noted England 005 Update: Missing Textures Lake District

[Mithras]

Hi, 

 

My migration has gone smoothly and has been checked with the troubleshooter. My 005 England update has (as promised) taken away all the trees in the Lake District Mountains, but I can't beleive that what I have ( a dull desert) is supposed to be what FTX have intended... gone are the fields in the valleys and small settlements, the trees in valley bottoms too and the colours are almost non-existant. The divide between good scenery and new bland scenery is harsh, I hope you can see in this screenshot. 

 

 

Can I, should I? Revert to 004. Would I have to reinstall EU England and patches to do this, and would I need to migrate once again??

 

Hope you can help. I fly low level RAF training missions through these mountains on a regular basis. Thanks!

 

 

 

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

Do you have an order number for EU England at all?

[DAVIDF4]

I can confirm that the lake district looks a bit broken in it's Autumn colours. It's a bit better in Spring and Summer.
The Autumn look is unappealing though and a bit unrealistic. There are inappropriate textures and colours that don't sit well together.
The place seems to have lost its sense of scale and depth somehow and now looks a bit drab. 
 
The original developers of the FTX England scenery did a very poor job of choosing landclass for the uplands of the Lake District, Pennines, and other upland regions.

For the lakeland fell tops a lowland heath texture was chosen that had tree autogen. Great elsewhere, but completely inappropriate here.
There was an outcry about the trees and buildings being in places they should not be, but nothing was done to fix the problem at the time.

When Richard Bui asked for suggestions for improvements and additions to FTX England, the fell top trees were brought up again.
Some people suggested that perhaps autogen exclusions could fix the problem.
This did help a lot, but was a bit draconian in places with autogen lost in areas that should still have it.
Richard did a brilliant job of polishing up the scenery in general though. A huge improvement to the details. Thank you.

I pointed out that the real problem with the English uplands was with the daft landlasses that had been chosen for them in the first place and that changing them for something more in keeping with the real life locations would fix the trees (a suitable landlass would have no autogen) and improve the look of the place in general.
ORBX has lots of great landclass textures and there's bound to be something to fit the bill. Some of the treeless rock, grass and bog textures that you see in the Alaska scenery would seem suitable and perhaps some others out there might be even better.
I'm now imagining one of those wallpaper or carpet sample catalogues, but with landclass swatches.  :-)

It does seem like the upland landclasses have now indeed been changed (or the textures 'globally' overidden), but some of the the new textures, whilst treeless, are now a bit...well...errr, arresting.
That bleached/parched grass texture is possibly a bit too extreme in Northern England (I noticed it on Dartmoor as well). There's also a problem with abrupt colour changes at landlass boundries. There's no sympathetic blending. I guess it doesn't help that  some of the original landlass ploygons are often very large and clumisly shaped as well and lack the finesse that's required to blend the landscape together properly. 

Has there been a purposeful change here (if so I applaud giving it a go at least), or is this something accidental?
If this was done on purpose, how was it achieved?

One problem is with that very light Autumn grass landclass. Its appearence in Spring/Summer isn't as jarring beause that version of it is closer to the textures surrounding it, but it goes completely off-kilter and contrasts with everyhthing else too much in Autumn/Winter.
I like the basic texture itself. It actually looks rather good in isolation. it's just the colouring in context with its suroundings in Autumn/Winter and the way it's applied to the landscape in harsh contrasting bands that makes it a hard sell. Those polygons just aren't trying for a gentle blend are they?
 A landclasses that doesn't contrast so wildly with its neighbours in all seasons would be better perhaps. Something less drab and a bit darker and/or greener probably.

[DAVIDF4]

Can you imagine if just the mountain sides and tops where replaced with colour blended photo textures (no need for autogen here), with the valleys and lower slopes done with suitable landclass and autogen. That would be yummy indeed.
 

[Mithras]

David, thank you for that comprehensive explanation. As long as it is intended, I am OK, it's just that I'd thought I had a glitch. Looking at the tops of the hills again, it does have that bleakness of the upland fells. I will get used to it! 

 

My EU England order number ... I have it on my sim, but I'm nowhere near that at the moment. I was sure an order number was in my signature. 

[Nick Cooper]

An order number is indeed in your signature but it does

not reveal an order number for EU England.

Possibly a clerical error.

[DAVIDF4]

It sounds like Mithras might have made his peace with this issue, but I have not.
Please, I'd still like to know what process has brought this change about and if the problem textures/landclass can be swapped out for something that present a more plausiable landscape year round.
I can see that the Lake District has changed, but have any other areas changed too?

 

Thank you,

Dave.

