I will have to try the latest beta when I get back home from work. Looking at the pictures it is really getting there. It's just too bad none of the 3rd party aircraft seem to work properly. I wish that gets corrected as soon as possible...

 

 

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2) Aerosoft cities translate extremely well into Xplane-fill the "plausible" cities with 1000 rw buildings bringing the sim extremely alive and capturing the essence of individual cities. The performance in xplane is incredible unlike the other sim which will often grind to a halt.Are the Xplane developers talking with the Aerosoft people about porting their work to Xplane-or even like p3d a license for Xplane users to use this scenery on multi platforms?

 

Aerosoft already answered this, but in german a while ago.It is less a question of what they want to do, but what they are allowed to do! In many cases they simply don't have all the necessary rights to do anything they want with a scenery unless they ask EVERYBODY involved in this project if they would allow this use!

 

It is a totally different question what you do with the scenery you bought in your own home.If you convert dhis data to use it in a different simulator no one could cry out if you don't publish your work.

 

3) landclass is a huge problem, at least in the US where I live, fly, simulate. I understand from your article of the difficulties-but perhaps the collective genius at Lm can figure out a way to get this corrected sooner than later. When entire city areas are missing, or incorrectly depicted it really diminishes the immersion. It seems particularly innacurate in the United States. With FSX if you didn't like it there were multiple vendors to procure something better-easily fixed. Perhaps there needs to be a heavier emphasis on recruiting 3rd party developers so that they can take up the slack in these areas?

 

You bark at the wrong tree! Laminar always said explicitly that hey will use the data from Open Street Map. The main problem is simply: They had and in many cases even now have a very limited amount of data in the US. As far as I know their database their is worse than for nearly every other place in the world!

 

The reason is simply: If you wanted to do something with navigation in a non commercial environment the big map owners would charge you even if you would not charge for your own work. So OSM was established and it was used by more and more devices and application and every new device and application would motivy new people to add details about their local area, so that they can use their devices better.

 

In fact in the area where I live the data is so precise that it contains every single house and every building has its own number! In fact there is so much information that the normal OSM maps have to throw a lot of these informations out. But many devices use other informations than a flight simulator. So as an example the landclass data is not necessarily precise and very few buildings have their hight entered.

 

But I see another problem: While I can see the result of my work more or less at once, when I regenerated the data with OSM2XP X-plane 10 still uses its original data of the time of the release. But OSM changed in the meantime quite considerably.

 

It's just too bad none of the 3rd party aircraft seem to work properly.

 

Not really. The CRJ-200 is actually updated. 1.5.3 now supports 64 bits and it works fine in the beta. Much more stable than the 1.5.2 in fact.

 

 

 

Not really. The CRJ-200 is actually updated. 1.5.3 now supports 64 bits and it works fine in the beta. Much more stable than the 1.5.2 in fact.

 

Yup, I read that. Too bad for me I got it at x-aviation as they seem to hold on to the patch for the time being. Looking forward to try it out, though.

 

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Phew ... ok ... let me try to give you some answers.

 

Avsim is not a forum for complainers. It is a forum for customers ( I have owned most every Xplane since version 4 or 5) . Avsim provides a forum for said customers to comment on a product they have paid for-and like any consumer with an ability to express themselves there will be both compliments and critics.

Well, sorry if my comment was interpreted, as if I would try to criticize complainer. My main point was, that there are questions coming up over and over and over ... So, usually I try to point people to the link - you have thankfully read :smile2: - and hope they read it ... and if you see, that people (after the link was posted) still ask the same thing which was answered (more or less) in the article ... well then, it gets annoying.

 

I believe scenery to be almost the top need for a flightsim. Scenery from the air is the primary reason I took up rw flying, and for a flat motionless desktop simulator is very important for creating the illusion of flying.

I am absolutely with you on this! Otherwise I would have never started working on X-Plane scenery.

 

If I can paraphrase what I at least get out of the article it is that making the scenery more realistic is very slow and painstaking, and that one has the ability to roll up their shirtsleeves and tweak as individuals ( all though in my case have been there, done that the last 31 years and have no more desire), and maybe at some point this will all come together to manifest as the best scenery ever seen in a sim ( I have no doubts).

