ANSWERED Sedona Mountains

[GrayRider]

I'm adding a few screenshots if they show up, of the Sedona mountains close by.

 

How can I clear up how the mountains look. They don't look so good at the moment. I don't know if the issues is slider settings of fsx.cfg entries. Thanks for any inputs related to what I can do to fix what is seen in the screenshots.

 

THX

 

GrayRider

 

 

 

 

[Orbx Flyer]

Some of mine look the same way.  I think it was the quality of the DEM info used to create the scenery.

 

Jarrad could offer you a better explanation for why your mountians around Sedona look like that...

[Eric Bakker]

In P3D they look the same on my system as with the OP, no matter what I change in the settings. Generally speaking the mountains in this scenery look much more blurred than what I expected.

[Rob Newman]

This is just a side effect of using Photographic imagery for an area... Photographic imagery certainly is the best option for absolute local realism, but one drawback is that the image is taken from directly above, so if you have steep slopes, each pixel will be "stretched" down that slope.

 

The only way to resolve that would be to use higher resolution imagery, but while this works great for a small area like the airport boundary, doing so on such a scale to cover mountain ranges and canyons would put a huge strain on the simulator.

[Jarrad Marshall]

G'day Grayrider,

 

I'll split my reply into a couple of tips to help with the visuals, and then a quick explanation of some of the limitations of photoscenery (in general);

 

Firstly, some tips that will help:

1. User viewpoint zoom: This one is very important.. a view zoom of 0.30 or 0.40 is ideal as zooming in too much on distant terrain will highlight sections that have not loaded their highest LOD; ie they will appear blurry. This is easy to remember inside the cockpit as the default zoom for most aircraft is 0.40, however most aircraft external camera views default to 1.0 or higher, a much higher zoom than is recommended to view scenery. This higher zoom is very flattering to the aircraft models themselves (next time you see a car advertisement in the newspaper you will notice they often use the same trick), however not so much for scenery. To counter this, when in external spot view, use a combination of - (negative) to zoom out to 0.30, and Ctrl - (control negative) to bring the viewpoint closer to the aircraft. This will increase the zoom whilst still keeping the aircraft in the foreground of the screenshot. 

2. Mesh settings: Make sure your mesh slider is set to 5m (ORBX default) and that mesh complexity is set to 100% - the mesh density slider acts as a level-of-detail radius slider but for your DEM (digital elevation mesh). 

3. Ground texture resolution - set to 7cm. The resolution of the outer photoreal areas at Sedona is 1m, so anything higher than this will work fine (7cm is the ORBX recommended setting for all our products). 

4. LOD Radius (aka Level of Detail Radius slider). In FSX, this slider maxes out at "Large", which equates to an LOD=4.5 in your FSX.cfg - in FSX:SE and P3D it maxes out to LOD=6.5. This setting is where you can really make a difference, but only if your computer can handle it. If you want to make the distant mountains look considerably sharper, you can bump up this setting by editing the appropriate line in your FSX.cfg - for reference I normally use LOD=8.5 or LOD=9.5 for most of my screenshots. Bumping this setting may not have a big impact on your FPS (results vary on this), however the big difference you will notice is that the terrain immediately underneath you will take longer to "catch up" - resulting in more cases of the "blurries" than if you had a lower LOD setting. If your PC can keep up with the load times (SSDs definitely make a difference here), then this will make a big difference, but it's a balancing act and will require a little testing at your end to find the best balance for your machine. 

5. Graphics Card Settings - As always, check out your graphics cards' AA and texture settings (mipmaps, filtering etc) and find the best balance for your machine between image quality and performance. 

 

Secondly, a couple of points on the limitations of photoscenery:

1. The big limitation of photoscenery in FSX is the vertical texture stretch issue. FSX photoscenery works by "draping" a flat 2D orthoimage (similar to Google Maps Satellite view) over a digital elevation model (DEM) to create a 3D approximation of terrain. In instances where the change in elevation is drastic - for example a cliff or steep mountain face, a texture stretch becomes obvious where the vertical distance greatly exceeds the corresponding horizontal distance. This is certainly the case in many spots around Sedona, with some of the steep cliff faces on the mesas quite prominent. It is a limitation of the FSX photoscenery terrain engine, and one that scenery developers do their best to avoid (or mask) - certainly similar examples can be found in parts of the Teton Range (KJAC) and San Jacinto Peak (KPSP). This limitation is fixed in landclass-based terrain by a clever algorithm that maps a generic vertical cliff-face texture for terrain that exceeds a certain slope angle - a good example of this can be found at Steamboat State Park in our Northern Rocky Mountains region. Unfortunately this option is not available for photoscenery terrain.

