Flight Terrain X (to work with FEX) Announcement!!

[Guest koorby]

I hope the Q&A answers most of the questions, and we'll add to it if there's more explanation requirement. Let me add a few points based on recent posts in this thread:1. FS11 is due in 2009, by which time we would have covered the globe with region packs and be fully aware of the new terrain visualisation system planned for FS11 and have a migration plan if that is required. I will be attending DevCon in Seattle in November and will spend time with ACES staff, so although I am under NDA, I am sure they will be keen for developers to understand any fundamental changes planned for the landclass/texture system currently in place.2. All sales of FTX are done through the FTX website and Aerosimulations is the sole publisher. They will be the worldwide exclusive publisher and therefore all sales of all packs are tracked and users will accumulate credit points for previous packs purchase. So even if you purchase FTX packs add-hoc, you will never, ever be penalised for buying only the packs you want. Your credit points will accumulate as long as you keep your account details the same. We are also going to offer a sort of "First Class World Membership" similar to FSG where you'll be able to have unlimited access to FTX packs for a capped price of around $300 or so. We have not yet decided on the final pricing model, but I can promise you we are not going to make it prohibitively expensive for simmers to enjoy FTX.3. As I mention on the FTX site, developing this level of fidelity ground terrain textures literally takes 16x as long, purely because our work is open to so much scrutiny by our users. You'll see so much more detail, that imperfections become obvious. Therefore we can't just release a country or continent at a time because the development time is so much longer. We would need 16-20 texture artists on staff if we were to release EU, US, South America etc at one time. So our solution is to reward you for your patience and offer a lot of incentive to purchase packs as they are released, so that it does not cost you a fortune.4. Anyone who thinks that FTX is a ruse to inflate FEX's release is gravely mistaken. FTX was formerly called VOZ PRO, and has been in development for a long, long time. The work done on the VOZ FS9 Freeware was all part of our 3 year R&D process. It is just a happy coincidence that Peter and I were able to finalise our partnership at the same time he and Chris were about to release FEX.5. If you have doubts about the improvement in quality of FTX over FS9 or default FSX, just visit the FTX forums and ask any of the beta testers why they don't use FS9 anymore and won't fly the FSX default textures anymore :) We shall also be releasing some video of FTX in motion very soon and if that won't convince you then I guess we never will :)6. Contrary to some impressions out there, Anthony Vos and I are not arch enemies and talk to each other quite regularly. We spent an hour yesterday discussing a bunch of stuff. I think whatever Anthony ends up doing, be it GEX or another project, he's do it well and will fill a space in the market for those who want broad coverage more quickly than FTX can provide. GEX and FTX are very different technologies and use vastly different source data, and have a different approach to solving the fidelity problem. The two should not be seen as 1:1 competitors and indeed could well be complimentary. The good thing for FSX users is that the more FSX products that are released means more choice and a richer experience for you all.Let me say that FTX is a hugely ambitious project, which will attempt to offer localised, regionalised, geographically local textures for many, many parts of the world in a way that has never been conceived before. It is an expensive project which has required us to involved partners, investors and a lot of planning and patience. We will probably not make a profit for a long time, but we believe that the groundwork that FTX builds over the next 36 months will really change the way FS11 looks and feels and we hope that in some way we can influence ACES' approach to the simulator design. I trust you will wish us good luck and support this new concept and hopefully we can convince you to at least try a region pack and see what we're trying to achieve.Lastly, thanks for all the great comments and support! We really appreciate it.

[Guest danny68]

This sounds like a really excting project John,I'm very pleased that there is good feelings between you and the GE X team.At last we are begining to see some really visonary plans for FSX.It just got a little more "As real as it gets"

[phoenixphire 50]

I for one would be very interested in a membership like this. I am a galaxy member at FSG and if I have the some assurance that I would be able to use this in FS11, I am in like Flyn. Looks amazing. Now I have to start saving up.