[Mithras]

I flew over the North Yorkshire Moors, and they also have the same textures, and I read another post that mentioned the textures showing up in the Peak District. 

[DAVIDF4]

Hi Mathras. Thank you for the extra info.
Just make sure you get that FTX England order number visible will you, otherwise this thread might become ignored.
Cheers,
Dave.

 

[Mithras]

Unfortunately I bought my England and Wales sceneries on CD-Rom three years ago, without an order number or even a serial key. All my other purchases were through Flightsim Store :/

 

I noticed a few hours ago that the cliffs around Flamborough Head, my local area, have been wonderfully recoloured as white chalk, rather than the brown sandy cliffs that were there in v001-004. 

 

Paul 

[Nick Cooper]

Can you say where you bought the disk versions?  

[Mithras]

I thought it was Flight Store here in the UK, but after going through all my old emails, it looks like they were Amazon purchases from March 2014. 

[DAVIDF4]

It seems that buying boxed copies might sometimes present a problem supportwise. I had a similar dilemma initially when I'd bought boxed copies of PNW and a few others, but had no actual FlightSimStore downloaded software at the time.
I'm still not sure if we are supposed to go back to our profiles everytime we make a new purchase and manually add the new order details to our order list.

Nick, from his purchase list it seems that Mithras is a pretty dedicated ORBX customer, but in light of the boxed copy issue, and seeing as there has been no developer take up here so far, do I need to re-raise this story in another thread to get some movement on it?

Thank you,

Dave.
 

[Nick Cooper]

Hello Dave,

No need to start another topic.

Hello Mithras,

No need to have more than one order number, I have put the rest into the spoiler in your signature.

 

[DAVIDF4]

Bump?
Jarring landclass makes parts of FTX England a bit of an eyesore in Autumn and Winter.
Come on. This scenery was starting to get rather good with Richard B's recent improvements.

[norfolk mike]

Hmmm, on climbing out of Southampton a few days ago (not the REAL Southampton I hasten to add), I too noticed a 'bleached out' area. Thinking it might have been a small section of landclass missed by the migration process, I ventured a closer look. It was Bodmin moor, so I guess most of the UKs National Parks have been given the same treatment?

 

It looked to me like a small area of photoscenery, but not very high resolution?. I recall some freeware airfields designed to blend with FSX default scenery looking similarly insipid when placed over FTX Global/England.

 

I didn't look carefully enough to determine that it WAS photoreal, but the colouration clash is what made me wonder if it was. Anyway, I do agree that the resultant update is a little too visually jarring, in the Autumn at least.

[Guest]

Hi guys,
Feel free to provide information about the landscape so I might custom the landclass.
People said they don't want trees over there so I cut the trees and replace it by anything else. Finally no one seems pleased. So, give pictures of the places along the 4 seasons and some paths on map or Google Earth. That would integrated into a full migrated FTX England once FTX Central V3 will be out

[norfolk mike]

An example of what I see in the Autumn is as follows. I'm not entirely sure what THIS particular moor/heath/down is called, but the renditions of Bodmin and Dartmoor (on my PC) are broadly similar in saturation and lack of resolution. I'm guessing its what the guys who posted above are experiencing also? The second photograph is merely a closer up view of the miscoloured area seen in the top down view.

 

 

[norfolk mike]

So, is this how the National Parks in FTX England SHOULD look now (In the Autumn), or is it in fact a result of 'migrating'?

 

Personally, I cannot imagine that such a colouration mismatch between what looks like a low resolution photo scenery and the considerably deeper saturation of the FTX landclass can be intentional, but would welcome some clarification.

 

If it is merely the result of selective 'tree culling', then I'd think the underlying photoscenery (or whatever it is) would still have been glaringly obvious, even at a distance, due to its colouration mismatch, and I don't ever recall seeing that prior to the update/migration?

[norfolk mike]

This time, The Lake District. The darker section down the centre is how (I assume) its supposed to look.

 

 

And a more oblique view of the same area.

 

 

Its looking like a 'seasonal change' issue as opposed to a result of a bad migration. I suspect its only affecting a few users such as myself or it would have been picked up in the Beta Testing, so how do we re-synch the seasonal change?

[DAVIDF4]

It's a grassland texture whose Autumn and Winter colouration depicts a very dried out/died back appearance.
The Spring Summer variant doesn't look as bad because it doesn't contrast too much with the surrounding landlclasses (you don't notice the join as much), but in Autumn Winter it gets lighter, whilst much of the surrounding textures don't change or get daker.