Wait a moment ... painstaking is quite relative here. There is one area in the scenery, which is definitely hard to modify - at least with the tool that are available (or better, not available) - for 3rd parties. This is the base scenery mesh with the textures on it (effectively the representation of elevation + landclass + climate data mixed in one triangle mesh, where each triangle patch "knows" what texture it needs to show). Its complexity arises from the way this data is structured and merged together ... Here we have a big difference to FSX ... FSX has more the GIS-tool approach, where you can reatively easily supply more basic data layers (like elevation or landclass), and FSX does the "magic" on the fly (kind of). But X-Plane has choosen the other approach ... namely to pre-compute this data mixture, and have it ready in a format, which can almost directly be piped to an OpenGL engine. This latter approach has the advantage, that X-Plane has to do far less "interpretation" work on-the-fly and you can do much more "magic" in the pre-computation phase of the scenery creation (as it is not bound by time constraints) .... Of course, the disadvantage is, that you can't just - like in FSX - easily throw in your distinct data layers, but need to do this pre-computation stuff in some way. And without the right tools, and a lot of configuration data you can't really do much (but here, I am not the one who makes the decisions ... so, don't ask me about the whys). ... Well, I am not even completely correct here: the internal tools Laminar uses are freely available (open source) ... but lack detailed documentation, and also, without all the config data (don't know how much this is an "intellectual property" thing for Laminar) and the knowledge how to prepare the geo data for it ... its hard to make good use of it for now.

 

But to come back to the "painstaking" point of the scenery. I wanted to say, that the mesh is one of the areas, where this attribute fits. But all the other areas, like crafting forests, creating new road networks, designing airports, putting in your own objects should not be much more "complicated" than with other sims .... and here, there are already tools etc. ...

 

So I read this article , and though age 55 have somewhat the same thoughts about the scenery improvements and when they will manifest in their full glory,including better more accurate landclass placement, airport buildings, and 4 seasons. We have had that on another sim for 10 years, so it is quite understandable when a consumer-especially who has owned/tried all sims is baffled.

Well, I think, one thing which many don't see is the complexity and cost implications you get with more data, better (more potent) graphic engines, and the always rising expectations of customers. The X-plane 10 engine is already very powerful (at least in the scenery are, it is definitely the case), and can present you a lot of magic (just like you all have seen with some FSX conversions, or other, well crafted XP scenery) ... the limit is almost only what the scenery creators can manage to put in. AND, here is exactly the main problem! What can scenery developers manage to put in? How much work it does mean to get a give quality of scenery? And at what scale? Especially this latter point is something, which people "forget" most of the time! Usually - and hey, this is normal, I understand it B) - almost everybody has this "my backyard/neighborhood is so much off ... this is not how it looks! Why can't the devs do this better" attitude. The reason is, because we are doing an entire PLANET, which is - even today - a damn big chunk of rock with lots of differing and nice feature on its crust! So, what we don't do is, to manually edit anything in the scenery ... thats impossible (or would need a workforce of thousands of devs ... which would make X-Plane cost 10000$ ... I am just guessing).

 

What we do (and thats what my link was all about) is, to come up with ways, to automatically transform existing geodata in an "as-good-as-possible" representation of the planet. And this process isn't easy either ... You can make so much "mistakes" in the process :lol: . Your raw data can be bogus (all the landuse data, which is quite - in my opinion - often very good, but sometimes ... not so good , or the elevation data), the raw data preprocessing can be flawed (even though I invested months in that), the scenery creator tool can be flaw (don't ask me, how many bugs Ben fixed in it ... and it is still far from "perfect"), all the configs / rule sets which drive the tool can be flawed (many years of refinements went in there), and finally, the artwork, which is applied on top of the final scenery can have its own flaws / shortcomings too (or just, plain missing ... and replaced by other, generic, less perfect stuff).

 

And if thats not enough .... there are also limitations on how big/detailed you can make a Global Scenery today at all! 8 DVDs are quite a lot (at least today) ... but even those are limiting us in many ways. The simplest is the "resolution" of the mesh itself. Just compare my extra HD Scenery Mesh tiles with the default one ... They not only bring out "better" elevation representation, but also much better landclass representation (YES, in almost all cases, the underlying landclass data has better "resolution" than the default Global Scenery can represent ... because of size limitations). Because the "landclass" info is bound to the triangle mesh (as I told above) ...

 

Of course, I already hear you "asking" ... why don't we then open this scenery / data process up to others? Well, effectively its open (in theory at least), as nothing is secret about the scenery system itself (and as I told, at least the tools are "open source" - everybody can look in them ... but who dares? ). And also all the data we use is freely available on the net (all the landclass, elevation, OSM data etc.) ... But who dares to process them, or create transformation rules for them ? Yes, the dream would be - as you (and many before you) pointed out - some kind of crowd sourcing. Some "one makes it all" web portal, where you can modify all the data layers. The eleavtion, the landclass, the roads (oops, wait ... for the roads etc. we already have OSM as the "crowd sourced" portal!) etc. .... and then hit a button, and you get a new, freshly cut DSF tile ... What a great dream.

