DMac10121 Posted November 24, 2015 Share Posted November 24, 2015 Hey simmers and ORBX staff! Writing to you here from Vancouver, BC. I've had KPSP for a few months now and, having flown there on numerous occasions in reality, I love it. Stellar modeling and, for the most part, spectacular texture work. The latter, however, I've found hits a wall in one particular area, and that's that of the runway texturing. I've cross-referenced maps, pictures and videos, and all tell the same story. In reality, the runway shoulders (as well as the west parallel taxiway) is far darker, as is common at most US airports. The shoulders in reality are near black (with yellow stripes) whereas in the ORBX rendition they are exactly the same colour of the runway. My second point was with regards to the overall look - the ground colouring RW (especially that of the runway pavement) is quite yellow-y and warm looking. Quite noticeably so, in fact. In FTX KPSP, however, the runway is very grey and cold - the same colour as the gravel surrounding it. Sorry for the long and obscure question there - might try to mess around with a few of the texture files and see what I can come up with (for personal use, of course), but I was wondering if there was any chance any of this might be able to be addressed in an official future update. Despite all this, again, love the scenery, and great work! Regards, Derek (RW) (sim) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Cooper Posted November 24, 2015 Share Posted November 24, 2015 Hello, Jarrad is away but I am sure he will appreciate your comments and reply when he returns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMac10121 Posted November 25, 2015 Author Share Posted November 25, 2015 Thank you Nick - most appreciated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 G'day Derek, Apologies for the delay in getting back you, and thanks so much for taking the time to pass on your feedback Firstly, very well done on picking up the differences between the real-life (current) runway markings and my own rendition - I think you may be the first person to publicly comment on this! You are certainly correct that the current KPSP markings show the darker runway shoulders and taxiways; the airport has undergone a process of re-asphalting over the past couple of years. The Google Maps 3D imagery you show in your screenshot is very recent; my guess is that was taken in the early months of this year (nb. for some even more up-to-date imagery, check here). The only commercially available high-res imagery for sale when I started the project 18 months ago was a little bit older; this was taken during the winter of 2010-2011. It's standard for airport developers to use the orthoimagery as the "best reference" for airport ground details; unless there are major changes to an airport ground area, I won't stray too far from the layout of the imagery I'm working with. KPSP is a good example of this; there was a small pocket of the airport that I synthetically created new content for the ground poly (around the new control tower, which wasn't built when the 2011 imagery was made), however I deemed that the resurfacing wasn't required for the final product as it didn't effect the layout or ground markings of the airfield. If you have Google Earth installed, I'd strongly recommend playing around with the very cool Historical Imagery function - there is plenty of different source data for Palm Springs over the past five years; you will be able to see the gradual runway surface changes over that time. I've attached a photo of how the runway looked in real life as I represented it; this is from early 2011. In regards to your second comment regarding the "warmth" of the ground textures - I am so glad you brought this up, as it's something I spend a fair amount of time deliberating on with each project, and is a component of scenery design that goes unnoticed by the absolute majority of simmers. Colour correction to the source photoreal can be a big task, and many factors come into play. Besides the basic clean-up of unwanted details (cars on roads, runway lines/markings, yard clutter, building footprints etc), basic colour correction, blending to surrounding terrain, removing imagery seam lines, removing overexposure etc, I often play around the the kind of "atmosphere" I want to create - an airport at a tropical location will have a different pallette to a desert airfield or rural bush strip. The key is to make any effects subtle enough that they aren't noticeable in a negative way, something that takes a fair amount of tinkering with to get right. KPSP was a real challenge - the lighter (old) runways, gravel overruns and adjacent desert sands are all close to each other on the colour spectrum - there was a real risk of making the ground imagery a washed-out mess with little variation. At their source (dds/bgl) level, the runways, aprons etc are on the slightly warmer (red/orange) side of neutral (grey), however alongside the more stronger magentas/yellows in the adjacent sands, this is less noticeable. A stronger comparison can be made when looking at the imagery alongside the unedited source material; this gives a better idea of the editing involved (please excuse the default FSX runways overlaying the unedited source): Lastly, another consideration in regards to orthoimagery is environmental/atmospheric effects, both in the source imagery (Google Maps etc) and the sim. Again if you have a look at the different imagery sources in Google Earth Historic View, you will notice that the warmth of the source is drastically different - the latest 3D imagery, for example, is definitely at the extreme end. This can be caused by a variety of factors - time of day, haze/cloud conditions, time of year etc - and as such I try to base my colouration on as many different sources as possible; ground imagery, regular photography, youtube videos etc. That being said, if you are looking to create a more desert feel within the sim, there are a couple of different options available to you; 1. Environment textures (REX etc) will effect how all scenery is coloured, especially when your weather visibility is set >50nm. Have a play with different sky textures, these will have a subtle but important effect. 2. Add or modify an ENV or HDR setting - all three sims deal with this differently, but in FSX I can strongly recommend @Mallard's SweetFX settings - they perfectly capture the hot desert of Palm Springs; in fact I use them regularly when flying around the area myself. Anyway, sorry for the long-winded reply, I hope this gives you a little bit of insight into some of the choices I made when developing the airport, and if you have any more feedback or questions, I'd be more than happy to be of help Cheers, Jarrad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMac10121 Posted December 7, 2015 Author Share Posted December 7, 2015 On 11/28/2015, 10:33:49, Jarrad Marshall said: Anyway, sorry for the long-winded reply, I hope this gives you a little bit of insight into some of the choices I made when developing the airport, and if you have any more feedback or questions, I'd be more than happy to be of help Cheers, Jarrad Jarrad, Thank you so sincerely much for taking the time to explain all of this! It really means quite a lot to hear about the decision-making process behind the airport, and to see such a comprehensive analysis on the design choices employed in creating this airport. I will certainly check out those ENB/SweetFX settings as well, they both seem to be great suggestions. As for the warmth goes, that as well makes perfect sense. The specific hue, for all intents and purposes, is greatly a subjective matter, considering any photograph will capture it differently, and creating the overall feel is the more important effect. As for the resurfacing, thanks again for the complete explanation. I was surprised myself, too, about the dark shoulders and taxiways! Having been down to KPSP almost every year now for a decade or so, I never realized the resurfacing even happened until looking at some later photos and videos from the airport. Is there potentially any chance of seeing a future (pay or freeware) update including the resurfaced textures? I suppose it could only happen if there came to be an update to the ground imaging used in the initial build, which I guess may not come to be for quite some time. At any rate, thanks again, and keep up the stellar work Jarrad! Regards, Derek Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 9, 2015 Share Posted December 9, 2015 My pleasure Derek In answer to your question, unfortunately any serious ground poly changes would only come as part of a payware v2 of KPSP (which isn't currently on the radar sorry).. the reason being that we'd need to license new orthoimagery to replace the existing version, a process which is quite expensive. Cheers, Jarrad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMac10121 Posted December 9, 2015 Author Share Posted December 9, 2015 1 hour ago, Jarrad Marshall said: My pleasure Derek In answer to your question, unfortunately any serious ground poly changes would only come as part of a payware v2 of KPSP (which isn't currently on the radar sorry).. the reason being that we'd need to license new orthoimagery to replace the existing version, a process which is quite expensive. Cheers, Jarrad No worries - completely understand. Thanks again for all the information Jarrad! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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