I'm loving Alaska more and more

[Glynn 405]

You are SERIOUSLY the first person I've ever heard say that, and I have no reason to doubt you, I'm just surprised.

 

Hello

I also have no issues at all with FSX, these days it runs really well even with high end addons, lots of traffic ect.

Thats why there is such a large amount of third party development for it.

There has to be a lot of happy FSX users to support that industry, and there really are a lot of folk running it well now.

[RichLP 32]

Hello

I also have no issues at all with FSX, these days it runs really well even with high end addons, lots of traffic ect.

Thats why there is such a large amount of third party development for it.

There has to be a lot of happy FSX users to support that industry, and there really are a lot of folk running it well now.

 

You say "these days it runs really well"...

 

Does that mean you have had problems before?

 

The part that surprised me, and maybe I read it wrong, was that he had never had problems...

[Guest]

Let's get back on topic, please.

[LHookins 3,103]

The public domain data for Hawai'i is 10m and Alaska is 60m, so expect a better landscape in Hawai'i.

 

I've seen evidence that the DEM data used for Alaska, whether public domain or purchased, isn't of consistent quality. Some areas are obviously higher resoution than others, and then there's the oddity west of Dutch Harbor to the end of the island chain where you get a stairstepping effect. I reported this on the beta forum and was told that was what it was like in the original source data. Seems to me that someone at the data source (not Microsoft) attempted to interpolate the data to make it higher resolution than it was, and failed.

 

An area the size of Alaska is bound to have some discrepancies that Microsoft isn't going to be able to fix. Some areas will have higher resolution data, other areas will have lower. Not much we can do about it.

 

This is what I meant in post #13 when I said

 

I suspect the source data for the terrain is as good as it's going to get, and you can't hand-edit 600,000 square miles, unfortunately.

 

Hook

[LHookins 3,103]

Have just done a quick hop in the Merrill Pass though (for the first time) and it does look very good down there. Might be my new favourite place to fly so thanks for the tip.

 

Hey, glad you liked it. I was amazed first time I saw it.

 

What altitude were you flying at? I usually fly around 1000 feet AGL these days in Alaska. If you're flying at high altitude, that may be why you see more rounded terrain: the Level Of Detail will be lower the farther away you are from the terrain. You can see a similar problem in fly-by view where the camera is zoomed way in so that hills in the background are too far away to be rendered in high detail.

 

Hook

[Bobsk8 12,735]

Probably not considering most will have to pay for the rest of the world now, unlike before.

 

 

 

Look I am sorry you have had issues with past sims, but I haven't, no CTDs, no lockups, no stutters in FSX and my FPS are locked at 33. I am wanting to simulate what I do see in a real flight, not what I see in a learning full motion simulator, Since I can't "feel" the creakyness of an old Piper, or "feel" the wheels on take off or landing or even "feel" the crosswond or updraft from sitting at my desk, then visuals and sounds are going to have to make up for it.

 

If you are thrilled with your Flight experience, I am happy for you, I am just trying to get there myself but obviously we have different needs.

 

No issues with FSX, must be a real rarity, because I still see threads on different forums listing all the problems that many people still can't seem to solve, and these are not old posts. Having a forum dedicate to " Crash to desktops" for FSX with posts every day tells me that there are still many unsolved stability issues with o MS sims. Been flying FS too many years and know too many people that still use it to buy the idea that it runs smooth and problems are solved for most users. They sold the rights to FSX to Lockheed, and they are still trying to work the bugs out of it to get it to be usable for a training sim, and haven't succeeded yet according to their forums,

 

There is only so many things a processor can do, and if it is busy trying to juggle floating boats, air traffic, kids playing in the street, and all the eye candy that people want to see, then something has to give somewhere else. The issue is, do folks want to give up a smooth, flowing, non stuttering , non crashing display and good flight model behavior, for eye candy? I don't, but that's just me.

[jcomm 5,939]

There is only so many things a processor can do, and if it is busy trying to juggle floating boats, air traffic, kids playing in the street, and all the eye candy that people want to see, then something has to give somewhere else. The issue is, do folks want to give up a smooth, flowing, non stuttering , non crashing display and good flight model behavior, for eye candy? I don't, but that's just me.

