UK scenery ?

[VFR_Steve]

Hi everyone :)

If any of you would be so kind as to tell me if there is any UK photographic scenery available for X-Plane I would be most grateful.

Cheers,
Steve

[VFR_Steve]

Ok ... I guess that answers that then! :'(

[cornclose]

Steve,

Don't dismiss this quite so quickly. Watch this space...

[VFR_Steve]

>Steve,
>
>Don't dismiss this quite so quickly. Watch this space...

err .. ok then, what's planned? Or is it still secret at the minute?

UK scenery in X-Plane would just be a dream come true for me!!

Cheers,
Steve

[cornclose]

All I'll say is :-

Watch this space. Secret, yes, but not for long, your dream may just come true....

[VFR_Steve]

Now that it's released I'm frustrated to find the resolution isn't fine enough and it looks quite blurry to me.. I understand now the reasons for this resolution although it's a great shame!! :(

Regards,

[cornclose]

Now that it's released ? That's news to me!

A demo version is released, but not the fully version(s).

For those that may read this an see it as a limitation of the scenery, it's not, it's a limitation on Windows due to the way X-Plane's scenery engine works. For more information, see [link:www.circle-software.co.uk/php/html/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=77|this explaination].

[VFR_Steve]

My opologies Cornclose I meant the demo area, having commented on the resolution it's not that much of an issue at all, it does look really stunning and far in front of any scenery addon for X-Plane

I would highly recommend any X-Plane user purchasing it!

I'm very intrigued to see how the accurate mesh looks :9

Regards,

[boxcar]

Hi Steve.

Imagine finding you in this forum too? :) Cornclose & I have been discussing the photoreal scenery textures in another forum & I thought it best to continue our good discussion here as it seems appropriate as well as apt to do so. Hope you do not mind, as it relates to this subject. Thanks ...

We are discussing my perception of the lack of enough yellow in the color mix of the photoreal textures, making the fields to appear rather "pinkish" as well as the greens to appear a tad bit too bluish-green, all of which could be easily rectified by adding a bit more yellow intensity to the color mix of the textures. These are his great comments & observations from the recent post in the Screenshot Forum:

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"This is an age old compromise with X-Plane. Since it is a cross platform sim (Mac and Windows) there have always been differences in how X-Plane looks on both platforms, mainly due to the way X-Plane handles gamma settings. Strangly, during initial beta tests, the feedback from one or two Mac beta testers was that the photographic textures look a little too dark/green.

Since we intended the scenery to compatible with both Mac and Windows from the outset, a little subjective opinion regarding colouration was always going to be inevitable, although nearly all users accept that the scenery as-is is very true to life for the UK. Subsequently, following on from feedback we had from Mac users, the photographic textures were modified ever so slightly to try to attain the best image quality on both Mac and Windows. I think we have the balance about right - however, individual users will always be at liberty to tweak the photographic textures enmasse if they want to see slightly different results in X-Plane.

Another point worth mentioning is that the sky colours and ambient/directional light colours can all be modified, quite extensively, by use of bitmaps within X-Plane. The default X-Plane colours are not to my taste, and they certainly do not represent conditions in the UK as well as they could, so I've modified them to suite my tastes, although the photographic scenery hase been tested using default sky colouration too.

As far as running X-Plane at higher texture resolutions, the key aspect is not Video RAM on modern systems, but is system RAM and the ability of the system's AGP implementation. The more system RAM you have the better (to a point) although more video RAM will give generally better results too. We are recommending at least 768mb of System RAM and at least a 64mb video card for good results with our scenery, with more yielding better results.

I can run very smoothly (ie. 30+ frames per second) at extreme res! with my Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53Ghz), ATI Radeon 9500Pro (128mb) and 896mb of system RAM. Reports from beta testers suggest that there is no significant reduction in frame rate when compared to default X-Plane scenery when using the same settings, and I can confirm this with my systems too. The main reason for this is that "default" scenery, meaning the gloS textures, are rendered using a different code path than the "custom" textures used in our scenery.

In particular, those curvy funky transitions between texture borders with alpha blending are rendered using a multipass system (even if they didn't, they'd use multitexturing), while custom scenery is just blasted quad by quad. In the worst case, where each quad has a natural land-use type that results in a different texture in a different corner, you do one normal quad and three blended quads! Which is well over four times the load of one unblended quad.

X-Plane's renderer detects when the same .bmp file is used by different gloS codes, so if no transition is visible, you're not paying for one. But there are some transitions visible in the gloS stuff, while there are none in custom-texture scenery like the England & Wales Photographic Scenery. That's why photographic scenery does not reduce performance markedly (and in some cases can actually be faster). If you were to go in and paint new images on the custom terrain bitmaps, you would have the same slower framerate that the default scenery has.

In summary, the graphics path for rendering matters a lot, and the size of textures matters some, but if all textures are in VRAM going smaller isn't faster. Similarly, if all textures can't fit in VRAM and you're already using AGP/System memory, then by using larger scenery areas you're not going to suffer in terms of performance (unless you don't have enough system RAM to start with!)."

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Whew!! That is a lot to get ones head around! Am speaking for myself here in this. :-hmmm Quite an extensive effort to accomodate my thoughts & curiosities in these things. Your explanations help to sort all this out for me. Lots to digest here & am tackling it all as time affords. Am appreciative of your diligent efforts to enlighten, thanks so much.

~ Am still feeling that the photoreal textures need a bit more yellow in the color matrix ~

http://flightsimnetwork.com/dcforum/...99697cd54c.jpg

All the best ...

Dwayne

[VFR_Steve]

Hi Dwayne, my apologies for such a late reply, great to see you in here also :)

It is alot to get you head around! I understood most of the concepts .. I think! :-groggy

I'm still very interested to see how Wales & the Lakes are with the new mesh and will probably be the deciding factor to whether I buy it.

Regarding the colours, I remember you mentioning this with the VFR scenery for FS2002/4 also, I must say I don't really see it as obviously as you do, you must have a much sharper eye than me.. or maybe just a better monitor ;)

Regards,