akriesman

Thank you so much for posting this Ryan.   We are trying to get the word out about XpressSim, as it is going to take some time to build up market credibility.    Your screenshots look great and really do the product justice.

P.S.-I don't have the time to follow the public forums closely these days.  But, I do frequently search Google to see if XpressSim related material is getting around.   This post came up immediately and made my day ;)

Cheers all,

Allen Kriesman

Scenery Solutions

Sad news indeed Rob.   You have an amazing talent and will be missed.

The Fly!2 days don't seem that long ago.

Good luck in your retirement !

Cheers,

Allen Kriesman

Scenery Solutions

Personally, I would vary the tree density a bit. Some of the screenshots that I have seen seem to show single trees in generally repeating patterns (probably more of a problem in some of the US cities with their "grid style" design). Repeating patterns (whilst to some extent unavoidable) shout "this is not real" at the human brain.

 

Are the trees just added at random, or do they conform to clusters of trees that are actually depicted in the photoreal base image? I don't know how difficult it is to add trees when compared to buildings, but getting the tree density variation correct adds enormously to the realism of a scene.

Hi,

The tree placements are generated automatically from their locations in satellite images (algorithm looks for a certain color hue and brightness range).    However, if I remember correctly, no 2 trees can be positioned within 5m of each other to keep the densities from being too heavy (and hurting frame rates).     

I believe that any grid-like look for the trees comes from the following:

1) In subdivisions, a lot of developers plant at least 1 or 2 trees per house.   If you look at aerials in Dallas and filter out the houses, the grid-like roads also contribute to the grid-like tree areas.   So naturally, there is a bit of a grid-like tree arrangement in reality.

2) The fact that we eliminate overlapping trees (for better performance) could be a factor.

3) The image scanning algorithm (row by column) could add something to this appearance.    Before planting each tree, we also randomly offset each one by 0 to 2 meters to stagger them a just a bit more, but keep them close to their real world position.

If you look at an aerial image of our coverage areas, you should see trees appearing in their accurate locations.   The only exceptions at times are some building shadows that may have a green tint to them.    I have seen a few trees appear in these locations.

Appreciate the feedback.

To Kuragiman.   That is a very nice review.  We will be building a reviews page on our website later on.   Do you mind if we post a link to your video ?

Thanks.

Allen

To follow up with the tree post.   Here is a screenshot from our development software interface that shows the tree locations.   The green + plusses show the locations and the size of the plusses represents their related sizes.

Cheers

Guys,

Developer here again.   As I mentioned at first, I rarely visit public forums, because I feel that public forums are a place where the general public should be able to give their honest opinions.   And, developers can get a little sore (and biased) when information is presented in a manner that is incorrect.

So, I have chosen over the last 10 years to let our customers handle the spread of information, good or bad.       As a result, I probably won't be responding much here if at all.

However, if anyone has any questions or comments at all, feel free to visit our Flight 1 support forums at the location below.

http://www.simforums.com/forums/xtreme-cities-series_forum55.html

If you guys think there is a good reason for developers to visit public forums and give their opinions, I would be interested in the feedback.   In the past, I have seen a lot of developers push their own agenda and basically hurt their reputation.    I want to provide the best service to the community, without overstepping boundaries.

Thanks !

One more thing regarding the Apple 3D buildings:

https://www.youtube....Ed1vvqiDnQ#t=27

I am pretty familiar with this technology as I was in touch with google about it about 1 year ago.    I also believe this is the future for flight sims.  However, it is not going to be the near future.  IMO, flight simulators are going to have to change their terrain modeling to be able to do what you see from Apple right now.    There are some places in Google Earth that use the same logic, only not as high resolution.

Cheers. 

A suggestion with this product, to help out Photoreal fliers that don't have Autogen to help blend your product in with other products (such as ORBX).   Where your data ends and your rendering thus ends, it would be nice if you could make the edge look more natural with varying treelines rather than a super straight edge.   It just makes the scene look very unnatural while approach it.  Looks great once you are over it but getting rid of those straight edge ending data areas would be a nice little plus.  Surely that wouldn't be too hard?  It is easier to destroy than create!  Just wipe out some of them spawn points around the extreme edges!  

