To Season or Not to Season - that is the Community Question

[Rob Ainscough]

18 minutes ago, jjaycee1 said:

I agree but clearly stated that snow all over GB was unrealistic.

 

And there is nothing that says Orbx or any scenery designer has to put snow "all over GB" for a winter season ... the only reason that happens is because the processing of snow under Orbx is done via scripts (automated) and then manually touched up any issues resulting from the automated process.  For example a winter season could be more snow cover in Scotland or North England vs. no snow cover in Bournemouth (south of England).

 

Regardless of altitude, the terrain will not look the same over the seasons for those parts of the world that have a very defined set of seasons.

 

But like I suggested on the airports and surrounding terrain there is Material Scripting available in P3D V4.4 so you can make the terrain/buildings in that area match to whatever the weather conditions are ... so if the weather is snow, you can script airport/textures with snow textures, or if it's raining you can script them with wet textures and with PBR support what I've seen of the wet textures is amazingly good.  It's all there if the developer wants to make use of it in P3D V4.4 onwards.  These features are new (Material scripting and PBR) to P3D V4.4 so it'll take some time for content providers to get up to speed with these features, but we're already seeing some content being provided with "some" of these features, give it time to ramp up.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[Airtrooper]

I like the idea of a LOD14 product with seasons... to the extent that I might, maybe, just about consider buying a region to see what it's like (whereas before I was going to give it a miss for sure).

 

I'm gonna stick my head above the parapet here, at the risk of being shot by some, and say I'm still firmly on the side of good quality land class & autogen with landmarks (i.e. done excellently by ORBX with FTX) interspersed with blended, seasonal orthophotos around bespoke airfields (again done excellently by ORBX) rather than orthophotos for entire regions/nations.

 

In years past I spent a lot of money and filespace flying over orthophotos sold by 2 different developers, then buying building and tree autogen products to overlay on top.... I LOVED it!!!! One of those developers decided to start selling orthos at LODs finer than 1m GSD... It was at that point I really realised filespace would be a perpetual issue. At about the same time I fell in love with flying seasons (outside of my ortho coverage). That was it... I ditched orthophoto regional/national coverage and went 100% for Orbx FTX and I've never looked back.

 

I recognise some may consider me a luddite (to the point I almost deleted this post, lest abuse ensue) but I'd much rather part with my money for an improved "Version 2 Ultra FTX Region" (i.e. buying the same regions all over again) with improved textures, more/better landmarks, improved mesh GSD etc. than a TE region.

 

Dare I ask if anyone else feels the same?!

 

OK I'll duck back under the parapet now... where I keep my rock to crawl under!

[Chunk]

I’m with you Airtrooper. Nothing wrong with the ortho products, they’re just not my cup of tea. I love the regions, and specifically the airports themselves. I’m sure there are plenty that agree and disagree with us.  

[Jorge Amengol]

11 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

But like I suggested on the airports and surrounding terrain there is Material Scripting available in P3D V4.4 so you can make the terrain/buildings in that area match to whatever the weather conditions are ...

 

I think you suggested to use Material Scripting for the entire TE GB. This is quite a difference and not currently possible, as you may know. High Res custom terrain (used in most airports) is a totally different story. They are objects over the "real" terrain. They can be material scripted, yes, but the native one can't.

 

It looks like P3D's Material Scripting made a good impression on you, which is good. It is indeed very useful. But sorry, it does not solve native terrain seasonal problem.

[Tim Harris]

15 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

processing of snow under Orbx is done via scripts (automated) and then manually touched up any issues resulting from the automated process.

 

Hi Rob, It most certainly is not done via scripts or automated, just hard work in photoshop with layers, brushes and lots of testing.

 

Winterizing landclass tiles is also a very different task to winterizing a huge photoreal area like England if it is have snow in only certain locations, or snow constricted to certain altitudes, with photoreal it is manually done, and fixed in place limited to a certain month of the year, there is no dynamic changing with the weather as seen with landclass tiles (even though that is not an overall pleasant looking effect)

[Jon Clarke]

14 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

 

And there is nothing that says Orbx or any scenery designer has to put snow "all over GB" for a winter season ... the only reason that happens is because the processing of snow under Orbx is done via scripts (automated) and then manually touched up any issues resulting from the automated process.  For example a winter season could be more snow cover in Scotland or North England vs. no snow cover in Bournemouth (south of England).

