Is this a bug?

[Aceshigh]

Flying from Sydney airport toward the city I see this, a river that just ends & a road system that runs over the tops of the buildings?

Is this a bug in FSX, FTX or my settings?      ... thanks.

[Meerkat]

Do you know Google Earth?  Before supposing a bug you could please at least check the reality... See image.

The canal is there right in the same shape, the roads are ok, the industrial and residential areas are where they should be - only the fact that they run though building textures (not actual autogen buildings!) is a bit destroying the almost photoreal appearance of the terrain. And that is a problem inherent to FSX, as the terrain textures are tapestry pieces of 1 km2 each laid out according the landclass system, and the roads are exact vector data that don't "know" of the buildings drawn on that tapestry.

So everything is fine and actually a proof of how good FTX reproduces reality.

Regards

[Pilot50]

I would hardly say "everything is fine.." Either we should eliminate one or the other. The combination of both creates an obviously incorrect scenery that certainly isn't pleasing to the eye. I have noticed "roads" crossing playing fields, etc, in other places.  

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

it's certainly a compromise, like everything else in a simulated environment.

We try to minimize these issues but they are unavoidable as long as you combine "generic" ground textures with spatially accurate landscape and human-made features. It's particularly visible where strongly directional textures are used, like industrial areas. Sure, you can remove all vector roads but then you'd also not have any moving traffic or real-world road corridors to navigate by. Same for water bodies, railroads, etc.

The only way to prevent these issues is to use spatially specific photoreal ground textures, like the MegaScenery titles or Horizon. But if you want to cover an entire continent who's got the funds to pay for the imagery and the army of "slaves" to place custom autogen and create accurate seasons and night lights?

Having said that, if you come across areas that, in your opinion, look particularly bad let us know about it and we'll have another look at them and perhaps remove some of the roads, change land class assignments or add custom polys.

Cheers, Holger

[Aceshigh]

you write: "Do you know Google Earth?  Before supposing a bug you could please at least check the reality... See image"

...No need to be sarcastic..  Thats how it seems to read to me.  I do not have or use Google earth.  My post did ask  "Is this a bug"  not "this is a bug!"

Au Blue claims to have made better landclass & roads "etc"  and here right within throwing distance of the city of Sydney is a area where the roads run across the top of buildings?  What I have noticed is that AU Blue does seems to be more victoria, Tasmania and NSW as an after thought. Sorry guys but now Im annoyed.

Ok I did ask about the river that ends if it was a bug..  "Ask" is the word.  but in the reality I do not see in the Google Earth image any roads on top of buildings.

a slightly annoyed AU blue user. 

Mark.  (Aceshigh)

[Holger Sandmann]

Hello Mark,

What I have noticed is that AU Blue does seems to be more victoria, Tasmania and NSW as an after thought. Sorry guys but now Im annoyed.

Don't let one off-hand comment by a fellow user spoil your fun! I can assure you that our team spent as much care on Sydney and environs as on any other part of region BLUE. As for roads crossing buildings you'll see the same issue anywhere in the region as it is an unavoidable consequence of the way landscapes and their features are generated in the sim.

As I said in my previous post, though, don't refrain from posting questions and reports about things you don't like. We'll look into it, explain what's going on, and let you know what we can do about it, if anything.

Cheers, Holger

[Barry Meiklejohn]

OK Gents, time to take some deep breaths.

Not everyone has the same depth of knowledge as others, nor are forums, emails or PMs always an effective means of discourse.

A valid question was asked, and responses received. Let us all try to be a little sympathetic and show understanding and tolerance.

Thankyou.

[Aceshigh]

Sorry guys..      ( cooled down after a coffee )    All I seen was a touch of sarcasm and re-acted a bit quick.

My comment about NSW comes from location, I live right near the area where AU Blue runs out, north of Sydney.

So I often see the defalt FSX area creeping into my flights.

I also found a few "bugs" in the Sydney, Bankstown & Blue Mountains area's.  I now seem to be loading flight plans in Victoria & Tassie to fully see the great quality of AU Blue.    Please take a quick closer look around Bankstown airport, Katoomba (Blue Mountains) & Sydney for your AU Blue SP1. 

