Xtreme Cities Limited Release (Official Release Tomorrow) from Ultimate Terrain Group

[William J.S.S 173]

PLEASE tell me you are going to be doing some Georgia/Florida work.

As of now, there is an unflyable Miami in anything other than the trike for that whole two state area.....

 

Jacksonville, Atlanta, Orlando, Augusta, Miami, Tallahassee, Tampa!

Hope maybe you guys could release planned cities or regions that you will be doing in the US? I bet that would get a lot more people interested as I can imagine that a lot of these sales will be based off where people live as we know these areas.

 

Thanks! And the user shots look great and I am looking forward to more from you guys! 

[Jimmy RFR 406]

 

 

This initial product is just the first of 20+ planned releases over the next 2 years. 7 scenery areas will cover the entire continental USA. The rest will be in Europe. Each scenery area will have between 15-20 cities.

 

It's too bad that you don't have a release planned for Canada; one release could theoretically cover a couple of the biggest cities from each province.  I'd pay dearly for that... Perhaps the data isn't available?

[Blaze 102]

I think I'm going to have to pass on this for now as to me the buildings although properly placed look rather bland IMO nothing against the product itself as the concept is excellent.  I felt the same way towards OSM in XP10 when I was dabbling around with it.  I cant help feel like the buildings remind me of a military mout training site; maybe its the texturing or lack thereof but to me they lack any character.  Looking at the night shot of Dallas posted I don't think the buildings look natural at all but rather lit up like neon lights, so the fact that they are the correct size, shape and in the right spot seems mute.  The daytime shot with photoscenery looks better to me.  Seems like a bit of a double edged sword  in that if  even if there was an artist making varied textures for the bulk of the buildings I'm pretty sure you'd run into a performance issue which would seem self defeating?

 

Then again looking at static screenshots isn't the same as flying over the scenery in the Sim so I'll be looking at the you tube videos as they come out.  I'm sure that there will be many who will enjoy these add-on pack but for now I'm just going to wait and see.

[akriesman 0]

As I promised yesterday, we have updated the Scenery Solutions page for XC USA SouthCentral and posted quite a few before/after screenshots that should do a much better job of showing the enhancements.    These screenshots are not yet up on the Flight 1 order page.    The Scenery Solutions link is below.

 

http://www.scenerysolutions.com/XCUSASouthCentral_P3D.html

 

For those that have not heard about the product, it is because we have not yet made a press release.    Thanks to your suggestions yesterday, we wanted to update those screenshots first.

 

 

Right now our license with the data vendor allows us to release products for the USA and Europe over the next 2 years.   Other areas are available to us.  But, the USA and Europe are coming first.       In addition to the USA and Europe, we do have future access to Asia, Russia, Mexico, South America and even 10 cities in Canada.   However, the extent of the future areas will depend on how well the series goes over with the public.

 

I am going to give you the honest truth about licensing commercial data.   That is, the data providers expect a decent return on their investment.    We have a very good relationship with them because Ultimate Terrain took their product in a direction that was very unique.   Normally, their data is used in GPS units which is pretty boring.   Ultimate Terrain, used with FSX, allowed them to demonstrate new uses of their data, because it presented it in a manner that was very visual.   So, they were able to use our product for school demonstrations, etc.   This added benefit to them allowed us to continue to use their data in our products, even if the sales from the Flight Simulation market do not match what they were used to.    The work we do at Scenery Solutions is somewhat of a novelty to them.

 

With Xtreme Cities,we are again headed down a new path with their product data.   To ensure that they get a decent return on their investment, we are going to release areas that are going to be the most in demand first.   As we know from experience, this is going to be the USA and Europe.    Canada has been a real struggle when it comes to UTX because the market is very small.   I apologize to our Canadian users, because Canada just has not received the attention that the other regions have.    So, even though there is data for Canada, I cannot promise a Canadian Xtreme Cities product.   Our current license does not include Canada, but it could be added depending on how things go in the initial rollouts.

 

Anyway, I didn't really mean to get into that much detail.  But, I hope that it will help both our Xtreme Cities and Ultimate Terrain users understand why some regions get more attention than others.   

 

As far as Florida and Georgia go, we have those areas planned in our USA SouthEast product (no release date).  Some of these regions may change slightly before production, as enhancements are made to the commercial data.   

 

USA Southeast (15)

 

Boca Raton

Daytona Beach

Ft Lauderdale

Jacksonville

Key West

Miami

Orlando

St Petersburg

Tampa

West Palm Beach

Atlanta

Savannah

Birmingham

Knoxville

Memphis

 

Thanks,

Allen

 

PS-To Blaze.  You are correct in that a key component regarding frame rates is to make sure that all objects in a "scene" share as few texture sheets if possible.    If every building had it's own texture sheet, the sim would not be flyable.   I don't see this changing soon even with the improvements in hardware.       What we did is to create a very large texture sheet that provides 64 different commercial building textures per city, with an additional sheet for residential areas.     However, since cities are generally not populated in the same scene, we have allowed for each city to have a separate texture sheet assigned to it.    Since these separate texture sheets are not loaded at the same time in FSX/P3D, they do not hurt performance.    With each city having it's own texture sheet, we can also give each city it's own local personality if needed.  Cheers.

