alpilotx

Yep ... Australia it is indeed ....

Look at these screenshots, and "guess" where these were taken You can see a lot more screenshots here (the regions name is in the link): https://picasaweb.google.com/101666907909842492197/PREVIEWAustraliaHDMeshSceneryV3?authuser=0&feat=directlinkAnd yes, I know, that I have told for a long time, that I will not do this region because of the lack of good landclass data. But here I prove, that I never stop researching and experimenting. This time it is not based on one dataset but is a mixture of 3 (and a tiny bit of a fourth) major datasets where non of them would have worked on its own ... but when mixed in the right way (its the "special soup") then it can work quite well. By the way: as I already announced in the Canada preview video post, I will now soon - really soon (in a few days) - start with the final data compilation for HD Mesh Scenery v3. This means especially, that the next OSM data pull is imminent ... The same is true for the airport data which will be used in the scenery generation (it has either already be pulled or will happen in the next days too). From then on, it will take approximately 6-8 weeks to complete the HD Mesh Scenery v3 creation, preparation, testing, packaging etc. (of course, only if nothing bad happens!).

To the first question, there is a very detailed answer on my website: http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-scenery-mesh-v2/#Difference-between-HD-Mesh-Scenery-v2-and-SimHeavencom-photosceneryAnd about editing mesh : well, its not really possible ... because there are no tools to do it in a feasible way. Neither do I recommend doing so, as all such editings would be lost, when ever a new cut of a mesh comes out (like for example the planned HD Mesh Scenery v3). Beside this, there are two tools on x-plane.org, called rasterTool and vertexTool (search for them). They at least help in doing some localized changes.

Well, there is an interesting comparison set of different Landclass Scenery in MSFS and HD Mesh Scenery v2 on simflight.de (yes, text is German but pictures are quite "obvious" to understand / click). They are taken at different locations in Germany, but each location has more or less the same perspective (well, I supplied the X-Plane screenshots ... and of course they only approximate the viewpoint): http://www.simflight.de/2014/09/14/der-grosse-vergleich-mit-welchen-landklassen-und-texturen-sieht-deutschland-besten-aus/

Well, there will be more rivers, if there are more rivers in OSM .... But there is also a technical limitation, that X-Plane still can't render all type of rivers ... especially the small, steep ones are still a problem and would look worse if included than if we leave them out. This will need a new tech in the render engine (kind of "draped" water, for really thin, small streams of water) but this won't come in the near future ... So, I will not promise you, that you will get all of them.

Norway will have its share of "tuning" too ... the number of forests will be reduced Just a few weeks ago a user told me, that there are too many forests on the Shetlands (where in reality there is almost no single tree on the entire island(group) ). After a little investigation it turned out, that there is a landclass type in the original source data (CORINE from the EEA) which I "wrongly" translated into the X-Plane world ... which resulted in some woody wetlands instead of grassy wetlands (the difference is, that the first one also gets some forests planted on top). Now this is - in the data - already fixed ... and will also affect large regions in northern Norway / Sweden / Finland etc. ... So, in the end there will be a bit less forests (but in the sense, that this will bring the scenery another step closer to "reality").

But let me add, that there was at least a tiny "fix" to the DEM data too ... In a few places in the USA (mostly Louisiana) there are some odd spikes in the landscape. Those were already fixed ... (and will thus be fixed in v3).

After so many years ... you should know better X-Plane has an irregular mesh, thus there is no such thing as a fixed resolution of the triangle mesh. But the source raw DEM (raster) data is still the same 90m data (which is completely sufficient until now in 98% of the cases.

There is always a price ... and it depends on a lot of factors. On high powered machines, you will not see a big hit (just like it was with HD Mesh Scenery v2), but with mid range machines, there is always a thin line ... which can lead to massive deterioration when you cross it .... but can still be good if you stay on the safe side. For example RAM or VRAM usage can be such a thin line (you are good as long as you don't exhaust it, but will get in trouble if you overstretch) etc. ...

NZ Pro is NOT part of the HD mesh Scenery line (neither is it mentioned in the list) ... its a more special scenery, as its based on a bit different data sources and has some other special features (the overlay scenery with custom made objects etc.). Neither do I see enough reasons for NZ Pro to be updated (its already quite good as it is ... and can be enjoyed as it is ... now ).

