Realitypack 1.2 - some scale/alignment/autogen issues

[Guest koorby]

Ok I had a quick look at some of Sascha's new realitypack 1.2 textures and there are some problems.1) The texture scale is about 4x too large (or in the case of the FS9 engine, 5 metres per pixel is the correct scale). Sacha's scale is about 1m/pixel, which won't work in FS2004. This means that houses in his textures appear the size of a warehouse or supermarket, and roads in small towns are as wide as the M1 freeway.2) I checked just one tile set (the 032b's "real cities" as they are named by Sascha), and they don't match up at the edges. This was the first set I looked at, so it may not be indicative of the overall product. However, this is a huge issue, because it makes cities appear non-seamless, i.e. you will have roads that appear out of nowhere and also terminate into the sides of buildings etc etc. Any new textures created for FS2004 must follow the rules of seamless tiling, which has been published in the SDK and in white papers by Jason, Jobia and many others.3)Sascha does not provide any autogen annotations; this means if using the default autogen annotations, correctly scaled (5m/pixel sized) housing will appear randomly over the top of his enormous 1m/pixel scale textures. You will also see trees in the middle of roads, houses in fields, and generally no alignment of any autogen objects. This will look quite bizarre.4) There is too much 3D "emboss" effect applied. This will initially give a nice appearance of depth and 3D, but it also means that shadows appear where they should not and using too much embossing creates a cartoon-ish effect. Textures should rely on the FS9 lighting engine to provide depth through shadow and the default detail1.bmp depth tile.I've made a quick image of what I mean:http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b141/koo...scale_issue.jpgWhilst I applaud Sacha's efforts to attempt to make photoreal textures, particularly for Europe, it will require more effort than cutting and pasting photos and satellite images and applying some colour editing.I hope I don't come off sounding all aloof or superior - I am trying to provide some helpful and constructive critique here to a fellow developer - I think it's fantastic that new texture addons are appearing, but in order for them to work correctly in FS2004 basic ruless of scale, tiling and autogen need to be adhered to.Let's hope Sascha can address these problems in a future release.

[1mikel151 71]

Koorby, while I believe you are trying to be helpful, maybe it should have been addressed straight to Sascha first rather than here in the forums. Just a thought.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpgCalVirAir International

[Guest koorby]

>Koorby, while I believe you are trying to be helpful, maybe>it should have been addressed straight to Sascha first rather>than here in the forums. Just a thought.>>Regards, Michael>KDFW>>http://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/mcdcvabanner.jpg>CalVirAir InternationalHi Michael,A valid point, but I wanted people deciding whether to use the scenery to be aware of these issues - it will take some time to address them and I think it is fair for people to know about this. I for one would love to see these textures correct because Sascha has some brilliant concepts and ideas that he's implemented very well. His forests are superb, just in the wrong scale. If I wanted to flame or criticise his work, trust me I would have used a less gentler tone :)

[Guest yarvelling]

I agree with Koorby here! He has pointed out in an informed and balanced way, a problem that I noticed when using the replacement textures; however, I could never have described the issue in anywhere near so lucid and 'nice' manner!I too have a lot of respect for Sascha and his work, but do not use these textures as they make the scenery look very tiled, and with little pieces of road that are totally in the wrong place!I do like his replacement airport enhancements, taxi light, roads and railway replacements, and like the cliff and forest textures (even if they are on the wrong scale....something I had not known until reading this thread!).Overall, I must thank Sascha for his work, and those parts as mentioned that I use are a genuine enhancement...Thank you :)

[Guest jennifer]

I agree that people need to know this as soon as possible. The install of Sascha's work is is a major undertaking and having noticed the problems I now have the tedious task of uninstalling the textures, and replacing them with my originals. In my view Sascha has great potential as a texture artist but there are some technical issues that need to be addressed.

