DAVIDF4 Posted October 14, 2016 Share Posted October 14, 2016 Hello, I've just been marveling at how lovely the North American landclass can look, but something has been nagging me. Where are all the tall spindly water towers that you should find in most towns and cities in North America, particularly in the midwest? It seems that they have been replaced by low squat cyclindrical white oil tanks. I know it was easy to take the Micky out of default FSX for its water tower fetish, but not having them at all just doesn't look right. They should be conspicuous landmarks that offer some nice verticality and parallax effect to low rise urban areas. Is this something that could be fixed at some point please? It seems like a small point, but I think it would make a big difference to the US look and feel. Or is this a Vector issue, or something else? Cheers, Dave Exhibit A. Suburban oil depot? Manhattan Kansas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave302 Posted October 15, 2016 Share Posted October 15, 2016 Agreed. Most American towns have the taller, narrower water towers. There are other types, but the type you describe is iconic. Below are screenshots of 2 common types in case some folks are wondering what we're talking about: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAVIDF4 Posted October 18, 2016 Author Share Posted October 18, 2016 Thank you for the input Dave302. I guess there's not much strong feeling out there about this then? I’m guessing perhaps that the NA landlass folk might have decided to keep things mostly generic to avoid inappropriate spamming of objects, but in the process something important has been lost. When creating a sense of realism, of course it's not necessarily important to get things 100% accurate (that’s the landclass way after all). I’m not suggesting that. I know that ORBX has gone to great lengths to vary land class by geographical area to better create the variety of environments that exist in the real world. But it’s these small iconic details (as Dave called them) that really help to conjure up that sense of place and atmosphere for the different places you can fly. They are also historically important VFR navigation aids, so it’s more than just about prettying up the place. I don’t have the sort of skill and source code access to allow me to easily manipulate large sets of data like the water tower locations, performing find replaces on model GUIDs and so forth. So I guess I’ll just have to start placing and replacing the water towers by hand as and when I find them missing or wrong. I’ve put a few in already and to my mind it makes a big difference to my perception of where I am. Any uniquely placed landmark (even when it’s a generic model) helps reduce the feeling of anonymity of a generic landclass tile. Since I’m doing this on a tower by tower basis I have the luxury of selecting the correct tower type for a location, but I’d have been happy with some random models if this was done automatically. Anything that suggests a water tower rather than a storage silo. Now, about those grain elevators, the skyscrapers of the prairie. Where the flip are all those at? I can see I'm going to be busy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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