FSX USA

[John York]

I know you'll think I'm in the wrong forum but please be patient with me. 

Today I flew from New Orleans to Panama City using the GEX/UTX combo, and I have to tell you that New Orleans is an absolute nightmare of roads criss crossing the city over houses, buildings, everything.  It looked hideous.

The thing I want to bring to Orbx notice is that this problem is really quite prevalent using these programs all over the United States and Canada, and are really quite irritating, but I've never come across an example quite as bad as this.

Actually, it happens on the odd occasion with FTX in Australia too and I know, as I've been told all too often, that little or nothing can be done about it.  However, I do think that as FTX/America is still in the development stage, it might be worthwhile for the team to pay some attention to this problem, perhaps by using the odd bit of photogaphy, if its available, even if it's just for the main cities.

Being used to flying in England using the Horizon photographic scenery, I know this blots out all the conflicts of landclass with FSX by overlaying the lot, sometimes a little detrimentally, but at least we don't get our roads (which, of course, are exactly accurate) running over the top of anything anywhere and that really is a blessing because, for me, it takes the edge off the enjoyment of the flight.

What d'you say fellers?  Can you do something to avoid/prevent this happening too much in FTX America?

John

[David Rogers]

I have seen similar issues and to be honest, whils I do really like GEX USA/Canada, I ended up uninstalling UTX because -whilst it had real relevence to FS9's poor road portrayal - I found it less relevent as an add-on, to FSX.

I'm sure ORBX will find a way of not allowing UTX to mess up their FTX US... 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi John,

good points all. While impossible to avoid completely the way we try to minimize the conflict of generic ground textures and accurate vectors (roads, railroads, streams, etc.) on top is:

* selectively removing vectors in areas where the clashes are most obvious, that is urban cores, industrial areas, etc.

* adjusting land class and land class textured polys to better align them with the vectors.

* use color matching, skirtings, and Alpha blending to make transitions from vector textures to ground textures less harsh.

* use local photoreal textures for urban cores, harbors, etc. The latter is going to be easier in the US projects as we have pretty much 100% coverage of high-res public domain airphotos or satellite imagery.

Once we have these features implemented in the current Alpha build we'll post some preview screenshots.

Cheers, Holger

[John Venema]

Seattle for example, will be photoreal at 30cm/pixel with full traffic and annotation, covering the CBD and docks. Expect the same to be applied for other US cities and regions.

BTW, you can turn off residential roads from the UTX control panel, which reduces the intrusion to a large extent.

[John York]

That's fabulous news Holger and John.  Thank you.

I'll finish my round the USA trip then wait to do the 'immigrants caravan route'  east to west until you have put the FSX USA on the market.

So, please hurry up and get it done.

David, I'm not sure what you mean.  With FSX USA there would be no need at all for UTX would there?  I could disable it when flying in the USA and use it only when flying in Canada where the problems, while being there, are not anywhere near as prevalent as in the major towns of America.

And John, yes, I mentioned the possibility of disabling the UTX roads to Nick at GEX but he said it wouldn't make any noticeable difference.  The problem is not really the residential roads which are not all that noticeable while flying anyway, but the huge main roads and railway systems they have.  I mean for example, great big highways with 4-6 lanes each way, duplicated a hundred yards away by the same road both of which are ploughing through and over residential areas, factories, well everything.  When you're almost overhead they virtually blot out the rest of the scenery!  As I said, it's hideous.

Personally, I don't know how they had the gall to launch products like that even if the rest of it is somewhat better than the default.  They do say they've attempted to improve their European version of GEX and I must say, I've been reasonably happy with UTX Europe.  I suspect they've had thousands of dissatisfied customers with the USA/Canada combo.

John