Jump to content


- - - - -

Does Your Seattle Look Sparse? (56k Warning)


  • Please log in to reply
17 replies to this topic

#1 162db

162db

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 421 posts
  • Location:USA

Posted 12 February 2012 - 10:42 PM

How about this. A works in progress by a few avsimmers.

Posted Image

#2 Daube

Daube

    Private Pilot - IFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 884 posts

Posted 13 February 2012 - 05:17 AM

Impressive !
Will they try to add some trees too ?
And what is the impact on the performance with such dense buildings ?

#3 Spam

Spam

    Commercial Pilot

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • 1,298 posts
  • Location:EGFF

Posted 13 February 2012 - 08:58 AM

Nice! yea some trees would really finish it off!

#4 162db

162db

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 421 posts
  • Location:USA

Posted 13 February 2012 - 02:55 PM

View PostDaube, on Feb 13 2012, 03:17 AM, said:

Impressive !
Will they try to add some trees too ?
And what is the impact on the performance with such dense buildings ?

I'm pretty sure no trees are in the plan. That's probably something that the X-Plane team themselves would have to work on since it would affect global and not just a certain area, no? As far as I know, it's an ongoing collaborative effort between 3 avsimmers. One guy is working on the smaller buildings and the other two are working on the skyscrapers and cranes. I know the performance hit is zero with the skyscrapers. I'm not sure about all the smaller buildings but I think the guy working on that said the performance hit was very small if any. Here's some vids. Should give you an idea of performance. Keep in mind these guys are on slower systems.

T_0nxgxnwL0

WOcd78ezUVE

Edited by 162db, 13 February 2012 - 03:06 PM.


#5 LA_PHX

LA_PHX

    Orville Reincarnate

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 5,783 posts

Posted 13 February 2012 - 04:17 PM

Looks weird without any trees - makes the buildings just stick out too much.

Hopefully that can get sorted out.

#6 HighFlyin

HighFlyin

    Airline Transport Pilot

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 2,920 posts
  • Location:Romper Room

Posted 13 February 2012 - 04:41 PM

The roads just bug me. I can't put my finger on it. They look like something out of a video game from 1997.

Everything else looks great though.

#7 Daube

Daube

    Private Pilot - IFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPip
  • 884 posts

Posted 13 February 2012 - 05:13 PM

It looks really good. There are just two things that are annoying me, appart from the lack of trees of course:
- the default ground texture for cities is green. That's not so good, because these building groups seem to be just hovering over a Golf course :/ I think the global visual impression would be improved if something could be done to this city ground. Less grass and more concrete, excepted for parks.
- in the night flying video, I think the roads look good, just like their lights and all these 3D lights around. However, the amount of light generated by the buildings and the street lights is too low ! The buildings are almost invisible, even though some windows have lights on... It's too dark. I understand they want to avoid looking like FSX at all costs, but this is just too extreme, they have to find a better balance :hrmm:

#8 162db

162db

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 421 posts
  • Location:USA

Posted 13 February 2012 - 10:55 PM

View PostDaube, on Feb 13 2012, 03:13 PM, said:

It looks really good. There are just two things that are annoying me, appart from the lack of trees of course:
- the default ground texture for cities is green. That's not so good, because these building groups seem to be just hovering over a Golf course :/ I think the global visual impression would be improved if something could be done to this city ground. Less grass and more concrete, excepted for parks.
- in the night flying video, I think the roads look good, just like their lights and all these 3D lights around. However, the amount of light generated by the buildings and the street lights is too low ! The buildings are almost invisible, even though some windows have lights on... It's too dark. I understand they want to avoid looking like FSX at all costs, but this is just too extreme, they have to find a better balance :hrmm:

Indeed there needs to be some separate texture sets for deserts, cities, urban areas, etc... These guys are just working on improving the city of Seattle by adding objects though. Maybe someone else will come along with texture sets or maybe the X-Plane team will implement those in a later release, who knows. About the building lighting, it looks like whoever recorded those vids has problems with brightness in general. Some scenes it looks fine, others it looks a bit dim. Sure the guys who are modeling the skyscrapers could have added more lighting but I think it looks fine.

All in all it's a heck of a fine job considering these guys are just simulator enthusiasts and not affiliated in any way with the X-Plane team or any scenery design team. Just imagine what could happen if more talented individuals from the community got involved.