[sascha 314]

Hi Koorby and thanks for the feedback!The texture set which you have commented on is indeed meant to simulate industrial estates (as written in the release information) i.e. large scale city structures with a lot of concrete and yard space around them, that is why I have deliberately upscaled them. But you are right - they are actually based on town textures because I couldn't find good aerial photographs for the type of structure I was looking for. But I edited the textures by hand, realigning and remixed all textures so it took a lot of effort (not just cutting and pasting. ALL RP 1.2 textures have been reworked i.e. repainted by hand).But I am already working on a complete set of replacement city textures which will be to a smaller scale (that is, outside of industrial estates):)Regarding scale, there are many excellent autogen addons (e.g Silver and Gold Wing by Bill Lyons) and most have different ideas on scale. In some, all the trees are hundreds of feet high whereas there are small houses.As for tiling, I have thought a long time about it and decided not to follow the standard practice as I felt that it restricted me too much in the structures I wanted to see on the ground. So I went instead for the overall effect. FS9 landclass usually mixes textures anyway so you will always get some strange edging effects unless you use generic type textures.Best regards,Sascha

[sascha 314]

Oops, I forgot to mention autogen alignment. This has been a very recent development and even noted designers like Ruud Faber of Fscene have only just finished updating their sceneries, Fscene textures having before had the same problems with autogen which you mentioned. I know that you have pioneered this technique but I have absolutely no idea how to go about this :( But I'd really love to correct this issue so if you can tell me where to find info on how to go about this I'd be really grateful!Sascha

[Holger 0]

Hi Sascha,John didn't pioneer autogen alignment. Developers have created new autogen placement (.agn) files for photoreal or "regular" land class textures since FS2002. Thus, the tools and methods have been known for many years, it's just that Stephen of BEV (with whom koorby used to work) was one of the first to emphasize the need for alignment of autogen with replacement textures and implemented it with BEV (John provided one of two alternative sets of autogen textures but not the actual autogen placement files).Anyway, all you need to do to learn how to make your own .agn files is to download the Autogen SDK, read the docs, and start up Annotator.exe. It's a pretty simple process, just rather tedious with larger projects like yours ;-) Here's the link: http://fsinsider.com/downloads/fs2004_downloads_sdk.htmNote that not all textures can have their own agn files; for some the autogen placement is hard-coded and others can't have any autogen at all. Basically, all the agn files in the default version of Scenery/World/texture are the ones that can be replaced/adjusted.There's a very helpful EXCEL land class table made by Arnaud Clere that can be found in this thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search If you have any specific questions feel free to post at the Avsim Scenery Design forum; lots of friendly and helpful folk there ;-)Many thanks for your efforts to enhance the FS world!Cheers, Holger

[sascha 314]

Well now I know what to do this weekend! Thanks a lot for this very useful information, I appreciate the effort!Best wishes,Sascha

[Guest dpc]

Good positive thread here folks.-Dave

[Max Kraus 338]

I agree. Anyone who takes the time and effort to produce a full continent of brand new textures deserves total praise. Well done mate!Koorby's comments are 100% constructive. It's all about knowledge sharing to take our marvellous hobby collectively forward.

[Guest koorby]

Holger is correct - Stephen Stever pioneered correctly aligned autogen with the BEV project, and I also implemented it in VOZ. Annotating autogen as per Holger's links is very easy to do - it's just a little boring and time consuming.Sascha, thanks so much for taking my comments in the right spirit - I look forward to seeing what you do with the city textures. Overall you're to be commended on a great project and I encourage you to keep at it!As I was saying to Peter Wilding the other day - "not a day goes by where I don't learn something new about FS development, it's always a learning process".I was expecting to be flamed and I awake to read a great thread - good stuff!

[virtualstuff 754]

>As I was saying to Peter Wilding the other day - "not a day>goes by where I don't learn something new about FS>development, it's always a learning process".>That's one of the great things about FS and any one contributing to this wonderfull hobby...Andr

[sascha 314]

Thanks Koorby!Could you tell me where to get the white papers you mentioned? I have been looking around and couldn't find them!I got a lot of feedback and have some ideas on how to improve RP for the next release - actually I'm raring to go, there was just such a good response!There is going to be a QuickFix for some issues and some minor improvements to be released soon!Best wishes to you all,Sascha

[Guest koorby]

Hi Sascha, will dig up those papers and send them though. I look forward to seeing the new version mate!