But again, what time / human / monetary resources would it imply to do this? Who pays it, who does it at all? And what else would NOT be done all the time this system would be implemented? And how to manage the gigantic piles of data? Especially changes, which might come from outside this portal? Like changes which come from a parallel portal like OSM? Or changes which come from new, improved landclass / elevation data from the original institutions?

 

And no, not even I have really good answers to many of thew questions ... but at least I wanted to give you a feeling of the dimension of this topic (so you can better understand why this all is not happening tomorrow or today). I know - and I think even xsimreviews had this topic many weeks ago - that simmers always want more, better, shinier stuff and are seldom fully pleased with what they have. Especially - and understandably - when they know, that it could be "much" better :rolleyes: ... but again, my point is, that a lot of that can't happen overnight.

 

I really like ORBX as a great example here ... they have done miraculous things (and yes, even if I don't use their products, and only see their videos / screenshots ... I am baffled by them!) ... But even there you see, that it takes them lots of time (and lots of money ... I think, there was a figure on the net somewhere) to achieve what they do ... and compared to the whole planet, they still (understandably!!!) only can do tiny fragments.

 

 

Ok, finally, maybe a few words to your questions

 

1) ms seems to have been able almost 10 years ago to procure a worldwide database of airport buildings and populate the entire world with "plausible" buildings that in most cases represent the airport so well that I at least have not felt a need to but add on airport scenery in that platform. Surely 10 years later Xplane might be able to do the same?

Laminar could try to reproduce that approach too, but decided against doing so (I know, that having at least some stuff at airports is better than nothing - but this is a controversally discussed topic amongst the users) ... and hopes, that one day the crowd sourcing approach will work here (at least that was Bens/Austins idea). With all the lego bricks, and a way to add this extra info to the defaul airport database. Well, its still not really here ... and I don't know how it will continue, but I think Ben/Austin are still commited to it (but again, it has to happen at some point). But bear in mind, that this is not so much my main area of work, so take my comments with a lots of salt grains (and pepper if you like).

 

2) Aerosoft cities translate extremely well into Xplane-fill the "plausible" cities with 1000 rw buildings bringing the sim extremely alive and capturing the essence of individual cities. The performance in xplane is incredible unlike the other sim which will often grind to a halt.Are the Xplane developers talking with the Aerosoft people about porting their work to Xplane-or even like p3d a license for Xplane users to use this scenery on multi platforms?

Yes, definitely fantastic stuff. I have seen the pictures, videos. But again, I am only a "humble global scenery dev" ... don't know if or how much Ben/Austin are in contact with Aerosoft here. But i could also imagine, that if a few of you start bugging (the power of the masses) Aerosoft, they might move (and yes, I - personally - would welcome that move too!!).

 

 

3) landclass is a huge problem, at least in the US where I live, fly, simulate. I understand from your article of the difficulties-but perhaps the collective genius at Lm can figure out a way to get this corrected sooner than later. When entire city areas are missing, or incorrectly depicted it really diminishes the immersion. It seems particularly innacurate in the United States. With FSX if you didn't like it there were multiple vendors to procure something better-easily fixed. Perhaps there needs to be a heavier emphasis on recruiting 3rd party developers so that they can take up the slack in these areas?

Well, I think, I have addressed a lot of this above ... still, I am surprised that "entire city" areas might be amiss. The data of the USA is quite good ... You can even check it out with the "MRLC Consortium Viewer" here: http://imsdemo.cr.usgs.gov/webappcontent/mrlc/viewerjs/

(for example choose as data layer "Land Cover ---> NLCD 2001 (Conus) Land Cover V2" ... this is more or less what the current Global Scenery is based on there). But here again, all the possible pitfalls I listed above might/can apply (data pre-processing mistakes, or even more the limited "detail" the Global Scenery mesh can have because of size limitations!!)

 

Again, wonderful improvements in the scenery for this last version-congratulations!

Thanks ... we tried hard

 

 

PS: and wait for my next NZ Pro scenery, which will show even more of XP10s potential

alpilotx-thanks for you lengthy reply-appreciate it.

 

If I can touch a few points:

Longranger-I just don't buy it. Every sim since the first fs1 has had some type of recognizable worldwide objects in it-fs1 had the John Hancock building and Sears tower in Chicago-and every incarnation of flight sim I've used has something in this department. It is one of the few things a computer scenery can do to at least give the end user a feeling of going from one place to another-if it all looks the same then there is no feeling of really going anywhere.

