chris k

Roads - Check. Signage - Check. Water - Check. Kieran - this should give you a reasonable idea as to how much the ortho I am using.... Is easy to get more; but all this is the hi-res stuff (2kx2k tiles) I want to use. ANything else would be of much lower density (1/8th res or so). - CK.

Naturally, All the ortho imagery is completely new =).... Oct 2011 was when the Imagery was taken. Basically, as it stands right now, I have asked Mikx for permission to redistribute the 2 terminals and the tower from his original package; but am awating his reply. I have replaced almost everything else with an equivalent OpenSceneryX 2.x object or referenced a built in X-Plane library object. I have also added things like SkyFlyer's objects, which is freely available and has no usage caveats on his EULA.) The taxiways/runways/signage/aprons are completely new from scratch; based on the latest orthophotos. Neither X-Planes nor the other one included were close enough (although MIKX's was pretty close!) - Given that - it was literally easier to simply start again with a blank sheet at this point, and re-do them. I like seperating the taxiways from the line markings as well - which meant I'd need to re-do 90% of it anyways do do my 'markings above ortho' tricks. - CK. P.S. I expect to have a decision soon to hopefully obtain a derivative works rights to those 3 objects If not, I'll have to find alternative sources. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to use the XP10 facades; however, that would break XP9 compatibility.

> I'm looking forward to investigating the tunnel under the runways. No tunnel. The X-Plane universe is flat down here... has no concept of something "less than seal-level" =) > How far do the orthophotos extend? The source is here (check out their coverage maps): http://www.nearmap.com) ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Cleaning up all the taxiway signs, ground textures, line markings. Cordoned off the new construction area.... - CK.

Moving right along.... OSX Aircraft..... Tiles Loaded..... Gamma corrected..... Fixing signage.... re-doing polygon overlays, etc.. Also using Skyflyer's Hungry Jacks and McDonalds. Those of you whove been to Sydney airport probably recognize this exact combination of objects: Also making sure that the OSM roads line up, and that certain "infield" ones are supressed. Nothing like having buses drive down on the service road next to the runway =) - CK.

Andras, I think youre going to personally transform XP10 with this type of scenery! I hope Austin's giving you a good cut of the revenues by now. =) - CK.

> and takes up to much space no matter how little that space may be I think this has something to do with Crafts.......

He must have HDR Enabled. "her clothes are in her wardrobe (I checked the maximum allowed area loading of the floor before)"... LOL Just noticed that... (gotta read between the lines). Did you check with the fire marshall that the number of shoes doesn't violate local zoning ordinance? - CK.

Thanks Graham, but.... I have a long way to go to fill the shoes of the likes of Jaques Brault, RoyalOak and Ted Davis (just to name a few!) ... Theyve put out literally hundreds of sceneries for a lot longer than i have. Got a ways to go .... We'll see if I'm still doing this in a year. =P BTW, this is what happens when things go very very wrong: Psychedelic.... A weird cross between Dennis Leary and a bad Kevin Kostner movie.... - CK.

Gotta love it when they give you georeferenced pictures. Makes my life easy. Look! It's botany bay! - CK.

Good news.! I found some royalty-free 15cm geo-referenced orthophotos of Sydney Airport (YSSY). The Imagery is free under Creative Commons License and I can do pretty much anything with the imagery; except derive a revenue stream from it. =).. So Yup - this is going to be another freebie/labour of love. I will have to wait a bit for Laminar to re-cut the .DSF tile for Botany bay to get the water, but this is an overlay, so one can use it before and after the underlying .DSF is fixed. Ive gone over my limit here (30 Mb already of images ive uploaded), so i'll hotlink 'em for now. (hey admins? can I get some more? I try to keep my jpegs under 300k). - CK.

Sneak peak at my next project. I love how there's a "Danger, Moose!" sign here. And there's that twisty-tower... Aha. Signage!. Proper runways! Taxiways lined up now! - CK.

Oh no.. the Vulcans are out!! /me ducks.

Both released now: Area Photo 1.0: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=15967 OSM2XP Buildings 1.1: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=15929 - CK.

Heh Andy. Not on my Nvidia AA = No FPS hit at all. All done in Hardware on the Nvidia 330m... get the exact same frame rate at No AA and 2xAA, 4xAA and even 8xAA only drop 1-2 FPS for me. I normally have the hi-res orbital textures off because of the heavy-use VRAM scenery I'm working on.. I'll take every inch of VRAM I can =). Dunno why it was on. - CK. So, what's the verdict? I'm calling Beta 7 a "Win" so far.

March 06, 2012 Beta 0.3 - Fixed all Rivers, now are transparent (so water can be seen through the orthophoto) - Fixed Wigram Air Base Runway/Taxiways (NZWG) to line up - Changed OSM2XP "round buildings" into OpenSceneryX Fuel tanks of various sizes in Lylleton Harbour, as well as the eastern beaches/river area. - Various small fixes in the water, removed speckling from earlier alpha conversions, etc... - Vairous Tile Optimizations with Alpha/no-Alpha DDS compression Still to do: - Still got some white edging showing up very small on some northwest tiles, some type of graphic artifact I'll check out for next release. - Not all rivers done with alpha yet, so some show X-Plane water, some show the ortho water (east of the city). - Wigram Airbase (now closed) needs it's runway/taxiways fixed to line up with the orthos - Need to put forest exclusions around areas where XP10 trees are showing through buildings and in empty fields in parks, where there's no trees. - Need to change the OSM2XP forests to be denser - probably will just re-do them by hand for now. - Re-check certain tiles if they really need alpha, as dropping the alpha channel drops the VRAM usage in half. Warnings: Uses 1.2Gb of VRAM at "extreme resolution" with compression. Careful of blowing your memory and getting "Bad Alex." ( click here for the explanation ) If you drop your texture resolution from "extreme" to "very high" (one step down), you're back in ~500Mb VRAM territory and all is fine. Downloads: See 1.0 Release below Let me know how it all works out for you guys. Enjoy! - CK.

