FSDT KIAH Released--Can't Install

[F737MAX 5,604]

15 minutes ago, chapstick said:

The 4k option has been enabled... here's a comparison: https://imgur.com/a/YaQDMEk

Yikes!

Most of the scenery is of a fair to good level, which for the price point is fine. I'm willing to accept less overall detail, such as static images on the terminal windows on the 'C' gates.

However, those 4K textures look worse than the original lower resolution ones and messy AF.
I hope Umberto revisits these apron textures. I'd rather see both the ground texture colouring (that weird green/yellow tint) and the ortho (with the messy real markings and pavement edges) replaced.
MSFS default airport aprons look better (to me) than this.

[virtuali 4,421]

54 minutes ago, F737MAX said:

However, those 4K textures look worse than the original lower resolution ones and messy AF.

Sometimes I find it difficult to understand what people really want. It seemed the "problem" was first and foremost resolution, and the updated texture are clearly sharper and, to me, they look much improved.

In fact, these were the textures we always planned to ship and we were working with while designing the scenery, we decided to settle on the 2K resolution just to submit it to Microsoft for the Marketplace, which demands Xbox compatibility, so we need to be very sparse with resources there.

The method used here is exactly identical to the one we used for both KORD and LSZH, it's a merging between regular MSFS Aprons that, by varying transparency settings will show the ground texture below. In some places, like taxiway edges, the MSFS apron polygon is more opaque (but still not completely), on the main tarmac is a bit more transparent, so you see more of the background and less of the normal Apron.

The two overlaid texture works together in a way the Apron polygons is used to give the detail when at close distance, the background gives the overall variation when looking farther away. 

Again, the method works exactly the same other airports we made, it's just that for Zurich, for example, we had the luck of having an source aerial image of *exceptional* quality, at an extremely low price (and those that did Zurich after us got it for free, because at a certain point, the Swiss government made these images free to use, even commercially), which gets updated every 3 years with a new recon flight.

With KIAH (and KORD as well), due to all the changes and reconstruction that has happened at the airport, and it's still going on, it's already very difficult to find an up-to date image as such, and the quality is just not comparable to what we had for Zurich, so the final result is a complex patchwork of many different sources and lots of hand-editing, in order not to have too large differences between areas coming from different sources.

I think the only possible way to improve this, is to show less of the background and more of the apron, but the issue is, KIAH aprons are extremely fragmented, dirty and beaten up, and doing this will result in a less lifelike result.

Edited May 27, 2023 by virtuali

[Fiorentoni 4,226]

50 minutes ago, virtuali said:

Sometimes I find it difficult to understand what people really want. It seemed the "problem" was first and foremost resolution, and the updated texture are clearly sharper and, to me, they look much improved.

In fact, these were the textures we always planned to ship and we were working with while designing the scenery, we decided to settle on the 2K resolution just to submit it to Microsoft for the Marketplace, which demands Xbox compatibility, so we need to be very sparse with resources there.

The method used here is exactly identical to the one we used for both KORD and LSZH, it's a merging between regular MSFS Aprons that, by varying transparency settings will show the ground texture below. In some places, like taxiway edges, the MSFS apron polygon is more opaque (but still not completely), on the main tarmac is a bit more transparent, so you see more of the background and less of the normal Apron.

The two overlaid texture works together in a way the Apron polygons is used to give the detail when at close distance, the background gives the overall variation when looking farther away. 

Again, the method works exactly the same other airports we made, it's just that for Zurich, for example, we had the luck of having an source aerial image of *exceptional* quality, at an extremely low price (and those that did Zurich after us got it for free, because at a certain point, the Swiss government made these images free to use, even commercially), which gets updated every 3 years with a new recon flight.

With KIAH (and KORD as well), due to all the changes and reconstruction that has happened at the airport, and it's still going on, it's already very difficult to find an up-to date image as such, and the quality is just not comparable to what we had for Zurich, so the final result is a complex patchwork of many different sources and lots of hand-editing, in order not to have too large differences between areas coming from different sources.

I think the only possible way to improve this, is to show less of the background and more of the apron, but the issue is, KIAH aprons are extremely fragmented, dirty and beaten up, and doing this will result in a less lifelike result.

I mean I‘ve never been to Houston and maybe some KIAH pilot can chime in, but I find it hard to believe this is the „lifelike“ look of the apron…? I think the result is just not good, while I do appreciate you trying to make it realistic, don‘t get me wrong.

