odourboy,I added some buildings to the scenery, and for the first time I used Google's earth 3d model, which is close to the real building (I just use them for corecity) and make night texture for them .

check this out to see if it's worth putting time on 3d building or not. I just used four Google 3d model for the core city. The rests of the buildings are default FSX objects.

http://mohsenfff.dl.rapidpars.com/4780/2729654/31hahzbh61b/PLYMOUTH%283%29.rar

Put them in your add-on folder. if it asks for overwriting, click yes.

 

It is hard to judge based on a video. You can try the scenery to see if it's too dark or not.

 

I've only had a few minutes today to look at this but I loaded this up and took a spin a couple of times around it. Looks pretty cool! As to whether it's worth it... I think I would certainly consider it a 'nice to have'.

 

At altitude, the effect is going to be minimal. On approach or ascent, or low and slow, it adds to the immersion. Certainly more worthwhile than spending your time doing trees, which really adds nothing to the night-time vista. There's not just your time, but the potential performance cost of drawing more objects - I didn't notice any difference in Plymouth, but a larger city... might be a factor?

 

(Added) Do you have access to more 'high-rise' building objects? A good variety (maybe 20 or 30 different buildings?) would be nice. For this test, I did notice they were pretty repetitive.

I'll have to try that out. I use "Free Video Joiner" which up till now has been the only one that converts and retains more or less the original resolution.

 

As for the video, generally there is much more light eminating from all the streets and residential areas. Not just the main roads. The town centre is about right especially as that is all pedestrianised in reality. But the rest of the City appears much too dim.

 

If you've read some of my previous posts, I've encouraged Mohsen to make the 'neighbourhoods' lighter. But given I'm from Canada, I'm not a good judge of 'old world' cities. It would be really nice to get other opinions... And Mohsen is right, best too see it first hand rather than using the video. I find it's not as dark on my FSX system as it appears in the video (could be settings that aren't captured).

Actually, I have to use more building with different color and brightness since they are designed for FSX default scenery, they look too white in my scenery. Adding 20 or 30 different buildings is a good idea I have to make them myself.
About the "neighbourhoods," I intentionally used some setting, so they seem dark from distance, but as you approach them and get over them vertically, they start to emit light and form a "Linear structures" Considering the buildings hide the residential road's lights from the pilot' sight, I think it's a pretty realistic effect.
For example, the neighbourhoods in this picture may seem a little dark.


However, as  you get over them, the neighbourhoods's structure will appear:

 

 

 
BTW ,What do yo mean by larger city, like Toronto? , do you want me to work on such a scale? It may be a little time-consuming to that in this stage.

 

 

BTW ,What do yo mean by larger city, like Toronto? , do you want me to work on such a scale? It may be a little time-consuming to that in this stage.

Early on you were envisioning doing the entire UK or USA (although I think you agreed that was a bit much, esp since some much area is rural), so yes, a city with a large urban area of the scale of Toronto seems to me to be a suitable test to see if your techniques & tools will scale a provide a usable product now that you've developed a nice visual technique. If there are other things you want to experiment with streamline first then by all means, stick with a smaller town - it's your project! It was just a suggestion. I don't want to be presumptuous of what is the best use of your time. :sorry:

As far as the UK is concerned pretty much every town and City uses sodium lamps in every street both main and residential. Even though on the main roads the lamps are spaced more widely there is more reflection because the roads themselves are wider. But, in residential streets the lamps are much closer to each other. so there is a little less reflection but many more light points (this is all to do with speed limits). Couple this with the white or yellow of buildings lights, the overall effect is of a sea of light. I think it's quite difficult to get exactly right, but the overall view I think should be much brighter. There are numerous night landing videos that demonstrate this.

Early on you were envisioning doing the entire UK or USA (although I think you agreed that was a bit much, esp since some much area is rural), so yes, a city with a large urban area of the scale of Toronto seems to me to be a suitable test to see if your techniques & tools will scale a provide a usable product now that you've developed a nice visual technique. If there are other things you want to experiment with streamline first then by all means, stick with a smaller town - it's your project! It was just a suggestion. I don't want to be presumptuous of what is the best use of your time. :sorry:

I thought about it, and it's good idea to do one more work before whole UK. So I will do it.

As far as the UK is concerned pretty much every town and City uses sodium lamps in every street both main and residential. Even though on the main roads the lamps are spaced more widely there is more reflection because the roads themselves are wider. But, in residential streets the lamps are much closer to each other. so there is a little less reflection but many more light points (this is all to do with speed limits). Couple this with the white or yellow of buildings lights, the overall effect is of a sea of light. I think it's quite difficult to get exactly right, but the overall view I think should be much brighter. There are numerous night landing videos that demonstrate this.

