VFR scenery

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Peter...Love your shots, as always... Guess what now graces my desktop?Regards,John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Love your SLC shots.... Great stuff, as always...-John

[Guest]

CasI appreciate that Microsofts main market is Joe Bloggs in the street who frankly wouldnt have a clue if an aircraft felt real or not.Having said that in these forums are the real enthusiasts who are far more demanding and want more than "just a game".Im sure that when people like Chris of FSW releases his more realistic interpretation of clouds most here will run and get them rather than stick with the Microsoft generics.The same goes for every other aspect of the sim. Third parties are continually striving for more realism but are constrained by the structure which only Microsoft can adjust.I afraid i have never been the type to bow in thanks for what we have recieved and will always push to match the sim closer to what i see real world.Remember the saying "strive for perfection. While you may never achieve that goal at least you may end up with something better than you had".Now push the limits is much more to my liking and its also not true that Microsoft doesnt listen ;-)BTW my name is spelt S I D O L I ;-)CheersPeter

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all.A few of us are experimenting with Terrascene.It was developed to create pseudo-photoreal for FLY2. It can produce the same scenery for FS2002. The output is a TGA bitmap that can be processed to a windows bipmap, then sliced by resample.exe. The results are very accurate roads, streams, water, even city streets. Landclass polys are right where they should be.I'm experimenting with FS2002 derived textures to produce LOD8 sized scenery that blends with the default pretty well. ( about 25x25 miles ). I use Terrascene 2.1, Paintshop Pro, resample, FStexconvert.exe, imagetool.exe, and a batchfile to process the windows bitmap with resample and the imaging tools. The batchfile takes out almost all of the tedious interaction. The whole process takes about 45 minutes per LOD8 sized Cell.In the future, new tools may allow us to process this scenery as VTP and LWM plys and lines, in a relatively short amount of time, with FS2002's default textures and autogens, giving us accurate water, roads, streams, streets, land-type usage, with seasons, and autogen. And this doesn't exclude the use of small CUSTOM tiles for small areas within the scenery's bounds.We have a lot of options.Also, autogen may be assigned to any CUSTOM tile, and objects may be placed onto CUSTOM tiles as well. And the autogen can be removed by renaming the AGN extension, or deleting the AGN files... you don't have to suffer with it if you don't like autogen.Stop by AVSIM's 'MSFS Scenery Design Forum' for some interesting ideas.Dick

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I've had good results with Terrascene...Months ago, I posted some Tahoe shots and some Napa Valley shots of my Terrascene/Terrabuilder work. I'll see if I can dig those up & repost them to the thread, so folks know what we're talking about.The limitation with Terrascene is the same as photoreal...size. Add seasons and night to that, and you have a really big package. I agree with you that once we get a handle around some of the new tools, we might be able to overlay our own photoreal road networks, much like we do with landclass today. The areas I've done with Landclass Assistant are arguably just as suitable for VFR navigation. It's amazing what the addition of a small village or town does. I know when I fly down the Carson Valley, which was my first LCA project and the one I used in my tutorial, it reminds me very much of where I used to live... I used to drive down Kingsbury Grade every evening, and I could see the cities lit up as I came over the pass about 4000 ft. above the valley floor... Ahh, that was a commute....

[Donmo 6]

Oh man. Been there! I've been down the Kings Grade. Went from Stateline to Carson for some "fun", if ya know what I mean. They have some great "ranches" down in the valley! LOL! On topic, I used your Landclass tutorial and found it to be easy to use. I followed your instructions without a hitch. Great program and I thank you for it. Don Moser :)

[LAdamson 240]

>>As far as I'm concerned, nothing can beat high-rez, >satellite-based scenery. I guess I'm not the only one - the >soon to be released UK VFR and Dolomite sceneries generated >a lot of very enthusiastic threads. I definately DO like high resolution satellite-based scenery when sim flying from an altitude where the scenery is "crisp" in resolution. While most of my sim flying is FS2002 with added mesh sceneries for improved elevations, I really like these shot's I took with FLYII, and some added third party satellite scenery. These shots are beautiful from altitude, but degrade at low altitudes....... where I think the MSFS textures and "auto-gen" do better.FLYII/SoCal --- satellite scenery

[Guest]

We had about the same discussion a few months back about flight models. Those who were saying that MS weren't that bad, or very good, those who were uttering the good ol' "Whadaya expect for 70$?", those who were saying that it was impossible and those who were saying that they could be improved. Note that the latter passed for protesters, bitter individuals unable to accept their happy fate etc...Well, a few weeks later the SF-260 marked a clear improvement on how flight dynamics is rendered in simulations. It happened because some people decided to use their brain and their time to make things better, by focusing on what was not good. For 27 bucks.So. The question is not to decide whether landscape is or is not bad, good, sufficient, cheap etc.in 2K2, but to push in the direction of making it *better*. I have a hard time finding rational explanations to the resistance to admit this rather obvious idea. What's wrong about suggesting to improve? Is there another way to improve anything than to focus on what is not good? What's the big deal?

[Guest BrianC]

Most people do not pay $70 for FS2002 Professional.Most people buy the standard version when the price drops to $30 which it mostly has, at least on sales. Soon enough that will be the regular price. The pro version is generally $60 now at the major stores in the USA, and it's been on sale for $45. Plus a lot of people in the USA get the $10 upgrade rebate on Standard, or $15 on Pro.So perhaps we should be talking about a $30 simulator, which is surely what most people buy.$250 million... riiiiiight. MS must have died laughing when they first heard this. :)

[Guest Twister]

Wow !That sounds great ! I'd love to see those screenshots...If only I could convert a good satellite pic of my area and turn it into a decent scenery for FS...I would be on cloud 9...Like I said before, Autogen and Landclass are absolutely fantastic, but I'd still rather go for a satellite-based scenery given the choice...Twister