Question about regions.

[Dadtom65]

Hi. I know there is a lot going on about the new True Earth stuff and I know Orbx are still bringing out the last Land Class Area’s but we have not heard or perhaps I’ve missed it, anything about new Regions being considered. As I am thinking about getting all the new True Earth area’s for just Xplane and keeping my P3Dv4 just for the normal scenery it would be interesting to know about any new Regions being considered. Derek.

[John Venema]

We will be finishing Great Britain and Netherlands and then moving onto the USA. We will build TE regions wherever there is imagery is available - so that includes Europe, NZ, possibly parts of Australia etc.

 

By mid 2019 we plan to release a TE region each month. We are establishing a development centre in the UK for 40+ developers as part of this investment in R&D. We will soon be posting positions for 3D modellers, texture artists and programmers for that dev centre.

 

Just a word about the Netherlands for XP. Because XP11 has 1-degree lat/lon fixed sizes for ortho tiles which cannot be blended or masked, we have a big technical issue:

 

We would need to license almost as much (actually - more) imagery for parts of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg if we want to produce the ortho tiles commercially. This would then become a sort of DE-Benelux region rather than just Netherlands. The problem is that we are having trouble finding data sources for Belgium and Luxembourg. So for now, that region is on hold.

 

If in the meantime, Laminar Research allowed masking of ortho tiles to follow geographical boundaries (as you can do in FSX/P3D/AFS2), then we would be ready to release this now.

[flsm (Frank)]

15 minutes ago, John Venema said:

We will be finishing Great Britain and Netherlands and then moving onto the USA. We will build TE regions wherever there is imagery is available - so that includes Europe, NZ, possibly parts of Australia etc.

 

By mid 2019 we plan to release a TE region each month. We are establishing a development centre in the UK for 40+ developers as part of this investment in R&D. We will soon be posting positions for 3D modellers, texture artists and programmers for that dev centre.

.......................

15 minutes ago, John Venema said:

 

 

If in the meantime, Laminar Research allowed masking of ortho tiles to follow geographical boundaries (as you can do in FSX/P3D/AFS2), then we would be ready to release this now.

 

Sounds fantastic John.  Yes please for Australia.  You mention a "road-block" with LR and XP on the 1 degree tile issue.  Are there many other "roadblocks" with LR and XP?  It seems to me that if LR was to remove "road-blocks" it would be a business win-win for both them and you, and of course great for us customers.  Can you tell us anything about your working relationship with them?  Cheers.

 

[Dadtom65]

Hi John thanks for the reply. So it seems you will be mainly concentrating on the True Earth Regions. I was more interested in the basic regions with the likes of Northern and Southern Germany. So as I see it there will be no more of those regions to come. Hope you understand what I’m on about. Derek.

[Dadtom65]

Just to say I’m not knocking the True Earth Regions, I think they are great and I have both that are out and will definitely buy more. Derek.

[John Venema]

We will continue traditional landclass based region for FSX/P3D, which have averaged about one a year thus far. We have a major update coming with Australia V2 and there may be other LC based regions that the team led by Holger will want to create. Right now he is focused on Australia which I am sure is eagerly awaited.

 

@flsm (Frank) LR have been made aware of the 1-degree tile limitation and its impact on large scenery projects. We will continue to liaise with them to try and get some concessions in the terrain side of things. We are one of many developers, so I am sure they get feature requests all the time. We've also requested bone-based kinetic animations for human figures to be added, and shadow issues with trees to be addressed. I am sure that in time a lot of these things will be resolved. For now though, we make the best with what we have.

[Mohamed Amin]

11 minutes ago, John Venema said:

We will continue traditional landclass based region for FSX/P3D, which have averaged about one a year thus far. We have a major update coming with Australia V2 and there may be other LC based regions that the team led by Holger will want to create. Right now he is focused on Australia which I am sure is eagerly awaited.

 

@flsm (Frank) LR have been made aware of the 1-degree tile limitation and its impact on large scenery projects. We will continue to liaise with them to try and get some concessions in the terrain side of things. We are one of many developers, so I am sure they get feature requests all the time. We've also requested bone-based kinetic animations for human figures to be added, and shadow issues with trees to be addressed. I am sure that in time a lot of these things will be resolved. For now though, we make the best with what we have.

 

And what about Africa LC? Can you please give us some words about that LC?

[Benny]

Hi John, a wile ago you talk about PNW for AF2, is it still on the raod map, just curious

Thanks

[porsche]

Anything down the road for Canada?

Dave

[Matthijs]

1 hour ago, John Venema said:

We would need to license almost as much (actually - more) imagery for parts of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg if we want to produce the ortho tiles commercially. This would then become a sort of DE-Benelux region rather than just Netherlands. The problem is that we are having trouble finding data sources for Belgium and Luxembourg. So for now, that region is on hold.

 

If in the meantime, Laminar Research allowed masking of ortho tiles to follow geographical boundaries (as you can do in FSX/P3D/AFS2), then we would be ready to release this now.

On hold doesn't sound good, but I guess The Netherlands is not the only country/region with this boundary problem in XP?

[John Venema]

2 hours ago, Benny said:

Hi John, a wile ago you talk about PNW for AF2, is it still on the raod map, just curious

Thanks

 

Yes it is, that will come after our XP and P3D versions of TE PNW.