 

Regardless of altitude, the terrain will not look the same over the seasons for those parts of the world that have a very defined set of seasons.

 

But like I suggested on the airports and surrounding terrain there is Material Scripting available in P3D V4.4 so you can make the terrain/buildings in that area match to whatever the weather conditions are ... so if the weather is snow, you can script airport/textures with snow textures, or if it's raining you can script them with wet textures and with PBR support what I've seen of the wet textures is amazingly good.  It's all there if the developer wants to make use of it in P3D V4.4 onwards.  These features are new (Material scripting and PBR) to P3D V4.4 so it'll take some time for content providers to get up to speed with these features, but we're already seeing some content being provided with "some" of these features, give it time to ramp up.

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

The responses from 2 Orbx developers indicates that you are not necessarily correct Rob. But I still respect your knowledge in these matters. I am removing myself from this topic as i will not be purchasing the P3D version in whatever format it is offered. I now fly XP and am extremely happy with the summer only offering of TEGB. If i want a snow covered GB I just disable TEGB and use the default scenery with the Winter Package addon and GB is covered in snow.

 

[Rob Ainscough]

14 hours ago, Jorge Amengol said:

I think you suggested to use Material Scripting for the entire TE GB.

 

No didn't suggest that, suggested the surrounding airport area, however far that might reach which in some packages can be a large area.

 

14 hours ago, Tim Harris said:

Hi Rob, It most certainly is not done via scripts or automated, just hard work in photoshop with layers, brushes and lots of testing.

 

Surprised, I know some other developers are using scripted processing along with some manual touch up post processing to produce final season.  So your processing of seasons is done entirely manually on a single summer image set?  That seems like a HECK of a lot of work ... even for just LC.

 

14 hours ago, Tim Harris said:

with photoreal it is manually done, and fixed in place limited to a certain month of the year, there is no dynamic changing with the weather as seen with landclass tiles (even though that is not an overall pleasant looking effect)

 

Yes, I'm aware of that.  Agree that LC changing based on weather is not a pleasant effect especially when going from "green" to instant "white" ... the issue being "instant" and stark contrast in square tiles turning on/off as one flies.  But for material scripting at airports it can be leveraged to good affect/effect when triggered at a distance so as to not be that perceptible (and bad weather be it snow or rain comes with low visibility so I'm not going see much beyond my destination anyway) ... meaning the end user doesn't have to select "winter" or "hard winter" for the airport prior to flight in the airports configuration panel and isn't tied to any "season" but rather weather conditions.

 

Material scripting is a very powerful tool, it does need to be managed so there is not a case of hysteria and can be managed such that changes are gradual over time (sure it requires more work as one has to make many of the same terrain variants to make believable change in weather).  I do agree with JV on the "concept" of shaders to build and decay terrain with weather so as to avoid seasonal work loads, but we just don't have sufficient hardware to make that a believable reality now and I'm not seeing any hardware that can do that real time and maintain any semblance of FPS for the next 5 years and if it were it would most certainly require multiple GPUs of which XP11 doesn't support but P3D does.

 

I'm still voting for LOD15 seasons and happy to pay for all the hard work and there is clearly interest in seasons in this thread ... I'm just not a summer all the time user and the seasonal hacks in XP11 just don't cut it for me.  I enjoy change even if it's not perfect ... we all have to use the blind eye regardless when it come to simulation.

 

Cheers, Rob. 

[John Venema]

Keen to see your use of material scripting to achieve terrain seasonal variations Rob, I’m all ears

 

In the meantime, we are ploughing onwards with a LOD15 summer release of GB South and will certainly take all the feedback provided here on board, thanks everyone for your input, it’s much appreciated.

[Federico Sucari]

As I mentioned back in time to @John Venema, this can be done with some shaders tricks. Either a post process filter, which will work easily with Vulkan - and any engine, or maybe a more detailed “per object pass” type of solution.

