It’s one of the best posts I’ve read for ages, a must-read! I really hope this video makes Ben and the team HAPPY NOT GRUMPY! Other than some minor quibbles, the latest beta is running sweetly! No need to sell your hair to a wig shop….yet!
Regarding the Wellington NZ OSM buildings, I’ll be customising the day textures, including roof colours, to the more ‘varied’ look of NZ.
X-Plane only $69.99 now. More beta updates. Alabeo. More crazy surprises we can’t tell you about. Oh, and MS Flight has a 6 hour sale, you can get their entire package, all planes, scenery and add ons for just $16.99. Thankyou MS, for charging me full price just weeks ago, really good strategy that. At least we all now know their marketing strategy. Walmart/McDonalds beware.
Andras has posted this alert on the forums, so if you missed it, I’m posting here too. To me it looks a major improvement to the areas he’s covered! Can’t wait to try it myself, but my day job beckons.
From Andras:
Today I have something new for X-Plane 10. A scenery, which tries to improve the look of the less “populated” areas of the default (or HD Mesh (http://www.alpilotx.net/downloads/x-plane-10-hd-scenery-mesh/)) Global Scenery, namely the agricultural areas, grasslands and pastures (the place, which can be wast and empty … especially in regions like the US Mid West etc.).
This new scenery will add random tree lines along many-many roads and some – hopefully – well placed farms in the landscape (at least in the continental USA and Europe). After the download, you might be quite surprised by how some regions of the Global Scenery look (as a starter, try some random location in the US Mid West).
WHAT I DID TODAY COZ MY 10.10b VERSION HAS BAD FPS ISSUES
As mentioned earlier, I’ve been working on some improved _lit textures for Benny’s amazing OSM2xp project. As usual, it was a lot more involved than I thought, just due to the sheer quantity of textures to amend – 9 full building .png sheets, each with their own character. Took most of this Saturday to do it. Twice, as I wasn’t happy the first time. Don’t tell my psych I did that..
Here’s a final before and after comparison of what’s been done:
Before:
After:
Every time I revisit Benny’s project, I find something new and exciting, a potential that I can’t quite grasp. Like the potential for use in the generation of dense cities. Or in this case, the potential to absolutely, insanely fill an urban area with buildings that CAN look pretty good. Especially at night.
Well ladies and gent-eels, I think it’s finally hit me, and hopefully others! Basically, a heap of work up-front (in preparation of the textures) pays off big-time. I haven’t even begun thinking of the day textures, but I reckon someone else with more time will create some even more impressive day textures. Benny’s files only use 1024 textures, imagine what you could do with 2048. Vary the roof colours and textures more. Apply more grime, more filth, to give that authentic slum look we all hanker for. More for-sale signs to the side. Vagrants. Squatters. All the features a good suburb should have.
A large negative point about the OSM scenery has been offset by applying varied colours to the night textures. Many of the highrise office blocks looked bland, all the same yellow, washed out colour. Now we see lovely varieties, with that ‘noise’ detracting from the uniform shapes.
The files have been added to the .org, get them here now. [edit - this is MY work, please do not use it for any payware whatsoever & usual attributions if used in freeware & redistributed, thank you]
When Benny has finished another high priority task, he might add these textures to his tool so that any area generated will have the textures applied. For now, if you copy all the .lit textures into the facades directory and replace whatever’s there, you should be right.
The area I’ve featured is Oahu, the OSM2xp base files available at Benny’s site (excluding the new night textures for now). I was surprised at how thoroughly the OSM data had been completed for Hawaii, but Benny reminded me that unfortunately, the OSM building data is, indeed, pretty blank. The sneaky guy had obtained yet another free source of building location data in the form of a ‘shapefile’, and of course, whipped up a routine to batch convert these shapefiles into an OSM readable format (luckily there are a few pre-programmed converters out there).
So alas, there continue to be many cities without ‘dense’ OSM building data. As a result, I feel this shapefile idea has a heap of potential. After a lunchtime research session, I’ve identified a few ideas that might assist in filling up a few cities. Yet another huge project, with a big learning curve – I’ll probably take it on in my retirement in anywhere between 5 and 25 yrs…
Benny has promised an update on some more secret plans he has, the mind boggles. I know of one cool idea (hehe, I asked him for it & he said he’d already started work on it), but I’d rather give him the honour to mention it since he’s the programmer!
