I would prefer a complete overhaul of the AG.

In P3D all houses are separate while in real life there are many house blocks with houses attached to eachother...

Orbx has made houseblocks in their True Earth series but they are connected to the Scenery Complexity slider.

Some addon developers have them with custom products. Most of the time all houses are still seperated from eachother.

Beside house blocks I would like to see houses having more realistic colors and a more realistic build.

Compare the AG houses from MSFS with P3D and see the difference.

Even with LC scenery there is room for improvement.

 

 

22 minutes ago, GSalden said:

I would prefer a complete overhaul of the AG.

In P3D all houses are separate while in real life there are many house blocks with houses attached to eachother...

Orbx has made houseblocks in their True Earth series but they are connected to the Scenery Complexity slider.

Some addon developers have them with custom products. Most of the time all houses are still seperated from eachother.

Beside house blocks I would like to see houses having more realistic colors and a more realistic build.

Compare the AG houses from MSFS with P3D and see the difference.

Even with LC scenery there is room for improvement.

 

 

All of that is already possible within the P3D SDK, and has been since FSX. 

Earth Simulations did some amazing autogen with chimneys, solar panels etc even in FSX times.  I think other devs have never exploited autogen to its true extent because it's a bit harder to do, there used to be a significant performance impact, and a lack of demand from customers.

Rowhouses have been in the SDK since forever. Different textures and autogen models have been possible since at least 2006.

Again, what LM could do is make it easier to do this kind of stuff.  Back in 2015 Earth Simulations used Arno Gerretson's tools to place custom highly accurate autogen using over 30,000 lines of code...

Edited March 6, 20215 yr by kevinfirth

16 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

using over 30,000 lines of code...

@mpo910 ES autogenesis autogen split land up into many different use classes, eh coastal, farmland, rural, urban etc.  Each class had a range of different sized autogen models. ES used scenproc to allocate these different models to known building footprints using some very complicated logic at times.  Combined with the ability to assign a different texture set to any individual agn tile, it can be an immensely powerful way of getting very accurate and varied autogen.

If you look back on fsdeveloper forums you can still find the threads where Darren worked with Arno to learn how to leverage scenproc to the max and implement new features...

12 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

@mpo910 ES autogenesis autogen split land up into many different use classes, eh coastal, farmland, rural, urban etc.  Each class had a range of different sized autogen models. ES used scenproc to allocate these different models to known building footprints using some very complicated logic at times.  Combined with the ability to assign a different texture set to any individual agn tile, it can be an immensely powerful way of getting very accurate and varied autogen.

If you look back on fsdeveloper forums you can still find the threads where Darren worked with Arno to learn how to leverage scenproc to the max and implement new features...

Morning. I understood what you wrote and thought this must be a very powerful tool to create "dependent" different models. 

Why others don´t use this you think? To complex? To much effort and less ROI?

Edited March 6, 20215 yr by mpo910

31 minutes ago, mpo910 said:

Why others don´t use this you think? To complex? To much effort and less ROI?

Some have to a lesser extent.

Multiple reasons I think..

1. Involves a lot more work, creating models and texture sets.

2. The autogen system in FSX (carried over into P3D) is more forgiving performance wise with default than bespoke models. Better hardware mitigates this to some extent now but even so, with full slider settings you could bring a cutting edge rig to its knees now if you went all out.

3. The logic required to actually make it work took ES years to develop, mostly through trial and error. I've since looked at it as a personal project and the theory is simple, but the execution is hard!

4. Availability of datasets to make it happen - especially for commercial use?

5. ROI is a big one, take Orbx TE for example. They essentially determined what the price point was for their product and worked in a level of detail that fitted it.  They could have included location specific vegetation for example, but didn't.  I sent them datasets for tree species locations across the entire UK. It's theoretically possible to create vegetation groups to make sure the correct species of autogen tree are used to a 1km square level of detail.  I'm certain it wasn't used because the ROI would just not have been commercially acceptable.