The LM P3D material scripting is for MDL objects which don’t cover large mesh areas.

Season textures is already deprecated in today’s gaming architectures.

[kevinfirth]

26 minutes ago, OF Team Leader said:

As I mentioned back in time to @John Venema, this can be done with some shaders tricks. Either a post process filter, which will work easily with Vulkan - and any engine, or maybe a more detailed “per object pass” type of solution.

The LM P3D material scripting is for MDL objects which don’t cover large mesh areas.

Season textures is already deprecated in today’s gaming architectures.

Todays gaming architectures,  P3D excepted... no-one has yet succeeded in pointing to an available shader product that DOES achieve seasonal terrain.  Dont get me wrong, I'll adopt a change of direction if its out there, I'd much rather have seasonal and weather dependent terrain.  If it takes a GPU investment for it to work with decent performance I'll chalk that up as the price of progress with a smile on my face.  I just dont see tr it as a near future practicality yet.

 

Now one thing does pique my interest...John said he'd gone as far as hiring coders to create something along these lines.

 

That tells me two things,  that JV believes firstly its technically possible and secondly, that implementing it has some commercial value.  Since he also said Orbx discontinued that work, the logical conclusion is a) that it was found to be technically too difficult (dont believe this to be true given the XP screenshots); b) there was insufficient commercial

value in that R&D.  

 

Now that could simply be down to a judgement that customers would compromise on any demand for seasons and pay for a single season only product, or that another developer already has something in the works and could deliver their product sooner or with better features.  Since noone has linked to such a developer/product, either it doesnt yet exist, or is secret/under NDA....

 

If the former, why would JV start and then cancel Orbx R&D into such a utility?  That doesnt make sense to me...   Draw your own conclusions :p

[Federico Sucari]

2 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

Todays gaming architectures,  P3D excepted... no-one has yet succeeded in pointing to an available shader product that DOES achieve seasonal terrain.  Dont get me wrong, I'll adopt a change of direction if its out there, I'd much rather have seasonal and weather dependent terrain.  If it takes a GPU investment for it to work with decent performance I'll chalk that up as the price of progress with a smile on my face.  I just dont see tr it as a near future practicality yet.

 

Now one thing does pique my interest...John said he'd gone as far as hiring coders to create something along these lines.

 

That tells me two things,  that JV believes firstly its technically possible and secondly, that implementing it has some commercial value.  Since he also said Orbx discontinued that work, the logical conclusion is a) that it was found to be technically too difficult (dont believe this to be true given the XP screenshots); b) there was insufficient commercial

value in that R&D.  

 

Now that could simply be down to a judgement that customers would compromise on any demand for seasons and pay for a single season only product, or that another developer already has something in the works and could deliver their product sooner or with better features.  Since noone has linked to such a developer/product, either it doesnt yet exist, or is secret/under NDA....

 

If the former, why would JV start and then cancel Orbx R&D into such a utility?  That doesnt make sense to me...   Draw your own conclusions :p

I won’t enter into a technical discussion but just to let you know your technical thesis is totally incorrect. Terrain seasons for any game can be done with shader programing with very little overheads.

 

In addition, Shader programming does NOT take GPU investment at any means. On the contrary, it is a very, but a very light tech.

 

I am sure that for example LM, will be implementing this soon.

 

The whole complexity here is that as an outsider, you don’t have access to the different draw events (terrain, objects, etc), so for example you can’t saturate a texture on an ‘object basis’ - let’s say for winter. That is the limitation so you end up with a post process filter which is not ideal, but works well and was my suggested option.

 

I really invested a lot of time in researching this subject, and have been in contact with ORBX R&D to find a solution to this.

 

The consensus was that at the moment the Seasonal Textures is one of the valid workarounds.

 

 

 

 

[Bernard Nieberg]

Nice to see 8 pages of responses to this question! I definitely would prefer having all seasons available even if I have to compromise and get LOD14. I almost exclusively fly in RW wx so accurate seasons are appreciated. Hard drive space is also a consideration, so reasonably sized regions are also appreciated. I currently still run HDD’s, and definitely can’t afford to upgrade to a bunch of 4TB SSD’s to keep up with the ever increasing size of my ORBX P3D scenery addons. 

