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

 

Awesome! That sounds like a win-win for everyone. :smile:

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 prefer a mix. I really like default textures in mountainous areas, but I don't like it over flat areas.I did a test flight over Tromsø in alpha 2 with AlpilotX's UHD mesh and the results are very nice and a nice improvement of alpha 1, in fact it looks better than it does with photoscenery in the same area because the colours have more clarity, match the trees and are sharper.

 

 

 

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.

 

Unfortunately it's too late now for this release, but I agree with you, it looks wrong without photoscenery. There is a fix on x-plane.org that blocks the shrub lines in W2XP scenery, and I recommend you just install that until I remove them in the next version I do.

Good news! I would've voted for the vegetation in residential areas version. Bergen looks better in you last pictures imo. Anyway, great idea to make two versions.

Looking forward to an even more livly hometown

 

I've flown quite a few GA trips up north lately. With UHD, Norway Pro and freeware airports (user tdg at .org have

made quite a few great freeware norwegian airports), what an great experience it is, even in the Alpha1 version!

 

Thanks Ole

 

I'm uploading alpha 2 now (which is a nice improvement), it should be ready by morning. Watch this thread for the link ;-)

The non-photoscenery for alpha 2 has now uploaded:

 

This version offers a big improvement over the previous for many issues report on this post (Thanks all for the feedback)

 

http://world2xplane.com/2016/01/03/norway-pro/

 

If you use photoscenery, please save my bandwidth and wait a a few days before I upload a photoscenery-based compatible scenery.

 

Also, please let me know of any issues, however minor. I'm especially interested in feedback from natives so we can improve alpha 3/beta 1

As a very picky comment (almost didn't post it), the orange roofs are extremely bright - need more dirty brown added to the colors.  But that's a lot of work....

Do you mean the city centre autogen buildings? Those buildings are from my Czech autogen scenery and not really suited for Norway. I will work on improving them at some point once I have some time (Luckily it will only require a patch and not a new build)

Just had a look at alpha 2. Some thoughts:

 

- This version looks considerably better than the first one. transitions between urban and rural areas look better now and I like the trees in residential areas.

- There are still many roads with trees on them.

- The ground textures beneath buildings are excellent and make a big difference. Well done! Just to nitpick, some of the shadows (dark areas) on these ground textures are too dark IMO.

- as already mentioned by mdavis, the urban centre buildings could be improved a little (the ones with the blue billboards on the side look weird - if the billboard texture was removed it would look much better IMO).

 

But that's enough nitpicking for today, overall it is a beautiful scenery. Thanks once again for continuing your work Tony!

 

Steve

I see you guys are talking about a photoscenery for Norway; with the exception of Bodø and Lofoten from Zone Photo X, what photoscenery are you talking about?

Downloading now, soon ready to check it out. Good times

Yes, a definate improvement over A1, well done!

 

To nitpick (in the most possible humble way) I would agree that the shadows maybe are a bit too dark. They are quite easy to spot if the number of objects setting

is not very high/at max. And studying the landscape below is excactly what I do with an addon scenery like this:

 

With extreme settings, it is pure joy, and my soon 2 year old computer cope with extreme settings surprisingly well. Guess they invented 64bit for a reason :

Many thanks for all the feedback

 

X-Plane is doing a very odd and annoying thing here, it seems that it removes the house but leaves the ground texture when you lower settings. I'm not sure how to fix this apart from completely removing the shadows (Which should work properly if the building is visible). I've had a read through the docs, and it seems this is probably the only choice I have.

 

Edit: It was me being a numpty. I've found out how to resolve the issue (I now control the visibility of the autogen tile and not just the object in the tile), and it will be fixed in alpha 3 :-)

Tony, just an idea, after looking at the screen shot above with the shadow on the ground tile.

I am not sure if it would work, or even if it is possible.

 

Would it make sense to make a flat texture top down of the house and use it as the ground texture?

When you fly above a certain altitude, you see this texture, instead of the 3D building, with a possible improvement of the framerates. 

That way, we could start playing with the LOD for the best effect.
 

 

 

Would it make sense to make a flat texture top down of the house and use it as the ground texture?

 

Well funnily enough, that's how it starts out in photoshop before I turn it into a shadow and add the grass and paths.

 

Yep I guess it would be possible. I'd have to give the building a different LOD than the actual tile it is on, something like 4KM, so once you get high enough you'll only see the roof. Something like this can be done as patch to the autogen files as opposed to doing a new scenery build luckily, so it's something I can look at doing once Alpha 3 is done.

Good news, on the 1st January Sweden also released their vector data at a similar resolution to Norway's, which means that it will now be possible to do a Denmark/Norway/Sweden mega region :-).