ROI is where LM lose the plot.  Because it's possible to do something in P3D, doesn't mean it will happen.  I get the impression LM take the somewhat myopic view that as soon as they've facilitated the use of a specific feature in some way, that's it, job done.   Not enough thought seems to be given to HOW that feature can be leveraged.  Autogen is an example, so are speedtrees, and sloped runways.  Can we imagine what P3D would (or might in the future) look like if Devs had been much more easily (read cheaply) able to use much better looking buildings, trees and terrain? I'd hazard a guess MSFS wouldn't have split the market to the degree it has done.

LM need to understand that if they would like to keep a serious market for non military use, the relative ease of development for the civilian market is really important.  Military use cases will throw ££ (or $$) without thought as to the ROI if they want something.  Civvy developers can't do that.  Result? They either gravitate and diversify to easier markets (MSFS) or take on more lucrative military contracts.  ES did that many years back working for the defence helicopter flying school at RAF Shawbury, UK2000 did similar work, Milviz have been vocal about their military contracts, and I know of several others I'm not sure I can say anything about....  The evidence is all there, and doesn't take a strategic genius to understand.  

 

Edited March 6, 20215 yr by kevinfirth

Just out of curiosity, who is ES?

57 minutes ago, pgde said:

Just out of curiosity, who is ES?

Earth Simulations, I believe.

 

6 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

LM need to understand that if they would like to keep a serious market for non military use, the relative ease of development for the civilian market is really important. 

Super important.  

I don't know if things have changed, but when I designed scenery, it was extremely time-consuming to make a change in an object, then have to re-load the sim just to verify the appearance of the change.  I spent more time watching the loading/progress bar than I did actually designing.

16 hours ago, Mace said:

Super important.  

I don't know if things have changed, but when I designed scenery, it was extremely time-consuming to make a change in an object, then have to re-load the sim just to verify the appearance of the change.  I spent more time watching the loading/progress bar than I did actually designing.

Agreed, LM incorporated the clear shaders function while the sim was running, would it be too hard to have a similar function that cleared and reloaded model data while the sim was still running? I dont know about that, but perhaps @mpo910 could raise the possibility with LM in private forum?

Edited March 7, 20215 yr by kevinfirth

On 3/6/2021 at 7:09 AM, kevinfirth said:

@mpo910 ES autogenesis autogen split land up into many different use classes, eh coastal, farmland, rural, urban etc.  Each class had a range of different sized autogen models. ES used scenproc to allocate these different models to known building footprints using some very complicated logic at times.  Combined with the ability to assign a different texture set to any individual agn tile, it can be an immensely powerful way of getting very accurate and varied autogen.

If you look back on fsdeveloper forums you can still find the threads where Darren worked with Arno to learn how to leverage scenproc to the max and implement new features...

Darren and Vicki were way ahead of their time at Earth Simulations. Sadly, the technology to deliver all of that amazing scenery at the time was struggling to keep up

I agree with Gerard that P3D autogen needs to be significantly improved "out of the box". Obviously it can be done with a lot of time and effort (as Kevin mentioned above), but I suspect that very few developers think it is worth the hassle. As an example, the autogen in the ORBx TrueEarth packages looks pretty decent from the air, but take a closer look, and you will see that it is a rather inconsistent collection of buildings that are either too large, too small, or just plain weird!

Edited March 7, 20215 yr by Christopher Low

32 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

Agreed, LM incorporated the clear shaders function while the sim was running, would it be too hard to have a similar function that cleared and reloaded model data while the sim was still running? I dont know about that, but perhaps @mpo910 could raise the possibility with LM in private forum?

Hi Kevin!

I follow this thread and have noticed it will be much appreciated to have the functionality to reload scenery/models while the sim is running, or to model/develop in an environment which represents the "sim environment" in a way it is possible to see you development outcome directly without restarting/reloading the sim.

You should also post at LM! It is important to send such signals to them, not only via "me" but also directly from your "mouths". 😉

I am 1 of many and I am NOT a scenery designer/developer. But I will give them a hint and it would be nice to "link" my hint to "your posts" at LM!

Be aware that due the strict security levels LM has, they probably have not even the possibility to enter such Forms like AVSIM here.

That´s why I am keep asking you all to post at their forums too.