 

Cheers!

[Rob Ainscough]

1 hour ago, OF Team Leader said:

In addition, Shader programming does NOT take GPU investment at any means. On the contrary, it is a very, but a very light tech.

 

I am sure that for example LM, will be implementing this soon.

 

Depends on what one is trying to do with shaders, they clearly have an impact on performance even with relatively simple usage from vendors like TOGA Projects and PTA and others with shader modifications.  For example ENVSHADE usage on clouds is excellent but definitely isn't "free" and they even flag the option as have a significant performance impact.

 

But if you think LM (or whomever as I'm not tied to a platform) will implement something like this then I can't wait to see it in use ... I've never seen any development group successfully implement shader based weathering of terrain and buildings in a believable manner so I'm excited to see someone/group attempt this.

 

Cheers, Rob.

[kevinfirth]

8 hours ago, OF Team Leader said:

I won’t enter into a technical discussion but just to let you know your technical thesis is totally incorrect. Terrain seasons for any game can be done with shader programing with very little overheads.

 

In addition, Shader programming does NOT take GPU investment at any means. On the contrary, it is a very, but a very light tech.

 

I am sure that for example LM, will be implementing this soon.

 

The whole complexity here is that as an outsider, you don’t have access to the different draw events (terrain, objects, etc), so for example you can’t saturate a texture on an ‘object basis’ - let’s say for winter. That is the limitation so you end up with a post process filter which is not ideal, but works well and was my suggested option.

 

I really invested a lot of time in researching this subject, and have been in contact with ORBX R&D to find a solution to this.

 

The consensus was that at the moment the Seasonal Textures is one of the valid workarounds.

 

 

 

 

No quibble about it being technically possible - the demo in XP is proof enough of that :) My point was that there's no product which delivers this for P3D yet!

[Cyclone1]

Is this really what the community wants scenery with no seasons, then what's the point of certain airports that have been developed that are buried in the snow and look beautiful? I do understand how the platform is advancing but as you gain you also lose. This photo real looks great in one season but the rest of the non existent seasons leaves a void. Guess we have been spoiled by what ORBX first developed. I might have to settle for what has already been developed with all the season's because it is good in my sim world. I would say all of this new development is great and it is, but it does not co-exist with what has already been purchased. This is getting very expensive to keep up with for a hobby that not so long a go was in the budget; any more not so sure, a wife can lower the boom!

[craigeaglefire]

hi all,

 

On 1/14/2019 at 12:15 PM, Rob Ainscough said:

Depends on what one is trying to do with shaders, they clearly have an impact on performance even with relatively simple usage from vendors like TOGA Projects and PTA and others with shader modifications.  For example ENVSHADE usage on clouds is excellent but definitely isn't "free" and they even flag the option as have a significant performance impact.

 

But if you think LM (or whomever as I'm not tied to a platform) will implement something like this then I can't wait to see it in use ... I've never seen any development group successfully implement shader based weathering of terrain and buildings in a believable manner so I'm excited to see someone/group attempt this.

 

& there are textures as well with performance overhead,

 

 

On 1/14/2019 at 9:19 AM, OF Team Leader said:

Season textures is already deprecated in today’s gaming architectures.

 

i would love 'OF Team Leader' if you actually gave 2019 examples of ALL - right now - available software/sims/games to back up your bold claim...

 

On 1/2/2019 at 10:00 AM, John Venema said:

I will open this up to discussion, but please be nice to each other.

 

& i post this as a very happy Orbx customer - heaps of Orbx, & fairly new to flight sim world...

 

& Orbx 'powers that be' - it makes a huge difference when very talented Orbx Developers take the time to communicate/correct & listen to your customers!