Actually, because of the technology we use when building a scene of objects, it would probably be easier to add trees to the edges and release them as a separate BGL file. I do see your point and will make a note of that.

As I promised yesterday, we have updated the Scenery Solutions page for XC USA SouthCentral and posted quite a few before/after screenshots that should do a much better job of showing the enhancements.    These screenshots are not yet up on the Flight 1 order page.    The Scenery Solutions link is below.

http://www.scenerysolutions.com/XCUSASouthCentral_P3D.html

For those that have not heard about the product, it is because we have not yet made a press release.    Thanks to your suggestions yesterday, we wanted to update those screenshots first.

Right now our license with the data vendor allows us to release products for the USA and Europe over the next 2 years.   Other areas are available to us.  But, the USA and Europe are coming first.       In addition to the USA and Europe, we do have future access to Asia, Russia, Mexico, South America and even 10 cities in Canada.   However, the extent of the future areas will depend on how well the series goes over with the public.

I am going to give you the honest truth about licensing commercial data.   That is, the data providers expect a decent return on their investment.    We have a very good relationship with them because Ultimate Terrain took their product in a direction that was very unique.   Normally, their data is used in GPS units which is pretty boring.   Ultimate Terrain, used with FSX, allowed them to demonstrate new uses of their data, because it presented it in a manner that was very visual.   So, they were able to use our product for school demonstrations, etc.   This added benefit to them allowed us to continue to use their data in our products, even if the sales from the Flight Simulation market do not match what they were used to.    The work we do at Scenery Solutions is somewhat of a novelty to them.

With Xtreme Cities,we are again headed down a new path with their product data.   To ensure that they get a decent return on their investment, we are going to release areas that are going to be the most in demand first.   As we know from experience, this is going to be the USA and Europe.    Canada has been a real struggle when it comes to UTX because the market is very small.   I apologize to our Canadian users, because Canada just has not received the attention that the other regions have.    So, even though there is data for Canada, I cannot promise a Canadian Xtreme Cities product.   Our current license does not include Canada, but it could be added depending on how things go in the initial rollouts.

Anyway, I didn't really mean to get into that much detail.  But, I hope that it will help both our Xtreme Cities and Ultimate Terrain users understand why some regions get more attention than others.   

As far as Florida and Georgia go, we have those areas planned in our USA SouthEast product (no release date).  Some of these regions may change slightly before production, as enhancements are made to the commercial data.   

USA Southeast (15)

Boca Raton

Daytona Beach

Ft Lauderdale

Jacksonville

Key West

Miami

Orlando

St Petersburg

Tampa

West Palm Beach

Atlanta

Savannah

Birmingham

Knoxville

Memphis

Thanks,

Allen

PS-To Blaze.  You are correct in that a key component regarding frame rates is to make sure that all objects in a "scene" share as few texture sheets if possible.    If every building had it's own texture sheet, the sim would not be flyable.   I don't see this changing soon even with the improvements in hardware.       What we did is to create a very large texture sheet that provides 64 different commercial building textures per city, with an additional sheet for residential areas.     However, since cities are generally not populated in the same scene, we have allowed for each city to have a separate texture sheet assigned to it.    Since these separate texture sheets are not loaded at the same time in FSX/P3D, they do not hurt performance.    With each city having it's own texture sheet, we can also give each city it's own local personality if needed.  Cheers.

Developer here.

First, tomorrow we will be adding a whole new slew of screenshots before the official press release is out.   These will all be before/after screenshots.  So, you will really be able to see the differences.

The scenery boundaries for each product are based on the commercial data that we have licensed (TomTom's 2D Maps).    Generally, it appears that TomTom takes the city center and then go outwards by x number of miles/kilometers.     Our software has the ability to allow us to hand-draw buildings outside of the normal boundaries.   But, when some of these cities have 100,000 objects, you can imagine how long that would take to do by hand.    So for now, we will just be concentrating the release areas based on the available commercial data.

This initial product is just the first of 20+ planned releases over the next 2 years.   7 scenery areas will cover the entire continental USA.   The rest will be in Europe.   Each scenery area will have between 15-20 cities.    