[Guest koorby]

>I for one would be very interested in a membership like this.>I am a galaxy member at FSG and if I have the some assurance>that I would be able to use this in FS11, I am in like Flyn.>Looks amazing. Now I have to start saving up. I'd love to give you the assurance that FTX will work seamlessly with FS11, but I'd hazard a guess that not even ACES have locked down any major design choices for that codeline right now. I would think that the Olsen Landclass system currently employed still has a lifespan of several versions of FS, until such time as global photoreal coverage can be compressed enough and offered at a high enough resolution to make a radical switch. Still, I just can't predict what FS11 has in store, and every single developer is in the same position :)

[Guest Speed]

I'm excited about this product and the detail looks great but I must say the textures look dark and dull compared to real life. Its almost like every screenshot is on an overcast day. I would be comforted by some shots with brighter and more color saturated foliage.Yes I know Australia is duller than say New England, but I have flown in both places in RL and am sure my eye sees a brighter world than represented in the FTX previews.

[michal 44]

>I must say the textures look dark and dull compared to real>life. Its almost like every screenshot is on an overcast day.I had a problem that I was watching them first on a sub-par monitor, most appeared to me too dark. When I saw them however on my two other monitors at work they were close to perfection in my opinion.I can't however agree about dullness or darkness. In fact I give them a credit for having realistic looking colors - many other custom FS ground textures were simply oversaturated - they looked too much like made in Technicolor era. Also pilots tend to look at the ground from higher altitude (most of the time) and what you see is a slight "haziness". Some of the screenshots are indeed darker because you can see the Sun is fairly low, some also have fair amount of overcast. But I see plenty of sunshine here:http://www.flightterrain.com/album/images/screen11.jpgMichael J.

[Guest Speed]

Maybe you're right and I'm wrong. I'm not sure.I think if you took a photo of the scene above in real life it would look exactly as pictured by FTX BUTmy point is what the human eye sees is a richer environment and there should be some compensation of the saturation in sourced photos for that fact.Green has never reproduced well in print or photography, its the hardest color to reproduce as the human eye sees it. It is the color we see the most gradients of and I think the world is greener than that.That being said I will certainly buy FTX with dull greens or otherwise.

[storminnorm80 0]

"FTX will do for ground textures what FEX does for the sky environment":-eek Great, my wife will NEVER get me off the computer now. Do you know a good divorce lawyer? I am still drooling over FEX. Sensory OVERLOAD...:-boom Oh, BTW, Thanks.:-cool Best Regards,nOrmO

[michal 44]

>my point is what the human eye sees is a richer environment>and there should be some compensation of the saturation in>sourced photos for that fact.That's a debatable argument - it is true that FS scenery is nowhere near the richness of real-life textures, to be exact 'variety' of textures. But I would personally be against any attempt to compensate for shortfall in number of textures by over saturating whatever is left.Michael J.http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9320/apollo17vf7.jpg

[Guest Speed]

I should have listened to you the first time.It was a monitor issue. I just moved the screenshot from my LCD monitor to my CRT monitor and now it looks green enough for me.Drool, cant wait.

[Guest koorby]

Those beta shots do not reflect the final colouring at all :) What you are seeing is the "base" set (which is autumn in our case) which still needs a lot of clean up work. For the purposes of beta testing I have created 4 "fake" seasonal colour variations using a simple batch process, which attempts to produce approximate seasonal hues for summer, winter and spring. We have yet to do a recolouring pass over the base set for the seasons.So well spotted, it's not the final colour pallette and the RTM product is going to have a much richer mix of specific colours in each individual field, paddock, crop, town and urban texture set.Another thing you will find about FTX is that our textures are much less brighter than the FSX default, which are sapped of colour, overly yellow/brown and lack definition due to their overbrightness.I'll be sure to include more beta shots taken at the middle of the day in future.

[Guest Speed]

Excellent!! I'm glad I wasn't completely imagining things.Thanks for the monitoring the thread, you guys are the cr

[FlyingsCool 3]

Don't worry, Canada will be here Lonnngggg before Thanksgiving....Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[FlyingsCool 3]

Oh, I thought he meant he doesn't have a cord. Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest koorby]

Just posted some new shots taken a midday from overhead; should show brighter lighting. http://orbxsystems.com/forums/index.php?topic=358.0