TE GB South colors (X-Plane 11)

[Dawid Rbkw]

TE South seems to be such a mixed bag when it comes to color consistency. I've been impressed many times flying at 2000 feet in the right areas and rather disappointed in other locations. Took a few screenshots today.

 

First, for reference, this is more or less where I was taking these shots:

 

 

This is where the colors look rich and natural, looking East. Looks brilliant to me:

 

 

... And here is what we see looking NW. Let's be honest, this is not what your promo screenshots look like:

 

 

One more where you can clearly see the rich and the washed out colors right next to each other:

 

 

Why is there such a huge difference where the whole package is supposed to be color corrected ? Fair enough, it's not as bad as with freeware ortho where you literally have a straight line cutting through the landscape with different colors on either side but then ortho is free and TE GB South isn't. I don't know what % of the scenery looks as bad as the second screenshot, it might be as low as 5% or way higher, but I've definitely seen those bland colors several times before, for example in East Anglia. 

 

Two questions to the developers:

 

1. Why is the quality (as in colors) not consistent across the package ? Keep in mind we're not talking slight discoloration - it looks like two different products pretty much. 

2. Are you planning on fixing this ? 

 

[Ridvan Celik]

The colors you get in sim would depend on the shaders and mods you use for your sim, everyone has different preference in this regard... I would suggest looking into reshade and the likes for XP11.

 

Also i would say that for ortho images, they are big areas that ORBX provide, either thats what it looked like at the time the ortho was taken, or the team simply missed that specific area... maybe one of the team can provide you further info, thats just my take on it.. 

[Dawid Rbkw]

6 hours ago, Ridvan Celik said:

The colors you get in sim would depend on the shaders and mods you use for your sim, everyone has different preference in this regard... I would suggest looking into reshade and the likes for XP11.

 

Sure, and I've been playing around with monitor / Nvidia settings as well as some plugins, but the problem here is that only certain areas look crap and whatever you do is going to affect everything in the sim. Plus, frankly, no amount of tweaking I as an end user am capable of is going to correct those pale colors from my second screenshot. This would have to be done by professionals.

 

So yeah, waiting for someone from the team to have a look into this. They might have missed it but there's definitely more color inconsistency across the package and this particular area happens to be right next to one of their payware airfields (Goodwood). 

[Pmacb]

Perhaps it would help if developers promotional images on their product pages said what the settings were so the end user doesn’t have to experiment for hours to the best rendition. For me, some of the TE PNW can appear too dark whilst TE GB South too bright!

[stiletto2]

9 hours ago, Dawid Rbkw said:

TE South seems to be such a mixed bag when it comes to color consistency. I've been impressed many times flying at 2000 feet in the right areas and rather disappointed in other locations. Took a few screenshots today.

 

...... And here is what we see looking NW. Let's be honest, this is not what your promo screenshots look like:

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

Hi Dawid,

 

Though I fly using P3Dv4, I agree with you that those bleached out areas do seem odd.  So, I wondered, are you displaying the Orbx ortho image or some other ortho image which could happen in X-plane if you had another ortho of the same area active somewhere.  Since I know that the Orbx TEGBS ortho images in the P3Dv4 version match  (aside from lighting) the Orbx TEGBS ortho images in X-Plane,  I matched my image in P3Dv4 with the above image that you posted as a bad coloring example.  Please see my image below.

 

 

Though clearly the two images are both correct for this Bosham area, the coloring on your image is totally different from the coloring on my image.   They do not match.  I am thinking that you could be displaying an image from a non-Orbx ortho file.  What do you think?

 

Rod    

[Dawid Rbkw]

That's interesting Rod. Assuming the source imaginary is the same, it would mean guys at Orbx simply missed this bit of the map when doing their color correction for the X-Plane version. I've never had any other photo scenery for the UK other than TE so it can't really be the cause. What I do have is their Goodwood airfield which comes with its own, higher-res ground textures, but that's only a small area around the field so it shouldn't really be affecting the textures near the coast. 

