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A question out of curiosity (about the Barrier Reef)


Rainey

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I'm a bit curious after scouring over some of the beautiful screens of the FTX scenery which I am yet to buy, in particular Caloundra.  It makes me wonder why the same technology used to make the amazing looking waterways with the shallow sandy bottoms was not used to create the Great Barrier Reef in AU GREEN.

I know its been raised before but I'm still dreaming of an update to the reef system in line with the quality of the rest of the FTX packages. I mean no disrespect in that comment, but in my opinion it is about the only thing that Orbx has not gotten absolutely spot on, its good, but its not outstanding!

PS: I'm about to pre-pay for PNW and I'm not even interested in the region! I guess that's about to change.  ;D

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-snip-

PS: I'm about to pre-pay for PNW and I'm not even interested in the region! I guess that's about to change.  ;D

I said the same thing about Australia when I first ordered my first FTX product. :) Hopefully, FTX PNW will do the same for you that FTX AU has done for me.  :)

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Really!

I hardly ever flew Australia at all until FTX and now I actually know where Albury is.  I can tell you that Melbourne is in the south.

you'd think Id know these things but...

One thing all Aussie simmers will have to get used to though...  all the traffic will be on the wrong side of the road!  ;D

as far the water goes:  I have wished for some time that ORBX might release a waterclass project that does for the entire Australian continent what is done in the small airport areas.

Im curious what has been done with wtareclass for the US.  There really needs to be a good standard.

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Hi there,

we've had a couple of discussions about this topic before, for example http://orbxsystems.com/forums/index.php?topic=15283.0

The key issue here is "generic" water class textures (like the default or REX coral reef sets) versus spatially specific photoreal areas as in the Caloundra package. It's technically impossible to cover the vast GBR with high resolution photoreal areas regardless of whether the source photography exists or not. The best you can ever hope to see in high-res photoreal is a few local areas. On the other hand, with generic water class textures one is limited to 1.4 sq km texture "blobs", which cannot represent the intricate shapes of the coral reefs. For the GBR included with FTX GREEN we decided on the spatially accurate but non-reflective (in terms of water effects) compromise though we realize that it is a compromise.

As I mentioned in the thread referenced above we're still planning on experimenting with medium-resolution photoreal textures in combination with generic water class textures. We'll keep you posted on that.

Cheers, Holger

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Thank you Holger, that does make sense to me. I understand the technicalities involved now, and we do appreciate the time and effort you put in to create what is the most realistic compromise in the sim. Hopefully the hard work in developing accurate landclass/shorelines can continue to be worked into whatever is the next breakthrough in improving the look of the reef system.

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