Hello to all of you,

Lately I've been thinking about all the knowledge and experience there is in our community and if it's possible to combine those strengths in making great stuff for P3D. For example: there are people here who have great skills in using ADE. Other people are proficient in photoscenery. And then also people who have experience with modelconverterx and so on. And then there also people who have experience in making 3D models. So I think a lot of knowledge and experience here in this forum. 

Would it be feasible to combine these strengths, lets say to build an airport as a community task with several talented people in a projectgroup? And then the final product can be given to the community as a freeware. Has something ever been tried? 

 

Rein

I like your idea, it's good.

On the subject of photo scenery, surely ortho scenery is the way to go, as in X-Plane.

It is time consuming but at the end of the day it's worth it, I have the whole of the UK and for me, it simply transforms P3d.

 

Best ..  Phil

Building an airport is very ungrateful task. I pref. building terrain, because that's easier, but requires more patience. But your idea is fine. 

I like this too. I'm more of a jack of all trades. Lately I've been doing my own photoscenery from all over the world. Doing some in Brazil now.

Great idea, if only I wasn't working from 6am to 10pm I would offer more ... may I recommend no one become a software engineer that get dumped with IT task because senior execs don't understand the difference between software engineering and IT.

I do have latest 3DSMax and P3D's SDK plugin for it, getting PBR materials to look right is probably the more difficult task because what you see in 3DSMax is not how it will look in P3D.  I hope LM can find a way to address this.  I try to model in my spare time as it's a lot more relaxing than coding (especially web development on Microsoft's mostly broken/limited technologies).

Some key aspects in P3D that need to be included:

• PBR Materials (this will allow for rain accumulation/puddles native)
• Sloped runways (fully supported but a little worky to implement)

Now that we have SSAO and an incredible weather engine and a lot of compatibility with V5.x.  

 

Hi  all....it has been done before......OZx... started as a group of interested developers ( I was one ) , very successful....almost 400 small airfields in Australia...so successful that it became ORBX.

 

Jorge ( aeronauta)

45 minutes ago, aeronauta said:

Hi  all....it has been done before......OZx... started as a group of interested developers ( I was one ) , very successful....almost 400 small airfields in Australia...so successful that it became ORBX.

 

Jorge ( aeronauta)

I feel that ORBX base scenery leaves so, so much to be desired.

This should be compared to the far better freely available DIY Ortho with or without Orbx childlike plastic Lego models on top

2 hours ago, philmurfin said:

I feel that ORBX base scenery leaves so, so much to be desired.This should be compared to the far better freely available DIY Ortho with or without Orbx childlike plastic Lego models on top

Nothing personal but: This is why no one in their right mind should consider going back to the freeware path that is being suggested in this topic.
Once upon a time, releases were greeted with thanks and perhaps the odd request for an improvement.
These days, everything, unless pretty much perfect, like the A2A Comanche, is greeted with this kind of negative and usually highly subjective sniping.
Even if I had the ability, nothing would persuade me to become a flight simulator developer at Avsim and of those skilled developers who I know personally, very few ever come here to read the comments.

Edited September 5, 20232 yr by Reader

Likewise, I don't desire any personal nonsense.

In my opinion, ortho at ZL 17 or 18 from Bing, Google, Arc etc is faraway superior to that of the Orbx base.

 

Best ..  Phil

 

 

6 hours ago, Reader said:

Nothing personal but: This is why no one in their right mind should consider going back to the freeware path that is being suggested in this topic.
Once upon a time, releases were greeted with thanks and perhaps the odd request for an improvement.
These days, everything, unless pretty much perfect, like the A2A Comanche, is greeted with this kind of negative and usually highly subjective sniping.
Even if I had the ability, nothing would persuade me to become a flight simulator developer at Avsim and of those skilled developers who I know personally, very few ever come here to read the comments.

Isn't that such a shame. If I may quote @rogan "after all it's all about the fun". When I read that I thought I wish we could make that our community moto. Then maybe we wouldn't be at each other's throats over such things as platform preferences etc.

