OK, I`m shocked...

[HiFlyer 9,363]

Errrm, not quite. In fact they put some work into their colors. They are pretty much spot on and neutral, if you have a calibrated monitor. Considering that their main development plattform is the Mac this is hardly a surprise.

Mac Monitors are normally more expensive but have also much better capabilities than the monitors you find on many Windows PCs. I have to aggree, with my old monitor or my notebook the images look  dull, but after I upgraded my monitor the whole impression changed.

 

It is more a problem how to allow bettertuning capabilities without destruction of the neutral colormatching that is done in the background.

 

My monitor is a color balanced low-latency IPS model.

 

The problem is, I play an awful lot of both other sims and games. Nothing I've encountered recently looks quite as bland (with exceptions!) as X-plane.

 

There is a third party scenery being developed that looks very very promising. But at least part of my excitement is that it brings living colors to the scenery area it depicts.

 

(Instant buy)

 

Color and life comes to X-Plane

[SouthPawPaul 11]

Oh wow, that looks like ORBX for X-Plane

[Anxu00 176]

Oh wow, that looks like ORBX for X-Plane

It way better than ORBX.  I have the same CZST by ORBX in FSX and although it looks very good, the X-Plane version looks way more real.  Since the FSX engine is dated, the rendering in DX9 just can't match.

[HiFlyer 9,363]

It way better than ORBX.  I have the same CZST by ORBX in FSX and although it looks very good, the X-Plane version looks way more real.  Since the FSX engine is dated, the rendering in DX9 just can't match.

 

But if you look at those pictures, look at the mountaintops where the verdant colors of the CSZT scenery are blended into the X-plane default. See the loss of color? The buildings are also much more colorful, which matches the variety of real life.   :unsure:

 

X-plane just seems to be (generally) very de-saturated to me. 

[JimmiG 244]

My monitor is a color balanced low-latency IPS model.

 

The problem is, I play an awful lot of both other sims and games. Nothing I've encountered recently looks quite as bland (with exceptions!) as X-plane.

 

There is a third party scenery being developed that looks very very promising. But at least part of my excitement is that it brings living colors to the scenery area it depicts.

 

(Instant buy)

 

Color and life comes to X-Plane

 

I agree if they developed the graphics on a calibrated monitor, it should look good on *any* monitor. This is why graphics artists use high-quality monitors in the first place - to get a good reference picture that works well everywhere. if it looks washed out on some monitors, it means they developed the graphics on an over-saturated monitor. Likewise, if the sim was developed on a monitor with too little saturation, they would inadvertently over saturate the textures.

 

For me, simply replacing the sky and water colors with some free replacement textures mostly fixes the problem, so it's no big deal really.

[HiFlyer 9,363]

I agree if they developed the graphics on a calibrated monitor, it should look good on *any* monitor. This is why graphics artists use high-quality monitors in the first place - to get a good reference picture that works well everywhere. if it looks washed out on some monitors, it means they developed the graphics on an over-saturated monitor. Likewise, if the sim was developed on a monitor with too little saturation, they would inadvertently over saturate the textures.

 

For me, simply replacing the sky and water colors with some free replacement textures mostly fixes the problem, so it's no big deal really.

No it isn't really, at least not for the ground textures. And I hope it doesn't seem like bashing; I really have been thinking about the subject a lot before I opened my mouth, even going so far as to load all my other sims (DCS, FSX, Aerofly, ROF, FLIGHT, War Thunder, Wings of Prey Even Train Simulator!) and do some quick visual comparisons.

 

Just a week or so ago, on trip to New York, I Watched the scenery very carefully (doing an internal reality check on my thoughts on the issue) and even took a few pictures. I looked at other pictures on the web, and thought about it some more.

 

The result was that American cities at least, tend to be much, much lighter (and more colorful) appearing than the cities in X-plane, which tend to present as very dark grey/brown/tan, when real cities (as reflected in the palette of other sims as well) present in aggregate as nearly white, or at least much brighter in broad daylight. The dark colors, and the soviet era monolith buildings (projects) project a drab aura that probably helps contribute to the feeling of "wrongness" or "soullessness" your brain gives you when absorbing the view. :unsure:

 

Can/will it be "Fixed?"

 

Knowing X-planes history, I suspect not; at least not by LR, but maybe some enterprising scenery designer out there will do an FTX global one day after the Product stabilizes! (of course, you can also combat it by turning up the gamma, but that tends to wash things out, eventually)

 

City?

 

City

 

City (DCS)

[wolke85 150]

My monitor is a color balanced low-latency IPS model.

 

The problem is, I play an awful lot of both other sims and games. Nothing I've encountered recently looks quite as bland (with exceptions!) as X-plane.