Something else I think we've discovered: Demo Users - XP10.04 Beta 7 ignores any /Custom Scenery/ (other than KSEA) now. However, Full (Retail DVD) users - Even if you only have a Demo Install, it works fine as long as you have the Disc. Sorry Demo Users - Time to pay the piper it seems.... Cmon.. Cmon... You've had 3 months to save up the $80 by now. =) - CK.

Many times, great improvements can be made by simply re-arranging what you already have. Real Estate agents are masters of this..... and Global Scenery generators might be no different. =) it's all a matter of intelligently using (and placing) things in a new or novel way. Most of the best inventions are like this too. I think this is a serious "Win" for XP10 if you can pull that off Globally! - CK.

I love how the Computer area is all setup, while the Kitchen is a disaster. This is a man who knows his Priorities! =) - CK.

As mentioned elsewhere.. these images are absolutely stunning, Andras. I think this is precisely the "Plausible world" that most XP10 users are looking for. I'm beside myself how beautifully done these are - The farm houses, the tree lines, and the dense but localized forests. Brilliant. - CK.

Lowest is 10% now... I had 'em at 20% when I was testing cloud FPS hits. Default is 40% now I believe.

Yep - Having great success with 10.04 beta 7 so far. Just spent the past 2 hours with it, cranking up objects all over the place with little FPS penalty hit.....The Aerosoft Airport additions are a nice touch. I think we have a winner with this beta. Check out the FPS at Objects "Extreme" at the NZWN Photoscenery location below. Hory Mackalore... and this is on a Laptop with an nvidia 330M. Sweet. - CK.

Not bad at all re: the Aerosoft Additions. Some are just using the XP10 facade library system only. (which is pretty easy to do)... I was kind of expecting more I suppose. The ones they've done with their custom objects and orthophotos, yes indeed are nice! I can still use HDR on my nVidia 330M if I dial down the texture resolution. A good release (rendering wise) from what Ive seen so far in the last 30 mins of playing with it. Very smooth even at complex sceneries. I purposely "nerfed" down the clouds... (There's that word again Simon!) so I'm still getting a great framerate with reasonable sky quality. I noticed that Rain/Precip isn't dropping my FPS in half like it used to... although this may be an improvement in a previous build (never tested that earlier). KSEA - Can put objects to Mega Tons, and it's not a slideshow! (yay) - CK.

Note: LR has merged the "Installer" and the "Updater" into one program now. To load 10.06 Beta 7 - You will need this new installer/updater, which can be found here: ( http://www.x-plane.c...lane_10_update/ ) From the beta release notes: __________________________________________________________________ X-Plane 10.04 Beta 7 Beta 7 is out now. Note that to get it you need the new 3.1 installer. If you try to run the old installer, it will give you an error; if you simply update from the "about box", the new installer will be downloaded for you. With this new installer, the installer and updater are one program. See here for more info than you ever wanted to know. Lots of new art!!! The C-130 is included! Lit textures on cities and more city facades. Tuning of spill lights in the airport library to improve fps. Tuning and revision to natural terrain textures and forests. For users with the X-Plane 10 Global DVD, you will get Aerosoft's European airports if you install scenery for those areas, or if you update and have those areas already installed. Bug Fixes: Fixed crash when loading airplanes or quitting, introduced in beta 6. Fixed crash at EDDM on Linux (due to ATC taxi layout autogen running off the rails.) Fixed missing sky and clouds with P180, x737 and other wide panels when 4x SSAA and HDR are in use. Fixed the nasty bumps that airplanes were seeing when taxiing on runways at high altitude airports. Fixed multithreaded scenery load on Windows. This may help some users with flashing triangles. Rendering Engine & Scenery Object exclusion zones now also exclude autogen, so scenery packs that get rid of default buildings now get rid of the v10 default autogen. There is not going to be an "Exclude autogen" - just use the objects exclusion zone! Objects placed at high altitudes should now be at the correct location. Latest apt.dat data from Robin included. Plugin bug fixes, included in this beta: XPLM returns a version with an extra digit, to match v9. XPLM load/save data file APIs fixed. De-icing failure datarefs fixed. Datarefs.txt now matches the sim I've highlighted a few notable things above Ive been waiting for. Begin the dissection! - CK.

Take that, you clouds!!! Yes, it's an ancient network engineering term - handed down from the days of yore, and passed down from generation to generation of Internet Builders. =) </end digression - back on topic you!>

Whoa! That would be one heckuva comperssion algorithm. (JPEG-3000 anyone?) Until then, there's mastercard UrbanMAXX =) - CK. p.s. Hoping you're liking this forum so far John. We try to have a good time in our responses, as I hope you can tell. P.P.S. In the interests of full disclosure: "High-Resolution (10cm) GeoTIFF Orthophotos of the Urban area you're trying to cover" - $120 NZD at http://koordinates.com/