Orbx P3D 4.4 and NO SEASONS!

[kevinfirth 1,392]

28 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

P3D can do procedural seasons so can FSX, has been that way for almost 2 decades.  You can even do procedural terrain textures based on weather if you like (nothing prevent that from happening in the SDK).  It's unfortunate that ORBX will not leverage this 2 decade old technology with their TE projects, but one vendor's weakness is another vendor's opportunity.

Seasons are much more than some snow on the ground (I hope that's NOT the grand plan for Seasons in XP11), trees leaves change color, trees lose leaves, grass changes color from short green to brown to golden brown to long dense green (all this is supported in the P3D/FSX SDK) ... I wouldn't have purchased ORBX NorCal if it didn't come with seasons.

Most likely the "no seasons" approach from ORBX is more about cutting development time by 50-60% while charging the similar price point, avoiding the purchase of seasonal imagery (it does exist and it's not cheap), and freeing up resources to do Multi-Platform projects.  Sad, Orbx Vector has seasonal support too, frozen lakes and water bodies which as one knows can drastically change how a location looks.

Revenue/Sales will ultimately decide the future of seasons or if we'll forever be stuck in summer at a specific "snapshot" in time ... some image data is very old, going back to 2005 so even PR isn't what I would define as "accurate", it's just a snapshot in time ... your house may or may not be there pending when the image was taken and when one's house was built.

I still not sure how one is going to reconcile long flights from KSFO in December (our Winter) to Melbourne in December (there summer) which is supported by the P3D/FSX SDK ... sooo, that would look very odd indeed.  I hope ORBX have a re-think for their P3D/FSX projects.

Cheers, Rob.

£30 for 1/3rd of the uk isnt bad for full 3d autogen and colour corrected base imagery. Yes Id pay more for an even more full feature set.

There will be an upper price where JV knows from market data that his customers wont go.. he's simply adjusting the feature set to match the pricepoint he thinks he can sell product at volume.  Maybe he's right?  I dont know, I do know Earth Sims tried to do it to the extreme (within the capabilities of FSX) 4 years ago and failed to monetise it....

 

[Guest]

21 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

I dont know, I do know Earth Sims tried to do it to the extreme (within the capabilities of FSX) 4 years ago and failed to monetise it...

There were a lot of other reasons for that failure ... but technology options available "today" have removed much of the barriers in terms of deployment.  Not to mention we have better hardware and support for higher resolution, no memory limits, etc. ... 4 years ago we didn't have that, so times of today are very different than the times of 4 years ago ... and this is a good thing, it's time to expand, not contract.

JV's "problem" (I use that term loosely) is that he "was" offering seasons and now he's not ... so if Orbx price a single season product at the same as a 4/5 season product that may not get the desired results.

I just don't see non-season products as selling well in P3D, it'll work for XP11 ... maybe that's all that's needed?  It would certainly look odd with snow falling on a summer terrain with that has no snow cover ... and what about those P3D Airports that support seasons and even snow drifts like FT's Copenhagen (EKCH).  This just seems like a giant step backwards and I for one am done with going backwards.  But I'm sure another vendor will take up the slack and leverage the opportunity.

Cheers, Rob.

Edited December 31, 2018 by Guest

[kevinfirth 1,392]

18 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

There were a lot of other reasons for that failure ... but technology options available "today" have removed much of the barriers in terms of deployment.  Not to mention we have better hardware and support for higher resolution, no memory limits, etc. ... 4 years ago we didn't have that, so times of today are very different than the times of 4 years ago ... and this is a good thing, it's time to expand, not contract.

JV's "problem" (I use that term loosely) is that he "was" offering seasons and now he's not ... so if Orbx price a single season product at the same as a 4/5 season product that may not get the desired results.

I just don't see non-season products as selling well in P3D, it'll work for XP11 ... maybe that's all that's needed?  It would certainly look odd with snow falling on a summer terrain with that has no snow cover ... and what about those P3D Airports that support seasons and even snow drifts like FT's Copenhagen (EKCH).  This just seems like a giant step backwards and I for one am done with going backwards.  But I'm sure another vendor will take up the slack and leverage the opportunity.

Cheers, Rob.

The only other PR scenery for the UK in development that I am aware of is from JustFlight, and the publically available info about that indicates it carries much of the same limitations.

Edited December 31, 2018 by kevinfirth

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

As long as autogen continues to be layered on top of photoreal, trees will continue to look okay seasonally. And buildings don't change much with the seasons, except possibly having snowy roofs. The challenge is figuring out what to do with the base summer photoreal textures. One can adjust the tile colors to roughly match the season. One can add layers that simulate snow cover and ice. P3d does snowfall now and ORBX Vector attempted to do frozen lakes and rivers. 

But after all that adjusting, will it look better than the present system of seasonal patchwork landclass?

Edited December 31, 2018 by jabloomf1230

[Cognita 1,048]

For me, no seasons is a no go. I agree with Rob that it is a step backward on a platform that has good deal of capability to manage seasonal changes. I can't see trying to simulate winter operations, breaking through the clouds in a snowstorm at 1500 feet to see a beautify color-corrected summer scene as the snow flows around the window.

