MrBitstFlyer

XP12 is an incredible simulator, and I am always surprised when it is described as not as good as another sim. This is why I have been creating addons for it. Take a look at these two screenshots. First one is a real world view from A Spitfire. https://i.ibb.co/zV6qbVQD/Real-Spit.png Second screenshot is XP12 with my AutoHaze and AutoTrees. I am very pleased how AutoTrees is coming along, but boy, how good is XP12? 😮

15 Minute flight from Popham airfield demonstrating AutoTrees - still in active development. I'm happy to get useful comments and suggestions.

Napier/Hawke’s Bay should make an excellent first New Zealand test because it contains plantation forest, native vegetation, orchards, vineyards, shelterbelts, urban vegetation and very recent high-resolution aerial imagery. Christchurch would then provide a useful contrasting test of Canterbury farmland, shelterbelts, urban trees and the Port Hills. I’m currently investigating the official New Zealand vegetation datasets and will initially target selected areas around NZNR and NZCH

An update on AutoTrees progress. My aim with AutoTrees is for SimHeaven or Global trees to be used for base worldwide tree coverage, with AutoTrees enabling you to process vegetation from ortho tiles. Either full tiles or selectable areas in a tile can be processed, increasing realism where it matters to you. The AutoTrees app is coming along nicely. Vegetation can now be generated for complete ortho tiles, circles of a specified diameter, or rectangular areas. Generation is cumulative. If you generate another overlapping area, or later generate the complete tile, only previously unprocessed cells are added to the DSF file. Existing cells can also be deliberately selected and regenerated without rebuilding the entire tile. For locations where you want greater accuracy, vegetation can now be edited manually. Individual trees, tree rows, woodland areas and hedgerows can be added or deleted. Only the affected cells are regenerated; all other processed cells are reused unchanged before the DSF file is recompiled. Here is the app showing the autogenerated vegetation (shaded areas) and manually inserted vegetation shown as lines or dots. Any manually added vegetation can be deleted at any time. The area shown in the app is Popham airfield in the UK The UI will be cleaned up for release as it contains info used by me in its development. When you have finished editing, the DSF file will be recompiled using just the areas you updated. The following screenshot shows solid green cells that were previously generated, with the clear cells that were edited and are about to be processed into the DSF file. Some screenshot comparisons from Popham. The first comparison is an overview of Popham airfield. SimHeaven does a good job, but AutoTrees adds denser woodland and missing hedgerows/woodland/individual trees. imgicoPophamPopham - Drag to compare two images. Made with imgico.com.The next comparison shows the denser and more extensive woodland and hedgerows. Note the dense woodland on the right plus missing trees/hedgerows right centre. https://imgico.com/c/eFSTppS Just to the north of Popham is this golf course, completely barren in SimHeaven but full of trees and hedgerows in AutoTrees. Note the road running left/right through the centre - tree lined all the way. In the distance past the road you will see denser woodland and missing hedgerows. imgicoPopham GolfPopham Golf - Drag to compare two images. Made with imgico.com.AutoTrees is still under active development, and aspects such as woodland variety and tree selection are continuing to be refined. The aim is to combine reliable source data, aerial imagery and X-Plane’s default 3D vegetation with straightforward manual editing where extra accuracy is wanted. Feedback and suggestions are very welcome.

Download My AutoHaze addon to get almost zero visibility up to 100SM you mention. As a bonus my addon also sets visibility depending on the amount of rain hitting your aircraft. For example, on final to land if you enter a heavy shower the runway that was visible may very well disappear in the rain. AutoHaze replaces X-Plane's static default turbidity with values derived from real atmospheric data sources: CAMS (Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service) — satellite-measured aerosol optical depth at your exact position, updated hourly. This captures genuine regional variation: California with AOD 0.05 looks very different from London with AOD 0.20, which looks very different from Patna with AOD 0.75. VisualCrossing and OpenWeatherMap — real surface visibility, humidity, temperature, dew point and wind at your position, used to fine-tune the turbidity and correct for near-surface conditions. Open-Meteo boundary layer height — the real atmospheric boundary layer height is used to scale turbidity with altitude, so haze reduces naturally as you climb out of the surface layer into clean air above.

This wasn't possible in the last version of XP12. As you climbed above the haze layer, it disappeared beneath you. All I could do was simulate the boundary layer height. If this has been fixed I look forward to investigating when I get home from holiday. AutoHaze does increase/decrease visibility as rain hits the airframe, so entirely possible for a visible runway to disappear as you get closer if the rain amount is high enough. I wish Laminar would create realistic rain shafts so this feature of AutoHaze would look even better.