There is a first preview - this time a video on youtube (instead of "just" screenshots) - for the next, "version 3" of the HD mesh Scenery "series". Planned release is around the end of 2014. It will be more of an evolution - instead of a revolution - over the current "version 2" bringing: many fixes (see known issues list on my website for HD mesh Scenery v2)landclass improvementsincreased resolution (yes, the mesh res will increase a bit again)and most importantly fresh OSM (openstreetmap data) from autumn 2014.additionally, in Canada, instead of the OSM lakes it will use CanVec based lakes (which should bring a more or less complete and consistent lake/river coverage in that region - OSM still has quite a few gaps in that area).The coverage will most likely not go outside the current coverage and will still "only" cover North America, Europe and Japan. The main reason is still - as most of you might already know - that there is still no good, consistent, free, usable, high resolution landclass data outside the listed regions. As soon as this changes (and I can get hold of such "good, consistent, free, usable, high resolution landclass data") I will also extend the coverage. By the way, should you be one of the few users, who are contributing to the OSM project, I would say you have about 4 weeks to add stuff (things of relevance are: water features and road / railroad network) you would like to see in the coming HD Mesh Scenery v3 (one exception - for now - is water data in Canada, which will be substituted by the CanVec data for now)!

Yeah, but if you doo that extensively, you will very likely completely kill your frame rate ... you will also realize, that this way you will get sharp texture transitions too. You need to use some technique to take care of "smooth" transitions where landclass changes (the scenery generator of X-plane takes care of this with some complex, overlapping of parts of the triangle patches making up the base mesh - its complex) ... then you will also need to find the right data to cover enough area, at enough detail etc. (there is a reason why I didn't cover that area until now - because of the lack of sufficiently good data in South America ... t least I still don't know of such data ... even if i already got some hints). Ohh ... and a good texture choice is also part of the problem. So, even though draped polygons might be a solutions in some cases ... they are quite likely not the ideal tool to take care of large areas of landclass coverage!

Yes and no ... because it can only help with better elevation representation but not with better landclass representation, which is also closely bound to the res of the original(in the DSF!!) triangle mesh.

Generic answer: http://prideout.net/blog/?p=48And the X-Plane answers: http://developer.x-plane.com/2011/08/dsf-gets-raster-data/http://developer.x-plane.com/2013/04/dsf-mesh-formats-v9-vs-v10/

Still ... I repeat what I wrote above: the RAM footprint of the sim is extremely variable depending on a lot of factors, which can even (easily!) change with the exact same installation environment when you change starting location (which defines what gets loaded into memory, and can thus massively change your RAM footprint). And then, if you run out of physical memory (and the sim hasn't crashed) and your OS starts to swap (its the classic way to manage virtual memory on all modern OS-es ... they can use disk to swap out less used RAM, and thus allowing you to use a larger memory space than your physical RAM would allow) then all is over! Swapping is usually a very slow process (especially when it goes to a HDD) compared to using RAM, and thus can slow down everything by a few magnitudes ...

Yes, thats an important factor in X-plane 10! It has no stable RAM footprint in the classical sense. It depends and fluctuates massively with the choosen rendering settings, the installed content (not only scenery, but also different aircraft), the active plug-ins, and the location you are flying at a given moment. All of these can - at any given time - make quite some difference in your memory footprint. So, just as sundog correctly diagnosed, when you are already at the edge of 8 GB (which is definitely quite easily possible with what i see from your installed content - in the Log.txt) ... its not very hard to be pushed over the edge from one moment to th other. So, either go back a few steps by removing content (HD Mesh Scenery v2, Simheave photoscenery or World2Xplane can be big memory hogs ... depending on the complexity of a region ... but also complex aircrafts etc. can ask for a big share from your resources!!), lowering rendering settings or consider upgrading your RAM (if that is a viable option for you) to be on the safe side in the future.

