1. Region specific architecture. It can be generic, but generic for its location. Seeing Jim Walter Homes models in old world Europe is jarring.

 

Completely do'able within the X-Plane architecture, but Laminar Research does not have the payroll to support enough artists to do the work in a timely fashion.

 

2. Just 1 or 2 signature landmarks in major cities would do wonders. The Gateway to the West in St. Louis. The Sears Tower in Chicago. The Space Needle. Eiffel Tower. Big Ben. Tokyo Tower, and so on. Just one, two, maybe three unique landmarks would do wonders. Roll it out in stages, if they have to.

 

Completely do'able within the X-Plane architecture, but Laminar Research does not have the payroll to support enough artists to do the work.

 

...and people wonder why there is a call for Laminar to hire more developers!

 

That said, I wonder if any thought has been given or CAN be given to a crowdsourced/submission method for having end-users help populate city and town centers? They're at least hoping to create some sort of crowdsourced submission system for airports, allowing us to "fix" airports, submit them to Laminar, and have them included in the next update release (*above and beyond what is currently possible with Robin Peel's airport work)... why not something similar for cities?

 

There's nothing stopping people from going through the full 3rd party scenery development process and working on various cities and offering them for sale/download, but there's something to be said for having these things in the sim natively.

 

Heck - One can even use WED/Overlay Editor to populate an urban center with more accurate autogen-style buildings quite easily... Once the 10.20 beta series starts wrapping up and it's library starts solidifying, I hope to do this very thing to some local cities if only to spruce them up a small bit. This is assuming the autogen engine also gets fixed and all the 20-story Russian apartment buildings and FEMA trailer parks get demolished from the suburban areas, and houses return to their rightful neighborhoods.

 

-Greg

The buildings look good but the autogen is wrong for LA and Vegas. Plausable Vegas does not cut it.

 

You're misunderstanding what is meant by "plausible world". X-Plane 10's autogen is not intended to create exact replicas of real cities but to simply generate cities that could plausibly exist in reality.

It seems that X-plane is getting more and more popular from the activity on the forums. I'm predicting a lot more will purchase the simulator based on this. If this is the case, then hopefully Laminar will seize the bull by the horns and realise that to add just a only few major landmarks = big return on investment. Casual simmers and enthusiast simmers alike love real world landmarks. Fact! Look at how excited people get over Orbx scenery etc. I'm not suggesting Laminar can afford anything like that kind of detail but the creation of a few quick rectangular objects such as skyscapers for the likes of NYC and Vegas would be a darn good start. I'm sure this would motivate others to fill in the rest as freeware. Or how about they make a tutorial video for Wed 2.1 and show people how to do it. I would love to see a proper tutorial video that could show me how to make buildings (I know there's written tutorials out there but they are quite complex and like most after trying figure them out, I ran out of precious time).

Vegas does not have public housing projects like Chicago, and that alone forces me to use fs2004 or fsx to fly that region.

Vegas does not have public housing projects like Chicago, and that alone forces me to use fs2004 or fsx to fly that region.

 

Hah. Yeah, whilst I really like the new autogen, it looks like 70's housing projects have sprung up across the globe

Hah. Yeah, whilst I really like the new autogen, it looks like 70's housing projects have sprung up across the globe

 

Autogen next update abandoned factories and houses, and 1972 Cadillac Couple De Ville as the first X-plane car ride. that will make it plausable. The autogen looks good but its placement is off. Makes all cities look like Chicagoland. Vegas want to see the Sands, Mirage, Needle Tower, Golden Nugget like 3 to 6 landmarkts in major cities like major metro areas, and autogen to match the region. Scenery does not improve people will stick to fsx even if it gives them blurries and they need radiator houses and cooling to overclock the cpu to run good.

The autogen looks good but its placement is off. Makes all cities look like Chicagoland. Vegas want to see the Sands, Mirage, Needle Tower, Golden Nugget like 3 to 6 landmarkts in major cities like major metro areas, and autogen to match the region.

Uhm sorry, but do you realize, that what you are talking about is not autogen, but custom scenery? Autogen is, to "automatically" populate the entire planet whit buildings which then at least remotely make it look like as if there were urbanized places (with generic objects, roads and other urban structures). It does so, because there is no way until now (beginning of the year 2013), to have all real buildings placed correctly in the scenery (of the entire planet, which is the scope of the Global Scenery) ... neither would that fit on the few DVDs (just look at the size of already existing OSM based cities), nor is there a data source which contains this information (a "few" million buildings, with many of them having non generic shapes).

Placing landmarks like you are talking about is not autogen, but hand made, custom scenery.

Uhm sorry, but do you realize, that what you are talking about is not autogen, but custom scenery?

 

Do not believe that with technology now days houses in each region look different with Autogen. Houses in Northeast look and feel different than the Southwest and Midwest. X-plane does not add landmarks and other items people will stick too FSX and fs2004. People want landmarks and without them overtime your potential to get new users is limited.

I think we're getting a little caught up in the semantics of the terminology. Would it be safe to say that we'd all like region-specific building types (and trees, for that matter) as autogen, along with actual named signature landmarks in various cities as custom scenery, and just agree on that? :Peace:

I think we're getting a little caught up in the semantics of the terminology. Would it be safe to say that we'd all like region-specific building types (and trees, for that matter) as autogen, along with actual named signature landmarks in various cities as custom scenery, and just agree on that? :Peace:

 

+1....and seeing as it was mentioned in this post already, seasonal textures ARE very much needed, otherwise you may as well do away with the real weather system. When it snows, the ground turns white, it doesn't stay green, no sense having real weather if the environment doesn't change to reflect it, common sense. Sure that has a big impact on art assets and autogen, so be it, this is supposed to be "The world’s most advanced flight simulator." Does that not encompass all aspects of flight simulation? To me that includes the environment you fly in?

 

I don't care where it comes from, it's so desperatly needed. So please hurry and get this out of the beta stage so some 3rd party can make some seasonal textures, provided Xplane at some point is actually even out of beta and stable, so someone can actually make 3rd party add ons without fear of wasting time and loosing money. Aircraft and Airports don't count, they've always been made for Xplane. It's time to lock a version down, so people can actually make something other than the above to enhance this flying world.

 

I'll believe it when I see it, just calling a spade a spade (there's far too much precendence to indicate otherwise), taking bets now for those interested. ^_^

 

Keep kicking a horse, sooner or later it will start to run........or get left behind. I'll keep kicking this horse......I believe it will get to the finish line.

If you have Aerosoft's cities. Apparently they convert easily to Xplane with fs2xp. Looks really good, except for the fact that they have no night lighting.