 

I don't too... That's why I got in love with it... Love is a complicated feeling/state of affairs... Sometimes we get angry, but in the end all is OK again :-)

[meshman 109]

I've seen evidence that the DEM data used for Alaska, whether public domain or purchased, isn't of consistent quality. Some areas are obviously higher resoution than others, and then there's the oddity west of Dutch Harbor to the end of the island chain where you get a stairstepping effect. I reported this on the beta forum and was told that was what it was like in the original source data. Seems to me that someone at the data source (not Microsoft) attempted to interpolate the data to make it higher resolution than it was, and failed.

 

I saw the post and reply you mention. I haven't gotten out to that area to take a look, but it sounds as if the terrain was made using a contour DEM without implementing any smoothing.

 

Alaska does have some different levels of source, but for now the statewide 60m is what's commonly used and that would be made into 38m for the game, same as for FSX. Alaska does have a working program to get better resolution and high resolution aerial imagery, but with the state size and weather issues it's going to take them a while.

[LHookins 3,103]

"Contour DEM"... ok, that makes sense. I've only worked with point data, didn't know they had contour data as well.

 

At this point we don't know who did (or did not) do the smoothing. It might have been something Microsoft needed to do.

 

As far as I know, FSX terrain west of Dutch Harbor has the same stairstepping effect. Don't quote me on that, as I haven't been there in ages. It seems likely that Flight uses much of the same data FSX did.

 

Hook

[RoboRay 126]

Hmmm... west of Dutch Harbor, huh? I was thinking about an exploration out to the end of the Aleutians and back, but I may reconsider. I haven't actually encountered any terrain glitches in Flight yet (other than autogen trees right on the end of the runways) and don't know if I want to see them. :huh2:

[LHookins 3,103]

It's worth a flight anyway. The last two airfields, Adak and Atka, almost always have one or two clandestine cargo missions. Always to the other island so far.

 

Hook

[meshman 109]

I had taken a peek at Flight files before and went back to take another. It's difficult to compare based upon the boundaries that files will cover, as in FSX part of one file covers Alaska and Canada, while Flight will be truncated not too far inside the Canada line. Given that, areas for Hawai'i and Alaska show larger files than FSX. In the case of Hawai'i, Microsoft has gone from 38m for FSX to 10m for Flight. Comparing a portion of Flight's Alaska scenery where there would be no sharing with Russia or Canada shows a larger file size compared to FSX. Educated guess would be that less compression was used when compiling the file, as FSX used a lot of compression to fit upon two DVDs.

 

Higher fidelity and less "stair-stepping" can be gotten with a setting used during compile, but there is also a larger BGL file as a result.

[scotchegg 4,186]

What altitude were you flying at? I usually fly around 1000 feet AGL these days in Alaska. If you're flying at high altitude, that may be why you see more rounded terrain: the Level Of Detail will be lower the farther away you are from the terrain. You can see a similar problem in fly-by view where the camera is zoomed way in so that hills in the background are too far away to be rendered in high detail.

 

Usually at around peak height so sometimes the peaks are above and sometimes below. The mesh in that area does seem better than for example the mountains north of Anchorage. I like the small terrain variations flying west just before you get to the mountains of Merrill Pass as well.

 

I don't know Alaska well at all so getting tips on nice places to visit is important for me to get the best out of it. When I was using FSX I would often look at the ORBX community galleries to get ideas on where to go but haven't found a gallery bursting with Flight pictures anywhere yet.

 

Alaska does have a working program to get better resolution and high resolution aerial imagery, but with the state size and weather issues it's going to take them a while.

How do they even get this mesh in the first place and apart from the occasional flight sim developer, who uses it? Sorry, I realise this is off topic so if you know a site where there's basic information about it...

[RoboRay 126]

Lake Clark Pass, south of Merrill Pass is another nice flight.

 

My pics from both are here: http://forum.avsim.net/index.php?/topic/378030-Flying-the-passes

[LHookins 3,103]

How do they even get this mesh in the first place and apart from the occasional flight sim developer, who uses it?

 

The DEM data is avaiable from the USGS (I don't have a direct link on this computer, sorry). I've used it pretty extensively to make wargaming maps. I think you can get it from Google Earth these days, but I haven't messed with that at all.

 

Hook