Moving ahead in leaps and bounds.  Dare I say it, light years ahead of the competition!  😉

Still in development, but hopefully coming soon.

 

Edited February 10, 20242 yr by GoranM

58 minutes ago, GoranM said:

Still in development, but hopefully coming soon.

I watched this video couple of hours ago, and if sceneries use it properly, it would be a nice feature. Although not a mandatory feature unless I plan to load a boat in XP12.

BTW what is still in development? New Ortho4XP? Bathymetry? 3D water? Since when users can add such features into the sim? AFAIK only XP12 dev team can add those officially into the simulator. 

24 minutes ago, Pe11e said:

I watched this video couple of hours ago, and if sceneries use it properly, it would be a nice feature. Although not a mandatory feature unless I plan to load a boat in XP12.

BTW what is still in development? New Ortho4XP? Bathymetry? 3D water? Since when users can add such features into the sim? AFAIK only XP12 dev team can add those officially into the simulator. 

Ortho interaction. Water interaction with objects protruding out from the water. Water bouncing off sea planes. Different colors for different areas (tropical waters).  All the little extras that would really make it pop. 

Is this still the old XP11 DSF format from Oct 3, 2019? 

2 hours ago, Pe11e said:

New Ortho4XP? Bathymetry? 3D water?

Yes.

Keep tabs on it here. No updates yet but its obviously getting closer.

https://github.com/oscarpilote/Ortho4XP

That looks SWEET

Well, this looks way better than anything I was expecting !

The question is: how much bathymetry data is really available ? And is is only for ocean/seas, or also for smaller lakes ?

18 minutes ago, Daube said:

Well, this looks way better than anything I was expecting !

The question is: how much bathymetry data is really available ? And is is only for ocean/seas, or also for smaller lakes ?

I've seen @tonywob engage in discussion in the Slack group.  Perhaps he can shed some light on the subject...NDA's permitting.  He's far more qualified than I am on the matter.

This should be really good for heli flying , want to cover the coast of Cape Town following the shoreline

1 hour ago, GoranM said:

I've seen @tonywob engage in discussion in the Slack group.  Perhaps he can shed some light on the subject...NDA's permitting.  He's far more qualified than I am on the matter.

Sure, none of this is under NDA so I can talk about it... I've been working on this in older scenery, upgrading XP11 ortho tiles to XP12.

In X-Plane 12, there is an additional bathymetry raster and triangle properties that is used to set the elevation for the sea bed and the height ratio of waves.  For my work, all I did was fix the coastline so the coast and water snap together correctly (so there is no black gap and void) and I added the bahtymetry maps already in the global scenery DSFs. There were also additional changes I had to do to get it work, such as subdividing triangles on the coast. The result works and waves are back and no gaps, but it's an overlay colouring the water and not true 3D depth (i.e. Seabed under the water), mimicking what we had in X-Plane 11.

In Oscar's video, this is very different, it's actually orthos under the water, which is why this is such great progress, it gives a real 3D effect to the water, and I can imagine this will look stunning once people start generating Caribbean islands, reefs etc..

The bathymetry maps are very low resolution and don't need to be high resolution, but there are sources available that cover the globe, e.g. https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gridded_bathymetry_data/.  For lakes, at least in my own scenery, I simply set the centre of the lake to -50m and give it a fairly steep drop, and it works fine, as I don't think there is any global data that is accurate enough. For the coast, it was enough to just use the default maps already provided.

With further changes to water and turbidity coming in future versions, there is a lot happening in this department.

6 hours ago, Pe11e said:

Since when users can add such features into the sim? AFAIK only XP12 dev team can add those officially into the simulator. 

Since XP12 came out... the source code to XPTools is available on github for anyone who wants to dig into it, but many have been waiting for official docs and specs on how it it supposed to work, and that's a bit behind right now, with some guess work going on.

Maps4XPlane has done done amazing work in his sceneries and is one of the first to use this in his toolset, so it's not anything LR lock down. This is one thing many love about the simulator, it is made to be tinkered with and nothing generally is locked away and hidden on purpose

I look forward to the development of Bathymetry and 3D water. The video was impressive. Flying over the Bahamas, the Virgin Islands and similar locations would be greatly enhanced and more realistic. Maybe a sailboat wouldn't be a bad idea either. Go X-Plane.........................

That looks very good! 👍 But without AI-generated underwater pebbles, almost useless isn‘t it? 😂😉

6 minutes ago, Franz007 said:

But without AI-generated underwater pebbles, almost useless isn‘t it?

😂

Edited February 10, 20242 yr by GoranM

So will this enable hunting for subs at periscope depth?

 

What I can totally envision is sightseeing for coastal wrecks in shallow water:

When I was very young, I had a friend that used to say all kinds of lie to impress his friends. He once told me he could dive really deep in FS98 or so, and see the Titanic!! 

Maybe now it will actually be a possibility after all!! 🤣

Edited February 10, 20242 yr by Alec