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fabs79

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Posts posted by fabs79

  1. I always turn off PG because I hate the blurred, distorted look of the textures and geometry, and I think that the MSFS autogen is far superior to any other simulator, in that it correctly recreates building shapes, roof and sometimes even facade colors, something that can be achieved in P3D only by great but expensive products like the True Earth regions and you get that globally and out of the box in MSFS. Of course the variety could be improved but even as it is IMHO the autogen is the best of its kind. 

  2. 7 hours ago, John Dow said:

     

    The dev tried hard to get both PG on and off to work but PG just won't let that happen, so a decision had to go one way or the other.  PG won, because MSFS has developed places like Canberra where PG is pretty well mandatory.

     

    With PG off, there are many more problems that just the ends of the harbour bridge, many of the roads in the CBD are malformed and look worse than even the melted PG buildings.

    Thank you for the explanation John. It's sad that those compromises had to be made, for the Sydney Cityscape looked perfect before the Australia world update, so for those that own the Orbx Cityscapes things have actually gotten worse in those areas. But I believe that Frank did his best to adapt the product to the new circumstances. 

  3. 9 hours ago, wolfko said:

     

    I object. For me photogrammetry is one of the best festures of MSFS. Without it MSFS cities and autogen buildings look just like default P3d, FSX or XPlane.

     

     

    For me Photogrammetry looks like a city has been hit by a nuclear blast. The geometry is distorted, the colors desaturated, trees look like gelatinous blobs or, like the palm trees in Santa Barbara, like lava columns. And check out the bridges in Portland to see what PG just cannot do. And comparing the autogen to the one in P3D or fsx is laughable, those were just square blocks of roughly the size of the real building but nothing more. The AI generated autogen in MSFS has the correct shape, size, roof color, often facade color, height and sometimes even correct roof type (gabled, flat). Only the Orbx true earth regions in P3D had comparable accuracy when it came to autogen, and together with some handmade significant Landmark buildings the MSFS autogen provides a very good impression of a city, but compared to PG with vibrant colors, straight geometry and great performance. Just try flying from somewhere further away into a PG city that you've never been to before so it's not in your cache. On my system the PG slowly loads in higher detailed LODs while I fly over the city, which leads to continuous morphing of the shapes below. Maybe it's better with a faster computer, but even when the city is fully loaded the textures and geometry still hurt my eyes. I was born and raised in Freiburg, so I decided to give the PG a try there and immediately turned it off again even before I took off from EDTF because even from my parking position I could see those horrible surrealistic shapes the sim throws at me. With PG off I can still recognize the suburbs, small lakes and parks, train stations and instantly spot the Freiburg Cathedral as it is a custom model, and I prefer that over PG every day. But I realize that I'm the minority here and that most people are excited to see their own house or local pub even if they look like they've been built by Salvador Dali. The good thing is that Asobo let's you choose what you prefer so everyone can be happy with what best fits their personal taste. 

    • Like 1
  4. The best thing about MSFS photogrammetry is that it can be turned off. It looks ugly, takes ages to load and hampers performance much more than the autogen buildings. I was disappointed to see that the Sydney cityscape update was created to work best with the default photogrammetry turned on and there's no option to adapt it to the situation when photogrammetry is turned off, but obviously most people don't seem to mind the awful quality of the PG and those who turn it off are the minority. 

  5. If it's only the time or weather dependency your aiming for, this can be done pretty easily by using Simobjects instead of scenery objects for your people - then you can add a visibility condition to your object, for example only visible between 8 am and 5 pm or only if it's not raining or snowing and only if the wind speed is below 15 knots or whatever. You can also tie several of these conditions together. Many freeware developers already do this, I did it for my own NFTP scenery found on flightsim.to, making ramp agents and passengers disappear at night on an airfield that doesn't have night operations and a static aircraft that's only visible during daytime to simulate it flying back home before night. The only downside is that every person needs to be its own Simobject which makes the xml file pretty large and convoluted when you have multiple objects. 

  6. Anthony Lynch is the guy behind the excellent freeware Ants Aussie Airports for FSX and P3D and also some very nice aircraft like the Tiger Noth, Tecnam P92 and others. 

    17 minutes ago, John Heaton said:

    I have them all except Ballina - but have no Knowledge of Anthony Lynch

     

    What Orbx Airports has he done?

     

    (I wish the bloke - people - who did Gold Coast airport and Cityscape would read this request 

    and get rid of the old 8 year old Bing scenery )

     

  7. 2 hours ago, tigermothpilot said:

    John Heaton..I have Ballina, and I reckon it's a beauty! Also Aldinga. I don't know about you, but I feel I detect the presence of Anthony Lynch in AuScene, but I could be wrong.

    I don't think they work together. Anthony regularly posts on fsdeveloper.com and I it seems he focuses on bringing his aircraft into the new sim. Auscene is also a regular contributor to the discussions there and they never mentioned a cooperation. I still don't know if the Auscene developer is the same who developed Adelaide for FSX years ago under the same brand name , if yes then he has significantly improved his skills since then. 

  8. 5 hours ago, Seanmo said:

    None of the above, because Throwback Thursday means low-effort freeware-quality releases. I learned the hard way that in spite of the great price, they are barely better than default in MSFS. Seeing any of the above properly made to Orbx usual MSFS standard would be great, but not as a Throwaway Thursday release.

