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Autogen question

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Guest davewins

Ok so it's been a LONG time since I even played FSX (I bought it first day it came out). To be quite honest I wasn't very impressed with the flat ugly graphics of the ground and how autogen just poked out at it. It's ok from high up but when flying at low level it was just ugly and almost takes away from altitude perception in my opinion. Everybody's different and believe me I am not bashing the game. I just got back into the whole flight sim after flying back from Tampa and I really want to get back into it. My main question is what causes this ugly looking ground scenery if you will. The very flat ground with horrible resolution and then trees and buildings just placed right on it. There is no blending effect at all. Is it the fact that the scenery is 2d and the autogen is the 3d factor?? Can anyone explain to a newbie like myself what really autogen is all about and what it's based on. I am assuming its based on the landclass and some cities like NY and other popular areas are going to have certain popular things in them (statue of liberty, empire state building, popular bridges etc etc). My personal favorite part of flying isn't cruising at 35000 feet but rather taking off and landing (100 to say 3000 feet) where you can really spot things on the ground with high detail.I guess what I am looking for is better autogen?? If you guys don't know what I mean by the flat ugly low resolution ground I will try to post a pic.

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In most cases, it's the high resolution of FSX's ground textures that I DO prefer...Seems like your CPU is displaying something different that mine. In fact, the resolution of the city/mountain scapes is so clear, it seems to add to the sense of 3D perception.As to autogen, I usually leave it off. It seems to detract from those photo-looking high res textures that I mentioned. However, I wouldn't mine some trees that fade out above 2000' agl; but can always do without the cartoon like autogen subdivsions. I still have a lot of city and airport buildings though, because of the "global" setting.L.Adamson

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Looks a lot like FS9, if not exactly like it. For me, it's just a matter of getting used to it. I'm sure you could always get better texture replacements, but they never look right close up IMO, and night time is hard to render in the sense that the lights and objects are difficult to render without slowing you to a crawl.


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The thing is though that it's going to be a long time before you get worldwide urban scenery thst looks good at 100 ft. When flying over these areas a minimum of very roughly 1,500 ft in FSX and 2,500 ft in FS9 is needed for good visuals.

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Guest davewins

I know it's a lot to ask for and I am not asking for every single city and place all over the world to be perfect but maybe just better more realistic looking autogen is what I am asking for. I get more visual enjoyment out of flying helicopters at low level flight in other video games like war games where flying low is just pretty darn cool. I'm not knocking FSX at all I just wish there were some kind of settings that when flying at or below 3000 feet autogen really comes alive with 1.) A HUGE variety of buildings/trees/parking lots/cars/trucks etc etc and 2.) All that in very good detail.To me like I said earlier (and I know it's just my personal opinion)flying at low level is awesome. I love to take off from say a winter Rhode Island with some snow scattered on the bare trees and land across country in San Diego with beautiful sunshine and palm trees by the airport. There is such an awesome sense of change in environment and for some reason it does something for me. I just wish I could feel this in a flight sim. I don't know anything about how the scenery works and I am just simply guessing that it's autogen. It seems to me like the scenery is just like a picture and it's "pasted on the globe" if you will. So what you are seeing is an actual overshot that is obviously in 2d format and when you fly at low level everything seems to look very odd and misshaped. This is where autogen comes in I suppose. I just wish everything was at least heading towards improvement in this area of the game. I am not expecting them to get this nailed down in every corner of the planet but it would be nice to at least have some pretty nice realistic cities or places to fly in and out of.

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>It seems to>me like the scenery is just like a picture and it's "pasted on>the globe" if you will. So what you are seeing is an actual>overshot that is obviously in 2d format and when you fly at>low level everything seems to look very odd and misshaped. Yes but no...Take Megascenery Hawaii as an example. It's photo-real imagery laid over mesh. While climbing out over 1000' agl (preferably 2000'), the scenery starts looking very authentic and quite three dimensional, even though I have auto-gen on off. Overall, after the initial climb out, this type of scenery is my preference, as it looks real rather than animated. It's photo-like with a glossier look to it.For those real low level flights that you are talking about, I prefer 3rd party scenery such as FlightScenery's Portland, and Fly Tampa airports for FS9, as well as the excellent freeware "Glacier Bay" (FS9).Fly Tampa and Cloud 9 have also produced great looking "low level" airport scenery areas for FSX. There just isn't enough of it, yet.L.Adamson

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Guest davewins

Yeah I have FZ Portland for FS9. It's amazing. I just wish that FSX would do this or FZ/Tampa would come out with some more airports. I know that this is difficult work but I'm willing to spend the money that it's worth for it because this is what I really enjoy.

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>Yeah I have FZ Portland for FS9. It's amazing. I just wish>that FSX would do this or FZ/Tampa would come out with some>more airports. I know that this is difficult work but I'm>willing to spend the money that it's worth for it because this>is what I really enjoy.Reading the various posts... FZ and Tampa have gone hiatus from FSX. Too bad for FSX.Manny


Manny

Beta tester for SIMStarter 

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>Reading the various posts... FZ and Tampa have gone hiatus>from FSX. Too bad for FSX.>Okay.........Then MegasScenery for FSX, and FZ/FlyTampa for FS9..........if their is any more... :-hah L.Adamson

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Guest Lennyt

While the grass is ok looking over into the city picture ground textures it looks poor as usual just like the Vegas night shot linked to amongst others.To the OP, I imagine you're thinking of ground textures something like we get in games such as Farcry, etc. which can maintain their integrity right down to ground level instead of looking like blobs or patches of whatever. I guess the usual problems associated with memory, cpu power etc. would govern this issue. Maybe in the future.

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Guest davewins

>Hmm, I think the default ground and autogen looks amazing,>and I fly at or below tree tops all the time.>>http://sio.midco.net/FTP5/decathlon2.jpg>>http://sio.midco.net/FTP5/supercobra2.jpgI don't have any editing software and I am too lazy right now to do it but if you look at the bottom pic (the heli one) and look to the bottom right. Look at that "blurry" ground with trees just popping out of it. That's not really appealing to the eye imho. I call it blurry ground I don't know if that's really a good description.

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Guest

>I don't have any editing software and I am too lazy right now>to do it but if you look at the bottom pic (the heli one) and>look to the bottom right. Look at that "blurry" ground with>trees just popping out of it. That's not really appealing to>the eye imho. I call it blurry ground I don't know if that's>really a good description.Yeah its blurry but that section is a texture showing foliage and trees, so there is not meant to be definition there other than a mess of green. On the other hand the textures in FSX are much better than what was available a year ago. Somebody can say it looks "poor", but compared to what? I think it looks pretty good, and the best looking flight sim in the history of earth. One of the secrets to enjoying graphics is to focus on what looks good and not what looks bad, and let your imagination fill in the rest. Computer graphics looked awesome back in 95 when the first 3D accelerators came out, people were amazed, and here we are 12 years later, where people are pointing out how "poor" the graphics look.

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