Regarding trees, now that I think about it, in that screenshot above, it's possible he had the tree settings turned down because I don't see any trees even beyond the city and I know XP 10 can be full of trees with higher settings. I remember he said he had objects set to totally insane but didn't mention anything about trees. I'm just going to assume he turned down the tree settings solely to focus on buildings, I'll download the files when the projects are finished and post some screens.

#9 Spam

Spam

    Commercial Pilot

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • 1,298 posts
  • Location:EGFF

Posted 14 February 2012 - 06:43 AM

Yea i agree. They need to impliment a variety of base landclass texture for cities and get rid og that green..

#10 Jonay

Jonay

    Airline Transport Pilot

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 2,490 posts
  • Location:Alba

Posted 14 February 2012 - 06:49 AM

On the whole - how easy is XP development vs. FSX development?

I've done some scenery stuff with FSX and FS9, but the gMax method really gets me. And the fact that the only copies of 3DSMax that I have access too are too new for the SDK to be compatible with doesn't help.

I'd certainly be interested in doing similar things with my home area.

Edited by Jonay, 14 February 2012 - 06:50 AM.


#11 CaptainG37

CaptainG37

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 492 posts

Posted 14 February 2012 - 06:55 AM

X Plane officially supports AC3D but another programmer made export scripts for Blender.  You could model in 3DS Max (any version) and export in wavefront.obj format, THEN, import the new obj file into Blender, then export from there in the native x plane obj8 format using x plane scripts, THEN, open the new obj8 files in X-Planes Overlay Editor and position them.  Same thing with AC3D.  I have heard AC3D is easier to work with than Blender.

Edited by CaptainG37, 14 February 2012 - 06:56 AM.


#12 Jonay

Jonay

    Airline Transport Pilot

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 2,490 posts
  • Location:Alba

Posted 14 February 2012 - 07:02 AM

View PostCaptainG37, on Feb 14 2012, 11:55 AM, said:

X Plane officially supports AC3D but another programmer made export scripts for Blender.  You could model in 3DS Max (any version) and export in wavefront.obj format, THEN, import the new obj file into Blender, then export from there in the native x plane obj8 format using x plane scripts, THEN, open the new obj8 files in X-Planes Overlay Editor and position them.  Same thing with AC3D.  I have heard AC3D is easier to work with than Blender.

:hrmm:

#13 CaptainG37

CaptainG37

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 492 posts

Posted 14 February 2012 - 07:10 AM

It's really easy once you run through it once or twice.
:hrmm:

#14 162db

162db

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 421 posts
  • Location:USA

Posted 15 February 2012 - 08:01 PM

View PostJonay, on Feb 14 2012, 04:49 AM, said:

On the whole - how easy is XP development vs. FSX development?

I've done some scenery stuff with FSX and FS9, but the gMax method really gets me. And the fact that the only copies of 3DSMax that I have access too are too new for the SDK to be compatible with doesn't help.

I'd certainly be interested in doing similar things with my home area.

I'm not a scenery designer so I'm not sure about details or how much work it would involve. But the guys working on this project were mentioning something called Google Warehouses and shapefiles.

#15 Brandon-M

Brandon-M

    Orville Reincarnate

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 7,912 posts
  • Location:Canada - Calgary

Posted 15 February 2012 - 08:25 PM

You can probably stop making "56K warnings" ... :hrmm:

I don't think internet that slow is very common any more

#16 EduardoSpaz

EduardoSpaz

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 332 posts
  • Location:Chicago, Illinois

Posted 23 February 2012 - 12:18 AM

it looks like your flying through one of those old sim city games.  Doesnt look good to me at all.

#17 CaptainG37

CaptainG37

    Private Pilot - VFR

  • Members
  • PipPipPip
  • 492 posts

Posted 23 February 2012 - 03:38 AM

This photo looks like sim city as well.  Except it's a real photo.
:hrmm:

Posted Image

Edited by CaptainG37, 23 February 2012 - 03:43 AM.


#18 LA_PHX

LA_PHX

    Orville Reincarnate

  • Members
  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 5,783 posts

Posted 23 February 2012 - 10:57 AM

View PostCaptainG37, on Feb 23 2012, 01:38 AM, said:

This photo looks like sim city as well.
No, not really.  But when you just have buildings plastered on monotone green (almost), it looks odd.