Norway Pro (Work in Progress)

[tonywob 4,769]

 

 

Comparing against your pic no 2 in post #19, my home town og Bergen does not look as good as yours (tha landscape is "flat", missing vegetation, tall buildings etc.:

 

What looks like has happened is unfortunate. Since I did that original post, someone has added real buildings into OpenStreetMap for Bergen. The OSM buildings will kill the city autogen so there isn't any conflicts with real buildings, even if there are only a few in a given area.

 

In the next beta scenery build, I'll increase the tolerance so the city looks bigger again.

[olealm 12]

In the next beta scenery build, I'll increase the tolerance so the city looks bigger again.

 

Ok great, thanks! Looking forward to the next beta,then

[charleslee201 19]

 

Very nice shots

[Sesquashtoo 2,846]

Tony...another one of your 'Pro's'...shaping up.......

 

Loaded in UHD for Scandinavia, loaded in about a dozen Norway airports, and Norway has shaped right up into a beautiful fly-over..

 

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

 

[tonywob 4,769]

The first alpha of Norway Pro was surprisingly very popular based on the number of downloads, but it was quite a buggy version (and I shouldn't have released it so early :-)) and since it seems to be an area people want to fly in (unlike Denmark ;-)). I've made a few improvement/fixes and hope to get a second alpha out within the next 2 weeks:

• Fixed bug which caused repetitive buildings in city centres and increased the range of the city/town buildings
• Added trees to residential areas
• Added additional building types for residential areas (I'll try and get more done if I can)
• Fixed duplicate flashing buildings and weirdness where data was converted twice for some areas (ooops)
• Added collision detection between address-point buildings and other scenery objects and roads
• Performance improvements
• Ground textures underneath the residential buildings so they look a little better with the default scenery

Some screenshots of alpha 2:

 

Kristiansand (Without photoimagery)

 

Stavanger (With Photoimagery)

 

Tromsø (With Photoimagery)

 

Trøndheim (Without photoimagery)

 

Rural Farmland near Oslo (To show accuracy of vegetation)

 

Bergen (Without photoimagery)

 

I'm looking for feedback before I release the next version. In my opinion there are now too many trees in residential areas, but the trees also make the scenery appear more three-dimensional, so I'm not sure how to do deal with this. I'm finding it very difficult to get a good balance between users of photoscenery and those who don't use it.

 

Additionally, I'd like to try and get Sandane ENSD airport into the scenery which will be a great starting airport for touring the fjords and has a crazy approach with lots of steep terrain around:

 

Sandane Airport

[mtaxp 666]

That's just amazing ... thanks!

 

It seems like you have searched for some VFR routes in norway , can you recomend a tour (including airports with a custom scenery) in the fjors starting from the airport you mentioned?

This should be nice with the AirfoilLabs C172 :-)

[Don Quixote 76]

Some screenshots of alpha 2:

 

Stunning shots! The combination of Norway Pro, the HD Mesh V3 and the many high quality freeware airports from the .org is quickly becoming one of the best - nah, THE best scenery to fly in, regardless of simulator platform. Thank you so much for making this available for us all Tony.

 

 

I'm looking for feedback before I release the next version.

 

Personally I think a few more trees in residential areas are a good idea, some look a tad empty right now (without photoscenery that is). The majority of users will likely be using just default scenery or the HD mesh, since photoscenery for Norway isn't easily available (except for a few tiles from zonephoto.fr).

 

Two small iissues I've noticed:

Especially in rural areas there are some roads which have trees on top of them. I don't remember seeing this in GB Pro but I think it was also present in Massachusetts Pro.

 

 

In some urban areas (Oslo for example) there are clusters of these buildings with billboards on them, looks a tad strange.

 

 

Other than that, I thought that Beta 1 was already pretty amazing! Performance also seems to be at a very reasonable level, considering the sheer amount of objects in the scenery. If it can be improved further, even better!

 

Cheers,

Steve

[CFIJose 5,485]

Thanks Tony.

 

I downloaded v1 when you released it and I'm looking forward to any updates.

