the grass "flat" texture is separate from any 3D grass or weeds you may want to place on top...you cannot lay the two together in one operation currently. Grass is being discussed internally. A form of grass can be done using the forest specification but it is not optimized at all. You can creat your own grass texture to share if you like...this is essentially what the "pavement" texture is. Some shape with some repeating texture in it. If you want orbx style stuff, you'd have to create your own grass/weed/shrub library from scratch These would be 3D objects you'd have to place individually in WED. It's perfectly conceivable to automate this somewhat in xplane and I suspect we'll get to it eventually but for now, you have to roll your own weed and grass (pun intended).

If you want orbx style stuff, you'd have to create your own grass/weed/shrub library from scratch These would be 3D objects you'd have to place individually in WED. It's perfectly conceivable to automate this somewhat in xplane and I suspect we'll get to it eventually but for now, you have to roll your own weed and grass (pun intended).

Too funny!

the grass "flat" texture is separate from any 3D grass or weeds you may want to place on top...you cannot lay the two together in one operation currently. Grass is being discussed internally. A form of grass can be done using the forest specification but it is not optimized at all. You can creat your own grass texture to share if you like...this is essentially what the "pavement" texture is. Some shape with some repeating texture in it.If you want orbx style stuff, you'd have to create your own grass/weed/shrub library from scratch These would be 3D objects you'd have to place individually in WED. It's perfectly conceivable to automate this somewhat in xplane and I suspect we'll get to it eventually but for now, you have to roll your own weed and grass (pun intended).

Ok, so let's say we have multiple flat grass textures (Flat Grass Texture #'s1-10), and multiple 3d grass objects (3d Grass Object letters a-d) in the library. What would be involved in placing, for instance, Flat Grass Texture #7 and 3d Grass Object letter c in the sim?The vision that I am seeing is several airport designers/developers from the community having a relatively easy to moderate effort at creating Orbx-style airports (without flow tech) and dozens of high quality airports being available to the user community.

The vision that I am seeing is several airport designers/developers from the community having a relatively easy to moderate effort at creating Orbx-style airports (without flow tech) and dozens of high quality airports being available to the user community.

you just draw the perimeter of the flat grass with a bezier type drawing tool..and then select the grass objects and start clicking to lay them down. I understand the vision that you have and it would indeed be nice, but I don't think we're quite there yet. The elements that make orbx orbx aren't easily "drag and dropped" I have thought quite a bit about how to make happen what you're referring to and there are some stumbling blocks IMO that need to be addressed internally within laminar and this is something I'm hoping to pursue in 2012.

you just draw the perimeter of the flat grass with a bezier type drawing tool..and then select the grass objects and start clicking to lay them down. I understand the vision that you have and it would indeed be nice, but I don't think we're quite there yet. The elements that make orbx orbx aren't easily "drag and dropped" I have thought quite a bit about how to make happen what you're referring to and there are some stumbling blocks IMO that need to be addressed internally within laminar and this is something I'm hoping to pursue in 2012.

Hi Tom,Ever so slightly off topic...uh, kind of... I notice on the OSM website that some airports have rough placing of buildings and terminals etc. would it ever be possible to populate XP10's airports with this data as an automated process? I also notice it has other things too, such as petrol stations, car parks, railway lines etc etc. could this sort of data be used in the scenery generating process for future XP10 versions? Just curious.ThanksRhydian

Perhaps to some degree, but that's out of my jurisdiction. We are certainly looking into automated placement insomuch as it's feasible though.

Yes, indeed, there are ideas floating around about how to use the "additional" information from OSM.OSM is a treasure chest, full of data, but it is also a snake pit. Because of its wiki stile map editing (and especially the tagging!!!), there are some really, really strange things in there, which can make you cry, when approaching with algorithmic tools (Ben Supnik already had some nightmares because of it) .... So, even this coin has two sides :)

Good to hear guys. Having entered a few tags myself, I know what you mean, not exactly well structured. I've mapped maybe 20 houses in my local area- only 50,000 or so to go!

Good to hear guys. Having entered a few tags myself, I know what you mean, not exactly well structured. I've mapped maybe 20 houses in my local area- only 50,000 or so to go!

Better get back to work then. :)

Ha. Seriously though, there's enough smarts out there, surely they could develop a routine that analyses the satellite pics and pre-positions the polygons and labels them, ready for review. Residentials vs commercials have definite patterns to them

Hey Michael, howdy from San Antonio...I used to live in Lewisville right near Coppell..small world. Anyhow, I think there are 3 options to export 3D to x-plane obj format. Blender, AC3D and Sketchup each have exporters I think. There have been a few studio max ones "rumored" but I have yet to see a reliable one. As long as you can get your 3D into one of these apps then it really doesn't matter which one you use, especially for scenery where the export requirements are simple and do not generally require animations or fancy cockpit related stuff. You can basically open up the stuff in Blender, perhaps do a few quality checks (differences in coordinates or offsets perhaps) and simply export. As to why I myself would say Blender is the app of choice, the primary reason would be because of the "native" support for xplane objects. Beyond that, it's the fact that blender is the fastest 3D creation app I have used (and I've used a lot dating back to 1995) and it also allows me 100% control over each and every verticie. I realize this modeling style isn't for everybody though, I'm just giving you my perspective. I still have yet to see someone who "finally" gets blender regret learning it...though getting to that point can be painful.Hopefully you'll see video tutorials from me some time in 2012 going over the scenery system in detail.