So you can see the haze layer beneath you, rather than the whole depth of the atmosphere clearing as you climb above the haze? If this is the case that is great news!

Blast - my most hoped for feature was the haze layer visible beneath you when you climbed out the top of the haze.

I can't se this until I return from holiday - please, please tell me you can see the haze layer beneath you once you climb into clearer air. Simulating climbing out of and descending into clear air is an improvement, it is really annoying when you look down and the haze has gone!

I can't take a look until I get home, but glad you are still getting use from AutoHaze. When I read the release notes my fingers were crossed you could see the haze beneath you once you were in clean air - Is this the case?

Autohaze has a mode that downloads aerosol data, but another mode that uses a range of atmospheric data if that is preferred.

I continue to find this anti AI assistance with creating an addon quite odd. If anybody was to ask AI to produce a haze addon for X-Plane 12, they will be bitterly disappointed. The creative process remains with the developer, with the AI writing the code to the wants and needs of the author. I spent a couple of months creating AutoHaze, with countless hours debugging, refining and testing, and with over 6,000 downloads it has been well received. The AI is a tool like any other, but it speeds up development, it doesn't create an addon like AutoHaze while you go to the beach.

I'm going on holiday today for a couple of weeks, so i can't look at this right now. When I released AutoHaze I remember reading Laminar weren't interested in it.

Interesting, exactly like my AutoHaze addon.

Any particular area in New Zealand - Tile or place? The App is under testing so I am testing various countries.

Town trees plus hedgerows in the distant fields on the Isle of Wight imgicoBefore and after comparison on imgico.comSim Heaven vs AutoTrees - Drag to compare two images. Made with imgico.com.

Hedgerow details on the Isle of Wight UK

An image showing progress. Trees around the houses are less dense and smaller than those outside the town which are larger and more dense. Streets are mostly clear but gardens have appropriately sized trees.

I would think ZL14 is too low for the ortho scanner to detect vegetation accurately. My Map enhancement cache contains ZL17/18 and The ortho scanner will use the highest ZL it can.

I have a 4090 so happy with the VRAM, BUT my 32Gb Ram has become 16Gb as a ram stick developed a fault and crashes the PC - no way I can afford even a 16Gb stick at current prices 😭

I would imagine there would be a big FPS hit for that, but it isn't something I am planning to look at.

A product that can be applied globally, but not supplied globally. I use SimHeaven, so that will remain my global addon for tree coverage. AutoTrees will allow selected ortho tiles on the users PC to be scanned to create the more realistic coverage for that tile. I use the Map Enhancement tool, so I scan the cached ortho tiles (So no requirement to download ortho separately). My plan is to allow scanning by ortho tile, selected area of a tile and by route - input a departure and destination and the ortho will be scanned for a 15 mile wide corridor (with a distance limit). The ortho scanning is producing very good results for accuracy, not perfect but good. Incorporating ortho scanning with freely available government forestry data (for area coverage and classification) yields even better results. I am spending a lot of time at the moment on classification of vegetation areas. As you can see form my comparison screenshots, it is looking good at this stage. Currently it takes around 30 minutes to scan a whole ortho tile to create the DSF file, but I do expect this time to reduce once I concentrate on that aspect. I have currently scanned the southern half of the UK so can make those DSF files available. Be warned you may not like the product as I am utilising AI in its development 😁

Surely sloppiness is down to the developer? I'm pretty sure plenty of human coded software is sloppy. . I wrote 100 percent of my companies software for ten years. I haven't coded anything for twenty years, and I had no intention of learning a new language, so in my mind sixties AI has given me the ability to create some add-ons. I would have thought the end result is what matters, rather than the development tool. This chap has developed something unique. If it works, and doesn't take too many FPS or have too many crashes, hats off to him.

They were not interested in AutoHaze 🙂

I did approach the Author of X-ProTurb to see if the extra realism of ground effects in my addon would benefit his product. He did make a valid point that my effort scans OpenStreetMap to get the dimensions and shape of all ground features, but not everybody uses SimHeaven, thus would get turbulence where no ground feature exists in their XP12. He was also concerned about the FPS impact, but my sim was running fine, with my ProAtmosphere addon using approx 1 fps. I do expect to return and finish ProAtmosphere without the gliding aspects (although orographic lift is working great). I am 95 percent a GA flyer in XP12 so the airport environment was very important to me. Watch this space after I finish AutoTrees!