Will have to buy AU Gold to fill the gap just north of Sydney. 

 

[Martin Lott]

I also found a few "bugs" in the Sydney, Bankstown & Blue Mountains area's.  I now seem to be loading flight plans in Victoria & Tassie to fully see the great quality of AU Blue.    Please take a quick closer look around Bankstown airport, Katoomba (Blue Mountains) & Sydney for your AU Blue SP1. 

Hi Mark, I'll be working in the Bankstown area this week to address the landclass issues there. There's not an issue with Katoomba (Blue Mountains) that I'm aware of. Did you know that AU Blue stops there? You are seeing default FSX textures west of Sydney. Au Gold covers that area.

[Aceshigh]

Thanks...

.. maybe thats the problem, I have been "going on" the image pasted on the Flightsim store. Which to me looks like the area of Sydney and west of Sydney to the Blue mountains is covered?    So AU Gold comes down that far south and west of Sydney?   

Now don' t get me wrong...  I love AU Blue and appreciate all the hard work thats gone into it.

[Barry Meiklejohn]

Aces, here is a map I have completed for the new manual. I'm sure Koorby won't mind me posting it as a preview...

You, sir, are lucky enough to live near the juncture of two FTX regions, and therefore will get a great diversity of textures...

[Aceshigh]

Thank you, that shows it better..

Yes, now I can see.  I live and fly close to that little AU Gold spur behind Sydney.  I use Bankstown Aiirport and fly west a fair bit.  No wonder I have been seeing "bugs" and default FSX textures.    Still around Bankstown airport there is a few bugs from the Georges river flowing into roads & building "etc"  (reported one in another post.) 

Glad to hear you will be working on the Bankstown area this week.        Drop in for a coffee.  LOL 

Maybe Orbx can release a Bankstown Airport or Camden Airport add on.    ... please, ...pretty please with sugar on top  !!    LOL 

 

So AU GOLD on the shopping list today.

Thanks.

Mark  (Aceshigh)

[martinc]

MMM, like the preview of the new map...cant wait for section green. But i do have a request.....how about extending coverage to PNG?... Lived there briefly and it's got some "interesting" scenery from a pilots POV, especially going over the hump up to Mt Hagen..try that in low cloud at 38-40c and 100% humidity....

[Loosestping]

I know this seems to be an emotive issue. But would there be a way to "tone down" the roads that are on your custom landclass tiles, such that there isn't so much of a visual conflict with the vector roads? I guess that would solve a lot of the visual perception problems.

[Meerkat]

Mark, please take my apologies - I didn't want to offend you.

I really assumed you have seen these issues of roads, rivers or railroads crossing textures at places where it spoils the visual plausibleness already in stock FSX - it's in my opinion unavoidable with the current system of scenery creation in FSX (at least at reasonable price level).

And yes - you may be right, "everything is fine" perhaps never applies to PC flight simulation if you want "as real as it gets" (see this article for some more in-depth thoughts http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?L03gV00N=main/feature/asreal.htm ).

Again, sorry to have stirred up negative emotions - I like the friendly, relaxed atmosphere in this forum and appreciate the great enthusiasm of the FTX team.

Regards

[Aceshigh]

Apology excepted. 

A big misunderstanding. 

... all sorted now. 

[Aceshigh]

On a flight between Sydney & Melbourne, flying down the coast over  some of the wilderness areas there are too many roads.  I dont have the Google Earth to check but it looks odd ?    oh well...          Is that FSX or FTX ?

[dreamnugget]

My guess would be that most of those are in fact dirt/gravel tracks that are marked on maps that Orbx has tried to incorporate into FTX....unless you are familiar with the area concerned you wouldnt know what was a primary road, secondary road, or gravel road, which is why you have the pic in question......I reckon it would take a real long time to go back over it and give them gravel type colour.....or even whats involved in placing primary, secondary, or gravel roads, or even if it was possible for the guys to do it (have a sub program in your roads software to allow the designer to determine what class of road it is as he places them so it can be coloured/textured accordingly).