Without sounding ungrateful, in terms of freeware scenery for FSX/P3D, for example, there is unfortunately a lot of rubbish out there with airports with wrong taxiways, gates, etc... and overall wrong layout and design. What sometimes surprise me is that there is a lot of work done on buildings (models) and textures, etc... but the runway is not even in the right location! Really? I find this very bad for an airport. Those sceneries might look ok, AI traffic might work ok, but to me, this is useless if I am on VATSIM or IVAO or any other similar environments like Navigraph or Volanta.

For example, I don't want to be on a taxiway thinking I am ok there, and see other traffic on the exact same taxiway are 10 metres off the centreline....

I am aware of how much work creating scenery is, don't get me wrong, but a lot of freeware designers have pushed people away from freeware. This in turn has helped payware and as a result, put payware prices up as there are no decent alternatives anymore. That's why the likes of FT can charge $30+ for an airport...even if it has not been updated in 10 years.

 

For the good freeware developers I do believe there is also a feeling of " why should I bother"? A lot of work ... not even a thank you. Not very rewarding.

 

The idea of a group is good... At least you can combine efforts, help each other and create something decent. It does not have to be payware quality...

 

 

 

Edited September 5, 20232 yr by fnav77

10 hours ago, philmurfin said:

In my opinion, ortho at ZL 17 or 18 from Bing, Google, Arc etc is faraway superior to that of the Orbx base.

I agree with you, but I can't deny that most of those servers do not provide accurate enough data, I mean, the level of discoloration is quite high, because for some reason they want to stick parts into a single window, which really brings the problem. And with ORBX I never had such issues [ as an user, I never developed ORBX ground imagery, so I don't know actually]. I wish there was a way to get clean scenery without me need to interfere with Photoshop to fix discolorations.  

19 hours ago, PavlinS said:

I agree with you, but I can't deny that most of those servers do not provide accurate enough data, I mean, the level of discoloration is quite high, because for some reason they want to stick parts into a single window, which really brings the problem. And with ORBX I never had such issues [ as an user, I never developed ORBX ground imagery, so I don't know actually]. I wish there was a way to get clean scenery without me need to interfere with Photoshop to fix discolorations.  

I find ARC, USA2, and Here to be the best colour wise however, their imagery is not as sharp as that from Bing or Google but is still  still way ahead of Orbx ortho.

Phil

 

Ya, USA2 is nice, I agree. ARC has discolorations occasionally. Thank you for the information, next time I'll try. 

 

On 9/5/2023 at 12:19 AM, philmurfin said:

This should be compared to the far better freely available DIY Ortho with or without Orbx childlike plastic Lego models on top

Ortho sources are hit and miss and often low quality.  Sat imagery that is color matched, cloud removed, baked shadow removal, seasonal, and high resolution is extremely expensive, I priced out Greenland once (from UP42 at 30cm) and it was about $6M (yes million US $$).

It would be cheaper to have a globe represented by procedural trees/buildings/terrain based on accurate world data but not world imagery.  Procedural buildings/trees/terrain would solve many problems:

• Can change gradually with seasons (rather than all or nothing at a specific date)
• Isn't subject to baked single time of day shadows (shadows from sat imagery + shadows rendered by the simulator)
• Superior road/building/tree blending (freeway under pass or bridges that are not texture walls)
• Operate on the same light sources and PBR materials so have world consistency
• Can have persistent terrain changes (i.e. flood wipes out an area, or hurricane hits, earthquake )
• Can evolve the human expansion (or contraction) on the planet over time to real world accuracy
• Retain accuracy to the changing climate
• Use far less storage space

In the meantime, we live with what is cost effective and low CPU/GPU resources (lowest common denominator) ... I was shocked to discover the average GPU is a 1060 according to latest Steam survey that auto detects a users hardware.  

 

Edited September 6, 20232 yr by CO2Neutral