England VFR (Revisiting and playing with landclass scenery)

[tonywob 4,768]

When ORBX decided they would develop for X-Plane there was a lot of excitement in the XP world and then when they suddenly changed their minds I spent some time researching how they could have brought across their landclass sceneries to X-Plane in a way that would work in the X-Plane world.  Early last year I tried to mimic the FSX landclass system into X-Plane, but found it had the same problems as FSX (well ermmm! of course) http://www.avsim.com/topic/482409-bringing-fsxorbx-landclass-to-x-plane/, e.g. Roads going through houses, stretched textures etc.
 
So I decided that what could be done is to take the best of both scenery systems and make a hybrid. So basically X-Plane's brilliant autogen, mountains, roads and vector data mixed with the landclass tiles. Here are some of the results:
 

This is a UK autogen theme (in fact I'll probably release this at some point just to get rid of those German buildings in the UK :-)). I've only done a few buildings, but generally most of the houses in the UK do actually look the same. Less is actually good in this sense.


This is showing an example of how mixing suitable textures  could work. There is the odd real building from OSM, but the majority is just autogen. The roads are the real roads from OSM. The landclass scenery is placed to go with the roads instead of letting the roads go through it.


 
...and the cars drive on the left side of the road finally










The scenery works by creating a new base mesh, and then using OSM (and other data), building up the scenery around it. Roads are placed down in their correct places, and appropriate autogen (e.g. Place semi-detached houses here). Once the vector data is placed, annotated landclass tiles are placed in the parts in-between and lined up to the roads. All this is done without any ortho scenery at all. The above area was generated from the free European corine landclass data using OS Opendata for the coastline, water and forests and finally OSM for the streets and autogen (All data freely available). For mountains, the same textures are used as you'd see in the default scenery.

 

 

[JLSeagull 191]

Tony; THAT work is above and beyond anything that current Payware Devs (on any platform), produce. Surely you can not release that as Freeware. Market the product Tony and realise a substantial return for the countless, unpaid hours of work, that you have contributed to the XP Community? If anyone deserves accolades, appreciation and eventual financial rewards then I am sure that the whole XP community would agree that you fully deserve them all?

[Paraffin 2,197]

That looks great!

 

Especially that first shot, which is a great example of why I prefer landclass + OSM autogen over orthophotos, even when combined with autogen as a base layer. It may not 100% match the real world everywhere, but fine detail like that grass between the houses looks blurry with ortho terrain at low enough altitude. I need that fine ground detail when landing a helicopter for eyeballing height above ground when not over a runway. Or when flying into a remote grass airstrip where nobody is bothering to model the surrounding terrain in high-res orthos. 

 

I suspect that this is going to be a best fit for what Austin has in mind for procedural generation of seasonal effects, whenever we get that... if I live long enough. Wouldn't that look great with snow, or autumn tree colors?

 

P.S. I would pay for this too, although I know we've all discussed the downsides of that (like mandatory support).

[JLSeagull 191]

Buy it as is a 'One-Off' Release with no implied support or updates?

[Desaix 235]

No more words to add.

 

I believe Tony's forests are the best you can see in XP. I hope he can build a library from it. I believe some experiments were made in France as well, I remember screenshots with a similar vegetation  rendition, UK shots they look similar to the last amazing screenshots of coming DCS Normandy addon.

[JLSeagull 191]

 

P.S. I would pay for this too, although I know we've all discussed the downsides of that (like mandatory support).

 

 

Is it really that complicated Paraffin?

[tonywob 4,768]

 

 

I believe Tony's forests are the best you can see in XP. I hope he can build a library from it.

 

Actually they are  just default X-Plane forests laid out more tightly onto matching ground textures :smile: (It was the same with the France scenery I was playing with as well).

 

Not heard of DCS Normandy, but just had a look at some screenshots, looks very very nice, pity it's for a combat flight sim :(

 

 

Market the product Tony and realise a substantial return for the countless, unpaid hours of work, that you have contributed to the XP Community?

