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Guest jonpoint

New upload: scenery for UK

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Guest jonpoint

Very nice, Rob ;)We got's ta do somethin' about them night lights eh?All these lovely (lit) buildings are wonderful but when the sun goes down this black fog rolls in and ya can't see much. Besides, dawn and dusk are my favourite flying times!PS Sorry about the disks - excursions, sailing, band meetings - it's all too much. Last night I managed to mix ONE sound sample for the Dash-8 :-( And my UK is shaky :-( :-( I'll have to read all the 'readmes' again!:-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

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Thank you very much for this fine models Rob. Need them also for the Bembridge/Sandown area so may be i will find a replacement for the Glidernut hangar :-):-wave agtim

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Thank you for this new fine models.It's very good as always.I'll try this out with some new fled-experiments:-) Lars Peter.:-wave

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I've been delving into the dreaded world of FLED, trying to replace the parliament building. Except from the usual frequent crashes to the desktop I haven't been able to find the location of that building. It might help if someone provides the exact coordinates. Hans Petter

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Guest twsimfan

Rob,Westminster Palace (AKA Houses of Parliament) looks outstanding. Only problem is now it just screams for Westminster Abby across the street! ( ;-) Some people are never satisfied. :-shy ) Really great work.

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Guest R_Driscoll

Hans, I'm very sorry I can't give you the co-ordinates. But if you follow down the Thames River from London airport you should find it - its about one and a half river bends past the white Dome. Try taking off from London airport (which is next to the river, follow the river west, and its the building with the clock (Big Ben) next to it. Once you have spotted it from in FU3, you should be able to locate it in FLED by following the same route. (I don't have FU3 loaded at work, or I could work out the co-ords). But if you can wait a few weeks, Cristian plans an upgrade that will probably include all of this new stuff automatically.Thanks for all the kind words folks. Westminster Abbey? Hmmm ...

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Guest Ansgar

Hello Robert,very nice additions! Thank you for that...I have downloaded them and will try it in the next day

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Guest R_Driscoll

Ansgar, I am very glad that you have enjoyed the airport models - they each take a long time to do, but I cannot complain! I have enjoyed making them so much myself! Of course I am happy to work on the runways. There are several problems at the moment - the graduation from light to dark concrete is missing - I never managed to extract that one, and as you said, the resolution is low. Each runway block (there are usually about 30 or 40 blocks per runway) is low resolution (128 x 128) pixel, with a bit of JPG type colour wash due to the way I extracted the runways - I took an overhead shot of the Seattle runway! But I think we have come some distance since then. I could certainly redo the runways in higher resolution. I don't haev PSP or any of that stuff though.Anyway I think anti-aliasing is not enough. The problem is the low source resolution and the small amount of colour mixing due to my method of extracting the textures in the first place.Also there are several main types of runway surfaces, and it would be good to match the runway surface to the one actually used at each location.If you want to do all this - to make better runways, then I am also happy for you to do it. I think you would do a excellent job, and your understanding of graphics is certainly way ahead of mine. It would take me many evenings to do, and other building projects might fall down in the meantime. But if you are too busy, let me know and I'll add it to my list as a high priority.I enjoy flying into my airports, but you are too generous in saying there is only one thing which needs improving! I look at every model and think, why did I do that, or why didn't I do that - they are all compromises to time, polygon and framerates, poor initial pictures, limits of curved surface, of the FU3 engine etc. But my main compromise is that its better to make many simple models than a few complex models. If there were more people working on model making, we could change this and possibly raise the standards of FU3 even higher. That is why I have tried hard to pass on anything I have learnt to others. Parliament House (new version) took over a week, well almost two weeks with the night lighting as well. And I had good pictures for that.So anyone with graphic skills, come and join the team! There's plenty we could add to the UK skylines working together.

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I looked it up in an atlas and got it sorted out. If I remember correctly 52.30 North and 0.00 W (or East :-)) will be a good start. I found the parliament building and replaced it with the new model. Part of my FLED problems was caused by the fact that FLED tends to jump back to "zero" (the UK's westernmost longitude) once I scroll past Greenwich (0.00 W).Critique and minor issues: The new parliament building looks great but it's a tad too big. I tried to put it precicely over the scenery "track" and had to sort out a conflict with the Big Ben. I recognized features in the original aerial photos and tried to make a perfect match but it didn't quite fit. I ended up moving the Big Ben a few yards (eh, metres) to avoid a conflict. Then I placed the statue according to the ReadMe. The bridge is a good reference but I couldn't spot any riverwalk so I just guessed at the exact location. It seems that FLED shows the scenery at a far lower resolution than the sim. Later I flew around in a Cessna to check it all out and it looked sound, even the night version.However, the UK South night lighting is generally absent. How about adding some light to any street or city texture? It doesn't have to be precise and elaborate since there's no way to tell exactly where the light posts are supposed to be. What we need is some general array of city lights that tells us that we're flying over a major urban area at night. An idea might be to link the lights to a city hue (street or buildings).Hans Petter

