Is this what you mean by shimmer ?

No.

The shimmer can't be shown in a static shot.

 

Reflection quality isn't the issue, it's the way it shimmers and has motion that almost flashes.

 

People on the org seem to think its AA related, yet nobody ever has a cure

 

No thank-you Pascal. If it wasn't for your work with the data ref editor in X-plane it would be far easier to just continue to dismiss XP as the ugly, inferior flight sim to FSX/P3D. I think you even challenged Laminar themselves directly to improve the sky rendering in the default setup of the sim, as I think your ideas are probably going to be part of the next release version. I really wonder sometimes who are the artists (or who is the artist) over at Laminar. I know Austin himself doesn't have a clue what looks good. Xplane has an amazing graphics rendering engine, but it seems so under utilized at times.

 

As for Orbx, my opinion is that their airports are absolutely stunning! However their large area projects are far less so. I have FTX Global and to be blunt, I feel like I wasted my money. Some areas do look very nice, much nicer than the default FSX with it's greens and browns "desert problem." But over all it's just a bit underwhelming unless you also add some of their other addons like the PNW packages. I live near Olympia, WA. This state is beautiful. I've also lived in San Francisco, CA. One of my favorite flights to do is the hop between Seattle and San Francisco; a trip I've made many times as a passenger. Flying that same trip in FSX with FTX Global however, is like flying over a mostly green pock marked carpet with the occasional town or city rendered as a flat little oasis of generic textures with some randomly places little 3D buildings. Not too impressive and as always the classic FSX blurries follow me wherever I go.

 

Xplane certainly has it's faults, but it's getting better all the time and gaining momentum. Anything from TruScenery equals Orbx IMHO as well. :)

 

Sounds like a little ortho scenery over NorCal and Oregon with some OrbX destination airports would be the best compromise perhaps?

 

Honestly I just wish OrbX would develop for XP. Would solve a lot...but not the clouds or water sadly.

No.

The shimmer can't be shown in a static shot.

 

Reflection quality isn't the issue, it's the way it shimmers and has motion that almost flashes.

 

People on the org seem to think its AA related, yet nobody ever has a cure

 

Sounds like a little ortho scenery over NorCal and Oregon with some OrbX destination airports would be the best compromise perhaps?

 

Honestly I just wish OrbX would develop for XP. Would solve a lot...but not the clouds or water sadly.

 

OK I see what you are talking about now, I had to disable the Terra Haze plugin to be able to see the shimmering. If you set the reflections to default or lower it eliminates most of the shimmering. You can also play with the wave height in the weather options menu, that seems to help. Or you can just use the Terra Haze plugin !

OK I see what you are talking about now, I had to disable the Terra Haze plugin to be able to see the shimmering. If you set the reflections to default or lower it eliminates most of the shimmering. You can also play with the wave height in the weather options menu, that seems to help. Or you can just use the Terra Haze plugin !

 

I do have the Dataref editor installed. (sort of avoiding TerraHaze/Fly with Lua stuff during 10.3 betas)...

 

Are there some tweaks in the Dataref editor you could point me to specifically to try to reduce the shimmering?  Eager to try.

I prefer P3D. i only have x-plane 10 though :(

Like arguing over Pepsi vs Coke at times  :lol:

Those screens look amazing !

 

Are there any video tutorials on how to edit using JOSM ? I know how to use the web based editor but its limited on what you can do.

 

Thank you. You can even find much better here.

 

You can find video tutorials for JOSM here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Video_tutorials

I have both... regarding your shots the clouds imo there is no comparison.  Thus far REX4 has the best clouds, and couples with ASN, it makes a potent combo.

 

But... XPX is beautiful, especially if you fly GA.  I am on the sidelines with XPX until they get their high altitude figured out.

Yeah, I agree. I've heard throught time that x-plane10 is more for vfr, low flying(GA), and heli flying.

 

These I took just to give a very quick indication. My home field is EIME in Ireland which has a field altitude of 323ft depending on where you are on the field so these are all taken at 700ft within a hair on a very quick flight around the area. To me you see, no matter how hard ORBX try, they will never be providing a real representation of what actually exists at any given point which just irks me. To me they are selling fake scenery, I just can't get that out of my head when I fly over it. These are all G2xpl and World2XPlane. OSM data is not great for Ireland but it's good enough for me.

 

I certainly do agree that the water needs work and that quite a few other things need work but the great thing is, I didn't have to do any of the work that has already gone into the simulator code. I get to enjoy it. If at anything above 350ft I can see what really exists in the world as I fly over that spot in a sim, I'm gonna be happy as I can't afford to fly myself in the real world. I think considering all that we have in the simulated world, we should all be pretty content gven that none of us had to create the programs ourselves.

 

Now go down another 100 feet in your second shot, looking horizontally across the terrain, and all you'll see is ugly flatness and some bad blocky buildings.

