SceneryUSA (Aerosoft) TEXTURES

[Guest sfgiants]

All,Appears this vendor has created new textures. Could these be better than the blurry textures MS gave us?Tim

[Guest]

the default textures are NOT blurry. It's the way they are rendered that can result in a blurred image on screen when you don't have the resources to render the best possible mip.Unless these textures have no mipmaps at all, you'd get that exact same blurring, which is a limitation of the physics engine that was programmed in to prevent you from getting 0.01fps when you're flying at FL410 and seeing hundreds of miles in all directions.You can get rid of that blurring by either reducing the detail sliders to the far left for everything (which should also give you excellent fps) or by removing all the mipmaps from all the textures and saving the largest one by the original name (which would slow your FS to a crawl but look great).

[brandon 0]

Do they have screenshots? Where can I find info about these new textures?

[Guest tcable]

Those aren't simple tiles that they are using. check out www.sceneryusa.com and you'll see the Boston area- those textures are more like terrascene textures than siple tiles like FS2002 uses now. A few of them show the major highway interchange in Braintree, MA that is near the Final approach course for the 4's to KBOS. IT's too detailed unless Andrew has come up with a new way of doing textures that is independant of landclass. I know hte area becuase I live locally and I've flown many times South of Boston.Tim

[greggerm 312]

It looks sorta like FS2002 textures laid down using something like TerraScene. Essentially, CUSTOM textures which are sourced with standard files. Either way, I for one CANNOT WAIT for this package. It is as good as purchased by me. :) -Germ (who also knows the southeast expressway/I-93/Rt. 3 interchange!)

[fbevard 0]

It does look good!!!! Wonder how compatable it's going to be if you already have FSGenesis 38M &10M mesh and USA Landclass installed? Also FScene Summer,Fall,&Winter?

[Guest tcable]

You mean the disaster by South Shore Plaza? :) I think I even saw the mall in one of the day shots. At least they don;t show the zipper lane.I'm amazed that any of the Big Dig is open at all :) It is a part of my entire adult life.Tim

[Guest PaulL01]

>All, >>Appears this vendor has created new textures. Could these be >better than the blurry textures MS gave us? >>Tim I'm gonna just add some thought for food here:The SceneryUSA are using the photorealistic capabilities of FS2k2 but instead of satellite image data are using something very similar to TerraScene where USGS River/Road/landclass and elevation data are used to draw from texture samples to accurately render most all roads/rivers/coastlines as well as landclass type and then compiled as an image and then sliced into indexed textures that are reassembled in FS2k2 via scenery.bgl file. The benefit of this method is that seasonal and night time images can/are reproduced as it is hard enough to purchase cloud free coverage in good daylight let alone all seasons and night (as well as afford $$)The image sharpness or resolution is limited by FS2k2 to 4.8 meters/pixel, the image clarity can be further reduced depending on what method of resampling they used, MS SDK tool is very poor hopefully they used something as good as Martin Wrights graphic tools.As for the "blurry" textures, no matter if the texture has Mips or not FS2k2 will >always< mipmap a terrain texture the only exception to this is a DXT1 >with a single alpha channel- this acts like a mipmap=off switch but the results are not good as you get the "boiling horizon" effect, thus we have mipmaping, but as pointed out system power as well as good LOD and Anisotropic filtering settings in your video card drivers menu or favorite tweaking program make all the difference in the world and the results can be very good.A couple of questions about the SceneryUSA that would be good to have answers for: Are all seasons represented?Since it is very unlikely that autoGen will be present, have airfields been peppered with trees and surrounding buildings to bring that fell back when on final?What cities are being considered...???To stir up this interest and then just leave the empty space out there...:-rollOK, now where's my Beef jerky?

