This has always bothered me but I never got down to posting. Flying around cities and urban areas, there are many buildings in real life with signs on most commercial buildings and of course standalone signs. Most of these signs can be a multitude of colors. The long of the short of it is, that there is just not enough color out there on these buildings. When flying ORBX and GEX there is really not much at all. Once in awhile you will see some color on a building but there is just not enough IMO. I think the reason is because of the autogen and it's inherent duplication. It would sure be nice if someone came up with some replacement autogen buildings with a little color. I really miss the signage. Mostly gray and drab.

 

What do you guys think?

 

Bob

I second that !

 

I'd love to experiment by repainting a single building texture (after saving), and see the results. I suspect, though, we may see undesirable repetitive patterns show up.

 

How? Maybe the details are over in the scenery forum?

While it would be nice I would think that this would require custom work and therefore take a considerable amount of time (and money). Unless a person made a suite of generic custom signs and found a way to make a script that would place these signs in strategic places.

 

Personally, I do enjoy "looking out the window" and having detail is good, for me I want a very good land class texture that reflects more or less what is one the ground. Some of the best I've seen are

Aime Leclercq Creations

 

and Orbx regional packs. Next on my list is movement, I was a big proponent for moving traffic during FS2004 days and love FSX freeway traffic from a height, and airport traffic AI, ground services stuff that interacts with what you would normally see during a flight.

 

I have Orbx Concrete where they did a complete remake of the town buildings, signs etc and I only once did a walk through, my time is spent up in the air and usually I'm too busy flying to notice signs except immediately near the airports.

I think it would be a waste of resources. First of all you need LOTS of unique textures otherwise you indeed get very repetitive scenery. I rather have not too obvious (repetitive) buildings then way too obvious ones. Apart from that: having lots of unique textures isn't good for performance.

 

And then you have to think about how much you would actually see of it during flying. Like the mentioned Concrete addon: great as the town is, whenever I simply flew over the place or flew towards Concrete itself all the details went by unnoticed (the details, not the nice diversity of buildings). You have to fly very (too) low and slow OR get out of the plane to actually enjoy the details: there are signs on building you can't possibly see out of the aircraft!

I would just settle for some convincing city buildings at night like downtown new york or Chicago.

 

Building textures are too bright at night preventing the lit windows to stand out.

I would just settle for some convincing city buildings at night like downtown new york or Chicago.

 

Building textures are too bright at night preventing the lit windows to stand out.

 

What textures are you using? GEX - ORBX

 

Bob

Using both gex and utx, but neither program changes textures on big city buildings.

I'd certainly like to see improved autogen buildings. They are generally much to light and bright, especially for this part of the world (UK). And I would pay for such an enhancement. But it would be no small job.

I'd certainly like to see improved autogen buildings. They are generally much to light and bright, especially for this part of the world (UK). And I would pay for such an enhancement. But it would be no small job.

 

Yes, I think buildings should be darker at the bottom in daytime (simulating ground shadows) and lighter at the top (sunshine), and the opposite at night (lower portion lit by street lights and the upper portion nearly matching the dark sky).

 

Some windows at night should be randomly illuminated, but not too many, unless it's the Seattle Space Needle or the monuments in Washington.

Problem I have is there are too many bright white buildings for UK - more appropriate for southern Europe or elsewhere perhaps. But I understand that these buildings are used all over, so changing them will change them everywhere.

 

But then again I only (mainly) fly in UK, so I'd be happy with a "UK Autogen" package if someone felt inclined to develop one !

I rather have not too obvious (repetitive) buildings then way too obvious ones.

 

I wholeheartedly agree! If there's one thing that just kills the immersion factor for me it's seeing obviously repetitive patterns in the air. I'd err on the side of less up-close detail every time.

 

Scott