The software that creates the scenery may have taken 2 years to develop.   But, our goal is to try and release about 1 scenery product per month once we get ramped up (we are hiring additional developers and will train them on our software).

I will try and post a link to the new screenshots tomorrow on this thread also.   We appreciate the feedback regarding the screenshots and now have a pretty good idea of the types of comparisons user's are looking for.   

Cheers,

Allen

Back in May we made a Europe prototype and posted some screenshots for Ostrava in the Czech Republic.  This was before we added a lot of additional features.

http://www.simforums.com/forums/xtreme-cities-screenshots-ostrava_topic49252.html

Remember, those screenshots were taken 5 months ago before the product matured.

Our next Xtreme Cities product release looks like it will be Northern Italy (17 cities).   It looks outstanding with custom textures appropriate for the region.

Again, we use commercially licensed data.   OSM does have building footprints for a lot of areas in Europe.   In the USA though, there is almost nothing which is why we had to license the data.

I understand the cost issue.    We are hoping that by providing 15 to 20 cities per product, a lot of people find value in that.   Right now most detailed FSX cities retaill as a single package (1 city in 1 product).

Cheers.. 

• Personally, I just don't have a good eye for what looks flashy.   I look for accuracy only and so I miss some of the artistic details.  I considered hiring somebody artistic to take the screenshots, but the answer to this is explained in bullet point #2.
• We want to show exactly what the product looks like.    What you see is exactly what you get.  I think you will be more impressed with the real thing,

If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know in the support forum below.  

Rich.  Can't believe it has been 11 years.   You taught me the right way to treat customers and were a real inspiration and role model.    I probably owe a lot of business success to you buddy.    The most important thing that I learned, to be open and honest with your customers and they will have patience when needed.

I bet your daughter has grown up to be one fine lady !

Cheers,

Allen Kriesman

Scenery Solutions

For those that were waiting for the tool that adds FTX lighting to UTX roads, we released this yesterday.  

http://www.simforums.com/forums/released-ftx-lighting-tool-for-utx_topic48423.html

For questions, please visit our support forum above.    We do not monitor public forums.

Cheers...

Hello Guys.    This is Allen Kriesman from Scenery Solutions.    I just wanted to let you know that we are currently working on a new, automated tool to allow UTX and ORBX/FTX users to add the ORBX Lights to the UTX roads.   I don't have a release date for this.  But, it should not take too long (maybe week or two more ?).

John was kind enough to point me to this thread a couple of weeks ago.    

I don't normally read public forums.   So, the best way to get in touch with me or get news on the new tool will be in the UTX support forum.   I will put the link to the forum below.    When the tool is released, I will try and release the information in this forum also.

http://www.simforums.com/forums/support-for-all-the-ultimate-series-of-terrain-products_forum19.html

Thanks everyone !

>And Canada is not unique? (LOL) Oh BTW do say hello to Allen>Kriseman for me.>>Dan MartinHello Dan. Its been a few years. Hope things are going well.I don't get a chance to stop by here much any more. But, had to say hello when I saw your reply.Cheers,Allen

Hi Guys, I don't often make it outside the UT forum much anymore. But, I wanted to comment on the price, since I have not yet had a chance to explain in the UT forum.It is a valid question, which I have not had time yet to explain in the UT Forums.Tony is correct about several things. The base data set was more expensive than before. Mainly, this is because TeleAtlas knows that they have the only precise water coverage for the Europe region. So, it took some longer negotiations and a higher price to get it. However, the commercial water data was still lacking in some areas. So, for some areas, we had to hire GIS contractors to hand digitize water from hi-res images. This added another couple of months to the process at a pretty significant cost.Lastly, the product is the largest download yet. So, Flight One has to pay for the additional bandwidth. To be honest, I feel fortunate that we can release the product at the current price. There was a point last summer when it looked like we would have to break up the product in 2 pieces.As far as comparing the different UT products, the size of the area covered is really not a good measuring stick to use. A better comparison would be the overall download size. More details = more work = larger downloads. Cheers !Allen