 

There is a third party scenery being developed that looks very very promising. But at least part of my excitement is that it brings living colors to the scenery area it depicts.

 

(Instant buy)

 

Color and life comes to X-Plane

 

WOW!

 This looks great - and it would be a dream come true if X-Plane would more and more go into these directions regarding scenery design, shape an dlooks!

 ... i continue hoping for the best!

 But really: This looks fantastic!

Cheers, Christoph

[jcomm 5,939]

I can understand, but at the same time, colors changed dramatically for me during last week, and I tend to concentrate more on other items...

 

My old 1333*768 monitor flipped, and I was forced to buy an ASUS LED one, with 1900*1080 native resolution, at a bargain... I am yet to find if I will ever e able to get back my colors :-/

 

Meanwhile while continuing to test ASN in FSX + DX10, I have been spending some time comparing how good the best weather injectors for FSX / P3D that I have used do their work compared to X-Plane's default weather when it comes, for instance, to winds affected by the mountains... Ridge wing is IMO a lot, LOT, more plausible in X-plane 10 than FSX, no matter what weather injection program you pick.

 

There is a fluidity, but also the turbulent effects near the ridge tops and where the orography is not so smooth, that I simply can't find reproduced in FSX and can turn an otherwise great flight experience into a very strange, far from realistic, ride...

 

Photo-scenery, which is what I use mainly now with X-Plane 10 is so beautiful and makes it all feel so much more plausible that I can't get back to the default one, even with the new mesh. I am downloading the new mesh v2 for photosceneries from SimHeaven, and making the necessary adjustments to my ZL17 sceneries ( just 2, but going to download some more...). X-Plane 10 with photos, OSM + Autogen and Sky MAXX Pro is so so nice!

 

Regarding DCS, EDGE is coming too, but let's not forget that the coverage of their scenery areas is so much smaller than what either X-Plane and FSX/P3D cover, that I believe we would need 10TB disks to get the same level of coverage with the upcoming detail EDGE aperars to bring. 

 

It's all a compromise. Even using photo scenery in X-plane 10 can't be done without compromise, because we know that while we can expect not being plagued by OOMs like in FSX / P3D when photo scenery is used, the loading times increase, FPS can loose a few frames, and our disk becomes filled with X-Plane!

[HiFlyer 9,363]

I can understand, but at the same time, colors changed dramatically for me during last week, and I tend to concentrate more on other items...

 

My old 1333*768 monitor flipped, and I was forced to buy an ASUS LED one, with 1900*1080 native resolution, at a bargain... I am yet to find if I will ever e able to get back my colors :-/

 

Meanwhile while continuing to test ASN in FSX + DX10, I have been spending some time comparing how good the best weather injectors for FSX / P3D that I have used do their work compared to X-Plane's default weather when it comes, for instance, to winds affected by the mountains... Ridge wing is IMO a lot, LOT, more plausible in X-plane 10 than FSX, no matter what weather injection program you pick.

 

There is a fluidity, but also the turbulent effects near the ridge tops and where the orography is not so smooth, that I simply can't find reproduced in FSX and can turn an otherwise great flight experience into a very strange, far from realistic, ride...

 

Photo-scenery, which is what I use mainly now with X-Plane 10 is so beautiful and makes it all feel so much more plausible that I can't get back to the default one, even with the new mesh. I am downloading the new mesh v2 for photosceneries from SimHeaven, and making the necessary adjustments to my ZL17 sceneries ( just 2, but going to download some more...). X-Plane 10 with photos, OSM + Autogen and Sky MAXX Pro is so so nice!

 

Regarding DCS, EDGE is coming too, but let's not forget that the coverage of their scenery areas is so much smaller than what either X-Plane and FSX/P3D cover, that I believe we would need 10TB disks to get the same level of coverage with the upcoming detail EDGE aperars to bring.

 

It's all a compromise. Even using photo scenery in X-plane 10 can't be done without compromise, because we know that while we can expect not being plagued by OOMs like in FSX / P3D when photo scenery is used, the loading times increase, FPS can loose a few frames, and our disk becomes filled with X-Plane!

Photo-scenery might be the way to go for some, and when you said you tend to concentrate on other things I think you hit the nail right on the head as LM probably has a focus much closer to yours. Last night, I was listening to an old podcast with Austin describing how the lack of airport buildings had never been a problem for him, since he was more interested in the Plane and the Runway.........

 

I expect a lot of technical/study simmers will agree, but its not exactly the most encouraging thing to hear when you are interested in detailed scenery and nice planes!!!! :lol:

 

As for the coverage, I think we mean different things, as there is no way a modification of the existing textures would need that much space. I am not talking at all about building placement or any of that type of detail, and in fact the textures are going to have to be modified/altered anyway unless the whole world is going to look like America forever. (And unless they intend to leave buildings dark at night indefinitely!)