10.10b for ME
Funny isn’t it, everyone is reporting so many different experiences. The joystick bug made me chuckle, not just because it didn’t affect me, but because having a joystick connected to your pc….is pretty essential for most eh! I even saw one poor guy say ‘which of the 15 controllers do I disconnect?!
Myself, I’m seeing a 10 fps reduction, pretty well unflyable in the 747 at KSEA (my benchmark) with HDR on and still crappy with it off. Weird, flying around Oahu with the 50 trillion facades, with HDR on, I was getting a nice 22 fps in the King Air. But in the 747, in YMML with NO airport or add ons, I was getting 11 fps with HDR on.
Oh well, who cares. Poor Ben and the guys will wade through all the snazzy new crash reports and as usual, address all the major issues. I just see this as a hiccup on the way to 64 bit. I think (I don’t KNOW, my tiny brain can’t comprehend what these geniuses are really doing) they are recoding all the hdr and other widget-thingamybobbits in readiness for the 64 bit environment.
Most of you will probably go back to 10.05, it was certainly running very sweetly. Me, I’ll stay on the ‘bleeding edge’ for the sake of seeing the ‘latest’. Oh, and it’ll keep me doing the scenery work and not flying too much!
Maybe Ben is finally getting his/our way. He always says that X-Plane is primarily a scenery generator, the planes and craft are just convenient ways to review your scenery edits!
Please let me know what you think of the night textures, don’t hesitate to ask any questions or, more importantly, start working on 2048 snazzy day textures!
Oh, a last note – I haven’t gone off-topic for ooh, 2 posts or more! I will die a happy man if the crew behind ‘Danger 5′ (from Adelaide, Australia, of all places!) don’t become outrageous mega-international hits. Check out Snippet 1 of this crazy series I’ll inflict on you periodically. It must be my warped sense of humour, but a sci-fi, Bond-homage about a secret team out to assassinate Hitler, set in the 60s (!!!), with major nods to the Thunderbirds, Godzilla and all B-C-D Grade movies, it’s right up my alley!
Apols for the quality, I filmed it on my mobile phone, in-between fits of laughter.
As I’ve been experimenting with Openstreetmap recently, having some chats with Mr OSM2xp, Benny and exploring its considerable possibilities, I decided to visit my local area and add a few more mapped objects. It’s quite relaxing in some perverse sort of way! Plus you get to be ‘famous’, with your username plastered all over a publicly available map. E.g., I was exploring Oahu, Honolulu Int’l yesterday, and can see that Arti has been busy updating that part of the world!
Anyway, here’s a screenshot of an amazing little tool I found, called “Vespucci’ (You Americans should know the significance of that name!)
It’s only available for Android phones unfortunately (last time I checked). Aw shucks, guess who’s enjoying his Sony Xperia Arc S Android? Moi! Now I’ll enjoy it even more! It’s an incredible, simple little app. You can ADD and EDIT any new buildings/ objects of interest, save your edits offline, even upload them back up to OSM as bulk edits. At this rate I’ll be wishing for more train outages.
Awhile ago I tried in vain to find an iOS app that allowed editing of the maps, to no avail. Holler if you find one.
Moving from iPhone to Android is definitely a step backwards when it comes to stability. Between major updates of my phone’s software, the Gmail and browser apps were crashing far too often. Now things are peachy, it’s real smooth and I only get a crash once a day. (?!!?) My phone’s specs aren’t the greatest though, I probably push its capabilities a bit. These small quibbles are only SMALL, in comparison to its HUGE & pretty 4.2 inch screen, and extremely svelte, light profile. Heck, I can even put it in my shirt pocket without noticing it. Apple had better improve things with the upcoming iPhone 5 ( or 4.5Si ?)
If our family didn’t have another iPhone and 3 (THREE!) iPads, I wouldn’t be saying all this. Apple stuff is definitely amazing and a joy to use. I love my iPad 2 (wifey has the 3, and the 1 will stay for old times’ sake).