For those that are interested, we have updated the official version of the USA Roads Scenery Enhancement Package #1 (11/3/04). This version should fix all reported problems.See the thread below for the download location:http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_post...p?TID=9168&PN=1If you have already installed the package, and just want to update your executable, you can get the beta at the link below (the beta version became the official released version).http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_post...p?TID=9163&PN=1Either way, you can reinstall over the old version(s). Thanks !Allen KriesmanScenery Solutions

Right now, only highways and major roads cross water in USA Roads. We did this to simulate water crossings that had no bridge objects in FS2004.The negative to this philosophy is that you sometimes get both bridge objects and the flat bridges in USA Roads. FWIW, we are just a few days from releasing a patch that will remove all the roads from crossing the water in USA Roads. The patch will only be about a 2 or 3 mb download.Cheers,Allen KriesmanScenery Solutions

>Allen,>>I have your USA Roads and love them. I would like to know what>your timetable is on the lakes/rivers/coastline project? I am>really looking forward to that one!Thanks !The lakes, rivers, streams, and coastline project has been in the works for a several months now (and is about 80% complete). It is a pretty large effort.The product will be based off very detailed commercial data. For example, the very small stock tank behind my neighborhood is part of the data set (I can easily throw a rock across it). If anything, we might have to scale back on some of the data to get it to work well in FS2004. Because of certain events that have taken place lately, we may have to temporarily switch some of our priorities a bit. Also, several users have brought up some valid concerns regarding coastline fixes (as Will just did regarding Hawaii).We are going to continue the project, but I don't have a definate release date as of yet. The misplaced water in FS2004 is something I really want correct (and enhance).Cheers,Allen

Thanks for taking the time to reply Will. Your comments are definately valued, even if we are not in agreement on some things.Perhaps we should consider releasing an official darker version of our textures as an additional option. The concrete and asphalt colors were actually matched against high resolution aerial photos. I seem to remember even having to darken them a bit so they did not stand out as much.Perhaps in this case reality is not better regarding the texture colors.Cheers,Allen

Thank you for pointing out your bias Will :-lolI do know that you and Jon have been rather outspoken about a couple of USA Roads features (flattening and major roads over water).To be honest, you guys are the only ones that have ever requested these features from us. Many more users have told us that they prefer the roads over water, because there are no FS2004 bridge objects for a majority of the bridge locations in the USA.I do agree that roads near the coastline look pretty bad over water, when the FS2004 coastlines are way off.It is nice that AD Roads allows you the choice to turn off the roads over water. We will be releasing a long planned patch for USA Roads users to turn off roads over water if they want. We may even release a patch for flattening, if a good many of our users really want that feature.No doubt the presence of AD roads is pushing us to add these features. The competition is good for all FS2004 users.I do, however, believe that the majority of users will greatly prefer the USA Roads appearance over AD Roads.The fact that AD Roads uses default textures, gives them advantages in flattening, utility pole/line enhancements, and maybe signs.However, our custom texture usage gives us a whole lot more flexibily in road appearances. We have 196 different night textures, 10 different day textures, 5 seasonal grass variations (beneath and beside the roads), plus usage of the default dirt textures for the dirt roads.- The choice of 4 different types of night lighting.- Transitional street lighting from the cities to the rural areas (lights in the cities, but not in the country).- Choice of lighter or darker pavement sets.- Roads that cross, but do not have a dividing grassy strip at the intersections. We put seasonal grass textures underneath the roads as a separate polygon layer, so the grass does not appear at intersections.Frank Bergstrom's 3rd party textures provide darker roads if that is desired. User's are more than welcome to modify and publish different texture sets.I know that you do say many of these things in your review, but you give the nod to AD Roads because of the flattening alone. I understand that is your opinion, but I would like to hear from others that have both USA Roads and AD Roads, because flattening has not been much of a requested feature.The FSGenesis web site will show this flattening effect in comparing their product against ours. What they do not show, is the differences in road accuracy, road appearances, and night lighting. I guess we will need to provide our own comparitive shots.I should also note that the free USGS data used by AD Roads is taken from older aerial images. I know this product very well, because I initially considered it for USA Roads. Many, if not all, of the recent roads will not be in the package.I hope you don't mind my rebuttal. It is certainly not meant to criticize you personally. And, you did mention that this is your opinion.I am very proud of USA Roads. I just feel like we need to give our opinion on some of these things now, since we have not spoken up about this new competition. Nor have we been able to show visual comparisons from our side of the fence.The AD Roads and Streams product looks like a very nice product. For the money, many people will be really happy with it.However, the fact that we use the most accurate commercial data available, plus the custom textures, does give us some distinct advantages.Anyway, I hope the Avsim users don't mind me giving my very biased opinion. I would really like to hear the opinion of others that have used both products.Cheers,Allen KriesmanScenery Solutions

