Jump to content

Tom Knudsen

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    812

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    3

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Tom Knudsen

  2. X-Plane Terrain and Autogen

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I wish to start a healthy discussion on global ground textures and autogen in XP10 for both HDR and not.

     

    I am one of those that think XP has the best default texture sets of all flight simulators, but placement and variation is somewhat horrible. 

    Perticular areas they are awsome but in most places they seem to be stiched togeather by a blind person (no offence)

     

    Previously I used FSX (well a couple of years now since) but moved permently to XP when version 10 was out (have both 8 and 9 too). 

    I spent my time doing scenery design and also had something to do with GEX for those that know this package.

     

    Anyway, I have had a long talk with AIPilot about the posibilities of mesh and texture and know all about the triangler issues regarding how x-plane is made. 

    But I tend to think there must be something we can do about changing the quality or even the look and feel of the ground texture.

     

    I see a small but reasonable good change in the latest beta with introducing the urban texture, this did have a nice small effect on the landscape. But I do believe 

    there are many more areas we need to fix.

     

    I want to pull up an image from the 3rd party vendor FTX for FSX that makes the known FTX Global a landclass and autogen scenery for MSFS

     

    FTX10.jpg

     

    I think these farm textures and open field texture are more in the way of realism and a color de-saturated version for XP10 would be more suited than these stiched ones.

     

    lx3326.png

     

     

    There are many areas that need to be looked at, but if we can have a healthy discussion, purhaps Ben or any other in the development team can start to see what we are wishing for.

     

     

    What do you think, are there areas you would like to change? 

  7. SkyMAXX Pro

    in SkyMaxx Pro - Released!

    Posted


    Also I don't want to get any ones hopes up, I misspoke about possible release time frames earlier and I have a few people who are disappointed.....
     
    Hang tight!  I promise we will have a major and important add-on for you to enjoy in due time......

     

    Better lay away that bottle John, you may need it later he he..

  16. X-Plane 10 HD Mesh v2 - PREVIEW

    in Scenery Development

    Posted

     

    ... but I definitely applaud, that you are study "3D design and animation" ... this should lead you in the right direction. I see that you are a visionary guy, who has a lot of great ideas and indeed, those ideas can move a lot of things forward in the long run. But this way of thinking is sometimes a bit hindering when you need to do real work in an existing environment, with given set of possibilities. And with "give possibilities" I mean things like: how does 3D graphics work at its core, and what can you do with it in a meaningful (and well performing way)? What does a given platform - like X-Plane - provide you (with all of its pros and cons), what can you achieve with it, and what is outside of its scope ... Then one has to always evaluate: if I want to improve / change something, does it makes sense withing the constraints of the platform? Can I improve the platform itself? How much does it "cost" to make that improvement? Will that improvement work on current and future hardware? Is that change something which is "nice in my head" but something which is very hard to "tell" a computer (or a graphics card!) without killing it (and having 0.1 FPS as a result).

     

     

    I think you summened up all things very nicely with this section sir, well said. I guess this is the major fault with us consumer. We do not see the backend, just only what our own eyes see and know what our heart desire.

    We see cool things show up now and then, and read i.e what Ben writes and make conclusions and wishlist longer than our own noses reach.

     

    It is very difficult og limit our needs and wishes if we do not know how things work, the end user only care about product cost and we tend to forget new feature as soon as they have been implemented and used.

    Think I speak for everybody when I say we appreciate all the effort designers and developers do in order to sell and refurbish their product. As X-Plane is an ongoing product and we the fans are contributing to its

    success, well we do hope the developer listen to our needs and do what is possible to fix, amend or implement new features.

     

    Its a visious circle he he..

     

     

     

    And yes, if you have added your missing lakes in OSM ... then you will see them very likely. Because THIS is the only way (well or any other digital form) to tell a computer what is there in real life! Because you can argue as long as you want with X-Plane, telling it "hey, show me that lake ... its there in real life!!!" .... it won't understand you. The only language it understands is data, data manipulation, algorithms etc. ;) (but not "human language" arguing) ...