[SEBart]

10 hours ago, John Venema said:

Because XP11 has 1-degree lat/lon fixed sizes for ortho tiles which cannot be blended or masked, we have a big technical issue:

 

Hey John! Have you thought about using something like a texture that looks similar to what default terrain looks like in X-Plane? At least until you get a source for Belgium and Luxembourg. I don't know for sure how the guys at FlyTampa did it but they have some kind of patch that allows Ortho users to use their Photoscenery in combination with Ortho4XP. 

[caleb1]

On 11/6/2018 at 7:55 AM, John Venema said:

We will be finishing Great Britain and Netherlands and then moving onto the USA. We will build TE regions wherever there is imagery is available - so that includes Europe, NZ, possibly parts of Australia etc.

 

By mid 2019 we plan to release a TE region each month. We are establishing a development centre in the UK for 40+ developers as part of this investment in R&D. We will soon be posting positions for 3D modellers, texture artists and programmers for that dev centre.

 

Just a word about the Netherlands for XP. Because XP11 has 1-degree lat/lon fixed sizes for ortho tiles which cannot be blended or masked, we have a big technical issue:

 

We would need to license almost as much (actually - more) imagery for parts of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg if we want to produce the ortho tiles commercially. This would then become a sort of DE-Benelux region rather than just Netherlands. The problem is that we are having trouble finding data sources for Belgium and Luxembourg. So for now, that region is on hold.

 

If in the meantime, Laminar Research allowed masking of ortho tiles to follow geographical boundaries (as you can do in FSX/P3D/AFS2), then we would be ready to release this now.

 

Is there any way you can take parts of the default XPlane scenery tiles and combine them with the TE ones?  This Might be a problem for those who have orthos for surrounding areas though...

[Longranger241]

1 hour ago, caleb1 said:

 

Is there any way you can take parts of the default XPlane scenery tiles and combine them with the TE ones?  This Might be a problem for those who have orthos for surrounding areas though...

It doesn't really look good. The user might simply use AlpilotX  HD4 and you will see the difference due to the improved mesh and autogen. Or as youz said if someone uses their own OrthoScenery. I don't think there will be a solution before X-Plane starts to support local meshes. This is a feature heacily requested by scenery deasigners, when they don't want to deliver a complete tile.

While some people are already discussing about it, I don't expect solutions in this area before X-Plane 12. But accordings to some rumours they might modify the  required resources for mesh files at that time, which could make such a feature simpler.

[Matthijs]

What I don’t get, if The Netherlands is on hold, how will ORBX create other XP regions? Every country will have this boundary ‘problem’ unless it is a island like the UK. 

[John Venema]

XP regions will not follow a geographical boundary like our traditional FTX regions. This is not our choice, but a limitation of XP.  So for example, Pacific Northwest will likely not include the Canadian section unless the Canadian government relaxes its rules of extortionate pricing of their ortho imagery.

[Tony Wroblewski]

On 11/7/2018 at 12:39 AM, SEBart said:

I don't know for sure how the guys at FlyTampa did it but they have some kind of patch that allows Ortho users to use their Photoscenery in combination with Ortho4XP. 

 

You can do very small areas in X-Plane by draping textures over an existing mesh, just like with airports etc, however with large regional areas it is something like 10 times slower than using a direct mesh approach. It can work fine if the area is a small Island with not much around to kill performance.

 

Whilst technically we could just fall back to lower resolution satellite textures or default scenery, it would still stop anyone using their own imagery or scenery in the overlapping areas, which would not be very popular (especially for Ortho4XP users). The 1x1 limitation in X-Plane is just the way it currently is. For Laminar Research to change this approach would break compatibility with older scenery, but I hope with enough pressure from third-parties and users (hint hint ), it will eventually happen.

 

 

[Matthijs]

That's a pitty, i guess it's very unlikely we will see a short-term solution for True Earth The Netherlands if it's all in the hands of LR.
Well, for the time being i have to create my own photoscenery for The Netherlands with Ortho4XP and X-Europe. 

 

[porsche]

18 hours ago, John Venema said:

XP regions will not follow a geographical boundary like our traditional FTX regions. This is not our choice, but a limitation of XP.  So for example, Pacific Northwest will likely not include the Canadian section unless the Canadian government relaxes its rules of extortionate pricing of their ortho imagery.

 

 

I hear you about the Cdn pricing.

Dave

[LTCSZ]

Lots of questions...Is it OK to install both "Blue, Gold" etc and Global Base and PNW, CRM, and so on?...So, to make it simple, any or all Orbx addons can be installed without interfering with each other? Thanks, but it is confusing!

[Daikan]

On 11/6/2018 at 1:55 PM, John Venema said:

If in the meantime, Laminar Research allowed masking of ortho tiles to follow geographical boundaries (as you can do in FSX/P3D/AFS2), then we would be ready to release this now.

 

IMO load-time masking of base meshes is not going to happen with X-Plane anytime soon as this would mean a major overhaul of the rendering engine and DSF spec - a burden LR would likely currently not want while under-the-hood porting of the rendering engine to Vulkan/Metal is ongoing...

 

In principle it's already possible to combine landclass- and orthophoto-textures within the same base mesh tile. However, this requires authoring of the whole tile from scratch, which - in theory - is possible with Meshtool using an appropriate config. Ortho4XP, on the other side, does not support this, yet (but as it is open source everybody is welcome to extend it ).