I can, however, appreciate that for some it is not an issue; it has a lot to do with the approach to simulation and the kind of flying one does. For me, the great majority of my time is in an airliner and so I am not very concerned with how accurate the scenery looks below me, with the exception of the airport and immediate surroundings and the "idea" of the season and place I am flying in our out.  That there is a rough approximation of the city I am flying to is adequate for my purposes. So TE does not have a lot of appeal to me at present. And if I was thinking of purchasing it I would be worried about performance implications for the type of flying I do.

ORBX is definitely pushing the boundaries of what has been possible -- or I should say practical in terms of technology and finance -- in scenery simulation. I am interested to see how this turns out and where we go next.

[Guest]

Technology is going to evolve, DX11/12 supports much better compression formats such as BC6H/BC7 with HDR support and significantly reduced file sizes AND accelerated support from DX11/12 capable hardware.  However, P3D "currently" does NOT support BC6H/BC7 compression, that will have to change in order to make seasonal PR more accessible to the average flight simmer.  Of course this means a recompile of scenery into this format and it's NOT backwards compatible with FSX (the ball and chain).

For example a JPG that is 1024 x 1024 and 2.4MB file size ... turn that into a .DDS with BC7 it's 630KB.  That's about 4X smaller file size and that' compared to a JPG ... so a 4/5 season package that would be 800GB with the "older" method of BGL generation could be 200GB without any loss of image quality AND the benefit of hardware acceleration on the GPU side.

I've pushed for LM to support BC6H/BC7 ... I do just about every Beta cycle, probably annoying them to no end, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens in the future.

Cheers, Rob.

[DylanM 1,069]

28 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I've pushed for LM to support BC6H/BC7 ... I do just about every Beta cycle, probably annoying them to no end, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens in the future.

Keep up the good fight Rob...we all appreciate it 🍻

[Montie 124]

2 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Technology is going to evolve, DX11/12 supports much better compression formats such as BC6H/BC7 with HDR support and significantly reduced file sizes AND accelerated support from DX11/12 capable hardware.  However, P3D "currently" does NOT support BC6H/BC7 compression, that will have to change in order to make seasonal PR more accessible to the average flight simmer.  Of course this means a recompile of scenery into this format and it's NOT backwards compatible with FSX (the ball and chain).

For example a JPG that is 1024 x 1024 and 2.4MB file size ... turn that into a .DDS with BC7 it's 630KB.  That's about 4X smaller file size and that' compared to a JPG ... so a 4/5 season package that would be 800GB with the "older" method of BGL generation could be 200GB without any loss of image quality AND the benefit of hardware acceleration on the GPU side.

I've pushed for LM to support BC6H/BC7 ... I do just about every Beta cycle, probably annoying them to no end, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens in the future.

Cheers, Rob.

Thanks Rob for being a community voice to LM, I really appreciate what you are doing.

[regis9 3,996]

23 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

 ... example read NOTAM feeds for airports, runway closures etc. and animate temporary closure trailer/signs on the runway (Flashing X) ...

and the many other activities that happen at an airport that will impact one's planned flight.  Especially winter time, airport runways get closed frequently ... looking at my Foreflight app and NOTAM on PACV with runway closure.  I'm almost certain these types of features aren't being done because of FSX memory limits and not because of developer talents and I know there is no P3D SDK limitation.

This is such a great idea, I would love to see any and all scenery developers start doing this.  A long time ago i used to do this manually (minus the actual lit up X on the runway/taxiway) by reading notams for my arrival and departure airports, then manually editing a temporary copy of the AFX file for each airport to close taxiways/runways as appropriate.  But that was many years/one daughter ago and such free time doesn’t exist anymore.

[Lenny777 299]

No seasons no purchase. This has been the bane of Xplane for years. Now as noted above when I use megascenery as an example I use it for places which get very little snow (except in the high mountain areas) such as Italy or Spain.  I otherwise eschew these types of products because in Northern Europe particularly I want my seasons.

 

 

 

[Bigt 192]

Is ORBX not offering seasons in their future TE releases as a whole or is this only for GB?

[Montie 124]

11 minutes ago, Bigt said:

Is ORBX not offering seasons in their future TE releases as a whole or is this only for GB?

My guess it that is dependent on the size of the scenery.

[G-RFRY 1,705]

Well think about PNW with no seasons that`s in the road map for 19 it`s always sunny in Seattle 😀.  

[Christopher Low 5,324]

I was under the impression that JV was considering the possibility of providing season options for TrueEarth products....or has he changed his mind? Whatever the case, lack of seasonal textures is not really an issue for me. I am far more interested in getting a product that includes as much terrain texture detail, and as many realistic 3D objects and landmarks as possible. Summer textures only are perfectly fine.

[kevinfirth 1,392]

6 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I was under the impression that JV was considering the possibility of providing season options for TrueEarth products....or has he changed his mind? Whatever the case, lack of seasonal textures is not really an issue for me. I am far more interested in getting a product that includes as much terrain texture detail, and as many realistic 3D objects and landmarks as possible. Summer textures only are perfectly fine.

Would you pay extra to get seasons though Chris?