Why can't t FS autogen look like FlyTampa's buildings?

[Max Kraus 339]

Autogen buildings should need no more than FIVE polys - 4 walls and a roof. The secret to FT's great buildings is their artwork. They are all 5 poly buildings but notice the bottom few floors on every texture have that shadow zone - this alone would make Autogen look amazing and that's why FT scenery has this visual impact!

[phoenixphire 50]

After flying around in FlyTampa's new jaw dropping scenery and having amazing frame-rates in such a densely populated area that looks unreal, I was wondering why can't ACES make autogen that performs this well for the FS franchise? I have a pretty decent machine that runs autogen ok, but I mostly fly heavies high and fast so it is not as important to me so I usually turn it off to get that extra boost. If the whole world looked like this and performed like this it would be amazing. I would appreciate your thoughts. P.S. I am not slamming FSX. I love this sim and I am in high heaven but it was just a question that dawned on me while flying some heavies to VHHX. Oh, and I also realize that FlyTampa's buildings are not autogen, so maybe my question is off.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Sure, Thomas, but it is not about autogen or textures. Martin's work is all about unique, individual, custom buildings. A few thousand of them, if I understand correctly. And each must have its own textures, I suppose.This is something completely different, and why it is an absolute truth that the more scenery detail that is added, the greater the impact on performance. There is no denying this.Best regards.Luis

[FlyingsCool 3]

Yes, that is true about Martin's work. If there is extra artwork on top of the default, it will very likely have an impact on performance, assuming there are extra buildings being added to the scene. (Although I can imagine a scenario where if the memory map is understood well enough, maybe there is currently extra memory space that isn't being used, and could be used without affecting performance)My point was that you can make improvements without affecting performance, too.It all depends on what you mean by "more scenery detail". A given texture can have more "detail", IOW, look nicer, but still take up the same amount of space and therefore not affect performance.But certainly, if the scenery author is going to add new buildings that weren't there before, then that is going to have an affect on performance.I didn't mean to negate what you said, and I certainly don't want to get in an argument about it. You know a heck of a lot more about this stuff than me.Question - Has anyone analyzed the memory space at any given moment? Are there any slots for textures that are duplicated, and could be directed to other textures, thereby increasing the variety of the scene without affecting performance?I'm imagining that there are some sets of textures that use the same texture, and therefore those textures are duplicated in memory as if they were different textures. If this could be understood, then detail could be added by replacing those duplicated slots with different textures and performance would in theory not be affected. Not easy, but possible.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest jshyluk]

I'm pretty sure that's exactly one of the optimizations that's in SP2, Thomas. The ACES art team was really precise about their texture maps, and is very aware of how to optimize their textures. They weren't sloppy with their original texture maps, either, but again, SP2 does help standardize the process and get rid of unwanted duplicates. Jeff ShylukAssistant Managing EditorSenior Staff ReviewerAVSIM