 

Not to even mention seasons!

 

There are some things that are just going to have to be done, or I cringe at what might happen on STEAM when/if consumers accustomed to much more balanced and polished products encounter X-plane 10 in its current state........

[LAdamson 240]

Photo-scenery might be the way to go for some, and when you said you tend to concentrate on other things I think you hit the nail right on the head as LM probably has a focus much closer to yours. Last night, I was listening to an old podcast with Austin describing how the lack of airport buildings had never been a problem for him, since he was more interested in the Plane and the Runway.........

 

I expect a lot of technical/study simmers will agree, but its not exactly the most encouraging thing to hear when you are interested in detailed scenery and nice planes!!!! :lol:

 

As for the coverage, I think we mean different things, as there is no way a modification of the existing textures would need that much space. I am not talking at all about building placement or any of that type of detail, and in fact the textures are going to have to be modified/altered anyway unless the whole world is going to look like America forever. (And unless they intend to leave buildings dark at night indefinitely!)

 

Not to even mention seasons!

 

There are some things that are just going to have to be done, or I cringe at what might happen on STEAM when/if consumers accustomed to much more balanced and polished products encounter X-plane 10 in its current state........

Landing at the end of a sim flight, has been what I probably enjoy most. But it really does have to have scenery, and a sense of being there. It's the reason I really enjoyed some scenery of southern Utah airports (that I well know in RL) that were done for FS2004, back in the Dreemfleet days. I'd never be happy, about just being technical, for the sake of it.

[wolke85 150]

Photo-scenery might be the way to go for some, and when you said you tend to concentrate on other things I think you hit the nail right on the head as LM probably has a focus much closer to yours. Last night, I was listening to an old podcast with Austin describing how the lack of airport buildings had never been a problem for him, since he was more interested in the Plane and the Runway.........

 

I expect a lot of technical/study simmers will agree, but its not exactly the most encouraging thing to hear when you are interested in detailed scenery and nice planes!!!! :lol:

 

As for the coverage, I think we mean different things, as there is no way a modification of the existing textures would need that much space. I am not talking at all about building placement or any of that type of detail, and in fact the textures are going to have to be modified/altered anyway unless the whole world is going to look like America forever. (And unless they intend to leave buildings dark at night indefinitely!)

 

Not to even mention seasons!

 

There are some things that are just going to have to be done, or I cringe at what might happen on STEAM when/if consumers accustomed to much more balanced and polished products encounter X-plane 10 in its current state........

 

A great post!

And... well:

Last night, I was listening to an old podcast with Austin describing how the lack of airport buildings had never been a problem for him, since he was more interested in the Plane and the Runway ...

Hmmm ... this statement, if true, might explain why X-Plane looks and feels as it does nowadays!

It seems as if the priorities are exclusively and mainly on being some kind of "study- and phyics - sim", rather than about "study - physics - and Immersion"!

Really hope this will change and that we finally get a plausible X-Plane world which is not just technically plausible, but also immersive and convincing as well!

This can certainly be done - i am sure!

And indeed:

There will always be some kind of compromise, but as HighFlyer/Devon has also written in his latest post above:

There are some things that are just going to have to be done [...]

I fully second that ... although i am no Steam user (yet) - but a dedicated flightsimmer at least! :wink:

Cheers, Christoph

[Longranger 148]

A

Hmmm ... this statement, if true, might explain why X-Plane looks and feels as it does nowadays!

It seems as if the priorities are exclusively and mainly on being some kind of "study- and phyics - sim", rather than about "study - physics - and Immersion"!

Well, originally this was true, but not really for X-Plane 10.

X-Plane 10 wanted to change its foundations and they did. But a lot of things didn't really followed the plan.

Originally WED should have been ready at the release of X-Plane 10. Not years later.

But during 10.05 they got a big wake-up call and rescheduled everything. 10.10 was planned as the big foundation point for X-Plane 10 planes... and then came 10.20 with 64 bits that broke everything. And now X-Plane 10.20 is the real reference point.

[wolke85 150]

Well, originally this was true, but not really for X-Plane 10.

X-Plane 10 wanted to change its foundations and they did. But a lot of things didn't really followed the plan.

Originally WED should have been ready at the release of X-Plane 10. Not years later.

But during 10.05 they got a big wake-up call and rescheduled everything. 10.10 was planned as the big foundation point for X-Plane 10 planes... and then came 10.20 with 64 bits that broke everything. And now X-Plane 10.20 is the real reference point.

 

Thank You very much for the info!

Well then: Looking fprward to 10.30 now very much and hoping that it will be a game changer and new reference point in regards to X-Plane then!

But for now and again: Thank You very much for the info here!

Cheers, Christoph