This isn't a migration problem. Richard has replaced the previous landclass with this one, because the previous landclass contained tree autogen, which is not appropriate in various upland areas (because human activity has stripped it).
This new landclass doesn't have the tree autogen, so it's better in that respect, but the problem now is this unfortunate colour contrast for half the year.
The basic texture is a pretty good depication for the area though, it's just the marked colour differences at the landclass edges that make it look weird. It's just not green enough.

It doesn't help that some of the landclass ploygons are so large and coursely shaped, with no boundry zones to allow a better blending.

Anyway Richard has generously said that he'll replace this light coloured landclass with a different one if we can suggest something better.
We need to find a landclass that is treelass, depicts grass/rock/bog in a suitable way compared to the real life area, and has a not too disimilar colouration to the surrounding landclasses at all times of year (i.e. it roughly changes in a similar way to it's neighbours through the seasons).

So everyone with an interest in FTX England should get their thinking caps on.  And be careful about seasonal changes when choosing a landclass.

I'm currently looking at how parts of the Brecon Beacons (similar treeless high ground) have been depicted in the FTX Wales scenery. There's a grassland texture used there that stays more green in Autumn and so should match better. It's still a bit light coloured though (a bit darker would be better) and I'm still trying to weigh up if its snow depiction in winter is too exagerated or not.

I'll investigate further....

[norfolk mike]

That explanation makes a lot of sense David. I'm not sure I've got the patience (or knowledge) to assist in locating more appropriate land class tiles from OrbX's extensive collection, but it would be cool if a solution was found.

[Guest]

In autumn, the texture seem to be made of sand. I'll see what I can do because I admit it looks odd. Stay tuned mates

[DAVIDF4]

Thank you Richard.
 

[Mithras]

I do quite like the texture, it does reflect the barren uplands of these places but it does seem too bright. 

 

Today flying over the Peak District I noticed that autogen was completely excluded, not just trees but buildings too. Once I passed busy Chesterfield all autogen vanished, the town of Bakewell is represented as photoscenery, but not a building in sight, various woods and forests dotted around, especially in the valleys likewise have not a tree to their name. Is this the same in other upland areas like the LakeDistrict and North Yorkshire? 

[DAVIDF4]

I think some autogen exclusions were added to remove the trees from high ground (when the landclass for the high ground was the one with tree autogen).
Some of these exclusions might be overlapping areas where autogen should be.
With the new treeless landclass in place, I'm guessing these exclusions are no longer needed?

There's an area south of  Gosforth stretching along the Cumbria coast, between the fells and the sea that is also completely autogen free, even though the underlying land class (and reality) suggests that there should be buildings and trees in villages and woods.


Richard, how's the selection for a different landclass coming on?  Do you need any help with checking out possible candidates?

[DAVIDF4]

I've been looking more closely at the landclass distribution in the lake district.
The closer I looked at the senery the more I it seemed to me to be a complete abomination. I was starting to think maybe it was a lost cause, just too broken to fix properly.
But then I realised what the original developers were trying to do with the landclass, albeit a little ineptly.
In real life, the tops of the Lakeland fells are largely covered by various grasses, rock, scree and darker patches of low lying heather and tussocky grass.

Basically, the developers have coursely divided the fells tops into landclass zones to try and represent the lighter and darker vegetation areas (google satellite view bears out that this zoning very roughly matches what you'd see in real life). The problem is, in reality the variations are often far too subtle to represent with the abrupt edges of a landclass polygon, so we end up with very hard edges in the scenery. But they did try and they might have gotten away with it except that...
The landclasses that where chosen to represent what should be treeless areas where full of tree autogen, so the landclass layout for most of upland England ended up being a bit laughable. But ironically, the wasted potential here makes me want to weep.I suspect that the availability of time and resources might well have forced the deveopers hand here to be fair.

This could still be fixed though without changing the basic landclass polygons, but it might require some new quality landclass textures to be developed, or a very careful choosing from the existing ORBX global landclass set.
Basically, the upland landclasses used to represent the light and dark vegetation areas ideally need to have the same basic background textures and colouration and no actual autogen. The only difference being that the landclass for the darker vegetation (the heathers), should also have some darker areas/patches of low vegetaion cover (sans autogen) realistically blended within it.
Using this scheme would mean that the join between the two landclasses would be harder to notice (creating a basically homogeneous area as is found in real life), but that the areas that should have heather patches will now have some naturally defined darker areas, sitting within the common background texture (again as in real life).
Obviously the distribution of vegetation in real life is somewhat dictated by the underlying morphology (ridges and gullys), but the landclass shapes we've been given here don't have that kind of finesse.
I often hear developers mentioning landclass blending. I don't know what this is or how it works, but the joins in this scenery could sure do with some good blending.