I am still planning on releasing an optional patch that puts all roads beneath the water. As you say, some users prefer having the major roads and highways cross water, some do not.

"There might be other reasons for not providing the flattening effect but, technically, it IS possible to do this without having to alter the global terrain.cfg file. All that is required is a second copy of the road file with the texture set to one of the default road types (with or without autogen), at a width of "0", and a layer below the custom road. This doesn't have to be done for each road (actually, it's not desirable where the road density is very high) but for major highways and Interstates this would probably improve on your product."Very interesting idea Holger, and definately worth looking into. I would think that we could release a separate patch to accomplish this, at least for those that want it. I also agree that this effect should only be applied to the major highways and Interstates.Regards and sincere admiration,Allen KriesmanScenery Solutions

Hey Guys,This is, unfortunately, the first I have heard about the new product by FSGenesis. So, these are my quick thoughts on the differences.It seems like there will soon be quite a bit of competition for FS2004 users in the coming months.In addition to the USA Roads, Scenery Solutions has also been working very hard on a slew of new products, which also include USA coastlines, lakes, streams, etc.One of the big differences between our products and the others will be the source data, and perhaps the price.We are in the process of signing a major deal with our data provider for global GPS data. This will provide the most accurate source of data available worldwide.USA Roads data is very precise. I looked very hard at the freely available USGS data before choosing the pricey GDT road data.I can tell you, there is a huge difference in accuracy between the data we use and the freely available USGS data. This is especially true regarding in road classifications.The road classifications tell us what kind of road to display. The USGS data is dead wrong on many cases. Also, and this is a huge difference, I do not believe that the USGS data provides true divided highway/road support. What this means, is that you will not see each side of a divided road wind it's own path. This will be especially evident where access ramps merge onto the highways, and at highway interchanges.Because USA Roads uses custom textures, I feel that we can blend in the road intersections much better. Also, night lighting with the custom textures will be far superior to the default textures, because we have much more flexibility. I guess we will also need to publish comparitive screen shots, to show these differences.Because we use custom textures, we cannot provide the flattening effect seen in some of the comparitive shots with the competing product.My personal opinion is that the improvement the custom textures provide over the default textures, exceeds the lack of flattening effect in USA Roads. This is of course my personal opinion, and each user will have to choose for himself. The Scenery Solutions products will cost a bit more, because we have to pay for the GPS quality data.There is a reason that GPS units do not use the freely available USGS data.FSGenesis does some really good work, so I am sure that they will have a fine product. I think for the users, it will all come down to an issue of accuracy vs price. Thanks guys,Allen KriesmanScnery Solutions

Hi,Please disregard my last post. This issue seems to affect Canada, but not other countries. We will attempt to add this functionality if it is possible.Please check in periodically at the USA roads forums below:http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_topics.asp?FID=19If we can find a solution, we will address this issue.Thanks,AllenScenery Solutions

The USA Roads product only disables the default roads for the continental USA. Other countries will not be affected.AllenScenery Solutions

Bill,The product is based on very accurate source data licensed by Scenery Solutions. The source data is the same you might see used in GPS applications. This data typically comes at a premium cost to us.We have had some discussions with vendors regarding other parts of the globe. However, they have not yet been receptive due to the low cost of the product (what they consider low anyway).We will keep trying. If they see the product do well for the USA, they may reduce their demands somewhat.I can tell you that Canada would be a very strong possibility.Cheers,Allen KriesmanScenery Solutions