 

cheers

craig

australia

 

[Christopher Low]

Quote

Is this really what the community wants scenery with no seasons, then what's the point of certain airports that have been developed that are buried in the snow and look beautiful? I do understand how the platform is advancing but as you gain you also lose. This photo real looks great in one season but the rest of the non existent seasons leaves a void. Guess we have been spoiled by what ORBX first developed

 

Not everyone likes the ORBx FTX Regions scenery packages with seasons. I have stuck with photoscenery over the years, simply because landclass scenery (no matter how good some people think it is) has never been my cup of tea, and I don't really care about seasons. That being the case, the ORBx TrueEarth project is a big step forward for me.

[craigeaglefire]

5 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

ORBx TrueEarth project is a big step forward for me.

 

& 'I don't really care about seasons'...

 

Was TrueEarth P3D Netherlands (the first TE region made available for customers) - with Seasons - a complete waste of time for Orbx to develop & deploy?

[Federico Sucari]

2 hours ago, craigeaglefire said:

I would love 'OF Team Leader' if you actually gave 2019 examples of ALL - right now - available software/sims/games to back up your bold claim...

Just open Google and do a broad search on Shader Pogramming.

you will see plenty of techniques

Again complexity comes when you are an outsider to the game code, not because this can’t be done.

[craigeaglefire]

@OF Team Leader

 

it’s not techniques I am asking about...

 

what are the actual products available for the customer right now? (& yes, using the techniques you speak of)...

 

& you directly imply that P3Dv4+ - using seasonal textures is right now deprecated technology...

 

it’s what I actually fly with now + Orbx...

 

 

[Jon Clarke]

1 hour ago, craigeaglefire said:

 

& 'I don't really care about seasons'...

 

Was TrueEarth P3D Netherlands (the first TE region made available for customers) - with Seasons - a complete waste of time for Orbx to develop & deploy?

 

 Not at all, especially for those who like ortho with seasons. For those of us who like the all the true colours of summer on which the ortho is based, then maybe it was but the seasons option can be ignored if necessary.

So to summarise. No it was not a waste of time and I don't see where that has been suggested.

[Federico Sucari]

2 hours ago, craigeaglefire said:

what are the actual products available for the customer right now? (& yes, using the techniques you speak of)...

 

& you directly imply that P3Dv4+ - using seasonal textures is right now deprecated technology...

 

Well ... there will be some products coming. At least Embryonic.

 

[Christopher Low]

Quote

Was TrueEarth P3D Netherlands (the first TE region made available for customers) - with Seasons - a complete waste of time for Orbx to develop & deploy?

 

I stated that I have no interest in seasons. I did not say that developing season based products is a waste of time. I have ORBx TrueEarth Netherlands installed, but I am not likely to see all of the seasonal textures because I only fly in Spring and Summer.

[Banananav]

I must disagree with jjaycee1’s comment last Saturday that tubeliner flyers don’t need seasons as they are above the winter clouds.

I have just done a real-time, real weather trip from Arlanda to Zurich in P3D v4 landing 1540z.  The last half of the trip was over half-cover clouds and below Fl 100 CAVOK.  In fairness to his comment  I was using OpenLC Eu and very pretty it looked, snow and all.  

If I have to remain with, the occasional, Region and OLC then fine - but keeping them available, and seasonal and seamless, is more important to me than non-seasonal TE.

But my real world experience is that at FL330 on a gin-clear winters day over UK (in the back seat of a Buccaneer) you can see forever, and the ground detail is extremely clear.

Chris

[Airtrooper]

10 minutes ago, Banananav said:

in the back seat of a Buccaneer

 

Observer or Navigator? Just curious...

[Banananav]

Nav, but first tour on 809 NAS.

[Airtrooper]

... and now I'm asking myself why on Earth I didn't notice your alias before! Doh!

[Bassman]

I think it's great to have the choice between LOD 15 and LOD 14 with seasons.

[stiletto2]

LOD 15 for  me!

 

Rod

 

[SGunard]

LOD 14 with seasons, please! :-)

[Rob Ainscough]

On 1/15/2019 at 2:26 AM, OF Team Leader said:

Again complexity comes when you are an outsider to the game code, not because this can’t be done.

