chris k

February 6, 2012

No never I deleted anything try it yourself and see what happens .

Just did. I put in 10.04b1 when it first was released a week or so ago.

Just re-ran the updater now. Enabled the "get betas" checkbox.

Scanned 20000+ files or so.

No change: "X-Plane 10 is up to date"

- CK.

February 6, 2012

I have 2 different settings I use for testing my scenery in XP10:

1. XP10 "Demo" Install (no terrain, so it loads fast and I only see my scenery overlays):

2. XP10 "Full" Install (with full terrain, roads, forests, etc...):

Note how the full XP10 sucks a ton of VRAM for Terrain/Auto-Gen Objects/Forests/etc; so I turn off HDR, crank down the # of objects, the world rendering distance, roads, etc..

System Specs:

OSX 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard)

Core i7 Dual Core (i.e. non-sandy Bridge) @2.66 Ghz

6 Gb DDR3-1066 Mhz RAM

64-bit operating system =)

Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M (512 MB VRAM)

- CK.

February 5, 2012

You work QUICK Chris!
This is where it could get fun- if Andy or u can get me some local house images, I'd love to build a set of residentials for those very closely situated houses! I can borrow your Orthos and use them to place a big variety of homes there that suit the scenery. Same with any sizeable buildings around the perimeter.

I could arrange that... Lemme just get the underlying orthos done up correctly. =) Id love you to toss some house OBJs all over this thing.

I saw Aussi announce his new, bigger version of opensceneryx, might be worth checking out too.

Yep - was going to check that out once I get to the object-dropping step. Egads the photo manipulation seems to have taken much longer than I anticipated. Thought Id be at the object placement step by now. =(

Let me guess, it's Hilly in that street with the zigzag path??

hhehehehah. That's X-Planes "awesome" Digital Terrain Elevation (DEM) modelling... Everything's up on a 45 degree slant in Welly it seems!. Probably makes it hard to cook breakfast in the morning. =)

All is going OK tho. This will probably take a month (just like the last one did).

- CK.

February 5, 2012

After 4 hours of processing (and re-processing) imagery; I think I got the right balance (Alpha, Contrast, Gamma Correction).

Man this one was much harder to 'get right' than the last one... but here's the results so far:

God I love it when you get it "just right" and X-Plane blows me away. =)

Ignore the water textures to the north - I havent alpha blended that area yet.

- CK.

February 5, 2012

Yep . Good stuff Charlie!. Saw that yesterday. I have your scenery as well in it's own project (Custom Scenery/_Wellington/) as I'm working away. I'm calling mine "_NZWN_Airport_Photo_Scenery" BTW, so that X-Plane will load my scenery underneath yours. (due to Alphabetical ordering)

Pls continue on your project and the terminal objects - I'm only doing ortho scenery and re-doing the taxiways (markings, numbers, lettering), and probably just a few misc items (grass edges, fencing etc..) like NZCH. I'm not an object guy =)

Your objects will simply merge on top of the orthos. That;s the beauty of X-Plane's .DSF system - multiple packages add together so people can work independently on different parts of the same scenery. Once I'm completed, you can then import my scenery (orthos) temporarily into your project, in order to line up your buildings within 10cm of their actual positions. Once they're lined up, just remove my orthos from your project, and export your objects as your _Wellington scenery.

Then, when the two packages are both put into the /Custom Scenery/ directory by the end-users, they will then line up perfectly. This way both of us can continue to work on our respective projects without any inter-dependencies, so to speak. (I don't want to slow you down!.)

- CK.

February 4, 2012

Aha.

Had to mess with the contrast, Gamma, and a few other things on the images. The original TIFFs ended up too washed out in their original format.

Now, NICE and VIBRANT, like they were taken on a clear day.

- CK.