[virtuali 4,421]

1 hour ago, Fiorentoni said:

I mean I‘ve never been to Houston and maybe some KIAH pilot can chime in, but I find it hard to believe this is the „lifelike“ look of the apron…? I think the result is just not good, while I do appreciate you trying to make it realistic, don‘t get me wrong.

And of course, a video from a YouTuber that worked on ramp, which was just enthusiastic to show his home airport, made a precise point of the aprons at KIAH being really dirty and beaten up, which can be clearly seen from any aerial photo.  And no, MSFS simply doesn't support ground resolution comparable to what you see on Google/Bing maps, the detail must come from the overlaid aprons.

Again, the "simple" solution would be covering more the underlying image, it will of course much shaper, because the illusion ( note the word "illusion" ) of the overall sharpness is coming from the relationship between the aprons on top, which are designed to be seen from up close and what's below, which is the "real world", the more the Apron ( =generic ) texture is covering the underground layer, the more you *think* the ground is shaper ( again, it's just a perception, the real resolution is always exactly the same ), but of course the less the scenery will resemble real life, because you are showing less of it, and more of the generic layer.

[threexgreen 3,139]

7 minutes ago, virtuali said:

Again, the "simple" solution would be covering more the underlying image, it will of course much shaper, because the illusion ( note the word "illusion" ) of the overall sharpness is coming from the relationship between the aprons on top, which are designed to be seen from up close and what's below, which is the "real world", the more the Apron ( =generic ) texture is covering the underground layer, the more you *think* the ground is shaper ( again, it's just a perception, the real resolution is always exactly the same ), but of course the less the scenery will resemble real life, because you are showing less of it, and more of the generic layer.

But is this the only way to do it? I don't recall any other developer using this transparency approach, at least not as far as I know.

Edited May 27, 2023 by Nixoq

[virtuali 4,421]

3 minutes ago, Nixoq said:

But is this the only way to do it? I don't recall any other scenery using this transparency approach, at least not as far as I know.

That's precisely the reason why I started with:
 

Quote

The method used here is exactly identical to the one we used for both KORD and LSZH

I'm fairly sure it has been used by other sceneries are well, they might just have chosen an higher percentage of the generic layer compared to the photorealistic below. Sure it's not the "only" method, but I don't think this is particularly unusual.

Smaller airport have more freedom to choose other methods, of course.

Edited May 27, 2023 by virtuali

[threexgreen 3,139]

15 minutes ago, virtuali said:

That's precisely the reason why I started with:
 

I'm fairly sure it has been used by other sceneries are well, they might just have chosen an higher percentage of the generic layer compared to the photorealistic below. Sure it's not the "only" method, but I don't think this is particularly unusual.

Smaller airport have more freedom to choose other methods, of course.

Something is pretty different from KORD though, isn't it? I feel like the ground textures at KORD look completely different from this.

[virtuali 4,421]

2 hours ago, Nixoq said:

Something is pretty different from KORD though, isn't it? I feel like the ground textures at KORD look completely different from this.

Just a different choice of balancing the the generic apron part vs the underground part. The background image for KORD was more hand-painted, and since it was already somewhat "fake" to begin with, we didn't had many concerns covering it up with generic aprons. KIAH is more "real", and real is not always what you really want, more like what you think you want.

As I've said, the solution is not really complex, it should be enough to raise the opacity of the apron polygons to give more priority to the generic texture on top, and the lower-res photoreal textures below will be less noticeable. 

Edited May 28, 2023 by virtuali

[Benjamin J 751]

6 hours ago, virtuali said:

Sometimes I find it difficult to understand what people really want. It seemed the "problem" was first and foremost resolution, and the updated texture are clearly sharper and, to me, they look much improved.

[...]

I think the only possible way to improve this, is to show less of the background and more of the apron, but the issue is, KIAH aprons are extremely fragmented, dirty and beaten up, and doing this will result in a less lifelike result.

Cropped the original post to save space. I believe this is a strategy that FSDT has used from early times. I remember it going back to at least the original KJFK scenery, where, quite frankly, I also didn't like it. And it is an approach many designers take - including myself when I was dabbling into airport development for P3D. I remember OrbX tried it in some of their early AU sceneries for FSX, when a 7cm resolution was something new, and they gave the option of having FSX-style aprons, or to use the background only, with all the taxiway markings from the background. Suffice it to say I immediately turned on the FSX-style aprons, simply because the resolution of the background imagery was not high enough to look good by itself. I feel as though the same is true at KIAH. The resolution of the background will never be a high enough resolution to look good enough that it can be visibly this clearly, and I think the top high-detail layer needs to be made more opaque, so that the background isn't so dominant. Personally I'd rather have a much less lifelike look, if it's crisp and high resolution. Again, I don't think background imagery will be able to provide this within the next few years, if ever. There are certainly examples of airports where background and top high-detail layers are mixed to great effect in my mind, and usually it's because the background image is a mere shadow to an overlapping high-detail layer.