Now though, I have the ultimate combo – sit in a cafe, browse the web and emails on the basic iPad 2 with no 3G, but TETHERED to my Android 3G. Great stuff. At this rate, the new Samsung Galaxy S3 with its 4.8 inch screen is looking very tempting.
It’s been a confusing week for this member of the Chaos Manor crew, what with all the hype over Alaska for MS Flight and recent Xplane developments. I am now officially a very confused simmer, not knowing where to turn to next!
I’ll be doing a followup report for Flight soon, however I can already let you know that while PARTS of Alaska are stunning, I returned from a far-flung map tour rather ashen-faced, dumbfounded at the really awful treatment of some of the less visited environs – read an awful lot of the northern reaches. Dare I say that some of the airfields look emptier than a standard Xplane install of outer-Mongolia? I got quite annoyed at this cheat by MS, really they were far better off releasing a smaller section of Alaska at uniform quality, rather than misleading the fans with an impression that the whole State was as good as Sitka for example. Enough of my rant!
Back to the magnificent ‘consistency’ of Xplane!…
OSM2xp
A few of us have seen the great videos of Benny’s OSM2xp in action recently, eg this video. It seems that each month, as the OSM mapping data is gradually being updated, the density and detail of the OSM buildings generated by Benny’s amazing tool is improved exponentially.
For those still new to Xplane (and there are a surprising no. of you who come here to ask questions, welcome!), OSM2xp is a fairly easy tool that allows you to log on to the OSM site and extract an area’s mapping data, including every single darned building, including height, shape and position, and automagically create basic but pretty convincing building and objects sceneries for your selected area. Even better, Benny’s site has a section that is even easier, with already exported scenery files ready for download and simple placement in your Custom Scenery folder. Too easy!
After seeing some recent videos and screenshots (many from the prolific MdMax from France), I thought I’d give Hawaii a go. OMG, bloody bewdy! Really densely packed buildings scattered all over Oahu. In combination with Realscenery Oahu Enhanced photoscenery, it’s very impressive! As you can see.
I had a ‘spare’ couple of hours today, so went about addressing an issue that still annoyed me about the OSM2xp tool. Its default textures used for the buildings. They’re an impressive first effort, but I felt the night textures in particular needed some more subtle treatment. The standard _LIT textures are far too bright and uniform for me. Here’s a before and after comparison:
Before:
After:
It was a pain, as usual, to get it remotely right, but I like to think I’ve added value to the OSM files. Tell me what you think! I’ve emailed Benny and we may work on it a little more, especially to tweak the light positions for how his facades are specced (as a result some of my light positions are far too uniform).
In the meantime, I’ve posted the 3 .PNG files to this link (Copyright Simon W 2012, no use in payware approved, usual attribution requirements apply) so you can preview the change if interested. Just go into any scenery file available at Benny’s download site, e.g. Hawaii, go into the facades directory and rename the 3 original files as ‘_orig’ or whatever. Then paste my 3 into that directory. Done.
Newsflash – Benny has just contacted me, he informs me that most of the files generated in his repository were made with his version 1 of OSM2xp, with new texture files used for version 2. Fortunately the night textures are better, but not as good as mine . Maybe! Looks like I’ll have to do another version for his V2 textures.
So be aware, if you replace the LIT textures in a directory generated with the V2 tool, you may get very strange looking results indeed.
Doing this texturing was so easy, yet it has a huge effect across any similar scenery. It makes me think that I, or more likely someone else with more time, could ‘dirty up’ the day textures. Even better, I’m wondering what the performance impact of increasing the texture size would be, to get higher-rez, better quality shadow & material effects in. The files are currently 1024 by 1024. Might be some room to move? As ever, it would be a large job, as you would need to get the positions perfect to match with the spec of the facade file. If you have to ask why, don’t bother! It’s all about getting the windows and door positions, for all 28 or so house textures, EXACT. Or totally re-doing the facade calculations.
Oh well, maybe after the Red Centre project..
Here’s a quick demo video I did of the night textures and the ‘Van, but damn, as my xplane install is pretty new, I forgot to increase the video resolution settings. Sorry! So I gave it an ‘Ektachrome’ look, for old-time’s sake eh Chip!
