FYI

 

Beta notes here:

 

http://wiki.x-plane.com/Beta

updated a few mins ago and it looks good, especially KATL with airport buildings.  Our little xp10 baby keeps growing and growing :lol:

I really hope someone uploads a few KATL screenshots.

I really hope someone uploads a few KATL screenshots.

 

As you wish

 

If it's all "Lego bricks", it is indeed pretty impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

it looks better than default "the other sim" :ph34r:

Wow nice! So is this how default airports in the future will look like for X-Plane instead of a bare runway? This is great news. Very exciting stuff coming from Laminar. 

 

Can't wait to try it out.

Wow nice! So is this how default airports in the future will look like for X-Plane instead of a bare runway? This is great news. Very exciting stuff coming from Laminar. 

 

Woah, I'd rein in expectations just a bit

 

KSEA and now KATL were given special attention by Laminar, according to this recent interview with Tom Kyler, who developed both sceneries. Except for the Aerosoft airports that also come with XP, the rest of the world's airports are still empty by default. There's about to be a process where the community can submit airport scenery that will become part of the "official" database, but each scenery must contain *only* things from the default XP library, e.g. not a single thing from OpenScenery.

starflight, I see. Interesting. Well then I hope Laminar updates their object library to provide us creators with objects that have great details and looks in order for us to design amazing scenery.

Incremental improvements to X-plane looks good.  

That is to say, global generic airports may be available for 10.30?

captain420: If KATL is any indication, the existing library is enough to get started, especially for smaller airports.

 

The hiccup will be how to represent unique buildings that have no equivalent in the library, which you're more likely to find at major airports. If you look at the real KATL tower from Google images, the new scenery's tower built from library "Lego bricks" doesn't capture it at all. I can't see any way to drop in one-off objects... my guess is that a scenery designer submits an airport so it'll at least be available globally, so more and more airports at least won't be bare anymore after an XP install/update. The scenery designer can then "fork" that scenery, add things free of XP library restrictions. Users can download and install that separately, and override the default.

 

However, we really need up-to-date tools, tutorials and library object/facade references. I was banging my head for several hours last weekend trying to wrap my brain around doing very basic scenery, like drawing building facades and placing objects. I won't get into all the issues I ran into, but I was finally discouraged enough that I gave up, at least for the time being.

 

Sorry for going a little OT

10.21 autogen bug: extreme proliferation of gas stations in some places, far beyond anything ever seen on earth!

 

 

That is to say, global generic airports may be available for 10.30?

 

Not quite... the ability to create global generic airports with buildings may be available for 10.30, but widespread coverage of airports with buildings when 10.30 releases is almost certainly not a possibility.

 

Remember - Laminar is depending on us, the users, to design and submit these airports for inclusion into the master database. We designers don't yet have the proper tools to do so yet (*a newer version of WED) - but it is in active development per Ben's blog.

 

With this being a crowdsourced effort, the amount of airports which end up with buildings will be directly related to the number of designers working on them.

 

Expect improvements in some areas, but don't expect miracles for the world.

I love scenery as much as the next and wish for it sooner than later but is it just me or has the fm and many of the complaints which left xplane basically unusable for me the last few months been drastically improved?

it looks better than default "the other sim" :ph34r:

 

I guess you haven't seen what the real KATL terminals look like. One hint, they look allot closer to "The other Sim" then these. The color isn't even right!!! It's better then nothing I guess!!