 

I'm no outsider (I've seen many attempts in very small scale), if you can pull it off in a believable manner with the type of distances and poly counts involved in a flight simulator, then I will invest in you and/or your team because that would be extremely valuable outside of flight simulators. 

 

Cheers, Rob.

[craigeaglefire]

so good to see @Rob Ainscough that you are no outsider - you contribute heaps to the community...

 

seasons/weather/environment for immersion is what we are all after...

 

i will 'humour' JV by purchasing all XP11 TE Regions (very limited credit card) - with the implied promise that Service Packs are actively 'in the works'...

 

(just deployed latest ASXP - only to find out - no decent windshield rain effects in XP11 latest version - bummer!)

 

Rob, like you have observed, i believe in P3D world we want seasons for immersion...

 

@OF Team Leader has made bold claims that have yet to be substantiated - frankly, i have no evidence before me - let alone any product news - that would in early 2019 suggest that season textures are a 'deprecated' technology - actually, i use Orbx (+other developers) seasonal textures all the time!

 

cheers,

craig

[Federico Sucari]

5 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

 

I'm no outsider (I've seen many attempts in very small scale), if you can pull it off in a believable manner with the type of distances and poly counts involved in a flight simulator, then I will invest in you and/or your team because that would be extremely valuable outside of flight simulators. 

 

Cheers, Rob.

 

Rob, an outsider is someone like for example ORBX who does not have access to the sim source code. That's what I meant.

 

26 minutes ago, craigeaglefire said:

@OF Team Leader has made bold claims that have yet to be substantiated - frankly, i have no evidence before me - let alone any product news - that would in early 2019 suggest that season textures are a 'deprecated' technology - actually, i use Orbx (+other developers) seasonal textures all the time!

 

cheers,

craig

We are keeping evaluating alternatives and doing R&D - believe me. Some new techs will be coming soon.

[pmb]

This might be a first product for potentially seasoning TE under P3D:

 

https://secure.simmarket.com/shaderlabs-production-realistic-season-pack-(de_12227).phtml

 

Not sure if it works as advertised, and to begin with, the facebook link to Shadelabs  is either dead or requires a facebook account, which I refuse to get. Nonetheless, it seems to be something in the named direction.

 

Kind regards, Michael 

[kernel32]

Seasons please!

[craigeaglefire]

1 hour ago, OF Team Leader said:

We are keeping evaluating alternatives and doing R&D - believe me. Some new techs will be coming soon.

 

that's exactly what i/we want to hear!

 

all power to you (& you get to have all the exciting development buzz)...

 

cheers & thanks for being involved & communicating with your customers...

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Michael,

 

4 hours ago, pmb said:

This might be a first product for potentially seasoning TE under P3D:

 

Looks like the product title is a bit misleading as it's actually a tool that changes sky textures depending on the current season.

 

Cheers, Holger

[kevinfirth]

1 hour ago, Holger Sandmann said:

Hi Michael,

 

 

Looks like the product title is a bit misleading as it's actually a tool that changes sky textures depending on the current season.

 

Cheers, Holger

Thats interesting, when I read the product page I distinctly gained the impression it did ground textures...I'll have to look a little closer! K

[dave302]

Really interesting discussion regarding how to dynamically change the seasons in the simulator.

 

I'm not an expert in graphics processing technology, but can't shaders change the color, brightness, saturation, etc. of a pixel?  If this is the case, then why couldn't the shader scripts detect the time of year and then apply a different color to the textures?  In the winter the terrain could be changed to a white color, for example.

 

The only issue here I think is that once again you would have to define not only what date to change the color but also where.  You would run into the same problem we have now where the seasons.bgl isn't very accurate for much of the world. 

 

A lot to consider.  I'm glad there are plenty of talented folks working on this stuff.

 

Dave

 

 

[Federico Sucari]

10 hours ago, craigeaglefire said:

 

that's exactly what i/we want to hear!

 

all power to you (& you get to have all the exciting development buzz)...

 

cheers & thanks for being involved & communicating with your customers...

We will be testing some demos with @John Venema 

If the demos accomplishes what we want, you will be seeing it soon.