Carenado’s Grand Caravan C208B
Chip and FT56 have covered this plane pretty thoroughly before, I’m just the straggler – so no huge detailed review from me. Not that I do many of those anyway!
What do I think of it? Superb, wonderful, eye-gougingly detailed, a true testament to Dan Klaue’s skills and efforts working with Carenado to get it out in a top-notch condition. It’s my new favourite plane for X-plane, so versatile, pretty fast and handles real nice. Almost impossible to stall (well, almost..). Very pronounced attitude changes on flaps adjustments, feels good to me. FPS performance is fine with me, I didn’t have any serious slow down as mentioned by FT. Then again, I do have a better video card.
I flew this plane straight after a long depressing explore of Alaska’s outskirts in MS Flight. I literally burst out laughing on first load, it’s so detailed and lovingly created compared to the Flight planes! I still enjoy Flight, but it’s obviously a few rungs below X-Plane on the ‘Enthusiast Ultra accurate sim’ scale. This Carenado is at the top of that scale, reeking of enthusiasm and love, hours spent on each gauge and as you’ll see, even the seats.
As a born fiddler, button-pusher and open/closerer, all the doors and luggage panels are my dream! Just wonderful. Haven’t bought it yet? Loser Go get it at the .org or Carenado sites.
Some of my favourite features highlighted in the pics below:
The armrest and access ladder flip out on the door opening:
The world’s most manipulate-able sunvisor! Fiddle-city:
Look at the details – even the chair mounts!
The interior glass reflections are superb. Look for the reflection of the vent on the top of the glare shield to the right of this image. You may have to view full size and most likely not on your tiny iPhone screen. Reflections are everywhere in this craft:
Another chair image. We just love it when developers pay this much attention to detail:
One of Simmo’s patented camera angles, first used on Tom’s Falco all those yrs ago. Just as effective on the ‘Van
MOVING THE BLOG
This is advance notice that some time next week, probably later, we will be moving to a self-hosted site, with the new name ‘www.xsimreviews.com’ Exciting eh! Due to our growth and need to attract a little sponsorship and donations to keep us covering all that is good in Sim-dom, we need to get off the excellent WordPress.com host. Plus the fact that all of Chip’s empty cider bottles are fouling the air and FT’s half-eaten Souvlakis have grown new life forms. We just gotta leave the old digs!
Fortunately we have decided to get WordPress to do the transfer for us, so all our images, links and more importantly, your own contributions will remain in the new site. Once the new site is up and running properly, we will cease posting here, moving straight over to the newly painted Manor. Wish us luck, or else it’ll be one real blank start to the new financial year!
As we’ve said before, we’ll be keeping up all the core xplane coverage, but the wider name will sum up our intended coverage of all things good in the future of simming. We’re getting a few visitors from other sims like Flight and DCS, great for everyone who is willing to have an open mind and wallet! Even better for the devs and sim proprietors, who will gain from being able to show their beauties to other potential customers.
Happy simming, wishing everyone a happy version 10.10 and see you at xsimreviews.com soon, if all goes well!
Khamsin has just uploaded this most revealing tour of his creative island scenery. I even spotted a few parking spots I missed in my first tour, off to check them out…
If only xplane had easy, chaotic multiplayer action, I could destroy all his hard work!
Hi everyone, as promised I’ve recommenced work on adjusting the terrain textures for Australia’s Red Centre. Even I am surprised at how quickly I’m plowing through matters in between flights. It reminds me of how de-motivated I must have become last year. Now I’m really tackling the challenge with a different, committed way of thinking. Rather than plodding through it, I’m flying a bit first, then doing short bursts. After a few updates you’ll realise why!
In general, I am not changing Albert’s beautiful texture files. The detail he uses seems fine. But The files need SIGNIFICANT colour, brightness and contrast correction.
So below is a single example of what is being done with every one of the 27 texture files that I have identified as being used in the Alice Springs tile area. I may find more files, if unlucky.
I’m attempting to keep all the corrections to the same level for all files, to help the look in-sim and ease the adjustment process.