[Meerkat]

Hi Mark,

it seems dreamnugget is right - I see indeed a lot of forest tracks in some wilderness areas. The problem is, in reality they are barely visible, as mostly covered by treetops, while in FSX the required density of autogen trees would bring every PC to its knees. The problem gets worse when flying high, as above a certain flight level no autogen at all is generated leading to those "spaghettis on green". Again a difficult technical problem inherent to FSX. Maybe special "forest road" textures could help with gray-brown color, covered by dark green patches that mimick treetops?

And btw. - Google Earth is free as well as Microsofts Virtual Earth - it needs no high resources, only a good broadband connection. Another, easier possibiliy are "Google maps" (maps.google.com) in the satellite imagery mode.

Regards

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

I think it's time to revisit our unpaved road texture and tone it down a bit. The issue is that if we make the texture darker so that the tracks are less obvious in forested areas then that same texture may clash with the ground textures of non-forested areas.

I'll do some experimentation and perhaps set up some comparison screenshots to highlight the options and their respective drawbacks.

Cheers, Holger

[dreamnugget]

I'm thinking that the unpaved roads would be okay in a 'milk coffee' kind of colour....when you start to emulate tree top shadows and overhang I think it will start to get too messy for the developers and harder for many systems to keep fluid depending on how its done.

[Wolter van der Spoel]

it wil always be trade off between one or the other, as Holger already mentioned this is a very difficult labour intensive thing and the question at the end is is it achievable at all.

[John Venema]

It's 100% achievable. For a good example, Christian Stock R&RV uses a completely different dirt track texture which works a lot better in wilderness areas IMHO. It's a matter of Holger doing a data split between dirt "roads" and wilderness tracks and then calling a new texture from terrain.cfg.  It's a bit messy and will need some work, but it's doable

Good feedback and discussion, thanks!

[Aceshigh]

This is what I love about this forum..

One can get a good clear explanation....  and then we all see the Orbx team putting there thinking caps on to see if they can make their product better..

The roads (dirt tracks) are "not the end of the world" if they were left the way they are. They only show up in certain areas a bit strong.

I use the forest tweak that was posted in the forums. That may make the dirt tracks stand out a bit more ??

In the image below there is hardly any bush tracks, looks great. This was on the same flight as the above pic.   So maybe in areas that do have a lot of criss crossing dirt roads the roads could be toned down or darker?     I know its easy for us to say..    most likely a lot of work.   LOL 

It could turn out to be a case of "diminishing returns". A lot of work for a tiny result?  But if it would improve the product the Orbx (FTX) team will give their best shot, that Im sure !!  I see it all the time here.      Proud of their product and it shows in their great support for it.

Mark   ( Aceshigh)

[John Venema]

In the original shot notice where the roads are? All along ridge lines on those hills which indicates they are most likely forestry commission access roads/tracks and/or bushwalking/camping access roads/tracks. They almost certainly are there in real life because we used Australian Government data.

[Rob 421]

Hi

I am very impressed with the real looking land class scenery of both BLUE and Gold.

Flying over areas I am not familiar with it looks fantastic.

I enclose images of Caboolture area where I live and there is some bugs!!! for the want of a better term of seeing roads that in reality are not there.

I realize it is not easy to show all things as they are, so will hope corrections could be made at a later update.

Rob.

FTX BLUE 4852

FTX GOLD 6093

[Aceshigh]

In the original shot notice where the roads are? All along ridge lines on those hills which indicates they are most likely forestry commission access roads/tracks and/or bushwalking/camping access roads/tracks. They almost certainly are there in real life because we used Australian Government data.

True..  I see your point.    So maybe its the autogen tree settings that make them stand out so strong in some locations ?  Or the contrast in different lighting ?

..

Mark

[Aceshigh]

Hi

I am very impressed with the real looking land class scenery of both BLUE and Gold.

Flying over areas I am not familiar with it looks fantastic.

I enclose images of Caboolture area where I live and there is some bugs!!! for the want of a better term of seeing roads that in reality are not there.

I realize it is not easy to show all things as they are, so will hope corrections could be made at a later update.

Rob.

FTX BLUE 4852

FTX GOLD 6093

Hi Rob..

Sorry I can not see your enclosed images ?  they do not show on the post from here?

Mark    (Aceshigh)

[Rob 421]

Hi

Sorry will try again to include the images

Rob.