     

    Could one edit the default DSF file and add water to it via i.e polygons?

  18. X-Plane 10 HD Mesh v2 - PREVIEW

    in Scenery Development

    Posted · Edited by Tom Knudsen

     

    Maybe you should read a little bit about how texturing in general terms works (in computer graphics, not just flight sims). That might help to better understand what is happening here.

     

    I study 3D design and animation right now, this is part of why I ask so much and are so keen to understand everyting.

     

     

    So, for example the decisions to use the rotating shaders in a way we use them is born from a necessity (as it makes mountains look much better than with non rotating shaders!) and from possibilities you are given by shaders (and what the target hardware can handle with good enough performance!

     

    Do you have controll over those rotating shaders or is it auto. I know about rotating matrix in 2D but not sure if you are talking about the same thing or not.

     

     

    If a lake is missing or not has nothing to do with the version of X-Plane (I just want to make this clear, so people don't mix it up) .... but only with what is in the DSF scenery files. When you don't change them, then their look (at least what water features are "in" it) should not change. This is a plain data issue! All DSF Mesh scenery 8either the Global Scenery or my HD Mesh v1) is all based on old OSM data from summer 2011. So it only contains water features which were present at that time ...

     

    Well these lakes has never been in X-Plane, well at least in v8-9 and 10, but they are large and absolutly there in IRL, I have also adjusted this in Openstreetmap so I will be happy if they

    apperare in HD Mesh v2 for sure (Thanks for doing that btw)

     

     

    So to summen up this discussion

    I tend to believe there is nothing that cannot be done, it just take a bit longer and cost a whole lot more.

    But to say certain things cannot be done is just and indication that the person does not have the knowledge or is able to see the final solution (with non perticular in mind)

     

     

    “The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”

    ― Elbert Hubbard

     

    Good luck on your HD Mesh Alpilot, and once again thank you for contributing to the community :)

  19. X-Plane 10 HD Mesh v2 - PREVIEW

    in Scenery Development

    Posted

    Seems to me that the triangler mesh is both a bottelneck and an annoying layer that you always need to do battles against Al (mind if I call you that)

    Anyway, there are 3 key items I would love to get some feedback on if possible

     

    * Repetable texture as Rhard described

    - I guess this is a blend of the triangler mesh and coding? Would the performance impact be less or better with i.e a typology mesh (not sure if this is even a factor) or even tessellation mesh

     

    * Waterclass

    - I have noticed that with the latest update 10.22 there are many missing lakes and uncorrect "shorelines" in the default update. Have not done any comparrasing to earlier versions,

    but I did notice this when making OSM scenery (country). OSM scenery is not correct data such as typology raw data from shuttlemissions or similar, but they do try to be accurate.

    I went kinda away from it as I did notice a sport among 12-14 year old youths that they willingly mess up thinks like Openstreetmap and wikipedia sites..

     

    * Terrain Textures or Landclass

    - I understand now that triangler mesh tends to brake up (correct?) a texture tile in order to fit it around i.e a mountain peak.

    One can see this if you look closely at a mountain and then streight down from lets say 3000 feet.

     

    In XP I noticed that there are many mountains that have for example a top consisting of several texturebits rotated in several different directions making the rock texture look plausible, but far from realistic.

    I guess plausible is the Austin way, but i feel this is degrating the overall look and feel of X-Plane. I must add that X-Plane has the most beutiful and realistic default textures in comarasing to other simulators.

    But it has as Rhard pointed out, several errors.

     

    Repeating textures are one annoying factor, missplaced textures are a strong contender.