I’ve already seen that substantial editing of a few of Albert’s files may still be required, especially for some of the hilly textures, that in Red Oz do not tend to have verdant green pastures. But first I must prove that I’ve edited all required files and that I can get a ‘feel’ for how it’s all combining, before starting the fiddly editing.
The Photoshop editing:
This can be done in GIMP too.
Original file:
First I use the colour replace tool to apply weedkiller and a few millennia of drought to Albert’s often lush green highlights. I’d love to know how to do this via layers in PS, but haven’t found out how yet. The other adjustments use layers, to ease later adjustment:
Next I adjust the overall hue of the file, giving it the first red feel:
Then, as I’ve found the in-sim look of the textures far too bright, I reduce the brightness and increase contrast quite a lot. Im dreading the review of the overall terrain look, I expect to be making a few tweaks to this setting. Thank god for layers! :
Lastly, theres a final red highlights hue adjustment, again it looks quite exaggerated here but more subtle in sim:
If I need to make more adjustments, they’ll need to be repeated 27 times or more each cycle. Then compare in-sim, possibly only adjusting certain textures for blending purposes. Fun stuff, it is a very large task indeed. Then again, it’ll change a very large part of the world!
The next update will cover the .ter and pol. file structure and editing process, the most mind-numbing bit.
Ok, ok, I did fly MS Flight for 10 minutes today! Just to check out the new Trackir functions (sweet as) and the smoother online experience (lag-city is now gone).
Then I went straight back to the sexy terrain work, as you see here.
Andras and Albert, I do not know how you do it! We are all very grateful! It’s only early hours getting back into it, but I’ve almost worked out a workflow. I never thought my spreadsheet formula skills in the accounting work I do would be used in X-Plane! Finally, all those years of learning are worth it. Stuff the day job though, THIS is what “=CONCATENATE(“EXPORT EXCLUDE”,” “,B2,” “,O2)” was made for!! Gnarly Dudes!
Jarek from Poland notified us of his amazing looking scenery demo video, it’s very impressive along with the above screenshots. Here’s the video:
Yes it’s a long video, but if you drag through quickly, you’ll see the variety and detail of the scenery objects. Benny’s OSM2xp program has been used to full effect here! Watch some of the night scenes, really sinister looking stuff!
His youtube intro says:
“Flight simulation breaktrough. X-plane 10 with presented ultra high quality scenery [0.1 m/px] becomes useful also in very low VFR flights (especially for helicopter pilots practising their routes over cities).
3D buildings and trees were generated basing on OpenStreetMap data by osm2xp program. Roads and railroad tracks were generated analogically by XPOSM. Every 3D scenery of polish airports is a product designed for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and converted with Fs2xplane (and additionaly with overlayEditor and WED).
I used my own program which improves legibility of scenery textures (contrast and color): http://jm.iq.pl/graf/cmp.jpg ”
We’ll be keeping in touch with Jarek and let you know when he makes it available.
Thanks to twitter and Tom @fsnewsbrief, I just tried the surprisingly capable Google Earth Flight Simulator Online, available for free here.
It’s a GEearth plugin, and lets you fly all manner of different aircraft, ONLINE, with others, in the simplest of ways. The GE imagery is not the best, but in parts it’s better than alot of sims! It’s the right price. Finally, my work hours can be productive
The bonus is that it also uses the GEarth Google Warehouse buildings, so the vista can be pretty impressive. A warning though, I bet it needs a quick internet connection to work well.
Maybe this is why Orbx is having a 44% off sale for the rest of the month? ‘Last Ever Orbx Sale’ ? What, MS Flight and Xplane too good for them? Hehe..
On a serious note, I do have quite a few Orbx sceneries. Hardly use them nowadays, since FSX still runs like a dog for me and I loathe its flight model. So a worrying trend my end of the world – I’m starting to uninstall the least used sceneries (starting with PNW, it really is overhyped in my opinion), to make room for MS Flight and any other installs on my SSD drive. That’s the reality guys!
Here’s some quick pics of GEFS online I took just now, buzzing Sydney and Manly Beach:
. Maybe! Looks like I’ll have to do another version for his V2 textures.
