active LOWI road traffic

[Jon Clarke]

It was mentioned as part of another post regarding LOWI,but I would like it to be a separate info request.

There is no road traffic at all on the main sweeping hillside highway that runs alongside the airport leading to the ski jump. Any reason why? It's such a great looking road that needs traffic on it.

 I also have not seen the animated train action that ran alongside the airport in the P3D version. XP has had animated trains long before Orbx managed to create them for P3D but I have not seen one on that area of rail track. Other parts of the scenery have the trains running but I suspect those are XP generated and not Orbx's.

[Jon Clarke]

@Tony Wroblewski  @Jarrad Marshall Sorry to direct this at you Tony/Jarrad but there are now several comments regarding the lack of road traffic on the Orbx forums and we respectfully ask for a dev's response if possible. Is it something that can be rectified/added via any update/SP you may have in mind?

[Jarrad Marshall]

G'day, 

 

Touching on your points with a quick explanation; 

 

1. You will see default trains using the tracks near the airport at LOWI, using the rail networks from our overlay. Primarily, the default trains are beautifully designed, and a couple of the European types included are very similar to types operate around Innsbruck; we saw no need to reinvent the wheel. Secondly, a combination of area-specific topography and inherent limitations in the XP terrain engine (specifically, our inability to tweak localized elevations with the same fidelity as we can in P3D) meant that creating those custom train routes for XP11 wasn't really viable. We did, however, remove the default tracks within the confines of the train station for aesthetic reasons, so you will see the static models from the P3D version present there.

2. It was an intentional design decision to remove the default-style road overlays in the immediate confines of the airport, including that section of freeway - by design, this will also remove road traffic. Again, this was primarily done out of "best-case-compromise" - as you no doubt know from your experiences elsewhere, the default roads are beautiful when they work, and cumbersome and ugly when they don't. They also exclude some of our other scenery elements, and of course never 100% line up with the photoreal underneath. Whilst we can add custom road traffic, it does come at a serious performance penalty (more so than default road traffic), so we decided to keep this custom traffic limited to the airside and immediate surrounds of the airports - basically areas you are more likely to see when airside on the ground. So in short - performance + visuals came at the compromise of this missing section of traffic. Whilst we can add the traffic as an update in the service pack, my absolute preference is to always prioritize performance, and it would need to be as an optional feature only. 

 

Hope this gives a bit of insight  Much as we experienced when porting this product over to AFS2, there are inherent limitations between all sim platforms, and getting the balance right whilst still making the most of what platform offers means that not every part of the scenery will look exactly the same. 

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

 

 

[oldboy43]

Thank you Jarrad for me, your explanation is satisfactory, because I also have problems with highways and rail transport inside the airport.

cheers

Karoly

[DieterPfaff]

An option to activate more road traffic would ne nice  

[Jon Clarke]

@Jarrad Marshall Many thanks for your detailed response outlining the road traffic situation in LOWI. It is this detailed type response that I in particular am always glad to receive and really appreciate, and now understand better the nuances of XP's limitations. Much appreciated as usual

[JohnVulcan]

Thank you for the explanation Jarrad, however I do believe traffic on the modelled freeway should be made available as an option as the deserted road really catches the eye and spoils the immersion. At least us users can then see the performance hit on our system and decide for ourselves, which is important as the performance of PC's can vary dramatically. This doesn't just apply to LOWI either as I've noticed the absence of traffic on many other (beautifully) modelled bridges etc. and it always catches my eye as I'm admiring the scenery and spoils the immersion.

 

I hope optional traffic can be added in future service packs.

Edited August 12, 2019 by JohnVulcan

[lustigerpopo]

Thanks for this scenery. We are still waiting for the optional traffic patch.  

[Jon Clarke]

I do not believe that this is now planned due to the difficulties explained by Jarrod in his reply:

 

2. It was an intentional design decision to remove the default-style road overlays in the immediate confines of the airport, including that section of freeway - by design, this will also remove road traffic. Again, this was primarily done out of "best-case-compromise" - as you no doubt know from your experiences elsewhere, the default roads are beautiful when they work, and cumbersome and ugly when they don't. They also exclude some of our other scenery elements, and of course never 100% line up with the photoreal underneath. Whilst we can add custom road traffic, it does come at a serious performance penalty (more so than default road traffic), so we decided to keep this custom traffic limited to the airside and immediate surrounds of the airports - basically areas you are more likely to see when airside on the ground. So in short - performance + visuals came at the compromise of this missing section of traffic. Whilst we can add the traffic as an update in the service pack, my absolute preference is to always prioritize performance, and it would need to be as an optional feature only.