[Guest tcable]

The fatal flaw being that of terracene- file size.Landclass offers the comprimise of generic land types, accurately placed for a specific area. Supplemet that with some detailed local scenery and I'd say that it is good enough for most of us. However, that's not to say that I'd love ultra detiled local scenery, though with Autogen :) I've found that at low levels that element of 'texture' makes a huge difference.Take a look at LOMAC's low level video of the MIG-29 with stands of trees and industry- it is amazing The static images are awesome, but hte video is incredible. Take away the stuctures, and low level flight is bland.Tim

[Guest PaulL01]

>"The fatal flaw being that of terracene- file size.I understand what you mean but I think with todays hardrives that becomes moot.>Landclass offers the comprimise of generic land types, accurately >placed for a specific area. Supplemet that with some detailed local >scenery and I'd say that it is good enough for most of us. However, >that's not to say that I'd love ultra detiled local scenery, though >with Autogen I've found that at low levels that element >of 'texture' makes a huge difference.>>Take a look at LOMAC's low level video of the MIG-29 with stands of >trees and industry- it is amazing The static images are awesome, but >hte video is incredible. Take away the stuctures, and low level >flight is bland."True, but once you are in the air there is nothing to compare:http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/ecto8.jpg

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all.It doesn't matter so much how they derived the textures... they are CUSTOM as described in the SDKs.I believe the creator is Peter McLean, who's brother Andrew was a pioneer in the photoreal method.5 seasons plus night are possible with CUSTOM. An area of 20x20 miles ( LOD8 area ) would require about 1024 textures for each season plus a night set, for a total of about 6144 textures... @43kb per texture, equals about 265Mb for each 20x20 area.Autogen is possible, but it's unlikely that it would be made for such a large area, as each CUSTOM texture would need it's own autogen... thousands of autogen made with Annotator? Probably not.Each groundtile that adjoins the default groundtiles will need to match roads, shores, and water masses, as well as default landclass textures, or it will have a very noticable edge where the CUSTOM tile sharply meets the default. I'll assume there was no attempt to do this, as it would take thousands of hours of hand editing of VTP and LWM BGLC code.There will be no framerate drag on the sim with this approach, unless your system needs to read the textures off the CD, instead of the harddrive.So there are some questions as to what you will get for your money.And, yes, you can derive sets of TARGA images from TerraScene, and make CUSTOM from them yourself. The best part of that method is the accurate placement of roads, streets, lakes, streams and rivers. The first time I did this, I busted-out into a grin, as I saw my home area presented accurately in the sim. I suddenly knew the names of the creeks, and roads, and could easily fly VFR without any disorientation. It's like flying a map.But unless you are very familiar with an area, you won't get that benefit. So I would not be likely to buy "Boston", for example, as I don't know the area from Adam, and the default is just fine for my purposes.Dick

[greggerm 312]

From the description on the website..."It's coming soon. Thousands of square miles of scenery on CD-ROM for various areas of the USA at a reasonable price."...I guess this will NOT cover the entire USA... I was getting a little excited about the possibility of that. Does anyone have any insight as to how they will be working the scenery areas?Which cities or regions? How will it be done? Will they distribute the custom textures on the CD, or will they have some sort of generation program which will actually MAKE the custom textures on your computer, so all they need to ship are the base textures along with land use and road data? (space-saving for distribution - ship far larger areas of detail on one CD) I won't ask about pricing or release dates, as I know they haven't announced that yet. I've played with TerraScene and FS2002 textures, and couldn't quite get things to work properly for me, with the seasons, night lighting, etc... this looks like it will be SPECTACULAR, so long as they have coverage in the areas that matter to me the most!Information, Aerosoft Austriala! Info!!! :)Eagerly awaiting,-GermPS - Forgot to add - if it's not too late, and depending on the method you are using to make the scenery... the double-laned "highway" which goes from downtown Boston out towards the airport (as seen in the screenshots) are in fact a pair of tunnels... TRUST ME-No complaints about it, but on the off-chance you are interested in such little details, I figured you could know. :)

[Guest tcable]

I just noticed teh Callahan and Sumner- but no Ted...They even show the elevated expressway (so to speak) I worked 15 feet from that road while they were doing construction there on teh Big Dig- in a building with 2 foot thick granite walls, the place still shook all day and night.Tim

[Guest Dean]

:-eek Whose the giant standing to the right of the runway in your screenshot? It looks a little like Bill Clinton.:-lol

[greggerm 312]

I'd imagine so!Chances are the land use data and highway information are a little out of date... now that the Ted Williams is open and technically part of I-90, the next time they pull the road data it will show up. But as a user of TerraScene, I haven't seen the free USGS road data get updated in quite a long time. Old roadways, tunnels, whatever - It's not stopping me from the purchase! (So long as it is affordable!) -Greg