tonywob

Basically, it's a hack that uses the texture grid filenames generated from Ortho4XP to download the imagery on the fly as they're requested from the operating system (and loaded in and out of memory). It's not a bad attempt and whoever wrote this has done the best they can do with X-Plane as it is, but the fact that it still requires tiles to be generated beforehand is not really a practical solution for most users. What we need is some way of streaming draped textures (and building and vegetation data) onto the existing terrain instead (and that would likely need help from LR to support)

Yep, this is extremely buggy for me, especially in ortho scenery (with or without clouds). There is a really bad flicker in the distant. You can also see a nasty bug if you get to grand level over water and there is a big gab between the water and the land going off to the void (which is probably what is causing this flicker)

It's stuff I never knew I needed to know, but now that I do, I'm pleased to have watched the video

As the OP has said, this thread has now run its course. Topic locked

Well, I love XP12 so far, if that's saying much. It's the only sim I can run on my Macbook Pro and still works with scenery I have from 2017

Yeah, I work in corporate and we're well trained in what we say :-).

Wonder what they mean by most successful ever? In terms of sales, or smoothness?

Ooh, thanks for that. This one is way better

Whilst a lot of the things Murmur and Jose are talking about are above my pay grade (I'm just here for the pretty graphics and scenery development ), I believe being able to have a discussion and compare things like this without taking it personally is important in not only improving the sims (via feedback) but also educating people like myself etc about things I'd never even considered.. Indeed, about the worst thing I've experienced whilst flying round is forgetting to check I have enough fuel, and that always ends well. Anyway, please keep the discussion civilised so this interesting thread doesn't derail and need to be closed.

I've moved this topic to RXP's support forum which is hosted here at Avsim

As long as the Orbx or Simheaven regions are higher in priority, then it'll use the trees/forests from those, which are more accurate in general

Honestly, I actually think the clouds and lighting in XP12 look better in your shots, much more natural (although low resolution). I love how MFS looks and it can produce spectacular views with great performance, but I feel it tends to over exaggerate the saturation and lighting to produce pleasing but less natural effects. If LR can improve the performance on similar hardware, it's a great way forward.

I had noticed that Microsoft/Bing had released an opensource worldwide building footprints dataset filling out most of Europe and other areas not previously covered and was going to offer help to get it imported, but seems he's well ahead already . Now having detailed coverage of vegetation and buildings for North America and Europe, it's amazing that this sort of free data was only something I could dream off a few years ago when I was making OSM sceneries

Is it the placebo effect maybe? I'm not seeing much difference in clouds or visuals in Beta 9 and don't see anything listed in the changelog. Not to say others aren't seeing anything, my machine isn't the fastest out there

Ha ha, this is brilliant :-), Austin should take up making sitcoms. This is the sort of marketing they should have been doing during XP11, fun, interesting and very well made

Interesting, I almost forgot this existed because it's been going for years and years with just small baby changes. I remember it having a really dedicated team of modders and developers behind it, it's just a pity it's fell behind the times as it had huge potential to be a decent flight simulator

Yep same here, XP12 simply does not agree with my PC, even if I have clear skies. It's usable, but nowhere near as smooth as XP11 (even with xenviro)

I agree... I love how XP12 renders the ground and distant sky textures. I have it setup how I want with some custom scenery, but I need to get a better PC as it clearly hurts against the same in XP11.

Ha ha, this is great. Got to love this guy's enthusiasm

The video is not really a great preview of the capabilities of X-Plane 12 (or 11), especially the ones that show the Simheaven autogen on-top of default textures which is never going to look particularly good. Let's also not forget Simheaven's scenery is free and developed out of fun/dedication, and when used as intended (with aerial imagery) it does a very good job of filling out large areas with believable scenery. I know from my own experiments and projects that the sim is capable of looking really incredible (sometimes beating the competition) and performing well. It just needs passionate and dedicated 3rd parties to put in the time, money and effort to develop for it. However, with the inevitable comparisons with another sim and the fact that it has great scenery for free out of the box makes this a risky and probably unprofitable endeavour .

100%... But, need to be careful not to over do it, too much vegetation (or trees that are too big) can drown out the scenery below. In earlier versions of MFS I found the UK and some other areas had way too many trees that made some areas unrecognisable, but I think in the below shots the balance is good:

That is pretty cool. I'm so used to not flying in anything but clear skies and summer in XP11 that I need to try this out more

I can't.. I don't contract for them anymore sorry. Ha, I have my own ideas, but real life full-time job takes that away

Yep it is, but it's horrendously slow over anything but small areas and not recommended, so very few do it

I believe this is somewhat already the case. The raster data that is used is often based on satelite imagery or free data taken from satelites that has created landcover maps (using AI and other techniques). Although they're pretty low resolution, you'll find that X-Plane's scenery is actually somewhat accurate in the shapes of villages, towns and other features. The issue remains that the textures and autogen are just very repetitive, boring and not very realistic. Even when combined with more detailed local data such as OSM etc, the result is still not pleasing to the eye. Even scenery such as the global themed autogen addons lose their effect when higher up (but look great on the ground). If you can suspend belief, it's very possible to do VFR flights using the default scenery. I think research is needed into more procedural methods that aren't static (Outerra and similar comes to mind) that can improve and give more variety and interest to the ground scenery. Maybe in time we'll see this