But I fully understand the reasons why people are asking this. I do also recognize how "time consuming" restarting the sim is for making small changes which only show up after a restart.

Marcus 

35 minutes ago, mpo910 said:

Hi Kevin!

I follow this thread and have noticed it will be much appreciated to have the functionality to reload scenery/models while the sim is running, or to model/develop in an environment which represents the "sim environment" in a way it is possible to see you development outcome directly without restarting/reloading the sim.

You should also post at LM! It is important to send such signals to them, not only via "me" but also directly from your "mouths". 😉

I am 1 of many and I am NOT a scenery designer/developer. But I will give them a hint and it would be nice to "link" my hint to "your posts" at LM!

Be aware that due the strict security levels LM has, they probably have not even the possibility to enter such Forms like AVSIM here.

That´s why I am keep asking you all to post at their forums too.

But I fully understand the reasons why people are asking this. I do also recognize how "time consuming" restarting the sim is for making small changes which only show up after a restart.

Marcus 

Yes Marcus I will, but my expectations are low! 😃 My reason for highlighting it is that you may be more successful in having even a brief discussion with the LM Devs about in principle feasibility than I will ever be able to accomplish.

Edited March 7, 20215 yr by kevinfirth

The best they could do with AG is complete change the format in the way the AG density/range could be adjusted without reloading the sim (like clouds)...

At this point only the FFTF value can be changed without reloading.

If somehow this would be possible then a feature could be added that adjusts the AG density/range when either the main core load is 100% for X seconds or when the franerate falls for X seconds below a certain value.

Edited March 7, 20215 yr by GSalden

6 minutes ago, kevinfirth said:

Yes Marcus I will, but my expectations are low! 😃 My reason for highlighting it is that you may be more successful in having even a brief discussion with the LM Devs about in principle feasibility than I will ever be able to accomplish.

I already posted today! I have opened a topic within the "none open space" section at LM and parsed your/others input "as quotes" from this thread and various other similar topics directly to the devs!

Things like PBR usage, sloped runways, autogen, learning curve, trial and errors with restarts to check the changes, all in there now.

I do understand your needs, at least I think 😉 

Marcus

Edited March 7, 20215 yr by mpo910

My request over at LM

Important request from various Devs/designers to raise development efficiency

I have seen various developers over at AVSIM who would love to see some optimizations to save time within the development process when developing models/textures for P3D.

I am NOT a designer/developer and therefore can only parse these information to LM without having made my own experience with this process and learning curve.

But it really seems to be a important thing! They need to save their time and need "tool improvements" to gain efficiency on their side.

The most often mentioned complain is, that they have to restart the sim every time when they make (smaller) changes at textures and models to have a look how this change looks like in P3D. Of course at some point their experience will help them (experiences with settings/using values).

But this is probably one main reason why some guys/girls who started developing for P3D but abort again due the enormous effort they have to make and also loose important time with restarting and waiting to watch how their "outcome and results" will look like in the sim. Or switch to other platforms where developing is more easy.

But maybe LM should also prepare for the situation some devs would like to come back to P3D and if they find improved processes/tools or a more efficient way of work they would speak about this and devs would create more addons for P3D (maybe porting them over from MSFS to P3D).

I don´t like to compare with other platforms. But in this case it is obvious that the outcome at MSFS is so high, that even I asked myself "why is this" and "how is this possible"? Why is this NOT happening with P3D?

I started asking over at AVSIM and raised threads with topics like:
- Why LM provides functions which hardly are used by developers in P3D (AKA: Speedtrees, PBR textures, Sloped runways)
- Why there aren´t so many "newcomer developers/scenery designers" at P3D as compared to MSFS?

And this is some of the feedback I got from experienced and unexperienced scenery devs.

- Sloped runways. Must be a huge struggle and effort to get this properly implemented. Why?
- PBR Materials. "Learning" implementing this with such huge time consuming processes. Developing -> Starting the sim -> check the change in the sim -> stop the sim -> change the values -> start the sim again......etc. How changing values would look like when the sim is running?
Can´t this be done better or more efficient? Is there a way to provide/change tools, so that the outcome can be checked without restarting the sim. Like Tool-environment = Sim environment? Or Outcome can be "loaded in the sim while the Sim is still running?

