Pix re NZ and NZMF issues (in main forum)

[andy1252 3,373]

Just installed the NZA NZMF. Although I know this is a wonderfully scenic location, I hardly ever go there as I'm not a huge fan of mountainous areas. But the preview video of this looked great and I remember it well from P3D days so I got a copy. But definitely having issues.

Two main issues are firstly the large detached chunk of mountain face seen in this picture, and also the general state of the mountain tops. I have the Orbx NZ Mesh in place, but it all looks like blancmange.

The detached chink of surfacing might be to do with the NZA product or not, is anybody else getting this? The general softness of the mountains is a mystery though. It seems to be the same with or without the Orbx Mesh, which would make me think that the mesh is not doing anything.

Also, the waterfalls look a bit naff to me. But then, again, I don't think this is an NZA issue, more the general presentation of the sim.

There's also this patch where the water mask looks a bit dodgy. Again, does anybody else's copy look like this?

The rest of these pix just mostly show the rounding / lack of sharpness on the surrounding mountains. If everybody comes back and just says stuff along the lines of "what are you moaning about?" or "this is what it looks like, it's fine" then I guess I'll just go back to avoiding the place like I usually do. But I'd love to know if there's something I can do to get a better result around these parts.

I run at 4k, and all my settings are here -

[andy1252 3,373]

OK, it seems the Orbx mesh is not compatible any longer. I thought I'd seen a note somewhere that said the latest version was, but I removed it and the floating/detached cliff face is gone. But the mountains still look like crop (spelling not allowed).

The NZA NZMF package is amazing. Going down to wander around with the drone is great, the details are incredible. But I doubt I'll go there much, the surrounding landscape is too dismal for me. Those mountaintops are truly awful.

[pmplayer 8,515]

Nice shots ans scenery, thanks for showing..

cheers 😉

[WingZ 546]

Far more off-putting in every rendition of NZMS to date has been the smeared textures on near-vertical features.
You'd see this on the south side as you ventured seaward, mostly.

Not apparent in the shots above, would be good to see how they are handled here! 

[bernd1151 5,420]

Hi Andy, I definitely agree, the ORBX mesh causes severe issues with this add-on. I also haven’t seen any noteworthy improvement, when it is installed, over vanilla MSFS NZ.

Except for one, I don’t have any issues with this add-on though. When you look at the first picture, you can see some floating rock formation near the water fall.

 

 

Coming to the mountain tops, do you think they look less round than on your shots?

 

 

 

Here are my settings. I have an AMD card and haven’t done anything with it, when it comes to finetuning

 

 

[bernd1151 5,420]

Sorry, small mistake on my side, I forgot to delete the default Milford Sound scenery. Now the area around the waterfall looks great:

[WingZ 546]

Bernd thanks for posting these, NZA have put in a lot of effort into this scenery, very nice.

BUT Milford Sound has yet again defeated the skills of the scenery gurus: as alluded to above, the dreaded texture smear is apparently still to be found as per your shot #5

I don't know if this can be fixed with mesh, I suspect not.

 

 

[pmb 5,130]

46 minutes ago, WingZ said:

BUT Milford Sound has yet again defeated the skills of the scenery gurus: as alluded to above, the dreaded texture smear is apparently still to be found as per your shot #5

I don't know if this can be fixed with mesh, I suspect not.

This texture "smearing" has been with us from FSX to Prepar3d to MSFS, and I've seen it in the NZA NZMF scenery badly myself (flying from NZMF not into the Sound but into the opposite direction).

As far as know, there is little we can do about it. I recall one developer (Frank Dainese) who was able to produce stunning smearing-free Prepar3d mountain sceneries for ORBX once by a special technique (something like transforming the mountains into autogen and texturing them as such, but don't cite me on that).

Unfortunately Frank was lost (for us) to X-Plane years ago, and he was the only one I recall having been able to properly handle this ages-old issue of the FSX/ESP engine. And yes, it's indeed special to this engine as neither X-Plane nor Aerofly are plagued by it, at least not to that extent.

Kind regards, Michael

[WingZ 546]

1 hour ago, pmb said:

 from FSX to Prepar3d to MSFS, ..., it's indeed special to this engine as neither X-Plane nor Aerofly are plagued by it, at least not to that extent.

I tend to agree it's inherent, this has bugged me from FS9, even.

I got kicked off the Aerosoft forums once, for criticising the Gibraltar scenery because of it! 🙂

In FS9 one was accustomed to "look the other way" when flying through awkward sceneries. Didn't expect this in MSFS2020 however, and it's somehow worse when the scenery just down the road is so nicely done.  

Edited September 17 by WingZ

[andy1252 3,373]

Hi @bernd1151, @pmb, @WingZ, @pmplayer, thanks for your input. I guess the bottom line here is that mountains, and particularly vertical faces, just are rubbish in MSFS. I tend not to visit such places in the sim anyway, so it came as a bit of a shock to see just how bad this all looks around this area. I remember it being ok, actually rather good, in P3D but maybe that's just the "summer was sunnier back then" syndrome kicking in.

No problem with the NZA scenery - it's very impressive, but it's a bit like finding the Ritz hotel in the middle of a slum area. I doubt that I'll visit much. There are plenty of other areas much better done in this sim. Plus there's always the other sim.