260 replies to this topic

[Peter Wilding]

Aerosimultions LTD are now in development of ground textures and super HD cloud texture up to 4096 in resolution.

Clouds shown are mastered at 4096 and will be available soon as  free update to FEX users. In game they can be sized down to 256 if requried.

Here are some examples of ground textures first.








Hope you enjoy this early preview.

Please keep in mind there is not yet autogen developed and screens are not final in colour or detail. The first region will be Europe and we are doing the world and aim to complete the world in less than a year.

Peter


And some clouds at 4096. Pay attention to edge detail and note how sharp edges are right in to the distance as well as the subtle lighting this allows.

[JetBlast]

Magic  
any plans for middle east, middle east is the most neglected scenery in FSX, would be great to see some development for it

[Peter Wilding]

yes, we wil cover the middle East also. It is down to supply and demand though which is why you tend to suffer some neglect at times.

[LeadBalloon]

This looks absolutely outstanding Peter - very exciting times ahead  

[Peter Wilding]

Thanks, we are very excited too.

[pwheeler]

Hi Peter,

Looks great. Will this be landclass based textures or photo textures? If its landclass will you be providing custom landclass or will the textures overwrite the originals?

Cheers,

Paul

[Hypofx]

AMAIZING i love FEX im using it every day

[FSRobert]

Man, this hobby just never stops, gotta love it.

...seems autogen is not needed according to that shot!

[synecdoche]

This looks great. FEX was first past the post with many of the features that others have passed off as 'new' or 'revolutionary' and it's good to see that you're pushing the boundaries of what has been done again.

Please keep the screenshots coming! And please don't be tempted to make them look 'arty': I for one would like to see what the new clouds/ground textures look like in normal situations and not in composed screenshots with generous cloud backlighting etc.

Thanks!

[Peter Wilding]

pwheeler, on Mar 7 2008, 10:03 AM, said:

Hi Peter,

Looks great. Will this be landclass based textures or photo textures? If its landclass will you be providing custom landclass or will the textures overwrite the originals?

Cheers,

Paul

Good question Paul,

These are replacement textures for FSX that use landclass and autogen. UTX and any landclass package will work seamlessly with it. Yes, the textures we show are photo-real but so are fSX deafault textures as are other replacement texture packages.

What is different with our package here is that the very high quality allows much lower level flying and the 3D feel remains good right down to around 300 feet AGL. A normal standard 1.2 metre solution needs to get to around 1,500 AGL before things start to look really sharp. It just does not work well for low level flying and that's where the real fun is.

We will be doing land class solutions also but we do feel there are plenty of good landclass packages out there.

We will also provide some photo real areas that are larger and scenery to match for some air fields.

To start with we will provide a base pack that covers the world then gradually provide more detailed land class solutions for more accurate textures that are more region specific. We strongly feel though the right approach is both very high resolution and also to cover the world in the shortest time frame.

Thanks for the question.

synecdoche, on Mar 7 2008, 10:45 AM, said:

This looks great. FEX was first past the post with many of the features that others have passed off as 'new' or 'revolutionary' and it's good to see that you're pushing the boundaries of what has been done again.

Please keep the screenshots coming! And please don't be tempted to make them look 'arty': I for one would like to see what the new clouds/ground textures look like in normal situations and not in composed screenshots with generous cloud backlighting etc.

Thanks!

Thanks for that. Yes, we have been subject to the "new revolutionary" hype.

4096 super high definition really is new and will be available very soon for a free update to FEX. There is a huge number of textures and as I'm sure you can appreciate we could not disclose this too early or we would have been copied.

In my opinion I was never happy with going in the 1.2 metre direction with ground textures which is why I'm going it alone this time (with Chris Norris) and keeping it firmly in Aerosimulations camp.

FSRobert, on Mar 7 2008, 10:30 AM, said:

Man, this hobby just never stops, gotta love it.

...seems autogen is not needed according to that shot!

Yes, I share the view that at this kind of resolution autogen is less needed. We do recognize though that plenty of people like to use autogen so it will be provided.

On a personal level I honestly don't like to use autogen at the best of times as for me even the default FSX textures look photo-real to me and are plently good enough for 1.2 metre. Yes, they can be improved but the gain vs the time is not really worth it.

It makes much more sense to me to work on higher quality stuff.

No doubt there will be some competition even at the higher resolutions we are using but as always we will do are best to keep some real surprises ready for final release.

synecdoche, on Mar 7 2008, 10:45 AM, said:

This looks great. FEX was first past the post with many of the features that others have passed off as 'new' or 'revolutionary' and it's good to see that you're pushing the boundaries of what has been done again.

Please keep the screenshots coming! And please don't be tempted to make them look 'arty': I for one would like to see what the new clouds/ground textures look like in normal situations and not in composed screenshots with generous cloud backlighting etc.

Thanks!

Yes, I know what you mean with composed back lighting. This kind of thing is something I won't' do so don't worry. I know it's harder to win the admiration of the viewer/customer when we show simple in game no nonsense screen shots that just show clouds and in typical real situations. We are always debating this.

I want to be honest with how things look and though I agree my screen shots don't look amazing I know when people see them they can only see the clouds or the textures and not get suckered in to a magazine cover shot.