    I agree with you, the reason I opted for NSTU to be ported over as a Throwback Thursday release is that I think it is the only way we'll ever see this kind of scenery at all in MSFS. I absolutely loved the package in P3D, but let's face it, there is not much demand for sceneries far out in the South Pacific, most people prefer US or Western European sceneries, maybe Australia and NZ too but that's about it. So Orbx will most likely not update the scenery to modern standards or invest a lot of money if they're not expecting high sales numbers. Heck, even freeware in this region is obviously not really successful, on flightsim.to there are only a handful of sceneries for Kiribati, Fiji and Tuvalu and my own two Tonga sceneries. None of them has accumulated more than a few hundred downloads, while US freeware airports regularly get a few thousands even if they were created with minimum effort. Long story short, I'd rather have a direct port of the NSTU pack even if it's not up to date but at least the buildings and overall feel are largely correct than stick with the awful default in this area. 

    • Upvote 3
  9. 54 minutes ago, Sniper31 said:

    For me, photogrammetry is off all the time....the melted trees and buildings absolutely ruin the immersion for me. I am a low and slow flyer, so I cannot ignore them....they always pull me out of immersion when I see them, and they are more then just a few. I don't miss photogrammetry at all. Definitely seems to be a user preference, whether you like it on or off.

    Same here, and opposed to what was said above I think the auto-generated cities without PG still look miles better than in any other simulator because the Blackshark AI accounts for the building footprint on the satellite imagery, roof color and other parameters. Of course there are still buildings that will look way out of place, that's why we need more regional POI products like GB Central to place those special buildings and structures that no AI could autogenerate, and for the largest and most important cities the Cityscape sceneries. This IMHO is far superior to PG. Good example for this is Seattle PG compared to Drzerwiecki Designs Seattle. 

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1
  10. 9 hours ago, A.Bloom said:

    Thank you Carlos!

    I observed two things though:

    1. The "The Walkie-Talkie" skyscraper ( 20 Fenchurch Street ) is facing the wrong direction. I wish Orbx will fix this.

    2. The boundary between the photogrammetry area and the autogen is a straight line and very noticeable, but it is Asobo's concern.

    Concerning No. 1 you should report this in the support forum section, maybe they'll make a small update. Concerning No. 2, one more reason to turn the PG off. It just kills the immersion to see these obvious boundaries as it destroys the homogenous, consistent look of the scenery. The Blackshark AI even assigns correct building shapes and roof colors to the autogen buildings based on the satellite imagery, so the overall geometry of the city is still preserved even with PG off, and the textures are much more crisp, and there are no border lines or seams in the scenery. Maybe just give it a try. IMHO the combination of the high quality landmarks and the autogen is enough to make a city recognizable. 

  11. 12 hours ago, carlosqr said:

    Yes it is poor but I think they said it will be improved in time, but currently doesn't look nice, it is a bit better in Paris but London's is the worst

     

    Agreed

    Though I prefer to leave it on.

     

    I think that depends on your internet

    I have 100 mb set up to unlimited, it uses the whole bandwidth, so it loads pretty quick

     

     

    Cheers

    Carlos

    Don't get me wrong, I don't want to spoil PG for everyone, if you're happy with it by all means leave it on? I'm glad that the landmarks packs still look good with PG off so I bought the London pack yesterday. Thanks again for the comparison shots. 

    • Like 1
  12. 50 minutes ago, John Hargreaves said:

    I've settled on PG=off and use the London pack, it works great. The scenery is really crisp and sharp, maybe has that flight sim/computer game look rather than the naturalistic subtlety you get with PG, but the London PG is pretty poor imo, and it spoils the immersion when flying low in the Bell 47G, which is by far my most preferred aircraft. 

    Thank you, my thoughts exactly, Carlos' shots are great but the low altitude shots along the Thames clearly show the distorted building geometry and textures I mentioned. Also when you fly into a PG area that is not in your cache it loads in awfully slow and the buildings morph from triangular shapes to their final firm while you are flying over them 

    • Like 1
  13. Has anyone tried the London and Paris landmarks packs with photogrammetry OFF? do they still fit seamlessly? Contrary to most other simmers I always have photogrammetry turned OFF because the scenery takes ages to load and from lower altitudes looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland with greybrown distorted building facade textures, bridges where the area behind the bridge is displayed as a solid mass below the bridge (check out Portland, Oregon if you don't know what I mean) and trees that look either like basalt columns or dungeon trap spikes (hello Santa Barbara). Up until now I only read how great the city landmarks packs fit seamlessly into the photogrammetry but never if they also display correctly without it. Until then I'm holding off buying them. 

     

  14. Are you referring to the Global AI ship traffic Addon by Henrik Nielsen that he released for P3D and has been trying for a while now to get into MSFS? I know he is making good progress but last time I checked on fsdeveloper.com he said it wasn't ready for release yet, but I could be wrong. I'm also eagerly waiting for it because I love island hopping short flights all over the world and the AI ship traffic adds so much to see to otherwise sometimes boring flights over water. 

  15. On 1/5/2020 at 11:45 PM, vfr_steve said:

     

    Wow, maybe you ought to get that attention span looked at ;)

    With 55-60 hours/week in emergency and intensive care at a large hospital and two little children it ain't about attention span, it's about managing precious free time for my hobby. Watching hours of video reviews is  something I simply don't have the time to do. 

  16. 13 minutes ago, 12bPilot said:

     

    Nope, SODE is free for everyone.

    I have only charged devs for creating jetway models and placing them in their sceneries. And that‘s because they were not able/willing to invest the time on learning how to make those jetways. But in the meantime, they are mostly creating the jetways themselves. The SODE jetway SDK is free as well...

     

    Best regards,

    Jeffrey

    OK sorry, I must have mixed that up. Best regards 

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