noted Scenary Conflict in Tasmania

[lowery]

I Have almost all "Oceania" scenery installed in my P3Dv4 flight simulator. I also have all the appropriate FTX downloads including "Vector" which I use after any scenery manipulation. I am using FTX Central v3.2.2.8. Original Order No for problem scenery area is: FSS0005352.

I could find no fault with any scenery until I placed a Grumman Goose at my favourite seaplane location some miles south of Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. Now there are land textures that cover some of the water asd these textures move with the aircraft when it taxis but disappear when the aircraft reaches a few hundred feet in height.

I have used the P3Dv4 scenery library to disable Ants Aussie and OZx scenery with no change; but I don't think their scenery encompasses this area.

I would very much appreciate your assistance with this problem

 

Roger Lowery

[Jethro VH-JET]

Hello Roger,

 

Unfortunately I have the same anomaly in that location, called (texture peeling) in my FSX sim with FTX_Australia_SP3. Although FTX AU and therefore Tasmania Blue region have existed for some time the anomaly has escaped the service packs & patch fixes. It appears that there may be at least 2 overlapping water polys in the direct area of the beach and jetty, causing the shifting patch of landclass to display over the top, it then disappears when about 200meters from shore @ 500ft alt.

The anomaly has nothing to do with the Grumman Goose aircraft, OZx, FTXVector or P3Dv4.

If you want experiment with "60cm texture res" and "10m Mesh res" to temporarily resolve the anomaly, it does actually work, but not then ideal for the rest of the scenery at these lower resolutions. Ideally Orbx/FTX displays best @ 7cm Texture res and 5m Mesh res.

 

 

I'm sure Holger Sandmann will drop in here to reiterate the above, but I believe Orbx have mentioned plans in the pipeline to update Australia with a new more detailed product.
When!!!! I have no idea, but it will be "ready when its ready" and very very good when it arrives.

[Jethro VH-JET]

1 hour ago, Jeff Gilmour said:

FTX_Australia_SP3

ran out of time to edit post again.   Correction - typo -  FTX_Australia_SP4.003

[lowery]

Thank you, Jeff. As this is the only ORBX scenery anomaly I have experienced in the move from FSX to P3Dv4 I certainly can't complain. In fact I think ORBX has done an outstanding job. I look forward to a fix but am not suggesting haste!

Thank you.

[Jethro VH-JET]

You're very welcome Roger,  btw did you try the 60cm T res 10m M res, I'd be interested if the temp solution works the same in P3Dv4 as it does in FSX.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello Jeff,

very many thanks for this answer which I knew nothing about.

My (first) lesson for today. 

It appears that in P3D v4, the mesh can be left at 5m and setting the texture

resolution to 15 cm seems to stop the effect.

[Jethro VH-JET]

Much appreciated Nick,  I thought that might be the case, as P3D seems to operate at higher resolution better than FSX. 15cm Texture res is still high enough to see a good ground image while maintaining the recommended 5m Mesh res is good news for P3Dv4 users.

 

EDIT: Well Nick I just tried bumping the texture res down one notch from 7cm to 15cm instead of going so dramatically to 60cm, so it looks like the 15cm T res & 5m M res works / fixes the peeling texture for FSX as well. So I have learned something today also TY.

[teecee]

I have been flying Tas for Years and never heard of "South arm Beach Jetty" scenery..is this specifically in Prepar3d v4? Teecee.

[Jethro VH-JET]

I was generalising with the name Teecee "South Arm Beach" it was close enough, as I did not know the name of the beach I had a punt. But it is more likely named "Calverts Beach" according to the name of the access track. The jetty is ficticious, but it has always been part of FTX Australia, FTX AU blue, and even the FTX AU Blue Demo, for FSX and P3D.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

 

interesting! I've searched for previous reports of the issue but can't find anything from the user side even though this part of FTX Australia was released in 2008! I did find a Beta tester report from Dec 2007 but only a comment that it would be fixed prior to release, which I suppose it didn't.

 

We refer to this display issue as "peeling" as it moves around with the user aircraft and is caused by overlapping polygons with complex shapes, which the sim gets confused about. It's mostly seen on land, including at several default airfields: https://orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/115766-texture-morphing-causes/?do=findComment&comment=1040095 

 

 

I've checked the local FTX AU files and there are indeed several overlapping water polygons that are probably responsible. Due to the proximity to land it looks like water gets replaced by adjacent land textures. Unfortunately, it's no easy fix and I don't have access to the original source files. Thus, a permanent solution probably has to wait until we create a new set of shoreline files for the next version of FTX AU.

 

The good news is that the peeling effect is confined to the highest mipmap (or LOD) of the ground textures, which is the 7-cm slider setting. Thus, as you guys discovered, using 15cm is a suitable work-around at these locations. Moreover, most of the texture resolution slider settings really only affect vector textures, like roads and shorelines, because the landclass ground textures all have 1-m resolution anyway. Therefore, the visual difference between 15-cm and 7-cm settings is minimal. Even if you take zoomed-in overhead screenshots in slew mode, comparing 7cm and 15cm, you'll be hard-pressed to notice a difference.

 

Cheers, Holger