February 4, 2012

Hi 7,

Yeah - nothing fancy here, the imagery is just a standard draped .POL

A few reasons:

1. Meshtool/TER files are great when you have a large area you want to cover; and you're replacing huge amounts of default scenery. In this case, My hi-res imagery is all of 200 meters wide or so.

2. I need to make it both XP9 and XP10 compatible - so If I created my own "base level" DSF, Id have to create 2 of them: 1 for XP9 style and 1 for XP10 style w/the roads etc.. or which worked with the differing terrain heights on adjacent tiles. (plus, you have to do the entire 1x1 tile.. way too much work for such a small scenery area.. =)..)

3. I need these .POLs to go above the taxiway/runway draw layers (i.e. LAYER_GROUP runways +1); which you can't do with a base terrain ortho (which is always drawn at LAYER_GROUP terrain "0" so to speak =)...). In order to achieve the effect I want; I need to use a .POL so that it can be drawn at the correct layer.

I had dabbed with using tools like PhotoSceneryX (i.e. to scrape off the top layer, and replace it), but since the area I'm trying to "paint" is maybe 1 sq km; it seems like overkill.

- CK.

February 4, 2012

Hehe - that wont be a problem!

Ok, look *closely*. This is what the current resolution does (2kx2k) and how the runway currently looks:

This is why I "hid" the runways in NZCH, because the ortho just wasnt sharp enough..

Notice the difference between the X-Plane generated one (on the left) and the ortho (on the right)

Now, I figured out a method to do 4000x4000 pixel resolution per tile if I want. (Thats FOUR TIMES the ground resolution than the NZCH package). I'm experimenting with doing the runway (only) as a native-res (10cm) image; so you can indeed see the bounce marks. (The original ortho is so good, you can make out ery very tiny details).

Unfortunately this may seriously impact VRAM, since there will be a ton-o-alpha. So.... give me a bit to figure out the best balance here.

P.S. Im going to use this airplane from now on, for all my screenshots:

- CK.

February 4, 2012

February 3, 2012

Next Project - NZWN Wellington New Zealand

Charlie has done some buildings and objects for this. I'll concentrate solely on doing the underlying orthos. I'll also try to keep this one XP9 friendly (using OpensceneryX stuff and no lighting/facades/buildings).

I have 2 groups of images for this one:

1. General City Ortho at 2.5m

This set covers everything - i.e the entire city is covered, all the way through the bay up to the Hutt valley

2. High-Res Airport-Only ortho at 0.1 meter

Same resolution that NZCH was & I expect simmilar good results once TIF->PNG->DDS compressed

Again, much ike NZCH, only the airport will be done in super-hi-res. (BTW, This Hi-Res Imagery cost me $50 or so just for that little airport section.. the entire city would be out of the question, $$ cost wise, hence the low-cost 2.5m for the rest of the city/valley).

I expect this to be (once again) a free package. I will also post progress over the weeks.

Go team! =)

- CK.

February 3, 2012

V nice!

February 3, 2012

Looks great! One piece of constructive I have is that the domestic terminal is WAY to tall. About 2x too tall The airbridges should be coming out of 2nd floor, not the first. But that's just me being a picky little ass . All in all, a fantastic effort. I think a custom runway wouldn't go a miss either. PM me if your interested in that!

Hey Theo,

Yeah, I am limited by the Objects I already had at my disposal. The Terminal Building was an FSX conversion from a while back; so I'm kinda stuck with "working with what I have". I'm not an Object Modeller (never used, never tried, and don't necessarily want to learn.... instead leaving that to more capable people). however, if *someone* wants to submit to me a new NZCH Terminal, I'd be more than happy to accept it into the scenery! =)

(bit by bit I am thinking that the remaining FSX converted objects will be replced by native XP objects).