[virtuali 4,421]

11 minutes ago, Benjamin J said:

I believe this is a strategy that FSDT has used from early times.

You are making it sound as a "strategy", implying it's "old", when in fact, the one and only difference between other sceneries we made very recently, that nobody ever had anything to say against their ground textures, was:

- the quality of the original background image. Very high in Zurich, so we could afford to show it a bit more. More synthetic at KORD, so it also didn't show so much of the typical issues associated with aerial images that are not of exceptional quality.

- the plain and simple opacity value that balances the visibility of the two overlapped layers. 

I repeat plain and simple, to clarify it will be fairly easy to change the whole look of the scenery towards the more synthetic look. 

[somiller 694]

19 minutes ago, virtuali said:

You are making it sound as a "strategy", implying it's "old", when in fact, the one and only difference between other sceneries we made very recently, that nobody ever had anything to say against their ground textures, was:

- the quality of the original background image. Very high in Zurich, so we could afford to show it a bit more. More synthetic at KORD, so it also didn't show so much of the typical issues associated with aerial images that are not of exceptional quality.

- the plain and simple opacity value that balances the visibility of the two overlapped layers. 

I repeat plain and simple, to clarify it will be fairly easy to change the whole look of the scenery towards the more synthetic look. 

If any change is made please start with color correcting the taxiway and apron textures so they aren't yellow. I understand we can't have the detail I see in Google Earth or Bing Maps, but while the detail can't be matched certainly the color can be. One point you make gets my complete agreement and that is that KIAH taxiways and aprons look REALLY dirty, stained and patched in the Google and Bing aerials and your scenery accurately shows that aspect.

[virtuali 4,421]

2 minutes ago, somiller said:

One point you make gets my complete agreement and that is that KIAH taxiways and aprons look REALLY dirty, stained and patched in the Google and Bing aerials and your scenery accurately shows that aspect.

And when we'll release another update that, because of the change in opacity that will show more of the generic apron and less of the underlying photorealistic texture, some of that will be lost, to the God of the perceived "sharpness".  Perceived, because the actual resolution will be exactly the same, but if you see less of the blurred image and more of the detail image, it will look sharper, even if it's not.

Also, it will look less realistic from a distance, where the "blurred" textures are in fact at a distance when they don't really look blurred, while the aprons on top will start to look repeating.

Ideally, the perfect solution for this problem would be having some kind of fade out, so the opacity of the aprons could change depending on the viewing distance, but that's just not possible in MSFS, so you need to find the perfect balance and guess if users would rather have better quality when taxiing or more realism when approaching the airport.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

10 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

I mean I‘ve never been to Houston and maybe some KIAH pilot can chime in, but I find it hard to believe this is the „lifelike“ look of the apron…? I think the result is just not good, while I do appreciate you trying to make it realistic, don‘t get me wrong.

If you look at a satellite view of KIAH on Google maps, the tarmac/apron is pretty beat up and patchy looking in some areas. It’s far from a perfect apron that some airports have.

 

[Benjamin J 751]

18 hours ago, virtuali said:

You are making it sound as a "strategy", implying it's "old", when in fact, the one and only difference between other sceneries we made very recently, that nobody ever had anything to say against their ground textures, was:

- the quality of the original background image. Very high in Zurich, so we could afford to show it a bit more. More synthetic at KORD, so it also didn't show so much of the typical issues associated with aerial images that are not of exceptional quality.

- the plain and simple opacity value that balances the visibility of the two overlapped layers. 

I repeat plain and simple, to clarify it will be fairly easy to change the whole look of the scenery towards the more synthetic look. 

It seems we are in full agreement, so I'm not sure why you repeat my words. Perhaps my phrasing was unclear. My only point is that the combination of a satellite background image with a top-level 'high-detail' layer is a common developing method that has been used at least since the days of FS2004 by both FSDT and many other designers, and that, indeed, there are examples where it was done well, and those where it wasn't.

And yes, it will be easy to change. But, there's always going to be somebody that complains, because there are different tastes. I already bought the scenery and like it so far overall. I mean, it's 9.99... Can't beat it for that price...

[Sunshine13 234]

One point I have to make unlike other developers we don't get a slide show.  For $10.00 I get a smooth ride and I am a happy camper.  Bottom line FS Dreamteam, flytampa, and Flightbeam are the best airport developers!!!