Visibility conditions are not the same. I think that in your X-Plane screenshot, the visibility is not maxed out. Please tell me if I'm wrong. You can see the real visibility by going into the detailed weather screen.

 

Could be, I simply selected the clear weather theme and haven't looked at the visibility. I presumed this one had everything maxed...? And yes, the real picture is very bright and colorful, that's true. But it is not extremely overdone and both sims clearly lack a realistic light IMHO.

 

Just when I wanted to do such a comparison shot for Alaska you beat me. How did you manage to get the interchanging pictures uploaded? That's nifty. I also was about to buy FTX Norway at the sale but hesitated when I read that the cities were not well done. Seems that they focused on the landscape. Bergen looks really bad. Also agree that the best of XP is the ability to work with Ortho4XP and OSM data to create your own sceneries. I'll try to compose another comparison if you tell me how to do the overlay :smile:

I put every picture in a seperate layer in Photoshop and then opened the Timeline view in which I added three frames of each 3 seconds and I enabled a different picture (layer) for each frame (click on one frame in the timeline and then enable or disable the layers you want for that frame). After that I exported the 'movie' for the web as a gif. Something like that. The file was then uploaded to Flickr because afaik not every upload site supports animated gif. And finally I copied the exact link to the file itself on this site (so not one of the Flickr links because they will lead you to Flickr all the time). Not sure of all this helps...

Me and Photoshop  I guess I better post three separate shots. Won't be before tomorrow though. 

Could be, I simply selected the clear weather theme and haven't looked at the visibility. I presumed this one had everything maxed...? And yes, the real picture is very bright and colorful, that's true. But it is not extremely overdone and both sims clearly lack a realistic light IMHO.

 

Be advised that the "Clear" weather theme sets a visibility of only 25 miles. To increase it, go to the "customize" weather screen and drag the visibility slider to the right. Max is 100 miles. This should improve lighting. Also, the overdone haze is one of the most common complaints for this first beta, so there's chance that they will tune it in the next betas. :smile:

That ortho picture is not much better than default texture, quite blurred, I think you should try L17 or L18 to really get the best of Ortho4XP. For example I have generated northern Italy at L17 with airports airfiled at L18 and sometimes L19, pretty amazing. And sometimes you need to change, mix, swap textures from one provider to another, edit jpg to uniform some, change contrast and luminosity...a long process but once you're done the result is worth the time. For example look at these pictures https://www.facebook.com/mbliveries/photos/pcb.1225174964207829/1225164227542236/?type=3&theater

there are all tiles at L18, not a tea for everyone HD I guess but I've never seen someting like these in FSX world even with photoreal expensive packages.

Of course a powerful PC is needed, it dos not come at a low price even if it's all freeware

Yes, XP11 is far superior. FSX and P3D don't match it at all. First thing I noticed was the fuel being burnt behind the motors, the scenery, the standard aircraft, the day/night weather textures, etc, etc. Also watch when for example, the 737 touches down the suspension movement on a default plane. The airports.  I'll have a XP11 please.!!!

Check these if you haven't yet;

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8nqEtAl0rk

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0Sm9GDha4#t=131.557794

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDBEuHDiWmY

 

Cheers.

jgoncalves

It's so nice, I am ready to ( temporarily ) forget about the Moon phases.... Those of you who joke about me asking for it, are simply not married.... and those who don't notice the wrong lighting at moorning or dusk twilights, wake up too late or are closed inside their homes or offices all of the afternoon :-) - But heck!  XP11 looks sooooooo nice as it looks already in beta!

Be advised that the "Clear" weather theme sets a visibility of only 25 miles. To increase it, go to the "customize" weather screen and drag the visibility slider to the right. Max is 100 miles. This should improve lighting. Also, the overdone haze is one of the most common complaints for this first beta, so there's chance that they will tune it in the next betas. :smile:

 

 

Oh! LOL Wow, I will look at that first thing this evening then.  :wink: That should make a difference. Since everyone was complaining about the haze I simply thought this was it!

 

 

That ortho picture is not much better than default texture, quite blurred, I think you should try L17 or L18 to really get the best of Ortho4XP. 

 

 

Yes, it's still bad, of course, but as I said: I can see that this could become something with higher res textures. Which makes me wonder why there don't seem to be more downloads for this... Has this to do with bandwidth only or also legal issues? It's a bit odd everyone is spending days and weeks on their own to accomplish the same result. Aren't there any similar payware options? I'd gladly pay big time for (for instance) Norway in L17 photoreal. Creating the tiles is already quite some work, let alone having to edit each and every file... 

Great work Jerone on Your first X-Plane scenery

... and ...

 

Aren't there any similar payware options? I'd gladly pay big time for (for instance) Norway in L17 photoreal. Creating the tiles is already quite some work, let alone having to edit each and every file...

 

... no payware options for that larger areas at the moment if i recall correctly (and i may be corrected here).

However, the more people getting interested in X-Plane and comming on board so to speak, the better the chances of getting more and more high quality sceneries for it.

:smile: :wink:

Yes, thanks, I saw it, sorry for not responding, but I managed to get an airport running in the meantime. I think the main problem was some library that was missing... or something like that. But it's working now. It looks quote okay too (ENBR from tdg) with Parker planes and all.

 

I just (well, just...) installed Norway Pro and all possible libraries and decided to create a comparison between XP11, P3D and real life. (EDIT The city you see is Bergen, Norway.)  I am using the settings I am using in the sim, so I didn't set things to max for this comparison. It's pretty rough (didn't remove the menu and slew info) but it gives an idea.

