more eye candy..keep it comming..never enough

[Fredla]

I, for one, want more eye candy. That would be my number one reason to upgrade from FS9.

I really hope that they can create sceneries that look like photorealistic sceneries similar to Megascenery, but in a way that it is not so blury and two dimensional when flying low. To accompolish this and create a more 3 dimensional look, the Photo scenery should accomodate lots of Autogens that blend onto the photo realistic textures. This is something that creators of Megascenery have not yet been able to do. In fact, because of their inability (or lack of resources I should say) to blend the autogen into the photo scenery, they recommend a lower autogen complexity when using their product.

If creating a 3 dimensional (less flat?) photoreal scenery is not possible, then just use the photorealistic scenery outside of the developed areas (such as those cool mountains and desert photo textures in Megascenery S.CA) and improve the textures and autogens of the cities.

As it stands, the autogen has real potential for improvement; improvements that can really change the look of the sim as a whole. Lets have more commercial buildings along main roadways (instead of scattered houses). Throw in some shopping centers! As you move away from main roads, increase the residential autogen.

Is it me or do the autogen objects look too big? Fix the relative size of the city textures to the autogens. Have you seen the textures representing local football fields? The houses next to them are bigger than the football field. The fast food resturants (with big chicken) are so much bigger than widths of the highways next to them. (I believe that the size of the autogens are okay, its the texturs that need fixing.)

[Fredla]

I forgot something and I will add this as an reply to my own posting:

A lot of you will tell me that there are third party developers that provide better scenery, better autogens and texture than default and I agree. But, for me, buying 3rd party sceneries (as with buying Megascenery) has often involved major trade offs. For example, with Ultimate Terrain so many scenery objects (including landmark bridges) needed to be removed. Thats why I want the improvements in textures and autogens done from within Microsoft package in the next version.

[bgenesis]

Eye candy, yes... the more realistic our experience becomes, the better... however... keep FPS, RAM etc im mind. Everyone's not gonna pay for a supercomputer to run this.

[kurtvoss]

Why does it have to use alot of FPS?
I would say around 15-20 FPS can be gained just from adding afew numbers in the CFG!
Flight sims coding isnt very good and uses fps on nothingless really.
Also a shopping centre for example, is abit vague, it could mean just a "box" kind of shape with blury textures around it representing a shopping centre (thats what i would be expecting anyway)
But i see your point, its not going to be detailed enough that you can see how many fingers the till lady has! Afew cars in a car park and some better lighting would be nice. Also some patterned lights going along a motorway instead of the dim motionless ones.
But when you think about it, flight sim wasnt made so you can look down and say "wow a shopping centre" its more about the flying and yes some monuments and achievements such as the statue of liberty (which could use some improving!)
Tthe flight sim textures arnt that bad as it is. compared to when you look at say Xplane, now that is an ugly carpet! lol.
I would suggest the autogen to be abit more clever and not just place buildings anywhere, and those trees could use some "realisticness" But then you cant really say "i want those branches to blow in the wind or collect snow" because its not going to happen!

What i would like in FS10 would be the abiility to leave earths atmosphere. Sounds over the top but it wouldnt be very difficult to create really. And yea somehow without killing your fps to a lousy 15-20, a slight improvement on ground textures. Also the clouds are abit of a slow down. But its not like battlefield 2 where you are trapped within a small map with limited textures and aspects to the game, flight sim is literally "the whole world" so you can imagine the difficulty of creating a agme which lets you go anywhere without killing your FPS!


Oh and yea, those autogen and even some of the attached buildings, e.g. football stadiums are much to small! In reality you could fly a chopper and land inside a football stadium, on flight sim it will barely fit! Try it and see for yourself.

[Fredla]

You are right that the textures in Xplane are ugly. But they weren't so comparing to the earlier version of FS.

Look at the Megascenery and flight zone series. I have attached an example below. If the look of their scenery can be incorporated in the next version of FS9 but in a 3 dimensional way, you will agree that our current textures will look ugly!.

[Fredla]

I don't think better textures and better autogen will decrease FPS significantly.

However, we have to all accept that software improvements must take into account improvements in hardware. Otherwise they can't improve the program. They have, however, put sliders to accomodate people who can't upgrade at the time. But even there is a limit to use of sliders; hence you can't play FS9 on a 33 MHZ 386SX.

Speaking of playing on older systems. Look at the advertisment for FS1 on the attached picture. Look at how they boast about the "Flicker free" frame rates of 3 FPS!!!!!!!