Hi Tom, small world indeed, used to live in Austin back in the late 80's and my band played in San Antonio (Sneakers) quite a bit, had some great times there, love the River walk.Thanks for the info, much appreciated and exactly what I needed to know. I guess I might need to spend some more time on the Blender UI. I was that way coming from 3DSmax to Gmax, didn't make sense and then one day it clicked. I have quite a few object libraries frolm various sceneries i have done that I can convert to be imported into Blender, so that is not a problem.I did want to ask about overall possibilities since you brought up Orbx type sceneries.. The attached image is an example of a project i am working on. It included photoreal ground at 30 cm/pixel, all seasons, custom runway/taxiway FS2002 type ground polys, autogen and custom objects (some animated). Would a scenery like this be feasible in XP10 and if so, learning curve??

Absolutely feasible...I am working on a little demo area myself to demonstrate (just don't ask me when it comes out :) Like a lot of things, there is more than one way to skin a cat though. You COULD use ultra-high resolution orthophotos to pretty much take care of the ground in one simple step (at the cost of high VRAM usage). Or you could use lower resolution images for general color...then overlay that with high resolution....asphalt, grass, whatever, THEN on top of that you can overlay transition polygons....say to bridge the transition between asphalt and grass to get some cracks or that rough edge. You could do that by hand placing those polygons in WED or you could use what we call LIN files...which are basically a line you draw in WED that strings along a texture. We use LINs for taxilines, but you can have a line that is half asphalt and half grass with asphalt cracks in it for example.......OR you can use the new shader control texture to virtually erode grass, exposing the dirt underneath etc.....OR you can use a combination of all of them thereof on a case by case, which is pretty much what I do.I do not think there is any quick way to get orbx scenery.....because so much of orbx look is a very coordinated ground texture with the 3D stuff on top and xplane's autogen and generic stuff just can't match that. Really good stuff will have to have polygons overlaid over the area of interest and how to go about doing that is definitely a topic best saved for a comprehensive tutorial.Below are a few screenshots I did to test some GIS tools I was writing dealing with ground textures. I took some quick screen grabs from Google, georeferenced them and autosliced them then brought them in to WED. The resolution is heinous but it was more of an alignment test and I basically started tossing default xplane library buildings on top of the orthophotos but with some real lights thrown in. I think you could see that with a little love and care of the textures..and the addition of some fences and electrical utility stuff that this scene could be cleaned up right quick into something nice. Toss in some real lights and it will get even better. FYI, the tennis courts from the google screen grab were way low rez so I just made some polygons, textured them with tennis courts and placed those in WED, simply overlaying the ground orthophoto texture. This is a good example of putting high resolution polygons only where they're needed if that is what is desired.http://dl.dropbox.co...Picture%201.pnghttp://dl.dropbox.co...Picture%205.pnghttp://dl.dropbox.co...Picture%207.pngAnd also as a FYI notice to those interested.....my home base forum for scenery work, Q & A, and any tutorials will take place over at x-pilot.com.....so pretty much after this weekend, that is the place where I will be addressing future V10 scenery related questions.

I think we will have some incredible airports done after the tools are released.Those images make ME want to learn how to do this.Thanks for sharing Tom.

Nice work, like the workarounds and the techniques you are using, the tennis courts look good. I like the idea of not having to create night textures. Looks like I will definitely be getting XP10, looks promising. It'll be nice to have a new/diferent canvas to work with. You'll probably be getting some emails from me afterwords, LOL.Thanks again Tom!

Hi Tom, small world indeed, used to live in Austin back in the late 80's and my band played in San Antonio (Sneakers) quite a bit, had some great times there, love the River walk.Thanks for the info, much appreciated and exactly what I needed to know. I guess I might need to spend some more time on the Blender UI. I was that way coming from 3DSmax to Gmax, didn't make sense and then one day it clicked. I have quite a few object libraries frolm various sceneries i have done that I can convert to be imported into Blender, so that is not a problem.I did want to ask about overall possibilities since you brought up Orbx type sceneries.. The attached image is an example of a project i am working on. It included photoreal ground at 30 cm/pixel, all seasons, custom runway/taxiway FS2002 type ground polys, autogen and custom objects (some animated). Would a scenery like this be feasible in XP10 and if so, learning curve??

Great looking stuff there.