 

My main findings are:

 

1. XP11 (with Norway Pro) lacks color and the haze is way too much: things look very grey and bland and the buildings look like simple Lego blocks. It doesn't look real at all compared to the real photo. It looks like a rather basic (and old) computer game.

2. P3D (with FTX Norway) looks like a total mess with those ground textures going absolutely nowhere but from a greater distance it feels more like the real thing, mainly due to the colors and the clutter. It doesn't come close neither, really, but it feels closer somehow... you just shouldn't look too close. Close your eyes a bit and gaze at the three pictures and to me P3D comes closer to the real life picture. (EDIT Maybe I should have maxed out the P3D autogen for this comparison: XP is using the max amount of world detail.) BTW I seriously checked if FTX Norway was installed allright because it looked so bad... look at the textures with houses baked in near the shore... yikes.

 

Take note that I didn't post this just to say P3D is better of XP11 sucks: I am just comparing things. And you can't really say these are apples and oranges because XP has been 'upgraded' with one of the better freeware addons. This is what you can get right now and P3D nor XP11 can't get any better afaik. Unfortunately. :wink: (EDIT: XP probably CAN get better in this example with Ortho4XP groundtextures: forgot about that. I suppose that with Norway Pro that would make a real difference. It's next on my list of things to try.)

 

In short: we still have a few decades to go LOL (and seeing these screenshots almost make me lose hope I will see a real good sim in my lifetime).

 

Where is that?

Yes, XP11 is far superior. FSX and P3D don't match it at all. First thing I noticed was the fuel being burnt behind the motors, the scenery, the standard aircraft, the day/night weather textures, etc, etc. Also watch when for example, the 737 touches down the suspension movement on a default plane. The airports.  I'll have a XP11 please.!!!

Check these if you haven't yet;

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8nqEtAl0rk

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0Sm9GDha4#t=131.557794

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDBEuHDiWmY

 

Cheers.

jgoncalves

 

The atmospheric lighting, lightscape and level of terrain detail are really amazing judging from the videos. What about the included planes?

Quite a few bugs and faults must still be fixed on XP11. Although everything looks so beautiful, ultimately payware aircraft will be the best for some simmers who like the real systems, etc. . But for the majority of people, the default planes will be good enough, even with some repairable bugs. Judging by the vids the clouds  don't look at the same level as the rest of the simulation. This is my opinion guys, I see this sim, once all bugs are rubbed out, just unbeatable. Also we must remember this is a beta".  One very important point is the system requirements. It should run on a good I3, or at least lowish I5. Or it cannot be overwhelmingly popular, as lots of simmers don't run I7's,  4Ghz+  rigs. But the developers know what their market aim is ,so to speak. The addons will then come out but aircraft only.  Will the rest need addons?   I don't really think so.  Let's wait and see.

 

Cheers.

jgoncalves

I think DTG's job just got a lot harder

 

Yes, it's still bad, of course, but as I said: I can see that this could become something with higher res textures. Which makes me wonder why there don't seem to be more downloads for this... Has this to do with bandwidth only or also legal issues?

 

Both. Nobody can distribute or sell ortho textures in Europe, for US I think they're free on the contrary. It's a pity because, as you see, everybody is forced to do the work on his own loosing the great rendition of many talented who goes behond the simple download and convert.

 

For example I did the greek Cyclades islands at L17 with airports at L18 but that took me hours since I often had to merge Bing and Google textures, lighten some areas, darken some others, increase contrast...long and boring process. I'd like to share my work but I cannot.

 

Regarding space, please consider that an L17 tile keeps 5/6 GB, 20Gb at L18 ...you get the picture.

Last year we had Simheaven that for example hosted all Europe at L17 but they ware forced to close downloads because of the cost required to mantain such a bandwidth traffic.

You can find decent tiles Lod16 for Europe at Zonephoto, the few tiles at L16 available for north Norway (which at those latitudes means almost L17) are simply breathtaking with amazing water transictions made personally by the creator of Ortho4XP.

Here are my comparison shots.

 

The base is the aerial photo of LFMD, obviously taken in winter as we can see snow on the mountains.

I set both sims to today's date, 11:40Z, full visibility.

Prepar3D is running with FTX Global, Vector and EuropeLC, scenery and autogen to max, default shaders, HDR on, saturation and bloom a bit increased.

X-Plane is running with a ZL17 Ortho4XP/World2Xplane OSM not enhanced, objects to high, visual effects to high, contrast and saturation a notch increased from stock.

 

Looking forward to your thoughts.

 

 

 

 

 

Where is that?

 

Bergen, Norway.

 

 

 

Regarding space, please consider that an L17 tile keeps 5/6 GB, 20Gb at L18 ...you get the picture.

 

I get the picture indeed...  :wink:

 

 

 

Looking forward to your thoughts.

 

The first picture is best.  Funny thing is that the P3D picture (very obviously the last one) sort of looks more like a photograph (or what you'd expect on a photo) than the other two... but obviously the first one is what it is in real life (comes to show how wrong our (or well. my) expectations of reality are!  :wink: Second funny thing: if you shift the colors of the XP11 screenshot a bit more to blue it would become pretty realistic. At this altitude the lack of colors in XP is in fact an advantage and closer to real life. Maybe lowering the visibility back to the (too) low default would make things more realistic.

 

Sims are odd things.  :wink:

I think P3D is the middle one Jeroen ?