 

Could someone from Orbx have a look into this ? 

[John Venema]

You're looking towards Chichester to Langstone Harbour and Portsmouth. The source imagery shows fallow fields which in fact are that hue of grey at the time the imagery was taken. I use a WIP shader I have been working on with another person for some time and it is not difficult to bring more colour into that view.

 

Here are some screenshots I took last year, the first being the same west facing view towards Portsmouth:

 

 

 

 

 

X-Plane has a habit of washing out its colours if you stay with the default settings. It's pretty easy to make things 'pop' a lot better and add real depth to the imagery.

[Dawid Rbkw]

John,

 

Your first screenshot was taken over Port Solent - around 15 km to the West of the area I'm referring to. Have a look:

 

 

I checked that that area out now and I have no issues with pale colors over there. As I said, the issue isn't washed out colors everywhere in TE GB South, but just some areas. Here are my screenshots from Port Solent area.

 

My normal settings and realistic visibility, hence it looks different to yours, but the colors are natural. Look at the cockpit and the instruments. Definitely not washed out:

 

 

And this, with slightly higher contrast, from right above the marina looking North:

 

 

Nothing wrong with the colors as you can see which means that my settings are not the problem here - the washed out colors 15 km to the East are. Have a look at the 4th screenshots in the original post. This just can't be right. I'm afraid you can tweak the settings all you want but when you have such a huge difference in colors of bordering fields, it's never going to look good. Either the fields right next to the coast will look overdone, or the ones inland will look like they do in my screenshot. 

 

But feel free to prove me wrong by showing this exact area, at a similar angle and looking toward the coast so we can see how it looks with your settings, reshade etc. 

 

 

 

 

[renault]

5 hours ago, Dawid Rbkw said:

John,

 

Your first screenshot was taken over Port Solent - around 15 km to the West of the area I'm referring to. Have a look:

 

 

I checked that that area out now and I have no issues with pale colors over there. As I said, the issue isn't washed out colors everywhere in TE GB South, but just some areas. Here are my screenshots from Port Solent area.

 

My normal settings and realistic visibility, hence it looks different to yours, but the colors are natural. Look at the cockpit and the instruments. Definitely not washed out:

 

 

And this, with slightly higher contrast, from right above the marina looking North:

 

 

Nothing wrong with the colors as you can see which means that my settings are not the problem here - the washed out colors 15 km to the East are. Have a look at the 4th screenshots in the original post. This just can't be right. I'm afraid you can tweak the settings all you want but when you have such a huge difference in colors of bordering fields, it's never going to look good. Either the fields right next to the coast will look overdone, or the ones inland will look like they do in my screenshot. 

 

But feel free to prove me wrong by showing this exact area, at a similar angle and looking toward the coast so we can see how it looks with your settings, reshade etc. 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi David

 

I have read your post with interest. These are a series of screenshots from  XPlane (11.41R1) with all haze and light scattering removed. In other words this is the colour rendering that is native to the  Xplane rendering engine and  the ortho imagery scenery as it comes from Orbx.

 

As a number of other members have commented, many of the XPlane native settings can result in visual alteration that affect the color rendering.  I am not suggesting that the ortho imagery is completely color corrected (as JV mentioned it was from a different time of year), but visually it is certainly not incompatible with the surrounding image areas in my opinion.

 

Of course , each of us has our individual perspective on such things and I appreciate and respect that your view may differ from mine. However, as I mentioned ,  I hope that you might find this of interest.

 

Cheers 

Renault 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Tony Wroblewski]

We're aware of the colour issue in this area and this was how we got this imagery from our provider. It seems it was taken when then was frost on the ground. We've tried adjusting the colours but often it just made it worse. Sadly until we get more up to date, cleaner imagery taken in the summer for this area, we're stuck with it.

[Dawid Rbkw]

Thanks for clarifying that Tony.