 

I just finished watching season 1 of Lilyhammer and it made me want to plan a trip to Norway.

 

For now the sim will do.  :smile:

[Longranger 148]

Impressive.

[tonywob 4,769]

It seems like you have searched for some VFR routes in norway , can you recomend a tour (including airports with a custom scenery) in the fjors starting from the airport you mentioned?

Surprisingly there aren't that many custom airports for Norway. The ones I have are Kristiansand, Stavanger, Narvik and Bergen. Stavanger and Kristiansand are particularly good, although they're quite old now. I'd like to do a nice GA field, which is why I'm starting on ENSD. For routes, I got myself an old VFR chart for Norway and just fly the most interesting routes, but I'd be happy to recall at some point which flights I did which were good or challenging and post the route recommendations in the screenshots section. A nice one is to start at ENBM at simply follow the fjord west visually all the way to Bergen.

 

Especially in rural areas there are some roads which have trees on top of them. I don't remember seeing this in GB Pro but I think it was also present in Massachusetts Pro.

Ah thanks for reporting this, I wonder why my lumberjacks have stopped working :/. As you can imagine it's hard to test everywhere, so I'll look into this.

 

In some urban areas (Oslo for example) there are clusters of these buildings with billboards on them, looks a tad strange.

Yes, this is what I found was a real nasty bug in alpha 1. The buildings didn't randomise properly in urban areas creating this horrible effect of strange repeated buildings. This has now hopefully been fixed, at least cities appear much nicer now. It really does ruin the scenery which is why I want it to be fixed as soon as possible.

 

[soaring_penguin 428]

Except for the lumberjacks being on strike (I found at least one airport with trees: ENJK) I like this one a lot.
Performance is great (my performance tanks when switching back to default autogen) and the city looks believable to me, together with UHD mesh.

(I am not familiar with the region, so I can not tell more).

[Don Quixote 76]

For airports, I highly recommend the following ones (all freeware, available from the .org):

 

ENBR Bergen: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=23963

 

ENKB Kvernberget: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=26063

 

ENBN Bronnoy: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=25918

 

ENBO Bodo:http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=23092

 

ENTC Tromso: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=23069

 

ENMS Mosjoen: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=28729

 

ENZV Stavanger: http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=6281

 

 

... and probably others, these are just the ones I've been flying to recently. My favourite is Bodo which is in a stunning location with plenty of nearby airstrips to fly to.

For GA flying, make sure to get the Prefab Scenery package from the .org, it's a must have.

[tonywob 4,769]

Thanks for links Don, this is a good resource.

 

I've also made the decision to do two Norway sceneries, one for users with photoscenery, and one without. The differences will be

 

Default (For use with HD or UHD mesh)

• Trees in residential areas
• Default beaches (they are currently blocked)
• Ground textures below buildings

Photoscenery (For use with photoscenery or if you have performance problems)

• No trees on autogen and in residential areas (It looks much better when used with photoscenery this way)
• Beach exclusions (To block out the beaches from appearing on top of the orthos)
• No ground textures (Not needed and just decrease peformance)

 

Of course you can use either, and I'm finding it hard to find a balance between the two. I'll build alpha 2 of the non-photoscenery over the weekend, and do the photoscenery one a few days later (I need to leave it generating over night as it takes ages)

[carrotroot 77]

 

 

Ground textures below buildings

 

Awesome Tony, I can't wait to try out the new lawn and gardens

[nikaslan 9]

 

I've also made the decision to do two Norway sceneries, one for users with photoscenery, and one without.

 

Tony, I can't thank you enough for this decision

 

I don't have the disk space and energy to hunt for available photoscenery for every region want to fly, and I, personally, prefer the sharp default textures to the relatively blurry photoscenery. I have the impression that this is the case now for the majority of X-Plane users. Your decision acknowledges that and makes this kind of scenery a god-sent gift for us.

 

Regarding world2xplane, another conflict I had found for the non photoscenery users, was the bush-lines that defined real-world terrain patches, but appeared out of space without photoscenery.