Hi GeoffaI agree and I have said it in many threads. I think it's time to ween. I am not sure how extensive the scenery sdk is or whether there is an interface or not into it, I jus hope one of the scenery guys out there can find a way do something that makes sense.RegardsBob

>I like dense trees because it is often the case around rural>airports.>>I still like the very old idea in FLY!2k of representing large>concentration of trees by large 3D 'blocks' - the way Marc>Stoering did it in his famous add-on scenery for FLY!2k. I>think it is a gross waste of computer resources to draw trees>individually. >>Michael J.>Yeah, we get hung up on representing vegetation to the Nth degree, but perhaps lose sight of trhe fact that the vegetation serves little or no useful purpose outside of providing visual cues for pilots - either in the air or on the ground. It's a Flight Sim, not a Gardening Sim and while it's nice to be able to recognise a Billabong from a Broad leaf deciduous it's a all a bit, well, unnecessary when the purpose is to create an illusion of depth and substance, to aid in speed and depth perception. It will only become necessary again when trees rustle under the downwash of a rotor, or leaves can get blown across a taxiway by an engine start.I think Geof has made a very good point about the depth perception possible with the new high-res textures and it might hopefully prompt a rethink on how and what autogen is good for. We now have quantity giving coverage, at a cost to fps, when it might be simply a matter of thinking outside the box and creating new or different `devices` that suggest the items they represent. At a philosophical level it might be daft to ask: "Why does a tree have to look like a tree?" but from there its a short step to comments like yours - why do forests have to be collections of individual trees? Why not open-topped boxes or a `roof on stilts` with texturing to represent the uneven canopy and transparency to suggest light permeation? Individual tree autogen struggles to follow roads, so you have long grey shapes on the landscape, when real roads are obscured for hundreds of yards by foliage and often appear disjointed from the air when they emerge from under the umbrella heading in a different direction and with a different road surface than they had when they went in. Why not have an inverted `L` shape treeline texture that is constructed as part of the road itself - the street lighting follows the same rules so why not trees that shade?Indeed, why not just have raised mesh, with the texture on top?Allcott

>I like dense trees because it is often the case around rural>airports.>>I still like the very old idea in FLY!2k of representing large>concentration of trees by large 3D 'blocks' - the way Marc>Stoering did it in his famous add-on scenery for FLY!2k. I>think it is a gross waste of computer resources to draw trees>individually. >>Michael J.Thats the way I did it in MSFS back when I made scenery. Most all of my trees were multiple sets all lined up in a row.Doesn't take too many to give the illusion of a lot of trees.Myself, I don't have a huge load time just changing scenery. I'd have to time it, but it's not that big a deal. Takes maybe60-120 seconds or so?? But also varies due to the amount of overall changes. IE: starting low, and changing to densetakes longer than visa versa usually. Add other changes besidesautogen and it might be a bit longer, but still nothing too bad.I don't generally change during a flight unless I'm just testing.I'll switch when I switch to various planes. MK

The autogen does look a bit superfluous with the photo textures, and looking down once airborne makes the ground look like a jumbled mess. I've always wondered why autogen couldn't somehow be tied to road layout as well as landclass. Rather than match the buildings to the roads in the texture, they could be arranged along the actual real-world roads in the sim, with landclass determining whether it should be a house or a non-residential building. This way, we wouldn't have the effect of 3D houses scattered on top of 2d textured ones we have now.

A further discussion suggestion: The current placement of autogen is done by mapping the autogen to the landclass. Do we actually need that landclass instruction when the detail level now available in textures could provide directly the information about what textures should be overlaid? So, instead of saying to the sim "See that blurry mess on the ground? That's a collection of houses that is". And then landclass saying: "Well, if that's a collection of houses I'd better dump some house textures on there", it actually ought to be possible to map textures directly to the underlying terrain - this might allow a `forest texture` to be created to plant straight on top of the texture underneath, or texture `collections` which are larger conglomerates of smaller textures used in combination for effect, rather than individually placed. The gain here is that, as mesh resolution improves, the textures remain on top and match the underlying texture footprint, and don't get half-submerged in the sides of hills, like autogen does now. A true scalable architecture.Landclass then becomes a means to add buildings or even things like street furniture - IN THE VICINITY OF AIRPORTS AND AIRFIELDS, or other areas of signifricance. In other words, landclass assumes the importance of being a layer for addon developers and tweakers to place new and better custom objects. The separate texture-map objects could also be re-defined by a text file in the same way that landclass does it via .agn now - a number of uses spring to mind, like being able to specify different heights of tree texture, or replace them with shrubs - there are far too many instances in FS (both 9 and X) of tall trees at the end of runways. Yes, it does happen in bush environments, but in managed environments the airfield operator usually has a duty of care to keep the trees cut back. This has the effect of creating the `notch` approach that all real pilots know so well - big trees to the left, big trees to the right, but straight ahead there's a gap in the treeline or shrubbery. Its called over the hedge, not over he trees for a reason. Not empty, just lower. And here's a suggestion for the ACES development team: It's a shame the SDK doesn't include a graphic interface for autogen objects and placements in the same way that AFCAD does for airports and airfields. Think of the accuracy you could offer in the next version of FS if the local knowledge of simmers with actual physical experience of many of those 24,000 airports could be applied to the environment around the field or airport in a controlled, repeatable way... No expensive research needed to offer far more accurate interpretation of individual sites, but a cumulative pool of information that could not be got any other way, or not without huge expense? Avsim and the other FS sites could host these small files as they do with AFCADs now. Its a tried and tested concept that gives MS something for nothing - more accurate data supplied by the customer base, as well as providing another entry level scenery adjustment feature for non-artists like myself.Allcott

>And here's a suggestion for the ACES development team: It's a>shame the SDK doesn't include a graphic interface for autogen>objects and placements in the same way that AFCAD does for>airports and airfields. Think of the accuracy you could offer>in the next version of FS if the local knowledge of simmers>with actual physical experience of many of those 24,000>AllcottIt has a graphical interface it's in the SDK ;-)Andr