Rectangular world

[Rimshot]

Hi Orbx team,

Although I have been using AU Blue since the day of release with a lot of joy it suddenly occured to may the world looks so 'rectangular'. I specifically noticed it during a flight from YREN to YNHL. Since I recently reinstalled FSX and FTX I am wondering if everything is right and what I see here is what I'm supposed to see.

Looking at the community screenshots and the preview shots for AU Blue I rarely find landscapes looking as rectangularly arranged as mine in the shot below:

I'm specifically talking about the forrests; they look like squares. Are they supposed to look like this?

If my position is difficult to read, here are the coördinates:

LAT S34 30.72 LON E140 35.82

[John Venema]

What does that area look like in GE? That's the taste test.

[Rimshot]

What do you mean with 'GE'?

[brendanstacey]

It could mean anything, maybe general electric? But I reckon its probaly google earth.

[Rimshot]

It could mean anything, maybe general electric? But I reckon its probaly google earth.

Well Brendan, I'll be darned. Hadn't thought of that! Thank you mate 

OK, checked GE. Rectangular as well. So the answer to my question probably is supposed to be 'yes, your FTX installation is supposed to look like it does'. That was all I was asking 

[Meerkat]

Yes, mine looks the same.

And the funny thing is, I didn't notice it as long as I was "sitting" in the cockpit and looking outside as I should do. Everything looked perfectly natural, interesting landscape, wow and so on, and only when I switched to birds eye view the pattern became visible. Poor birds 

Markus

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

FTX is the first product that includes a complete set of "blending masks" with its ground textures. The FSX default set is not only of coarse resolution (4.8m) but also doesn't consider the context of the textures at all, thus cutting fields or urban areas/features in half and creating an odd "shotgun" effect of mixed textures. This irregularity of the default blending masks looks more varied from the birds-eye perspective but pretty poor from a pilot's viewpoint (and it gets worse the lower you fly).

The FTX masks are at the same resolution as the ground textures themselves and respect the content of the textures. They also use an internal priority list mimicking human use of landscapes. Thus, urban textures "dominate" agricultural textures and agricultural textures "dominate" forests, meadows, and uncultivated lands. That's why the forests end up looking square as well; the fields cannot be cut in half so the shape of the forest islands conforms to the surrounding agricultural textures.

By the way, this is one example of why we need that FTX mode switcher: the default file responsible for the use of these blending masks is hard-coded to not allow some of the features I described above. If we didn't alter that file the blending masks would not work properly. Unfortunately, "unlocking" the additional blending masks can lead to odd visual effects with the default textures elsewhere, which is why it's better to use the FTX mode switcher.

Cheers, Holger

[John Venema]

Thanks for providing that explanation Holger, you beat me to it

Interestingly enough, FTX looks at times very weird in top-down mode view, but switch to cockpit view and suddenly it all makes sense and feel "right". The reason for that is that in fact, Australia rural landscapes are very un-Euro like, because they are sectioned off in very logical squares, often as small as 1 - 1.5km lots. This is because Australia is such a young country and the land given to pioneering farmers was apportioned in a careful manner resulting in often very defined and logical property boundaries.  Melbourne is another example: it's one of the few cities in the world where everything runs NS/ EW and if you ever get lost in Melbourne, just drive N for a few minutes and you'll come across a major arterial road which will take you E or W to where you need to be; a stark contrast to Sydney or Brisbane which were much less planned cities (but have more charm as a result of course )

[Rimshot]

Thanx for the enlightening explanation gents 

[solareagle]

they are sectioned off in very logical squares, often as small as 1 - 1.5km lots.

Here in the US midwest the farmland is within a grid of gravel roads sectioned out every mile to make pefect square mile sections.