinates and screenshots), and perhaps use WED1.2 to fix up taxiway markings or provide XP10 ATC/AI Airport "Flow" design for taxi routes, etc..)

    If you have another one not on this lease, use the "Write in"; but please ensure that (1) 10-15cm orthophotos already exist for it, and know where we can download them, and (2) ensure that there are existing objects somewhere (either in a free FSX conversion we could use, or an earlier X-Plane build), which we could attempt to derive rights from. I don't want to re-invent the wheel here. =)

    Thanks for the feedback!

    You can choose Multiple Responses in the poll above.

    - CK and all the helpers.

  14. Well, each weekend I do a ".1" increment.

    ....we're at 0.6, so I guess I have 4 more weekends to get it right...! Hah

    Basically, It'll be done when it's done. Shouldn't be too much longer. Each change is simply an updated version of the previous one as we work towards something that doesnt look too bad.

    - CK.

    from the readme:

    Bugs/Todo:

    - Ramps need much detail, markings, and 'clutter'

    - Light stands glow in the dark, need to adjust the textures for brightness

    - Service Vehicle Roads need overlaying of proper markings, stops, yields, etc.

    - Taxiway Edge Markings and Centrelines are not aligned to the ortho (In progress - Fixing)

    - Some orthos optimized (1kx1k, vs 2kx2k DDSs), but can bring this down further by cutting more.

    - Orthos contain aircraft Images (In Progress - Ropeless is leading the photoshopping charge!)

    - No Water in Botany Bay - Laminar needs recut the .DSF tile in a future Base-Scenery Update (Hi Alpilotx! If you're gonna do it, do it soon, pls! =))

    - Certain Buildings are simply "stand ins" until I get better objects (i.e. "Delta Hangar", and "USPS Post Office" - should be Australia POST for example)

    - Glideslope towers and ILSs need alignment from the master database to line up with the scenery

    - Basically, Sydney moved the GS towers slightly over the years.. you can see where they used to be on the orthos

    - Attached changes-to-navaids.txt has the new locations I need to submit to Robin

    - You can change them manually if you want them to line up - It's a cosmetic change only.

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