I'm fully on this same page as you. A breath of fresh air to my ears  

Hypofx, on Mar 7 2008, 10:09 AM, said:

AMAIZING i love FEX im using it every day

Thanks again and glad to hear this. I'm sure you'll love the new clouds and the new features in the package that is out really soon now. I'm guessing around 2 weeks.  

[alex330]

Peter, that's fantastic news, and your shots look just great!
I think it was Robert who said somewhere else "this hobby keeps getting better" - and here we see that this is just true!

[Peter Wilding]

alex330, on Mar 7 2008, 12:02 PM, said:

Peter, that's fantastic news, and your shots look just great!
I think it was Robert who said somewhere else "this hobby keeps getting better" - and here we see that this is just true!

Glad you like my shots but to be honest I don't impress some pepople as I'm told that I need to put more atmoshere in the like Tim does, who is a great screen shot taker, and work some magic in using more interesting planes some ground scenery, back ligting and so on. All that takes just ages to do and really, if I'm honest, I don't really enjoying takign screen shots and in particular I like to be dead honest about how things look typically in game.

well, maybe I'm doing it the right way.....? Who knows in the end.

[Hypofx]

Peter: keep them coming, fex was my first addon to fsx and its changed the whole world for me, just look at my post its always with fex:))))

[alex330]

Peter Wilding, on Mar 7 2008, 07:08 AM, said:

well, maybe I'm doing it the right way.....? Who knows in the end.

Ah, maybe there is just no right or wrong . Which of course means you've got everything right, even if it sounds paradox
To be honest, I like both approaches.
I like the artistic screenshots and I like the way you show what can be expected.
There should be enough mature users out there who just know that it all depends on computing power on the one hand and on the screenshot composition on the other hand.

As an example, when I see Mango's screenshots I know things won't look the same on my system, but still they give me an idea of what's possible.
But when you tell me, your shots are made to reflect the nature of the product without artistics around, that's just great too, and very accountable.

Anyway, just my two cents.

But I hope everyone is with me when I say "keep up the great work"

[FSRobert]

How will all this affect the programs UTX and GEX. ?

[synecdoche]

alex330, on Mar 7 2008, 12:22 PM, said:

Peter Wilding, on Mar 7 2008, 07:08 AM, said:

well, maybe I'm doing it the right way.....? Who knows in the end.

Ah, maybe there is just no right or wrong . Which of course means you've got everything right, even if it sounds paradox
To be honest, I like both approaches.
I like the artistic screenshots and I like the way you show what can be expected.
There should be enough mature users out there who just know that it all depends on computing power on the one hand and on the screenshot composition on the other hand.

I agree. Don't get me wrong, I love the great screenshots posted by Tim and Mango, but when I'm actually looking to buy something I like to see it in plain daylight! Especially because demos of these products aren't available or are impossible.

[Peter Wilding]

Peter Wilding, on Mar 7 2008, 12:08 PM, said:

alex330, on Mar 7 2008, 12:02 PM, said:

Peter, that's fantastic news, and your shots look just great!
I think it was Robert who said somewhere else "this hobby keeps getting better" - and here we see that this is just true!

Glad you like my shots but to be honest I don't impress some pepople as I'm told that I need to put more atmoshere in the like Tim does, who is a great screen shot taker, and work some magic in using more interesting planes some ground scenery, back ligting and so on. All that takes just ages to do and really, if I'm honest, I don't really enjoying takign screen shots and in particular I like to be dead honest about how things look typically in game.

well, maybe I'm doing it the right way.....? Who knows in the end.

Thanks man, that's why it's so important to us we look after the customer. Way to go man.

[FSRobert]

Peter, you seemed not to see my question...I mean you answered two replies but not mine.  

...here it is again: How will all this affect programs like UTX and GEX?

[Peter Wilding]

alex330, on Mar 7 2008, 12:22 PM, said:

Peter Wilding, on Mar 7 2008, 07:08 AM, said:

well, maybe I'm doing it the right way.....? Who knows in the end.

Ah, maybe there is just no right or wrong . Which of course means you've got everything right, even if it sounds paradox
To be honest, I like both approaches.
I like the artistic screenshots and I like the way you show what can be expected.
There should be enough mature users out there who just know that it all depends on computing power on the one hand and on the screenshot composition on the other hand.

As an example, when I see Mango's screenshots I know things won't look the same on my system, but still they give me an idea of what's possible.
But when you tell me, your shots are made to reflect the nature of the product without artistics around, that's just great too, and very accountable.

Anyway, just my two cents.

But I hope everyone is with me when I say "keep up the great work"

FSRobert, on Mar 7 2008, 12:43 PM, said:

Peter, you seemed not to see my question...I mean you answered two replies but not mine.  

...here it is again: How will all this affect programs like UTX and GEX?

I can't comment on this as I'll get in to trouble.   Not ignoring you BTW: I did miss the first time you posted. Man I wish I could just be myself and say what I want to but I can't. Please understand this.

Edited by Peter Wilding, 07 March 2008 - 07:56 AM.

[WebMaximus]

I realize this is probably a very stupid question so please forgive me for that but those ground textures shown in the top of this thread...are those the kind of textures we can expect for all over Europe or only for specific places?

As I understood the screenshots here are not autogen and autogen are what we will see for all places not covered by local specific textures like the ones shown here? And if that is correct, will you be able to show us what the autogen will look like? Currently I'm using GEX and that is all improved autogen, correct?

An amazing virtual world this is that's for sure  

Best,

Richard