This would also help "newcomers" with learning developing. They would save tons of time because their changes can be "proofed" directly because it is much more efficient.

This is probably nothing for short term delivery. But maybe you can consider these things while planning the future changes and take into those considerations that there are requests for more efficient tools and processes.

Thanks a lot guys! I hope you do understand my topics as positive input from the "market" and not "as my complains" about your products.

Here I have some "Quotes" from (former) developers:

Quote 1
Super important.

I don't know if things have changed, but when I designed scenery, it was extremely time-consuming to make a change in an object, then have to re-load the sim just to verify the appearance of the change. I spent more time watching the loading/progress bar than I did actually designing.

Quote 2
LM need to understand that if they would like to keep a serious market for non military use, the relative ease of development for the civilian market is really important. Military use cases will throw ££ (or $$) without thought as to the ROI if they want something. Civvy developers can't do that. Result? They either gravitate and diversify to easier markets (MSFS) or take on more lucrative military contracts. ES did that many years back working for the defence helicopter flying school at RAF Shawbury, UK2000 did similar work, Milviz have been vocal about their military contracts, and I know of several others I'm not sure I can say anything about.... The evidence is all there, and doesn't take a strategic genius to understand.


Quote 3
I'd really like to see them open up the sim more for developers. Not that it isn't open now, but it could be *more* open, and more simply. I'd like .NET bindings for the PDK, which I don't think exist at the moment because I don't think you can have in-process DLLs written in .NET (I could be wrong, but that's how I read the docs). I'd like to be able to write native gauges in C# vs C++.
A way to run standard gauges (C++ and XML) outside the sim process on remote PCs. Of course right now you can undock and drag a gauge to another display, but the gauge code still runs in the main sim process. It ought to be possible to build a network-connected virtual machine in which normal gauge code can run without alteration but which is outside the sim itself so you can move FPS-unfriendly gauges to separate PCs. Obviously you can achieve the same goal with avionics packages like ProSim etc, but there isn't offboard avionics software for most aircraft. This would probably be very complex to do, but hugely worth it for advanced setups.

Quote 4
Honestly, part of the puzzle (in my own experience in implementing these in my own projects) is simply that as a developer you have to learn new tools and techniques that take time to learn and can be quite complicated. It certainly also doesn't help that sometimes the previews that tools give you and the final result in the sim can be very different. For exmaple, I've spent part of the holidays trying to understand how to use Substance painter to make PBR textures for my projects. I have to learn first how to sue the software, then how to effectively use it in my workflow, then to figure out the best way to get things into P3D, and now I'm struggling with trying to figure out how to translate the preview I get from SP to something that also looks good in P3Dv5. Because honestly, there is a world of difference there. All of that has cost me a number of days for a fairly small and easy project and I'm not there yet (though getting closer). And that is just PBR!

Quote 5
I do agree that MSFS "real-time" development interaction is a BIG plus it saves many "loading trips" and provides a WYSIWYG for many aspects of it and I positively LOVE the ability to ID objects in dev mode by just moving my mouse cursor over them (a feature I asked LM for many many years ago).

Quote 6
However, the problem is not what you do in ADE, because I don't think anybody is really looking forward to a default style ground poly. The real trouble is making a custom ground poly that properly follows the ground, for which there are no tools at all, for as far as I can see. But even if you restrict yourself to the ADE alone, setting up the various height differences is a tedious and laborious process, especially for larger airports, that then also require significant retooling on the mesh front. All the while in MSFS the groundpoly that you design adapts to the existing mesh, and is thus a thousand times easier to work with. This, I think, is the way P3D should be going. All combined, it's just not a particularly enticing proposition to do sloped runways in P3D. In my own projects I've seriously considered doing it, specially for one of them where it could really benefit the airport scenery. It's also a rather small airports, so wouldn't require a ton of work. However, the more it became clear the amount of work that would need to go into it, I held off on it. Of course, that's just me. I consider myself a hobbyist - as I said before, I'm not in it for me. I'm mroe cocnerned about the time I have to work on these things.

Edited March 7, 20215 yr by mpo910