TerraMaxx - Seasons for X-Plane

[ohsirus 241]

In case you missed it.

 

http://forums.x-pilot.com/forums/topic/14197-announcing-terramaxx-seasons-for-x-plane/?utm_source=X-Aviation+Newsletter&utm_campaign=41164f7f33-SkyMaxx_Pro_4_Announcement_Date&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_12a9783f11-41164f7f33-407474475&mc_cid=41164f7f33&mc_eid=04b7246fd3#comment-127789

 

Automatic swapping of X-Plane’s default scenery with seasonal representations of summer, autumn, mild winter, and deep winter based on your simulated location, date, and temperature

Replacement tree textures with 4X the resolution of default and seasonal variations

Optional post-processing effects to give autumn and winter scenes season- appropriate hues

If you indicated that your GPU has more than 5GB of VRAM when installing, high-resolution normal maps for default scenery will be installed, to give the appearance of more depth to the terrain. You can easily switch between the normal map option with the installer.

[tonywob 4,768]

Interesting, I actually thought this was already announced some time ago, but glad it's on finals now.

It's a shame there is no way to give a season effect to orthos, but I can see this working fantastic in Alaska and Canada and those areas, and hopefully will tick off one of those complaints everyone has about X-Plane. Great work John and team

[Paraffin 2,197]

We've needed something like this for a long time. I'm firmly in the no-orthophoto camp, so I'm looking forward to this.

A sticking point, at least at first, will be custom airports using bitmaps and polygon ovelays. From a quick glance at the forum, they're working out a method for airport designers to sync their overlays to the seasonal changes, but it will require each airport designer to update their version and possibly create their own new textures. This would also include new building objects for full snow cover.

So this product should be great if you mostly fly in less developed and wilderness areas (raises hand!), but you might have to wait for airport designers to get on board, if you use a lot of custom airports in areas affected by snow cover.

I'll probably try it this weekend. I don't have a 5gb GPU for the high res normal maps, but the standard installation should still work on my GTX970. 

[ryanbatc 12,833]

I'm pro ortho but my video ram has a hard time keeping up with anything past ZL16.  I would totally consider swapping back to HDmesh v4 with these winter textures 

[jcomm 5,909]

In this area I'm a privileged simmer - I use full left scenery complexity, and just move the slider right one or at most two stops while at an airfield preparing my FF A320 U.... and default mesh is already just too good, compared to MSFS and derivatives....

PSX + ELITE guy here, anything can easily be better than either scenery wise :-)

 

[jt8d9a 1,881]

So has somebody bought it and can recommend it?

[MarioDonick 752]

I'm currently downloading and then testing. I'm usually using photoscenery, because it looks so much less generic, but I'm trying with HD mesh v4 now.

But I'm expecting that my main issue will be that my usual flying areas have a lot of custom airports and city scapes installed, which will all be unaffected by TerraMaxx' changes (which is NOT the fault of TerraMax, but simply the fact that addon scenery usually does not come with seasonal textures). I'm curious how spring and autumn will look when combined with such scenery, maybe it will fit in nevertheless.

[Heavy Metal 83]

Also waiting for some reviews and impressions first. While I think it is great to have this option available, I would like to see some more screenshots and video reviews to compare it with the freeware solution I have been using so far. For the couple of times of snow we have around here, I can live a little bit longer with this static approach. Or - like today - just fly the FSL320 on P3D on a short haul from EDDK to EDDM to see some snow and winter landscapes.

 

[Heavy Metal 83]

4 minutes ago, MarioDonick said:

...  I'm curious how spring and autumn will look when combined with such scenery... 

Yes, autumn textures and the seasonal trees would interest me, as well. They did not mention spring, however. So I assume they might consider XP default as spring and instead use more saturation for summer texturing...?

Happy to hear what you think of the package.

[MarioDonick 752]

Ehm, yes, now that I have installed it, I notice that there are Summer, Autumn, and two variations of Winter.

[jt8d9a 1,881]

How is the performance?

[MarioDonick 752]

45 minutes ago, jt8d9a said:

How is the performance?

The same as with default X-Plane.

[MarioDonick 752]

By the way, the TerraMAXX developer has released a free special version of his older UrbanMAXX v3, which makes use of TerraMAXX seasons. Looks like a good addition, to make urban ground terrain more interesting:

http://maxx-xp.com/urbanmaxx-v3-tm

[jt8d9a 1,881]

1 hour ago, MarioDonick said:

The same as with default X-Plane.

Thanks, Mario! So the higher resolution trees have no impact.

"If you indicated that your GPU has more than 5GB of VRAM when installing, high-resolution normal maps for default scenery will be installed, to give the appearance of more depth to the terrain"

Did you try this?

[jspahn 268]

Moderators I'm the developer, just want to point out how TM works so there is no confusion.....

If you chose the 5gb or over option TM installs normal maps over the terrain which brings some nice elements into the sim like better specular highlights, and more detailing and shadowing.  This option has a bit of a performance hit.  If you want to keep it activated try messing with the texture settings in the XP rendering options....

The less than 5gb option will not activate the Normal Maps and should operate close to default.....

XA made the installer "smart'" so if you do decide normals are too heavy you can re run it to disable them...

Thanks for your interest guys!