 

As far as Aerosoft-I can't to the life of me imagine that they would not want to increase revenue by what appears to be a relatively easy conversion to another product. If there is reluctance on their part, lm should be lobbying intensively to change this. If there is refusal-then a high priority for lm should be to hire someone or devote the resources to someone to create the same-after all we can all see that it can be done and the results are spectacular. I personally am not going to buy any more FSX scenery-but i would buy every Aerosoft city scenery made for xplane. Why? 1) xplane needs city landmarks-very badly 2) with about 1000 rw buildings in each city this is a new

realsim for any sim 3) The scenery runs much better in xplane than it does in fsx.

 

I get more the feeling that populating cities with recognizable landmarks just isn't a priority for lm.

It seems to be for a large number of persons trying the demo--going to their area of the world to fly, and reporting disappointment that it is a high priority for users. Again, you fly somewhere to go somewhere different-if it all looks the same...

 

It would be a coup, and a showpiece for xplane that would knock the socks off most to include or have access to a selection of high detailed cities that knock the socks off. True the aerosoft sceneries don't yet cover as many of the world as fsx does, but what they do cover is 100 fold of what fsx does.

 

 

Secondly-I share some compares to simply show my point about poor landclass and airport buildings needing to be a high priority.

 

Below is my city of San Diego-xplane with add in osm data, freeware add in San Diego airport, and freeware add in San Diego downtown buildings. Fsx default except ftx,gex.

 

In this first shot fsx has a pretty good "plausible" airport, of course aitraffic galor, but more importantly the buildings and vegetation match pretty much what is there is real life.The xplane freeware airport is excellent, however the aircraft are of course static. However all those tall office buildings are completely out of place, and Pt. Loma to the left is a desert waste land where as in the default fs it is populated by small homes and a few buildings as in rw.

 

 

 

Downtown city view-both don't do a bad job-but this is fsx default and xplane with an add in! I also know that most other major cities of the world will give somewhat of a good resemblance in fsx. Balboa park appears as a desert wasteland just outside the city in xplane when in fact it is tree covered. Fsx even has the golf course depicted. The multitude of tall office buildings on the outskirts of town in xplane-just don't exist!

 

 

 

Here is my home airport in generic fsx vs. xplane-"nuff said.

 

 

 

This is my town of 40,000 in both sims (10,000 in this valley). I tried to fly vfr to find my home in the sims-I got lost in xplane...headed for the golf course in fsx which is a landmark-no trouble

 

 

 

 

 

Now as a consumer, I want the most realistic flying experience I can get. I want to be able to sit with a vfr map in my lap (and I consider vfr flying the hardest kind-especially in a nightmare airspace are like San Diego) and be able to find my way. Also as a consumer, it strikes me as odd that a sim that is touted to be the most realistic out there, latest state of the art, still on a world wide, city to city, airport to airport basis does not meet the standards of a very, very old sim in the overall scenery department (what do they say about computer years = dog years -lol). Right now the present "plausible world" strikes me as wow-I can see lots of stuff below me-I must be flying! However,for a realistic sim for training purpose one must have landmarks in accurate locations...

 

Also as a consumer I understand the new scenery engine requires xyz, and the mesh,xyz, and osm causes xyz etc. Still doesn't change that the overall scenery in xplane is not up to what has been in the sim world for quite a while.

 

Therefore I reiterate my earlier comments.

 

There should be a higher priority on bringing the scenery up to snuff.

 

Cities like the aerosoft series need to be available-either thru aerosoft or someone who can develop them for xplane. Ideally 12-15 ought to be included with the program, but I think most flight enthusiasts would pay. Again, if a priority I am sure this could get done in some fashion or another.

 

Airports need buildings-only "plausible buildings"-but they need to be there. There must be some way to do this-it has already been accomplished for a long time! I don't really care if pi meson quarks have to be put in phase to get this done-it seems like the genious at lm could do it-if they considered it a priority.

 

All of this so the sim can attain a much larger user base and succeed even more. I don't think there is anyone on this board that doesn't want xplane to succeed. I'd even like it to be penultimate.

 

I have at least $500 invested in xplane 10 alone now-I really want it to succeed. I am an investor in it. As a shareholder though, I am concerned that now a year later though 64 bit is cool, not much of the lacking areas have changed that keep me from using it on a regular basis. It also seems from the regular threads one sees that there is not a "wow" factor from many who try the program. They are not xplane bashers-they just are making honest comments on their reactions. Why not change this for the good of the sim? Wouldn't it be great to see "I tried the demo-flew over New York--my god-1000's of rw buildings looking so real and performance I thought I'd never see on my 3 year old computer".

