noted Canadian Arctic Archipelago: Trees?

[Captain Lars]

Hi,

 

this is my first post on these forums.

 

Lately I have flown around a lot in Canada with openLC and I have observed two things (apart from that it is absolutely gorgeous, perfect, stunning, ... ahh one could go one forever. OpenLC really makes a HUGE difference):

 

1. On the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, there's always a single tree here and there. To my knowledge, there's not a single tree growing in that region. Not a tiny crippled fir tree. I may accept that perhaps around Iqaluit (although I really think there's none), but not around Alert (CYLT, quite close to the north pole).
2. Doing low altitude flying in Prepar3d v3.1 with the default F-22, I noticed that the framerate drops and texture reloading is severely lagged the more to the north you get. Whereas on the latitude of Iqaluit it is just smooth and normal, Svalbard (not in Canada but it serves as an example for the latitude) is just a tad slower, and Alert / Ellesmere Island is even slower, with stutters, and textures really blurry. Possibly because of the tiles getting comparatively smaller up north?
3. It was summer when I looked but did you remove the ice cape completely?

 

Then again, KUDOS to you and your work. The first time since FS98 that the simulator looks really realistic.

 

Lars

[Captain Lars]

I wonder if there's going to be a reaction to my observations.

[Bermuda425]

Hi Lars,

 

I also followed your topic from time to time for some replies, but nothing here yet, although your observations and questions are really good. I don't know much, but I'll share my knowledge with you.

For 1. you're right that the Arctic textures include trees, although there actually are no in reality. It's a matter of missing FTX textures for that region.

For 3, yeah, I also noticed that one time, that there is no ice around north pole. Not absolutely sure though...

Greetings,

Bermuda425

[Captain Lars]

Hi Bermuda,

 

thanks for replying to my post. In the meantime, I did some further checking...

 

1) I think that with a pay-ware landclass add-on that's not exactly cheap, especially when we think of Orbx' aim to represent the whole planet, it's not exactly too demanding that vegetation doesn't spread in totally unsuitable areas. I cross-checked this with FSX, and the trees are there as well (they even pop out of the water there, something I didn't see in P3D). The arctic is a HUGE, VAST area and not so remote as one might think; a lot of airline traffic is routing precisely via this area.

2) The stutters and blurry textures problem above 80° North seems the same to me in FSX.

3) I checked for sea ice in the arctic both in P3D and in FSX and there is NONE. It used to be there in FSX before installing FTX Global, although it has never been very extensive in my opinion. Now it has completely disappeared. The Arctic ocean is completely open. I ventured to the pole in slew mode and because of the architecture of the sim you see mostly a milky area without any textures, only the area directly beneath your aircraft is "normal" and there you can see that there is no ice. This leads to the effect that the milky "otherworld" - that is, where the sim shows you the map view instead of scenery - looks much more "arctic" than the actual scenery you are flying over. Oh and yes I checked it in july and in march, the ice remains missing.

 

 

 

 

[spud]

As far as I recall, unless FSX changed things the north pole is an area that the flight sim can not actually model. 

 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Lars,

 

I've let Eugene (developer of openLC) now about your comments regarding the trees in the high Arctic; he'll look into whether an update is possible.

 

The missing sea ice is due to Vector's exclude files and I've seen that you already posted in their forum.

 

Interesting observation about the frame rates; it's quite possible that the compression of the textures - meaning more data tiles per sq km -- has something to do with this. Since there are basically no 3D objects active in those latitudes it might be either water effect settings or the continuous calculations regarding land and waterclass tile composition and placement that have this effect. In addition, perhaps weather data calculations and cloud placements are affected by the distortions.

 

Cheers, Holger 

[Captain Lars]

Thank you very much for your answer, I keep fingers crossed that something can be done about it.