Why is FTX quality not what it was?

[Hypo 1]

 

Thank you for your input, but you are missing the point that was made very clear in my initial post. Please read my less elaborative comments above.

I understand your points. For me PNW,PFJ,AU are the best, and with RTMM sceneries and freeware AU, those are perfect. But true ENG is something else not at the same level

[Guest]

Since Vectors will only include major roads, unlike UTX, I doubt there will be an option to disable them.

 

There are two ways to overcome roads slashing through houses. Either place autocen as vectors like Ultimate Alaska X. It will tax performance, especially in large cities. Or urban landclass textures needs to be designed differently without the typical rooftop and road aerial photos. Difficult, but not impossible.

 

You won't be able to disable anything: JV clearly stated it's a program you install and then forget about.

 

As for the ground textures and roads problem: years and years ago I asked about this and it was said to be impossible to fix. I suppose the problem of creating ground textures that have no buildings and roads on them is that in will only look kind of nice with Extremely dense autogen. Any lower setting will result in very odd looking cities. The same goes for big forests. If you create ground textures that only have GROUND on them and no trees, things will look very barren quickly, even in some places where you use Extremely dense autogen.

 

You can of course simply disable ALL roads that run through buildings, but that also results in odd cities.

 

As long as we keep on using landclass this will remain a (quite annoying) problem.

[simmerhead 885]

As for the ground textures and roads problem: years and years ago I asked about this and it was said to be impossible to fix. I suppose the problem of creating ground textures that have no buildings and roads on them is that in will only look kind of nice with Extremely dense autogen. Any lower setting will result in very odd looking cities. The same goes for big forests. If you create ground textures that only have GROUND on them and no trees, things will look very barren quickly, even in some places where you use Extremely dense autogen.

I don't agree. It sounds like an excuse for not putting down the very hard work it would be to design the textures by hand to make it less of a problem. Sure, almost any photo texture will look poorer with little autogen, but it can be done. Also, with todays hardware dense autogen settings isn't that big of a problem. Should one design textures that look bad with ay setting, or textures that look only bad for some low settings?

 

That said, I understand this is how the FSX terrain engine was designed and I don't expect either ORBX or GEX to design their way out of it, because it is a monumental task.

 

As for forests, just take a look at the ORBX wooden tundra texture. It has very little auotgen vegetation, but still looks incredibly good. Outerra is another example that shows it can be done without looking too barren.

[Guest]

 

 

Outerra is another example that shows it can be done without looking too barren.

 

Outerra is what made me think about textures without trees in them. I think I hate the forestgroundtextures with those trees in them even more than those city textures. I rather have a brownish dirt ground textures and the only trees you would see should be the autogen trees.

[simmerhead 885]

Outerra is what made me think about textures without trees in them. I think I hate the forestgroundtextures with those trees in them even more than those city textures. I rather have a brownish dirt ground textures and the only trees you would see should be the autogen trees.

Yep, the current forest textures have never been any good, and ORBX didn't improve those much.

[Oliver Ooi 85]

But what will happen to the more distant terrain? If the forest texture has only ground but no trees, the terrain might look ok surrounding your plane, because of those autogen trees, but the far distant mountain will surely look odd because fsx will not display autogen but ground textures only, the forest mountain will become grass mountain then, the same problem will apply to city landclass too.

[simmerhead 885]

But what will happen to the more distant terrain? If the forest texture has only ground but no trees, the terrain might look ok surrounding your plane, because of those autogen trees, but the far distant mountain will surely look odd because fsx will not display autogen but ground textures only, the forest mountain will become grass mountain then, the same problem will apply to city landclass too.

 

 

For mountains in the distance there is no autogen - just textures. You can increase the sharpness of these textures and mesh by increasing the LOD detail radius, but it will not add autogen. It is a limitation of the FSX terrain engine. That's why I never fly with unlimited visibiulity as it makes distant scenery look odd.

[Guest]

For mountains in the distance there is no autogen - just textures. You can increase the sharpness of these textures and mesh by increasing the LOD detail radius, but it will not add autogen. It is a limitation of the FSX terrain engine. That's why I never fly with unlimited visibiulity as it makes distant scenery look odd.

 

He meant to say what will happen with distant terrain, forrests in the distance, when you would have ground textures with no trees on them, like we discussed: that would look odd indeed! Extremely autogen would make such textures look okay when up close but in the distance you wouldn't get the idea there are actually trees down there, like you do know, because you would only see barren ground!