     

     

    Anyway, I know you have a lot to do and I would imagine everybody els knows this as well. But my question to you is dedicated to this

     

    1. Will there not be a huge effort for X-plane to egange more people to do collobration work?

    2. Is even X-Plane adaptable to 3rd party vendors that i.e make ground textures like f.eks. "Ground Environment" that aims to start with X-Plane development

    3. Are there possibilities for me to add lakes and small waters into x-plane that are missing?

  21. The B737 Classic Project

    in Aircraft Development

    Posted

    The more complicated the acf, the bigger the bugfile list.

    mabye.....but catching bugs "pre-customer" is something we specialize in ;) I very much try to do things most customers won't even try....ever and put my code through a pretty hard wringer. We do expect hardware related bugs, possibly sound or graphics related....usability bugs, but as far as aircraft complexity or systems bugs....of course we will get a few, but not as many as folks my think IMO. Jan knows how to break stuff like nobody I've ever seen.

    TomK

    As I told Morten, I would easly do my best to find them

    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk - now Free

  23. X-Plane 10 HD Mesh v2 - PREVIEW

    in Scenery Development

    Posted · Edited by Tom Knudsen

    First off, let me say I am deeply grateful that you share your knowledge!

    Second, not a english native my self so excuse any missunderstandings!

     

     

    The areas where I do my improvements are (and this list is for sure far from complete):

    • Improve the input landclass data (there are many different sources for different regions of the planet ... all with their many pros and contras ... and non of them easily adaptable to the DSF creation process).
    • Tune / change the complex rule system which tells RenderFarm how to "translate" the raw data into scenery (especially how and which terrain types to apply where, depending on slope, climate and landclass information etc. etc.) ...
    • Work on vector data (import better / new sources ... at the moment I work on fresh OSM data import)
    • Sometimes even do a little hacking in RenderFarm itself (its written in C++ and usually its Ben Supnik who hacks it). ... Like I did with a new algorithm which makes the new, line river based small rivers look halfway sane in mountainous areas (its always a mess, when the line vectors don't match the elevation mesh exactly ... then rivers run up and down over hills etc.)

     

    Seems like more fun than work, but then I do not work with it so to me this is just fancy.

     

    I tend to get annoyed with things I do not understand and furthermore go to extended distances to figure things out. In some cases it will in fact be to annoy the heck out of people like you

    and Ben with question about things I want to figure out or do not understand.

     

    So how come X-Plane only have 90 meter elevation data where simulatators like FSX and Prepare3D claim down to 10 meters, 38 by default

     

     

    Second: about viewfinderpanorams.org. Well, there are many reasons to be better than the original SRTM data. Like for example many many holes and data errors in the original SRTM90 data. The limitation to only have data up to 60N (most of Norway / Sweden / Alaska etc. etc. would not be possible with only SRTM90). What viewfinderpanoramas.org (its effectively one guy - I had some conversations with him over time) does is, to get elevation data from many many different sources (if possible better sources than SRTM90) and merge it together to have one final dataset which has an overall good quality (in many areas far better than SRTM90 .... believe me or not ... you can have big quality differences even at the same resolution!), no holes, and a complete coverage of the planet ... which takes the burden off my shoulders to do similar things on my own (which I did for the first Global Scenery for XP10 ... and now I am happy that I will not need to do that anymore and still have better data).

     

    Well there are many tools out there that fixes SRTM data (patching holes and filling in like above N60) i.e SRTMFill http://3dnature.com/srtmfill.html and SRTMVoid Killer http://www.dgadv.com/dgvk/

    But thats not the point!

     

     

    What i am not sure about is if it even exists better data for the world than SRTM90 3arc collected by Endeavour back in 2000 (except SRTM30 for the US that is).

    Or if they did in fact to a new dataset collection on the last shuttlemission.

     

     

    I know one thing is to want someting better, but my frustration is that I do not know if it is even possible.

    As you said, purhaps tessellation is the only way out.

     

     

    PS..

     

    How the heck can Outerra do this type of mesh

    http://www.simflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/k298.jpg

     

     

    where FSX can do this

    http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/attachments/gaming/1978d1209209108-fsx-add-sandes_sion2.jpg

     

     

    but XP only this

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-aj3OyrOON3k/UjTndfsL_EI/AAAAAAAADGw/0w5_Z7rZp3A/w1597-h832-no/FA-22A_35.jpg

     

     

    NB!