 

Everything has it's pros and cons. Photoscenery and OSM can be made to look really pretty in pictures at the right angles but it isn't for everyone.

Now go down another 100 feet in your second shot, looking horizontally across the terrain, and all you'll see is ugly flatness and some bad blocky buildings.

 

Everything has it's pros and cons. Photoscenery and OSM can be made to look really pretty in pictures at the right angles but it isn't for everyone.

 

So very true.

If only these Sims would allow for some preferences that switched to Ortho scenery above certain altitudes.  Up high, some great photo scenery and weather is all that's needed.

Now go down another 100 feet in your second shot, looking horizontally across the terrain, and all you'll see is ugly flatness and some bad blocky buildings.

 

Everything has it's pros and cons. Photoscenery and OSM can be made to look really pretty in pictures at the right angles but it isn't for everyone.

 

I'm not suggesting it for everybody, each to their own has always been my belief but really I don't ever fly at lower than 400ft unless I'm landing or taking off so it's not a problem for me. Ultimately it matters not to me who does or doesn't agree with me, it's a digital conversation where opinions are expressed and either accepted or rejected by those who read them and view the pictures. It's not my intention to persuade anyone one way or the other but for those with an open mind or those who may not be overly committed to a particular viewpoint, being able to see and partake of the conversation may be prove helpful.

 

 

each to their own

 

That's the key!

As long as it's working for ya', it's all good!

 

For me it's a bit too flat (ortho scenery) below say about 2,000ft, and thus I'm not that into it as I'm mainly a GA flyer on XPX/P3D.

 

I do think it's great above that though!  

I do have the Dataref editor installed. (sort of avoiding TerraHaze/Fly with Lua stuff during 10.3 betas)...

 

Are there some tweaks in the Dataref editor you could point me to specifically to try to reduce the shimmering?  Eager to try.

You might want to ask the author of Terra Haze. I did not do any of the programming myself.

 

But here is the RTH water:

set( "sim/private/controls/water/deep1_b", 0.300000 )

set( "sim/private/controls/water/deep1_g", 0.27000 )

set( "sim/private/controls/water/deep1_r", 0.100000 )

set( "sim/private/controls/water/deep2_b", 0.200000 )

set( "sim/private/controls/water/deep2_g", 0.150000 )

set( "sim/private/controls/water/deep2_r", 0.010000 )

Just to chime on one post from TurbineSeaplane above and sorry it's late the day... Full disclosure - I developed nuvecta's Treescapes North America™.

 

It is purely "autogen" overlaying photo-scenery but deliberately positioned relative to real-world location to match photo-real (so it's not autogen randomly generated and rendered on land class scenery which is how most people think of autogen).

 

Sounds simple enough but in our case we cover a continent. It's  based upon commercially procured land-use and mapping data much which sprang from digitization of the USGS Topo map series. The government, as I found out directly from the USGS trying to get something for nothing (except my taxes!!), has only digitized somewhere near 2%-3% themselves, leaving the rest to the private sector (and hence not free or cheap like much of it is in Europe).

 

The data is processed to its limits which brings it down to somewhere equivalent to 1:15000 mapping covering the whole USA - like a Topo map. It does this for whole of the USA and slightly less accurate scales in Canada and Mexico. Some OSM is incorporated but, frankly, in the USA  OSM is woefully inadequate in coverage and accuracy and will be for years to come except for various very specific, very localized, relatively small areas.

 

We chose to produce Treescapes first because that data was much more comprehensive and faster to process. It makes a product like the wonderful Treeline product in the UK (based on UK government OS data) but covering many hundreds of thousands of square miles in our case. We are now working with the rest of our data to finalize techniques to produce reasonably complete autogen including buildings. Not so easy and we're not 100% happy with results so far, so that's only an experimental product.

 

Love the screenshots, by the way. Must admit, I haven't looked at X-Plane yet (we work with P3D and FSX). Wonder if we should?

 

I hope this helps your discussion.

The biggest problem for X-Plane in the huge U.S. marketplace is a lack of the very things you are doing. On  a state by state basis I imagine photoscenery with autogen would go down very well indeed with X-Planers. The photoscenery is not too hard to get with some determination but accurate autogen is limited to OSM which everyone knows is woefully inadequate in the U.S.

Love the screenshots, by the way. Must admit, I haven't looked at X-Plane yet (we work with P3D and FSX). Wonder if we should?

 

Awesome post and thank you so much for chiming in!~

 

Photoscenery, with auto-gen on top (in your case, accurate auto gen on top) would solve a lot of issues for a lot of use cases.

 

I've definitely gotten the vibe that although many of us (like myself) do only/mostly GA flying, loads and loads of Flight Simmers (I mean the concept, not a particular sim software) do mainly tube liners between major airports.

 

For that sort of flying, clearly just having some detailed airports at destinations and great Ortho/Autogen in between is basically a perfect compromise.

 

So here's a vote for Nuvecta to Xplane!  :-)