As for the runway - The runway is indeed there BTW - change the .POL file definitions from "taxiways +1" to "runways +1"; and you'll see that the orthos line up nicely; however I felt that they just didnt have good enough resolution to replace the XP generated ones. (looked too blocky for my tastes.. so I hid them underneath)

However, this wouldn't stop someone like yourself texturing a hi-res "Runway Object" (I can give you the original 4200x3600 PNG files which I dereived the scenery from @ 10 cm resolution); and then overlaying that object on top of the XP Runway. Feel free to disassemble my .DSF file and see if you can add in the runway object on top.

The other route is yet-another-series-of-ortho POL files, which are then themselves layered on top of the existing ortho and runway.

Unfortunately both approaches means we're painting the same patch of ground 4 times. (1ce for base texture, 1 for ortho, 1 for XP runway, then 1 for Object/Runway .POL). Altough, I'm already paiting it 3 times right now... 1 more shouldnt hurt too much =)

- CK.

February 3, 2012

Hey larry,

Cool.! Thanks man for the Kudos. Sorry to hear you're dizzy =)

This was a project in terms of: "I know XPlane 10 is completely capable of something like this"

I also wanted something to show that X-Plane is not ugly (When it's done "right" so to speak....) as compared to "other" sims.

BTW, Laminar Research.... I'm more than happy to quit my job and do stuff like this full-time, if the financials work out =) (cough cough.. Tom.. cough cough.. make sure Ben sees this! heh..)

- CK.

February 2, 2012

YMML is in VOZ

YPPH Is in AussiePak 6

YBBN is in VOZ

I have seen them all with my own eyes.

- CK.

February 2, 2012

James - Im aware of that (mikk's) YSSY scenery. However:

1. The taxiways are very very far off from reality. I overlayed a real ortho underneath them and it was very off. (Anecdotally as well from VATSIM - the controllers tell me im in the weeds half the time)

2. No taxi/rwy signage anywhere.

3. Runway TDZs, REIL and PAPI locations are incorrect on 34L/34R. He has a VASI instead of 2 x PAPI's on either side of the RWY. ILSs do not line up.

4. Terminal/Ramp positions are not correct - they're shifted north at least 20-25 meters.

5. The orthos extend all the way west to the suburbs, Sucking VRAM when youre not close tot he ground. I'd re-do it focusing only on the part in Botany Bay at higher res.

6. There's something seriously wrong with the Domestic terminal object.

My FPS drop to 10-15FPS everytime my view is towards it, and this was in XP9! (where I'm in the mid 30s even in complex areas). XP10 it's almost unusable.

Hence why I wanted to re-do YSSY.

- CK.

YMML is done as part of the AussiePak / VOZ , and it's done very nicely; (same with YBBN, YPPH, etc..) by BobRoberts. I can't believe youve never heard of this package, as it has 99% of all the australian airports in it done accurately, minus YSSY.

The Entire AussiePak scenery can be downloaded here: http://web.me.com/br...y_Packages.html

February 2, 2012

Wellington should be pretty easy. Charlie's done some of the Obj work.

I can easily slip the orthos underneath. - Already checked - LINZ has some beaut orthos available for it.

Also wanted to tackle YSSY, but others may already be working on this.

Rangioira has been done by RoyalOak, but I dont have any orthos for that one, so.... Same for West Melton.

I did notice that West Melton has a paved runway now, not just grass; so that'll need to be fixed up.

I *could* re-tackle Auckland. I dont think Robins scenery for it has been updated since V7.

I do have his original orthos (and have taken apart his scenery a bit to see how it was constructed).. I may be able to fix that one for XP10 as well.

Dunedin I could do.

Dunno - Suggestions? Check LINZ first (or http://koordinates.com) to see if there's scenery/orthos available 1st tho.

- CK.

February 2, 2012

Ok, had enough of mucking about with this airport.. time to move on.

v1.0 released!

NZCH Airport Photo Scenery v1.0

-CK.

February 1, 2012

Well, mouse wheel used to be throttle, and everyone wished they could change it; but alas, Mousewheel<>Throttle was apparently hard coded in XP7, XP8, XP9, etc..