 

...and yes the roads are incredible in xplane, the autogen much more believable when placed in a correct spot, and the night scenery blows everything away, and performance is great.

Good post alpilotx and Geofa, Very interesting discussions. I would love to see Aerosoft or someone else create some good city scenery with landmark buildings and such for XP-10. I emailed Aerosoft again last night requesting they think about it. I would suggest other X-plane users or potential X-plane users do the same. Maybe we can talk them into it at some point. I would gladly buy them again to get official X-plane optimized versions. Another sore point for me in XP, is the lack of good AI traffic. This is also something weve had for a long time now and I hate feeling like I'm all alone in the world. I know someone was working on an ai program for XP-10, but I haven't heard anything in a while and getting worried it will not happen. Rob

Well said Geof, total agreement on all points.

 

Glen

I agree also with Geofa!

Good things come for those who wait!!

 

C'mon guys let XPX run its course I'm sure a lot of things WILL get done eventually. In the mean time for those that find it hard to wait, well fire up FSX and enjoy it. We have to give Ben and his staff time. I'm sure they're working their butts off trying to get our demands out the door.

 

It took FSX several years to mature and for technology to catch up. Now after only a few months we want everything FSX has plus more.

Well, thanks Geofa! for your lengthy input ... it is appreciated (and has not much surprising elements, as many of your points are things I have "heard of" - in small pieces, in different threads, discussions, blogs). But I think, I will try to keep my answer shorter this time ... the simple reason being, that I am not the one, who makes the big decisions (and who holds the money). I am just the "tech"/"nerd"/"scenery freak" (choose which ever you want) guy, who knows how to work with geo data, and how to transform it into something called Global Scenery / HD Mesh / NZ Pro. I am not even doing artwork (well, at least not much), as its not my strength ...

 

But I see one thing ... customers always want B) . And even when some of them are already pleased (it happens from time to time), others are still far from it ... And thats understandable (hey, I am too a consumer in many other situations). Still, I want to remind you of the fact, that LM is not MS ... period. With all of the positive and negative implication this brings with it. And Austin has his own mind, his own vision, which he does in a way hew wants (and I don't want to discuss about this as it has been done so often ... without any result :rolleyes: )

 

So, LM does some things, which others did/do not do, and might not do things, which - as you say - is "common place" since fs1 ... But still, who knows, LM is not monolithic (even if some of you might get that feeling), and can come up with anything, anytime, anywhere. Its just - often - not big enough, to do everything (as the consumer would say/want) at once ... But discussing the resources of LM is again not my beer (as I don't hold the money).

 

As you see, this is not a topic I can talk about easily ... because I am a tech guy. I can talk about tech stuff, but not so much about business stuff ... So I stop here (and rather spend the time on my NZ Pro scenery).

I was wondering, how does payware like the CRJ 200 or the new Boeing 777, work with these new betas?

Good things come for those who wait!!

 

C'mon guys let XPX run its course I'm sure a lot of things WILL get done eventually. In the mean time for those that find it hard to wait, well fire up FSX and enjoy it. We have to give Ben and his staff time. I'm sure they're working their butts off trying to get our demands out the door.

 

It took FSX several years to mature and for technology to catch up. Now after only a few months we want everything FSX has plus more.

 

I'm a late xplane boomer, but what other than graphics is different from XP9 vice XPX? Will XPXI be just another graphics upgrade with multiple builds to get it to run smoother? I'm just wondering when will it not be about the eye candy, but adding the immersion it lacks. Relying on 3rd party devs thus far has not proven very sucessful.

Will XPXI be just another graphics upgrade with multiple builds to get it to run smoother?

 

XPX has been running smooth since day one.

 

.

but adding the immersion it lacks

 

Each to its own, many would say different, some will agree with you.

 

As it has been pointed out before, XPX is still in beta and so it is not for everyone, this process requires patience.

 

XPX has been running smooth since day one.

 

.

 

Each to its own, many would say different, some will agree with you.

 

As it has been pointed out before, XPX is still in beta and so it is not for everyone, this process requires patience.

 

I understand its in beta, but XP9 isnt, and from my understanding there is a lot of compatibilty between the two. Just wondering if/when will we see something for the non purist simmers.

Redacted.

 

I'm not in a good mood today, and it shows from my post. Nevermind, folks.

 

(*This post has been edited about a bajillion times)