Oh yes, I would say - by looking at your Log.txt - that you are pushing your RAM usage too far. Having in photosceney and some OSM based (world2xplane) stuff for the same location can already push you over the limit of 8 GB (you know, there is no such thing as "free lunch" ... and everything in a sim needs its own share of your resources)! So, removing that stuff, might help you .... or just upgrade to 16 GB of RAM (which is highly recommended nowadays - as a minimum - if you want to use lots of stuff in XP10) And totally off topic (sorry, but I see this too often nowadays, and bang my head on the table): why you guys do NOT read the install instruction of HD Mesh Scenery v2, Tree Lines and Farm, and New Zealand Pro? Why the heck is all your overlay scenery stuff always below(!!!) any of the mesh scenery? I mean these lines: 347 Custom Scenery/zzz_hd_global_scenery2/ 348 Custom Scenery/zzz_new_zealand/ 349 Custom Scenery/zzz_new_zealand_overlay/ 350 Custom Scenery/zzz_Treelines_Farms_Europe_v2/ 351 Custom Scenery/zzz_Treelines_Farms_North_America_v2/ You should it have more like this (and this is documented in the isntallation instructions!!!!): Custom Scenery/zzz_Treelines_Farms_Europe_v2/ Custom Scenery/zzz_Treelines_Farms_North_America_v2/ Custom Scenery/zzz_hd_global_scenery2/ Custom Scenery/zzz_new_zealand_overlay/ Custom Scenery/zzz_new_zealand/ The way you have it now, will NOT let you see any of the overalys (tree lines and farms, and NZ overlay)!!!

Which is all due to the massive improvements in the OSM data (as i told above). The default Global Scenery was relying on OSM data too, but much older data ... and at that time, Japan was missing a lot of data. In the meantime, Japan received a substantial improvement trough government donated data, which has greatly improved that region (up to a point,where its almost too much data for X-Plane ) ...

... as a side note: I have never been to Japan either, nevertheless I had some great joy flying over the "new" landscape while testing it.

Is somebody stopping you from doing so ? I mean seriously ... thats exactly the great point of a flight sim ... you can fly wherever YOU want

Good to hear that ... because Japan is badly underrepresented in the X-Plane world!

After a longer waiting time, I could finally complete the new addition to the HD Mesh Scenery v2 series, Japan! Basically it shares the same improvement, which were already present in all the other HD Mesh Scenery v2 regions. The highlights in Japan are: updated OSM data (Japan received a very big update trough government sponsored data)vastly improved landclass data (© JAXA)additional tree linesYo can find the download links (torrents are not up for Japan, but should come online in the coming days) - as always - on my website: http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-scenery-mesh-v2/#DownloadPlease also make sure, to read the installation instruction (which are identical across all HD Mesh Scenery v2 tiles): http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-scenery-mesh-v2/#InstallationAnd there is also an addition tree lines (without farms - would not have worked so easily for Japan) overlay scenery, which you can get on the respective download page: http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-tree-lines-and-farms-v2/Finally, there are - of course - also some screenshots (mostly comparison between default and HD): X-Plane 10 HD Mesh Scenery v2 JAPAN - default and HD comparisons

You are talking about now(!) ... But you didn't see what happens with long rang visibility (an upcoming feature in X-Plane), when double the amount of DSFs gets loaded. With that and HD Mesh Scenery v2, you will already come very close to the 16 GB limit ... add world2xplöane on top, and you will surpass the limit. Thats what I am talking about, when recommending 16 GB (or even 32 GB!!). If you don't need the "long range visibility", then of course, you can live nicely with 16 GB (or sometimes even 8 GB - sometimes). So, here we see, that XP10 is a bit more than a game (definitely more than most other games). And thanks to its 64bit nature it CAN use all the RAM you give it.

My recommendation for anyone building a new rig (which I am doing soon too) : get as much RAM as possible! 16 GB should be the minimum ... 32 GB would be optimal! With the upcoming "long range visibility" in XP10.30 (or 10.35 .... don't ask me when exactly Laminar puts this feature in), the loaded amount of DSF data will double! Then, especially with world2xplane and something like HD Mesh Scenery v2, you will easily surpass the 16 GB border! Of course, if this is a problem (or loading times become too long - yes, those will be longer too!), you will always be able to disable long range visibility (which, AFAIK will be the default setting anyways).

OK, I just wanted to caution you here ... because I read quite often (and I am Alpilotx ), that people think they need both at the same time, for the same location (which is not the case). Otherwise I absolutely understand you (just wanted to make things as clear as possible).