noted SCA - Service Pack Suggestions

[fltsimguy]

I have managed to zoom around SCA now and I am very happy with this new product. It is so fantastic to have the enter west coast or NA completed. I am particularly happy with my ability to achieve reasonable smooth performance given my aged computer system. The enhanced airports are a bonus, now a pleasure to make flight into and out of.

 

At this time I have a couple of suggests for future service packs, which I suspect will be forth coming.

 

Attached is an area called Santee Lakes just north of Gillespie Field, just east of San Diego.  I happen to know this area personally and so I thought I would check it out  to see how well it matched on the ground reality in terms of landclass.  In general, the area is OK but not over the top.  If one compares the subdivision development it can be seen to be significantly more extensive that portrayed in the new SCA (use the actual Santee Lakes (man made settling ponds) as a guide).

 

Another item.  While I notice considerable detail and effort has gone into bridges and overpasses, and flying GA at 5,000 ft or less, there are a considerable number of freeway overpasses or underpasses that are only portrayed with what my wife called "bandages" ...meaning a short segment of different road texture to show the overpass. Southern California is the land of the freeway and In a good number of cases these span sharp or deep gullies and the road drops down one side the back up the other...where those gullies have big elevation gains the appearance looks weird if there is no "bridge/overpass".  I realize that to "fix" this issue requires considerable manual fixing.  But anything that can be done to review the worst offenders and place actual over passes would certainly enhance the look and feel.  You can see the effect at the bottom of the screenshots I provided, however these are not the worst offenders.

 

And one more thing at this time. Not a big deal but thought I would make note of something that jumped out to me. The golf course textures.  I love the golf courses but am finding that in this region there is an issue with overly dramatic colour. My screenshot shows this as well.  Outside of some of the coast and high mountain areas, this area is parched.  The land of palm trees, sage brush, rattle snakes, stunted juniper etc...its darn dry.  Most golf courses (except for the high end PGA types) struggle with keeping green.  Consider here a regional texture change to a more mottled, struggling to stay green look.

 

ps. I am a golfer, golfed in several of these courses in and around San Diego, and I spend months of RV time at Santee Lakes.

 

cheers, and Merry Christmas everyone.

Bryan

[vegasjon]

Wow! That IS green! I don't imagine Vector helps with the border of it eh?

[fltsimguy]

I have both UTX USA and Vector....The golf courses are drawn polygons with applied textures not impacted by Vector.  I hope that my textures are not corrupted perhaps someone else would be able to comment on that.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

 

first off, neither Vector nor UTX come into play within an FTX Region, everything you see is placed by the region itself (the only exception being some components of the FTX AU regions; back then we didn't have the data to replace everything).

 

I'll make a note regarding the missing subdivision, it won't be difficult to add those in. Adding more 3D "extrusion" bridges is another matter, however. I recently watched the second season of True Detective, which plays in the LA area. In between scenes they show these great, if dystopian, helicopter shots of the LA highway network and its "spaghetti" overpasses. I'm the first one to agree that these would be great to have in SCA but it's not really feasible in the sim. SCA does contain about 800 extrusion bridges already, all of them hand placed, and it takes between 5 and 20 minutes to place and test each bridge, depending on complexity (there are 12 bridges in your screenshot alone, so you do the math). I did place a few somewhat complex overpasses, e.g., east of downtown LA, but extrusion bridges consist of straight elements only so they always look a bit awkward. Also, extrusion bridges don't allow for on- or off-ramps attached to the bridge itself, which is a very common feature. Moreover, moving road traffic always tracks the highest "platform" meaning we can't have an overpass with traffic unless we manually cut (break) the traffic vectors of the road it passes over. Last but not least, as the discussions about SCA's fps impact suggest, adding even more detailed objects may not be appreciated by all. That being said, I usually add a few more bridges with each service pack so feel free to point out specific location you'd think would benefit most.

 

We do have two different landclass textures for golf courses in SCA: the fully irrigated version as in your screenshot and the "desert" type in which only the fairways are somewhat green, as you'll find in the Palm Springs and LV area. I can experiment with making the former less saturated but we need to make sure that it still fits well with wetter locations along the SCA coast.

 

Cheers, Holger

[Ron Attwood]

Don't you just love this guy? Nice post Holger.

[fltsimguy]

Hi Holger, I totally understand the difficulty with the overpasses which is what I hinted at but you explained in detail.  I have tried that myself and its a bunch of work....do you not have a bunch of Christmas elves available...lol. 

 

Look forward to more exploration after the Christmas chaos that is our house, grand kids, parents and grandparents...its noisy here.

 

cheers

Bryan

[fltsimguy]

I have just found the desert type golf courses in Palm Springs, a very difficult thing to portray due to the texture alignment with the polygon shape, not sure how one would deal with this challenge but the texture is good.  I suppose that a hand placed specific photo scenery polygon would capture the exact representation but that would be another time demanding effort.