So now in response to all the requests, for XP10, Austin completely removed it; so now the mouse wheel has no function whatsoever.

It's a FEATURE =)

- CK.

February 1, 2012

Images taken with a beta of X-Plane 11 that fell through a time-portal.

- CK.

Update:

[FIXED] Orange/Green Lights on high-speed exiits from runways (not just Green)

[iN PROGRESS] No CHCH city textures on the jetways, will replace them with untextured (no signage) jetways via Autogate

[iN PROGRESS] Safedock system (i.e. autogate) is in use here! I'll pop those in using the Autogate System (So you'll have moving gates etc..)

[FIXED] Re-check all the signage, as many don't reference RWY '02-20', but just '02' or '20' depending on the end of the runway you're near

[FIXED] Re-do the "hold 1" and "hold 2" signage on A4

[FIXED] Fix ILS holds on all runways - there's no wigwags nor ILS flashing lights - just 3 amber hold lights instead.

[FIXED] Runway Remaining (in meters) at all high-speed entrance/exits facing takeoff traffic. I have the numbers from the AIP.

[FIXED] Blue Edge Lighting (not Red) in Air Ambualce Parking area.

[FIXED] Removal of Crane

Also:

Cut down (optimized) edge tiles alpha and sizes... saved another 10-12 Mbytes of VRAM.

Deforested some of the thicker hedgerows, they were a little too dense / FPS impacting

- CK.

January 31, 2012

I was at version 10.03rc2. From inside the sim, I tried to update to 10.04.
It said I was already up to date. After several attempts, I exited the Sim and used the stand alone Updater app. That worked.
Kinda strange because I had used the in Sim process for all other V10 updates.

You are up to date. 10.03RC2 is a "release" build (and *NOT* a Beta).

What you're running now (10.04 beta 1) is indeed a true 'beta', and will suffer from issues.

- CK.

January 29, 2012

Ok, After actually Visting NZCH, there's a series of changes I'll be making for 0.9

Reality:

- Orange/Green Lights on high-speed exiits from runways (not just Green)

- No CHCH city textures on the jetways, will replace them with untextured (no signage) jetways.

- Safedock system (i.e. autogate) is in use here! I'll pop those in using the Autogate System (So you'll have moving gates etc..)

- Re-check all the signage, as many don't reference RWY '02-20', but just '02' or '20' depending on the end of the runway you're near

- Re-do the "hold 1" and "hold 2" signage on A4

- Fix ILS holds on all runways - there's no wigwags nor ILS flashing lights - just 3 amber hold lights instead.

- Runway Remaining (in meters) at all high-speed entrance/exits facing takeoff traffic. I have the numbers from the AIP.

- Blue Edge Lighting (not Red) in Air Ambualce Parking area.

- Removal of Crane - Its gone now. (was there to signify this is a WIP). =)

If someone can get me accurate labeling as well on taxiway "E" at the hold points before the grass runways... I couldnt quite make them out looking from distance at the terminal.

May as well as be as as accurate as we can =)

The good news - is that after flying above it as well as being on the ground, the entire aerodrome I knew almost from memory at this point. Everything seems to be in the right place (trees, hedges, small buildings, GS, VOR, Ligthing, etc...) all seem very accurate to reality including proportions and sizes.

- CK.

January 26, 2012

Now at YSSY. See you soon Simon. Heh. Next stop NZCH

January 26, 2012

Now at YSSY. See you soon Simon. Heh. Next stop NZCH

January 26, 2012

Or USB Stick. Even faster

- CK.

January 26, 2012

There's a series of files you'll need to remove.

One is definitely the Global Scenery/ directory

There's also a 3d bumpmap file (which the presence of signifies it's a demo or not).

You may be better off just downloading the XP10 demo yourself (jnto a new directory), update it to the latest version, and then burn that - This will ensure that you have all the correct files and no more. Demo is only 3Gb; should come down pretty qick in a few hours.

- CK.

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