[Barry Meiklejohn]

G'day Rob,

Please be aware that FTX is not 'photoreal' scenery - that is where you see exactly the roads and streets and houses as they exist in real life.

FTX conforms to the MS FSX system of representative textures - that is a series of textures to represent urban usage, a series of textures to represent crops etc. The textures we use are developed from aerial photography.

If we were to try and provide 'photoreal' regions for Australia it would require a significant amount of data - far in excess of the approx 700mb downloads for AU_Blue and AU_Gold. We would be talking tens of Gigabytes of data. Plus that depiction would then need to be hand annotated with trees and buildings - a process that would take years of work.

Hope I have been able to help you understand the difference.

[FreddyG]

I would say that many members of this forum cannot remember what the Flt Sims used to be like in the mid nineties, otherwise they would appreciate how far we have come since then. In addition, look at how much you pay for Blue or Gold? First of all there is no scenery like it on the market and secondly you would NOT get any scenery for that price anywhere on this planet, nor, I would think, would members have the kind of  quick response we get from the ORBX team. Try WILCO sometimes?

[Aceshigh]

We are NOT complaining !    This is the support forum for questions to be asked.  LOL

We have the right to ask a question.  And from what I can see the orbx team dont mind.

What we use to think was great.. ( see pic below)    Yes we have come along way.  But without feedback and debate these products would not grow & progress.

oooooohh...  look at those graphics !!      My 486 CPU can hardly keep up with them.  LOL     

[Divot]

And this is why ORBX is doing the "city scape" add-ons, right? To give those cities that suffer from the FSX default city landscape a bit of spit and polish?

On my first flight over the Gold Coast, I was going to jump in to the forums and say that it's all wrong and nothing like real life, but then realised that it's all based on the landclass system. Then when I looked at it again, I could see how all of the landclass items fitted together to give the rough impression of the area.

I have to give kudos to you guys, as the "out of the box" Surfers Paradise was a complete joke. Holger's first landclass (from last year) update made it better, but still not 100%. Now, I feel as if I'm flying through downtown Surfers, even right over the canal system where my house is (although someone appears to have built a tennis court in the middle of my place  )

John, is there a (very) rough timeline of what cities are in the development pipeline? You advertise Perth for 2008, are there any plans for Brisbane / Gold Coast in the future somewhere?

Keep up the good work!

[Kiwiviator]

Hi

This scenery is sooo great, and would like to request an axe as well!! Trees need chopping at Charleville, YBCV.

Cheers

Paul

[Tweaker]

I have had that issue with a number of default fields.  Seemed to come about only after I installed the Acceleration Expansion.  The easiest way to fix it is to turn the auto gen sliders to 0 and that seems to remove the trees.  I have had entire forests at some airfields and even a couple of the Acceleration Missions have been infected by this phenomenon.

I don't think the OrbX guys would have done anything to create those trees. 

[Meerkat]

It's 100% achievable. For a good example, Christian Stock R&RV uses a completely different dirt track texture which works a lot better in wilderness areas IMHO. It's a matter of Holger doing a data split between dirt "roads" and wilderness tracks and then calling a new texture from terrain.cfg.  It's a bit messy and will need some work, but it's doable

Good feedback and discussion, thanks!

Would add a lot to realism - if Holger has GIS shapes for the forest areas - pleease, please do it!

Should also be a great plus with US Blue... 

Regards

[Matt Tomkins]

Hey, Mark (Aceshigh), can you please give us a lat and lon for that location where all the tracks are?

[Aceshigh]

I will try..

It was about ten flights ago.  LOL

I know I flew down the coast from Sydney to Melbourne.  I will re fly the trip tonight and keep a look out for the area.  I know it does stand out so I wont miss it.

..any excuse to Sim !!

[Matt Tomkins]

Ta Mark.

[Aceshigh]

Sorry could not find that exact same spot ?   oh well..   Found two spots that are almost the same.    Not the end of the world. 

In my first flight the area I showed did look odd, but as I was told it was most likely real life fire trails.  They just stand out more, contrasted against the bushland.

I use the tree tweak so that may show the bush roads and trails out more?