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Guest R_Driscoll

Firstly congratulations - I'm glad that you could work it out!Yes, you are right about having to move Big Ben -it should exactly touch the easternmost point (the jutting out lobby) of Parliament House, since Big Ben is joined to P. House.I am surprised you think its a bit big - it matches quite closely to the image on FLED, except possibly its a bit too wide (North-south direction) but still very close. Part of the problem is that the scenery was taken from a small plane photographing at an angle, so sometimes its hard to see where buildings begin and end.The river road is difficult to spot. Zooming out helps a bit here. It intersects the bridge road quite close to the southern face of Big Ben's tower.As to night lighting, the Seattle-type nightlighting was created by special mapping of the Seattle tga pictures, and I don't know how this was done except that it was carefully related to urban density but not carefully placed! Agtim may know more - his mapping and terrain skills are closer to this area than my model-building skills.Thanks for your comments!RobD.

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Let me just add that I think it looks absolutely gorgeous :-jumpyAfter re-reading my posts and the replies it may seem that I've focused on minor problems and forgotten about stating how great this is. Now I'll move the Big Ben a little further and get room for the new Parliament building. The fact that the famous clock tower was slightly misplaced was a major reason why I assumed the new Parliament to be oversized. Then I'll try to move the statue to its correct location.When I get time I may sprinkle some of those great-looking rural buildings over the countryside. Well, not actually put them all over the place since we only need them around airports. The scenery textures look great as they are when we're flying at 1,000 ft or more. Here's my idea of placing scenery objects--we need them where we're flying low and slow and we need major landmarks. Further, when a major landmark gets its polygon model it may a good idea to soften the transition to the surrounding area by placing some other smaller objects. Otherwise it gets too obvious that the rest of the buildings are two-dimensional. The same goes for trees--a few odd trees won't help create a park. All they do is to turn the treetops of the scenery texture into a bed of moss. Models create the best illusion when they are being grouped (a grove of trees / a small village).best regards,Hans Petter

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Guest glidernut

Hang on you lot, Im having troubl replasing the old Parliament House with the new version.My old Parliament House is there in the game alongside big-benbut in Fled only big-ben is there, no Parliament House ?And my "Place Models" dialog box in Fled is stuk on the oldParliament House model ?What should I do ?Sory its taken me so long to get round to installing this.There is a wor on you know.glidernut

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Robert thanks a lot for all this new models. Parliament house looks much better now. I just missed the rush hour traffic. :-)Thanks to Roland Wagener also for the Ships in The Solenthttp://www.agtim.ch/fu3/images/rushhour.jpgAny volunteers for a London Bus route package ?we have the Redbus as model now :-) :-wave agtim

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Guest R_Driscoll

This morning I posted a pack containing:o models for a village (houses, church, telephone box, London double decker buso new version of parliament houseo updated airportso improved textures for some modelso updated version of FixMip for multi-drive computersBelow are some pictures.

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Guest R_Driscoll

Twenty past nine and still rush hour? Its those rotten tourists ...Thanks all for the feedback - I need the encouragement! I had a look at the old abbey next door. Its got complicated twisted flying butresses - I can't do those accurately, and will have to make compromises.There are two things I could work on next, depending on interest I suppose. I could have a crack at the abbey (and again, don't expect the Taj Mahal) or if there was still interest I could throw some rocks together and make a Stonehenge. What would you like?On the topic of compromises, I am not trying to compete with MSFS - I can't do that. Just the number of objects is too great, and its a battle getting good textures/pictures/maps etc. I agree with Hans that putting a few good specific bigger models around like Parliament House, then blending them a bit with trees, lights, whatever. If all the models were complex then the framerates would suffer. I guess there were about 10 towers that I skipped over in making Parlt House - but I think the current model has little effect on framerate. Airports are easier to detail because you're close to the ground - its worthwhile because you see them up close. So I can't try to make Picadilly circus or Harrods etc, and Churchill's statue won't be made. Unless we can organise a team of builders ....??I don't mind the criticism. I complain bitterly to Jon then forget about it and try and fix it (sorry Jon). Its a good thing and has led to higher standards in all FU3 work.RobD.

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