FSX + photoscenery + mesh... Do we need that autogen an...

[Guest Tesla]

I found photoscenery video showing 1 meter mesh geometry with 0,5 meter textures... Do we need that autogen anymore? I think no. Imagine whole country phototerrain (for example Switzerland) with 1 meter mesh... (hint to all photoscenery creators) :) (low resolution video, 15,2 MB) http://www.crs4.it/vic/data/multimedia/sho...eo111divx_s.avi(high resolution video, 75,2 MB) http://www.crs4.it/vic/data/multimedia/mov...ideo111divx.aviFSX supports 1 meter mesh and up to 0,2 m textures. Do you think it is possible to create such scenery in FSX? This will be awesome!!! (sorry if there are mistakes in my english)...

[Highmike 68]

Yeah! Autogen suddenly redundant! Also, while scenery may take longer to load, there probably wouldn't be much of a frame rate hit. Very average system specs on the demo machine.Pity really, I was enjoying the forests in FSX.Mike.PS. Your English is faultless.

[Guest cwright]

> Do we need that autogen anymore? Yes. Best regards, Chris

[1mikel151 71]

Heck yeah!! You can always turn it off if you like landing on a photograph, LOL. Sorry when I am on final a flat, barren landscape is not my idea of exciting.The ONLY time photoreal looks good IMO, is when you are at altitude and can look straight down on it.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/ambanner.jpg

[Highmike 68]

That's not just a 0.5 metre photo texture in the video. It's also a 1.0 metre terrain mesh, and I think it shows pretty clearly that there's nothing flat about a mesh at that resolution. A 1.0 metre terrain mesh shows everything from buildings, cars, and even trees. And it looks pretty good too.A 1.0 metre mesh would reduce the autogen load at least.Mike.

[Guest david W.]

That sure does look good. It

[Guest allcott]

Interesting way to contemplate using the much higher mesh resolutions possible with FSX. I don't think it could do away with autogen altogether, but it could massively reduce the load in dense urban areas, or other places where the autogen is heaviest. Another possible use might be in heavily forested woodland. Now, the only way to create dense vegetation is to use large numbers of tree and shrub objects (assuming that FSX doesn't introduce a `forest` cumulative assembled autogen object) and that's pretty pointless since the only way to see the inside of a forest is to crash into it! A mesh forest just bordered by autogen trees would be a huge leap for large-scale rural display.But where the dense autogen suffers is when it's combined with detailed airports and their heavily-textured environment. With this technique maybe the mesh could be used to display the buildings outside the airport boundary with an exclude on the autogen, much like photoscenery does now, but without the manually inserted autogen objects to create a 3d landscape? Possibly, the texture for the airport buildings inside the airport boundary could even be overlaid on the mesh building, as a kind of `cladding` so you'd only need to display the point-of-view facing surface, while still retaining the structure, not a flat facet, and you could substantially reduce the number and size of textures displayed at once?Certainly something to think about.Allcott

[Guest Tesla]

>That sure does look good. It

[Guest]

Yes we do. Im sorry but just looking at a 2d picture on a flat landscape without trees, buildings, bridges, etc popping up looks completely unrealistic and kills the experience for me. why cant we have the best of both worlds?

[Guest allcott]

Did you even download and watch the video? it's not flat, the buildings and trees are present, it's better than photoreal and nothing - nothing - `pops` up. At least watch what we're all talking about before expressing an opinion!Allcott

[Guest dswo]

There's a danger in using ALL of that new resolution: see Adam Szofran's post here on what happens when video cards run out of RAM to display all the detail that's supposed to be on-screen: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...e=&topic_page=6

[frankla 44]

I think what he meant was the trees and the houses! They really give it a very sense of reality when you are landing or taking off!

[meerkat 86]

Hmm, have you calculated the video memory needed? With the cited resolution of 0.5 meter textures and 1 m mesh you would need 290 MB of video memory only for the terrain textures (if they are 24 bit) when a visibility radius of 15 miles is set - maybe only some 50% of that with mipmapping. Not to talk of the fancy 0.2 meter textures.And a small country like switzerland would amount to about 6 GB of terrain data (only day textures and no seasons!).Another question is where to get such high quality imagery covering a whole country without clouds, shadows, mist, color differences and other problems (maybe still possible, but I really don't know an affordable source of 1m-mesh).So we can be sure that autogen will even be further improved and diversified in the next years to get a typical-looking landscape all over the planet.Regards

[Guest]

at 5k a second if Im lucky, I dont think Ill ever be able to watch it

[Guest Tesla]

>And a small country like switzerland would amount to about 6>GB of terrain data (only day textures and no seasons!).>Another question is where to get such high quality imagery>covering a whole country without clouds, shadows, mist, color>differences and other problems (maybe still possible, but I>really don't know an affordable source of 1m-mesh).I think there is no need to create night or other season textures. For example whole "Switzerland Professional" scenery takes 1.5 Gb, so 6 Gb is not so much for such quality. Of course the problem is where to get mapping data and detail photo... The source of mesh on that video was: French "ISTAR HR Cartographic Database"http://www.infoterra.fr/Infoterra/reference_mapping_data.htm