If you had seen my pictures closely you would noticed the exact effect you mentioned ( many more lights in residential streets and more reflections on main roads). To achieve these result, I studied numinous topics on light pollution and in addition to visual approach(like watching night landing videos) I use some scientific scale to measure the overall brightness of whole scene and then compare it with the selected areas such as main road or residential area ,,,,and I think the overall brightness of block buildings is about right although I still believe the main roads are too  illuminated, and the lights should be spaced more.

Please download the scenery file and give your opinion based on that.

If you want, here is the download link:

http://mohsenfff.dl.rapidpars.com/4780/2717552/8fh3xsm3htp/plymouth%282%29.rar

for 3d lights and spotlights you should download the following files and put it in your global folder

http://mohsenfff.dl.rapidpars.com/4780/2683977/5rpphxzx68k/GLOBAL%283%29.rar

http://www.mediafire.com/?7vgm72un2uj0as4

and finally for building you should download this file and put it in your scenery file just like the first file.

http://mohsenfff.dl.rapidpars.com/4780/2729654/31hahzbh61b/PLYMOUTH%283%29.rar

I want to work on Toronto again to see how my new method works so if you have any opinion give it before that.and please see the scenery first,

Ok.. this is the most beautiful glittering night lighting I've ever seen in FS. Very life like!

Congratulations on your hard work to produce such a magnificent scenery.

I know if I was a commercial scenery developer such as Megascenery X or Orbx I would be knocking on your door to build Las Vegas.

It would be spectacular!

Thank you very much for sharing this with us!

 

Click on the photo for full effect.

 

None of the links work for me?

Ok.. this is the most beautiful glittering night lighting I've ever seen in FS. Very life like!

Congratulations on your hard work to produce such a magnificent scenery.

I know if I was a commercial scenery developer such as Megascenery X or Orbx I would be knocking on your door to build Las Vegas.

It would be spectacular!

Thank you very much for sharing this with us!

 

Click on the photo for full effect.

Plymouth.jpg

Well that's interesting.. most of the buildings in your screen shot look a little different than what I get - yours look like they're lit up. Mine are more subtle.

 

Did you make a change since I downloaded the buildings yesterday Mohsen? (Like like mine better! :lol: )

Well that's interesting.. most of the buildings in your screen shot look a little different than what I get - yours look like they're lit up. Mine are more subtle.

 

Did you make a change since I downloaded the buildings yesterday Mohsen? (Like like mine better! :lol: )

Hi,

the blue spikes are due to the textures. He didn't copy the building texture in texture folder, or maybe he doesn't  have FSX acceleration and that round halo over the city center is because of, I think "add-on scenery," , he may want to copy my scenery to the different folder rather than add-on scenery and disable the add-on scenery in the scenery library.

Hi,

the blue spikes are due to the textures. He didn't copy the building texture in texture folder, or maybe he doesn't  have FSX acceleration and that round halo over the city center is because of, I think "add-on scenery," , he may want to copy my scenery to the different folder rather than add-on scenery and disable the add-on scenery in the scenery library.

Not sure, just installed what you had but I'll double check. Still looks pretty cool as is.

Yes, I have acceleration installed.

Ok- I had the Plymouth 3 textures in the Global Texture folder.

 

Bloom

 

 

 

No Bloom

 

 

Ok- I had the Plymouth 3 textures in the Global Texture folder.

 

Bloom

 

bloom.jpg

 

No Bloom

 

nobloom.jpg

Now your buildings look normal,but still i can see Square very bright  spotlights on the ground which could mean that you have double BGL file somewhere.you should have 20 item in your scenery folder like this :

I have a RESIDENTIALTRAFFIC.BGL in addition to the ones you have listed.

Should that be in there?

I don't see any duplicate files in the Plymouth / scenery / texture folder vs the Global scenery / texture folders.

I have a RESIDENTIALTRAFFIC.BGL in addition to the ones you have listed.

Should that be in there?

I don't see any duplicate files in the Plymouth / scenery / texture folder vs the Global scenery / texture folders.

Did you also disable add-on scenery? If you copy my files in Add-on scenery, change the folder...

-----------------

For a while, I'm gonna to work on whole province of Ontario, and I will release the package in one or two months, this way I 'll get more time and energy to put on the project and as a result the scenery will be much more detailed. It will be a pay ware add-one, and I'm sure you'll enjoy the scene.