 

Unfortunately it's would still be some way off becoming a payware product. You'll notice that it needs layer blending, more autogen variety, city centre autogen, etc. These are things I'm working on slowly, but first I'm hoping to have a payware airport out at some point (It won't be ENOV, that one is nearly done if I can fix the bumpy mesh).

[JYW 2,977]

Wow, that is astounding!

[irrics 1,517]

Nice work!

[x-plane 123 61]

That's amazing Tony! It just looks so much more natural than default. I love orthos, but this will be great for places like parts of New Zealand (or should I say Zealandia) or Norway that have poor quality orthos. Looking forward to see what will come of this. 

 

On a side note, how were you able to get cars to drive on the left hand side of the road? Library System?

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

Fantastic work Tony. Another one willing to pay.......and JV started off small and built a viable business.....hopefully the increase in XP11 simmers would make it viable?

 

By the way - what is the major difference between this and GBPro - is it the way landclass is utilised?

 

Cheers

Peter

[wolke85 150]

This is phenomenal Tony!

I can only repeat what was pointed out above already, but i also really want to say: Please, please Tony - go on ... please do not hesitateto release Your sceneries as payware products!

They are truely amazing and would be one of the greatest contributions to X-Plane's environment!

... just trying to imagine how all this would evolve over time - and try to imagine this on a worldwide scale ... oh how this would turn X-Plane's environment into a fantastic replica of its real world counterpart!

AMAZING work Tony!!

WOW!!!

:smile:

 

[tonywob 4,768]

By the way - what is the major difference between this and GBPro - is it the way landclass is utilised?

 

Hi Peter, well there are quite a few, I list them here:

 

• Buildings aren't placed 1-1 like they are in GB Pro v2 (and W2XP). What I never liked about GB Pro v2 is that the buildings just look so random, e.g. You'll have a small terraced house and then the neighbour house is a different type of building altogether not facing the road. Using autogen makes the buildings look more natural. I've placed the autogen in such a way that they are still approximately where the real ones are (I also average out the sizes of the houses in any block to work out what size of autogen should be there). Being from the UK, I'm sure you'll agree that there are entire building estates where most of the buildings look the same. Also not to mention that the autogen buildings actually have gardens, fences, etc.
• No need to use ortho imagery. The above shots don't use it and instead the landclass kind of fakes the ortho imagery, but takes it to the next level by putting exactly placed objects and trees on the landclass tiles in the correct place. The landclass tiles are then placed with the real roads and where you see farmland in real-life, you'll see simulated farmland, etc. This is the real project here I want working, and I have it working experimentally at the mesh and overlay level so it could be used to flash out areas with believable scenery quite quickly (e.g. Around an airport). Imagine being able to draw out polygons (not just squares and lines like the autogen) inside WED and say "farmland here", and you not only get the ground textures placed, but objects placed on them.
• The bigger industrial buildings, shopping centres and placed 1-1 with data. At the moment I haven't made any building textures for these, but I will likely use the same approach I'm doing with Poland Pro with layered object facades.
• Switching seasons could be done using the library where the tiles are changed. Since orthos aren't used it's possible.

 

 

and JV started off small and built a viable business.....hopefully the increase in XP11 simmers would make it viable?

 

Well I think they had it easier. There was already a system in place in the simulator to change the landclass textures and it went from there. This is much harder because users expect much more from X-Plane, but yep absolutely, something like this I'd likely push out as payware if I end up spending months working on it. However, I don't think England would be a popular area for a region. ORBX stopped making airports there for a reason and I think the area which would go down very well is SoCal (especially because of PilotEdge).

 

 

On a side note, how were you able to get cars to drive on the left hand side of the road? Library System?

 

No, these are custom made roads (You'll notice most of them lacking road markings at the moment)

[DragoB 25]

I am paying for this

[Desaix 235]

Actually they are  just default X-Plane forests laid out more tightly onto matching ground textures :smile: (It was the same with the France scenery I was playing with as well).

 

 

Can you share the forests definition then? Do you use that  plugin to reduce size of trees?