answered Questions about Northern California, SFO area

[chasensfo]

When I first installed global base, I was blown away by how realistic the SFO area was(I'm from Millbrae, the adjacent city), and the terrain and graphic details were accurate enough that I was actually able to locate my old High School on the 01R approach path and land on the sloped athletic track! So when I upgraded with FTX NA Northern California, I was very excited to see how my hometown was represented. Well, I was let down.

 

While the scenery is very generally impressive, and San Francisco itself, miles off from the SFO airport, is very accurate, the "in between" SFO and San Francisco, is not. I was first surprised not to see a structure modeling the very iconic Millbrae BART structure, which is a prominent landmark with an In n Out Burger across the street right by runways 01. I didn't expect these to be modeled, of course, just some kind of matching autogen. But a climb to a higher altitude revealed the ground imagry for either was no longer there! Hmm? It was in global base, and this was supposed to be an upgrade. Trying to locate the High School, I realized neither it nor any school in the area, again thinking easily identifiable landmarks, were visible. Many streets lead to awkward dead-ends, and while it looks good from the sky as a lot of trees, houses, and roads, it was no longer photoreal. Sure, in the sense that the textures are very high detail, yes they are photoreal. However, what I am looking it is more or less gibberish on a scale of realism. I located a generic looking school-type building with a generic modeled track, which was built on the wrong side of the school if modeling the real life one and located in a different area. I decided to cruise up along the I-280 freeway towards SFO. If not for the accurate terrain and reference to SFO, I would not know where I was. All the ground imagery/scenery was off! For miles! Serramonte shopping center, colleges, parks, large parking lots and other landmarks, all missing. How could this be LESS accurate than the global base?

 

Now, I would understand if this were an outlying area in the middle of no where. I am well aware of the mass of landscape included in this product. But this is the area around a major city and airport which is very popular with simmers. Not to mention the largest metro area in the included scenery. Is it possible my install was corrupted somehow, or does the Northern California scenery sacrifice photoreality in favor of an X-plane like "plausible reality" with the goal of plotting as many "close enough" streets and buildings as possible? If the latter is the case, I really wish this were emphasized. Not that I will have a choice but to stick with it having bought scenery that requires it, I suppose. Hoping it is just an issue on my end.

 

Regards,

Chasen Richardson

 

 

 

 

[pmb]

Hi,

 

San Francisco plus surrounding where scheduled for a CityScape addon from the beginning, so some detail was reserved for this one and quite some part was based on generic objects. As far as I recall, this later turned into payware (or let's say into an announcement of payware). As far as I know this was never withdrawn, thus I expect it to materialize during the next years.

 

Needless to see, I would much acknowledge this, too, whatever ***ware it will be.

 

Kind regards, Michael

[chasensfo]

Interesting, well at least I know. I guess in the meantime, I can disable the Northern California scenery if I'm not using SQL and want to see that area accurate for my flight. It all makes sense, and honestly I am excited to know that even higher detail scenery will be released for the area!

 

Thanks for the quick reply,

Chasen

[chasensfo]

2 years later, any plans to update the imaginary but "high detailed" scenery in the most important aviation area of your FTX NorCal package with CityScape? Now all the way on P3Dv4.3 with the same old fake scenery around SFO...

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I am sorry that you are disappointed, I wonder which of these images you consider includes

the "ground imagery" that you now find to be missing?

 

 

[chasensfo]

Only the bottom image shows the true imagery around the airport, and with no buildings for whatever reason. But the area around SFO is just generic nonsense in FTX Northern California...which is upsetting seeing as SFO is the biggest airport featured in the scenery I bought, and FTX Global accurately portrayed the area more than the "upgrade" I purchased for this region.

 

So about that CityScapes...