The pictures below are supposed to represent the range of hills consisting of Blencathra and Skiddaw (near Keswick, Cumbria), in Autumn/Winter and Spring/Summer.
It obvioulsy looks terrible and nothing like the actual geography. The problems fall into two main areas.
The first and major one is the darker area with trees on top of the hill. The colour match with the adjoining landclass is off (the base texture is rather boring and probably too dark) and the trees are VERY wrong. I think the trees here are trying to represent the darker heather patches, but that could never work and the results looks daft and unrealistic.
The second problem is the colour of the lower slopes (Richard's initial attempt at fixing things up). Again it doesn't match very well with it's suroundings and is generally too brght and yellowish, when it needs a few more earthy greens and browns (it does look a lot better in Spring/Summer admittedly, but that's only half of the time). There's quite a lot of nice detail within the texture itself, but mostly the colourtion doesn't seem to fit well here (although some parts of this texture do seem much better than others).

In real life there is a noticable colour change (dark to light) where flatter farmed land ends and the slopes begin, so there is some leeway here, but the underlying tone should be similar to the surrounding landclasses. In the real world this boundry often tends to be masked by patches of woodland creeping up the lower slopes, or is marked by a road or wall.
The important thing is that the darker tree filled landclass areas on hill tops be replaced with something that better matches other parts of the same hill.
Maybe even using the same landclass in both areas would be better than an obvious line through the scenery.

Autum/Winter



Spring/Summer

[John Dow]

Part of the problem might be the differences in graphics settings.  Below are a series of default FSX textures taken in the same area and they look a whole lot better. 

 

I don't know what makes your textures so bright and colourful but I don't think the scenery designer would have been using anything other than the default FSX settings and palette when working on the scenery.

 

The ideal solution would be a photoreal blanket under autogen but I suspect that would have to be a community OZx scenery type development as there would not be a commercially viable market for a payware package.

 

Anyway, that's my 2c worth  (Or 2p in pommy currency)

 

 

 

 

 

[Guest]

@Dave, John's right, your texture rendering looks faulty

[DAVIDF4]

Hi John,
Your view seems better, but the colouration I'm seeing is in line with what Mithras and Norfolk Mike's screen shots are showing further up this thread.
Time of day can effect colours and I might have a touch of reshade going on boosting greens, but my screen shots aren't dissimilar to their's (or yours). Look at Norflok Mike's post from the 23rd of October to see exampes of the high contrast boundaries I'm also seeing.
If the landclass textures I'm seeing are the wrong ones compared to what's in FTX England, then I'll accept I have a rendering problem, but I don't think they are.
 

As it stands we are seeing highly contrasting landclasses butting up to one another and at least one inappropraite landclass type (the one with patches of trees and darker background) used extensively across England's high ground (not just in the Lakes). This causes a noticable and jarring banding effect in parts of the landscape where differing land classes meet. This effect gets worse in ceratin seasons when the renditions of the different landclasses move further apart in colour and tone.
Don't be distracted by the renditions of the colours themselves. It's the contrast that hurts. Also note that the texture sheet for the sandy looking landclass does appear to have some areas that are more green, so it can depend on exactly where you look in the landscape. I suggest looking at Blencathra and Skiddaw which show the problem well.

 

I don't know what else to say now. I'm clearly not alone in seeing this and what I'm seeing often looks odd and unrepresentitive. If the contrasts could be turned down so the landscape doesn't look quite so patched together then I'd be happier.
If you have a few minutes, do spend a little time looking at the real world coverage (aerial photos, Google Earth, and landscap photographs), to see what it should look like. It's really quite pretty.

Yes a photoreal coverage of the fell sides and tops, properly colour matched to ORBX, would be amazing, but like you say unlikely to emerge.

 

I'm using DX10 in FSX acceleration and reshade for the record.
Please don't pick on my use of reshade as a culprit here. It's accepted practice now.  PTA is all over P3D and JV has been going on about how real landscapes appear vibrant and colourful from above. So that's the party line.

[John Venema]

Richard and the team are sorting out a fix for this which we'll push out via FTXCv3 shortly, apologies for the unsightly mess.

[DAVIDF4]

Thanks John.
Richard's recent work has shown what great potential the FTX England scenery has.
It'll be good to have theses last few wrinkles ironed out.
 

[herky1955]

May I add my thanks in anticipation of the fix. The English Lake district is our Jewel in the Crown. I am spoiled because I live here and look forward to the superb Orbx treatment of this region.

 

Cheers

 

David

[Richard Lincoln]

18 hours ago, John Venema said:

Richard and the team are sorting out a fix for this which we'll push out via FTXCv3 shortly, apologies for the unsightly mess.

Thanks to everyone for the contribution, it has obviously run its course.