 

It isn't as easy as you may think to solve this problem.

[bonchie 2,305]

Until the autogen radius is dramatically increased, drawn on textures (like city textures, forest textures) will be the only workable compromise.

Otherwise you'd end up with huge bland solid colors just a few miles from the plane.

 

As noted, the solution to this would be what UT did with their Alaska package but we've heard nothing promising since that release as far as them using that system in a wider product. The talk of it goes back like 5 years.

[Christopher Low 5,354]

FS4 did OK with no textures across the entire scenery area.....and yet it still looked a million times better than the abomination known as FS5 :wink:

[Aaren 0]

I have been reading this thread with some amusement.

 

When Orbx setup Sim720 to create their FTX England scenery, they did so by choosing to use a development team with very little experience, in John Venema's own words:

 

Apart from Greg Jones, this team had zero FS development experience so Orbx spent quite some time and investment into training them and skills transfer, and this culminated in the release of FTX EU England late in 2012.

 

Rather than hiring skilled developers, John Venema chose the cheaper route, as skilled developers would have been much more expensive. The old philosophy, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, is very valid here and the FS community's disappointment in FTX England is proof of that.

 

If Orbx had created a company-wide structure to support and uphold a certain level of quality, by creating an in-house scenery creation bible for instance, then there wouldn't be such a huge difference in quality between individual developments. It seems clear that Orbx's focus has been too oriented towards short-term revenue. Key players within the company have not succeeded in letting the highest skill-set trickle down to improve the skills of less experienced staff. The airports that Sim720 have recently released on their own show this lack of quality and skill with agonising clarity.

 

Andreas Aarens

[StormVR6 30]

I have been reading this thread with some amusement.

 

When Orbx setup Sim720 to create their FTX England scenery, they did so by choosing to use a development team with very little experience, in John Venema's own words:

 

Apart from Greg Jones, this team had zero FS development experience so Orbx spent quite some time and investment into training them and skills transfer, and this culminated in the release of FTX EU England late in 2012.

 

Rather than hiring skilled developers, John Venema chose the cheaper route, as skilled developers would have been much more expensive. The old philosophy, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, is very valid here and the FS community's disappointment in FTX England is proof of that.

 

If Orbx had created a company-wide structure to support and uphold a certain level of quality, by creating an in-house scenery creation bible for instance, then there wouldn't be such a huge difference in quality between individual developments. It seems clear that Orbx's focus has been too oriented towards short-term revenue. Key players within the company have not succeeded in letting the highest skill-set trickle down to improve the skills of less experienced staff. The airports that Sim720 have recently released on their own show this lack of quality and skill with agonising clarity.

 

Andreas Aarens

 

I can't argue with that, Andreas. Good post.

[CFIJose 5,485]

How many airports has FTX developed?

 

How many regions has FTX developed?

 

Let me add FTXG & freeware airports. How many?

 

I can honestly say that maybe 10% of their sceneries did not exceed my expectations.

 

I'll take a 90% success rate anytime. Math I believe in!

[StormVR6 30]

I can honestly say that maybe 10% of their sceneries did not exceed my expectations.

 

The problem I have, DJ, is that all 10% came in one big chunk and apart from SAK, all 10% were Orbx' latest releases.. 

[simmerhead 885]

I have been reading this thread with some amusement.

 

When Orbx setup Sim720 to create their FTX England scenery, they did so by choosing to use a development team with very little experience, in John Venema's own words:

 

Apart from Greg Jones, this team had zero FS development experience so Orbx spent quite some time and investment into training them and skills transfer, and this culminated in the release of FTX EU England late in 2012.

 

Rather than hiring skilled developers, John Venema chose the cheaper route, as skilled developers would have been much more expensive. The old philosophy, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, is very valid here and the FS community's disappointment in FTX England is proof of that.

 

If Orbx had created a company-wide structure to support and uphold a certain level of quality, by creating an in-house scenery creation bible for instance, then there wouldn't be such a huge difference in quality between individual developments. It seems clear that Orbx's focus has been too oriented towards short-term revenue. Key players within the company have not succeeded in letting the highest skill-set trickle down to improve the skills of less experienced staff. The airports that Sim720 have recently released on their own show this lack of quality and skill with agonising clarity.

 

Andreas Aarens

I think you overestimate the size of the addon business. This isn't Microsoft or Apple. This is a small business with a volatile cash flow.