[iangbusa 2]

 

 

I also got Nuvecta for Maryland, and boy was I entirely regretful with that purchase.  Many tree areas were on top of roads and did not match up with the color of the photoscenery at all which made everything look horrible.  The only flight sim purchase I've ever made that I've been upset about.

 

You really should ask the store for your money back if it's that bad.  :mellow:

[Kuragiman 227]

A suggestion with this product, to help out Photoreal fliers that don't have Autogen to help blend your product in with other products (such as ORBX).   Where your data ends and your rendering thus ends, it would be nice if you could make the edge look more natural with varying treelines rather than a super straight edge.   It just makes the scene look very unnatural while approach it.  Looks great once you are over it but getting rid of those straight edge ending data areas would be a nice little plus.  Surely that wouldn't be too hard?  It is easier to destroy than create!  Just wipe out some of them spawn points around the extreme edges!  

[hawkeye52 8]

You really should ask the store for your money back if it's that bad.  :mellow:

 

It was only a few bucks and i'm sure you guys worked pretty hard on converting the databases and understand it's a large area to cover.  Also the store I got it from has a strict no return policy from reading their return policy.

 

I knew the limitations going in and could accept the trees being over roads/highways and shopping centers, but it was doing it over major roadways ruining the VFR experience.  But the color difference is where everything really took a turn for the worst.  It was my first time trying out photoscenery so I got a small/cheap area so no harm no foul, but probably won't go back to it again.

 

Again I understand you guys worked really hard, I just learned it definitely was not for me.  Sorry for straying off topic!

[akriesman 0]

A suggestion with this product, to help out Photoreal fliers that don't have Autogen to help blend your product in with other products (such as ORBX).   Where your data ends and your rendering thus ends, it would be nice if you could make the edge look more natural with varying treelines rather than a super straight edge.   It just makes the scene look very unnatural while approach it.  Looks great once you are over it but getting rid of those straight edge ending data areas would be a nice little plus.  Surely that wouldn't be too hard?  It is easier to destroy than create!  Just wipe out some of them spawn points around the extreme edges!  

 

Actually, because of the technology we use when building a scene of objects, it would probably be easier to add trees to the edges and release them as a separate BGL file. I do see your point and will make a note of that.

[Kuragiman 227]

Actually, because of the technology we use when building a scene of objects, it would probably be easier to add trees to the edges and release them as a separate BGL file. I do see your point and will make a note of that.

 

What ever breaks up those hard edges is fine by me!   Keep up the great work!  When are you going to apply for a commercial account so we can see your name lit up with golden 'commercial' goodness?  

[BIGSKY 316]

What would cause the brown water ?

http://s177.photobucket.com/user/B1900Mech/media/Flight%20Sim%20X/2014-9-16_0-52-54-935.png.html?sort=3&o=0

[carlito777 712]

What about compatibility with the Orbx openLC products? Is it possible to use your product for the cities and openLC for the rest? That would be great because the cities really suck in openLC.

[wolke85 150]

What about compatibility with the Orbx openLC products? Is it possible to use your product for the cities and openLC for the rest? That would be great because the cities really suck in openLC.

 

... as the Xtreme Cities website tells:

 

Multiple versions are available to specifically target users with either the base FSX textures installed or upgraded terrain texture packs from the most popular 3rd party addons. At this point, in additiona to the base FSX versions, we provide custom installers for users with "Ground Environment X" or "Orbx FTX Global Base" products installed. This allows Xtreme Cities regions to blend in best with the surrounding landclass textures

 

More info at:

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=xcusasc

 

... and in regards to OpenLC - as far as i am aware of, OpenLC is not released for the US yet, so i guess we'll have to wait to find out.

And in regards to the compatibility with Vector, i assume that overall it should work. There may sometimes be some differences occuring (eventually), but overall i assume it will interact seamlessly.

Only my 2 cents though.

:wink: :smile:

[carlito777 712]

I fully understand that it is compatible with FTX Global (textures) and FTX Global Vector (vector data). However the big question is whether it is compatible with other landclass products such as Orbx openLC. Since the next release will be Italian cities this is a very important question as I would expect a lot of simmers using Orbx openLC Europe. Both products (Xtreme Cities and openLC) are within the landclass layer of FSX or P3D, so they will not necesseraly be compatible.

 

Any information from the developer would be highly appreciated!

[wolke85 150]

I fully understand that it is compatible with FTX Global (textures) and FTX Global Vector (vector data). However the big question is whether it is compatible with other landclass products such as Orbx openLC. Since the next release will be Italian cities this is a very important question as I would expect a lot of simmers using Orbx openLC Europe. Both products (Xtreme Cities and openLC) are within the landclass layer of FSX or P3D, so they will not necesseraly be compatible.

 

Any information from the developer would be highly appreciated!

 

Hi Carlo!

I am sure the developes will soon let You know, but as a customer and flightsimmer i assume it will be compatible.

sure: There may always be some conflicts and issues remaining when various landclass products/data or various vector products/data come into play, but overall they should be compatible - especially in this case here, when it is primarily about local and specific urban land class/vector data.

But the developers certainly have more adequate answers at hand.

So let's indeed look, wait and see what they come up with.

Cheers

[vgbaron 3,626]

As with any scenery product, it depends on how they set up the layers in the scenery manager. You can have one landclass for the area and plop the new city on top. Nothing else changes, just that city/airport etc. It's only when you are replacing the ENTIRE landclass that you'd have issues.

 

Vic