     

    Could you do something about the mountain texture only? Looks like someone has sneezed on it with their now full of cocain LOL..

    https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-VS52wJqGyrQ/UjTnfb6e3pI/AAAAAAAADHU/W6xlVI27TTI/w1597-h832-no/FA-22A_41.jpg

  24. X-Plane 10 HD Mesh v2 - PREVIEW

    in Scenery Development

    Posted · Edited by Tom Knudsen

    You can read about the mesh and the underlying DEM data, and tessellation in Ben Supniks blog too:

    http://developer.x-p...ts-raster-data/

    http://developer.x-p...mats-v9-vs-v10/

     

    First off, see the latter link, Ben is answering my question in a previous blogpost, second most of what you are explaining are more or less quoted from that post.

     

     

     

    For HD Mesh Scenery v2 (and all other Laminar work) it is now the planet wide coverage from viewfinderpanoramas.org (you might check that out - it is a mixture of SRTM and many other sources ... usually the best data available for a given region). And yes, that raw data is at 90m resolution.

     

    Why is that better than the original raw shuttel mission data from NASA?

    http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/

     

     

     

     

    First you talk about textures, then about the mesh, the SRTM ... and I would like to know, which of them do you think affects what???

     

    In case you already havn't noticed, i am talking about mesh not texture

     

    From Bens post

     

     

    Mesh: In X-Plane 8 and 9, the terrain mesh is stored as a set of triangles in 3 dimensions; each corner of the triangle has a latitude, longitude, and altitude.  The shape of the mesh comes from the location of those triangles and the heights of each corner.

     

    Mesh + DEM: X-Plane 10 can also handle a new extended DSF with raster (array) data.  In this mode, the mesh contains triangles (just like it did) but they contain only latitude and longitude.  The elevation for the entire DSF tile is stored in a 2-dimensional array of elevations (a raster DEM).  When X-Plane 10 loads this format, it reads the height for each triangle out of the array of elevations to “rebuild” the 3-d triangles at load time.

     

    X-Plane 9 supports only the original “mesh” DSFs.

    X-Plane 10 supports both the original mesh DSFs and the new Mesh + DEM DSFs.

     

    First som facts

     

    1. DEM data for the entire world right now is 90meter as it has been since v9 right?

    2. We have only Meshtool for v9 i.e it kan only support mesh DSFs.

     

    So my questions are..

     

    If you are able to modify the 2d array as shown on the picture above, would not this be modifying just the lat and long quality and not the exactly elevation (would be with respect why i did not notice any difference in elevation quality with HD Mesh v2 vs orgininal mesh)

     

    If you are able beyond this to alter the 2D DEM array to even calculate the elevations (raster DEM), would it not be better elevation quality (i.e LOD - Level of detail) with better DEM data such as i.e 75 meter for the whole world?

     

     

     

    So Textures

     

    As you said, this is just pictures placed on top of the 2D raster layer as textures normally are, even with bump maps or speculars.. Anyway

    The clue must be to individually fit this to each triangle right? But that just if I am correct only affects placement or purhaps distortions???

    What I am curious about is what textures can be modified in order to change the picture quality on a global scale?

     

    I did this just as an experiment for the states, but dropped it for sake of some OSM scenery while a go, but purhaps I need to retry that experiment.

     

     

    X-Plane has about 100 land-uses for the whole planet. (Desert, forest, farm, etc.)

    X-Plane applies terrain textures to those land-use types.

    Just open the "landuse.txt" to see what textures are used by what land-use types.

     

    Could not be that difficult, just time consuming which again should be able to be automated

     

     

    I am curious not critising for fun, hope you take my questions as productive and not an personal attack he he.. ;)

     

    PS..

    Keep up the good work nevertheless.

     

    Here is btw a master theses on the subject of tessellation

    http://dice.se/publications/adaptive-hardware-accelerated-terrain-tessellation/

×
×
  • Create New...