2. Both the DEM resolution and ground texture resolution at Sedona are exactly the same as similarly mountainous products such as KJAC, KBZN and KPSP. The perception that the resolution is lesser may be based on a couple of factors; the scale of mountains are quite a bit smaller than the 14,000ft peaks of the other products, and also the colour contrasts are a lot stronger at KSEZ and therefore lower LODs/blurries are much more noticeable than the monotone rock formations of Grand Teton or San Jacinto Peak. In fact for important outcrops around Sedona, I used resampled higher resolution imagery to give much better definition to rock formations than similar areas in KPSP. 

3. One of the best ways to overcome this stretch limitation is to make a 3D model of sections of terrain and map vertical textures manually, as Frank has expertly done for his Yosemite and Monument Valley projects. I did explore (extensively) this option with some technical assistance from Holger, however the major hurdle I hit with this was that the model poly counts exploded out to just under 1,000,000 polys - more than a little too FPS-heavy! The other alternative, which was the route I ended up taking, was to spend considerable time cleaning up the imagery where "stretch marks" are present to minimize the visual impact - remove cliff-face shadows, synthesizing rock textures in lieu of stretched vegetation textures, and other bits and pieces. It's not as effective as the 3D model route, but did fit the performance confines of the Sedona area. 

4. A higher-detailed mesh would help to an extent, however it should be pointed out small vertical rock formations would not likely be visible even with a 5m mesh. 5m mesh was available but unaffordable (I could buy a brand new car for less!), and despite a lot of research no commercially available 1/2m source was found for the area. 

 

Sorry for the long-winded reply, hope this gives yourself and others a few tips on how to make the rocks look their best at Sedona. As you can tell, I spent a fair amount of time thinking out the best solutions to this problem for the final product

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[Eric Bakker]

Sorry for the long-winded reply, hope this gives yourself and others a few tips on how to make the rocks look their best at Sedona. As you can tell, I spent a fair amount of time thinking out the best solutions to this problem for the final product

 

Thanks, Jarrad, for you elaborate and helpful reply! Now I understand better some of the intricacies of scenery design and settings, and I appreciate even more the thoughts and efforts of a developer put in such projects to get the best results within the limitations of the sims. 

[Eric Bakker]

3. Ground texture resolution - set to 7cm. The resolution of the outer photoreal areas at Sedona is 1m, so anything higher than this will work fine (7cm is the ORBX recommended setting for all our products). 

 

 One more question, Jarrad: I assume that for Sedona there is no difference between setting it to 1m or 7cm, since it's res is 1m as you say?

[GrayRider]

Thanks Jarrad.

 

That's a long reply, but in the end it does help related to the question I had about the Sedona mountains. Even though the shots I took were at the field. I did however takeoff and fly closer to the mountains in the screenshots. I put myself at different distances to the mountains to see if there were any changes. I did see some improvments. There wasn't much change. I did see better improvments when I'm inside a plane. I did some zooming in and out, changed views, and the results were different each time.

 

My slider settings were set as the Sedona PDF mentions. I'm still fiddling with different settings, in the meantime. My ORBX Monument Valley looks a lot better, when I'm there flying around the Monument Valley mountains.

 

While on the Sedona subject. I'm wondering about. I live in Tucson, Az. I do drive up to Sedona once in a while. While in Sedona, I noticed when I'm flying during dusk or dawn. The Sedona rocks and mountains should be red in color so to speak, Sedona Red Rock country is known/famous for this. The red color of the rocks/mountains isn't present. Maybe it's a missing texture issue. 

 

GrayRider

[Jarrad Marshall]

Thanks guys,

 

Even though the shots I took were at the field. 

 

Out of the suggestions I offered above, the change to your terrain LOD settings is going to have the biggest visual impact from the airfield, as it effects how terrain is rendered in the background of a shot. I've just taken a quick shot in the sim from roughly the same spot and angle with my LOD=9.5 setting. As I mentioned above, have a play with your settings and find the right balance between performance and visuals, even having it set at LOD=6.5 or LOD=7.5 should make a noticeable difference. 

 

 

While on the Sedona subject. I'm wondering about. I live in Tucson, Az. I do drive up to Sedona once in a while. While in Sedona, I noticed when I'm flying during dusk or dawn. The Sedona rocks and mountains should be red in color so to speak

 

No worries at all - how the terrain is rendered at dusk/dawn will be most affected by your sky textures. Many freeware/payware products are available that offer alternative dawn/dusk texture palettes (REX etc), these will make a massive difference. Have a browse around our screenshots forums as there are some excellent examples of different texture sets in action, I've quoted a few below:

 

 

 

 

 

(care of AirDailyX)

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[wulfbindewald]

Hi Jarrad,

 

your explanations are fundamental knowledge and very clear explained.

 

I recommend to plug this chapter into the ORBX new guidline or besides the new guideline into the FTXCentral 2 under a chapter "FSX/P3D background knowledge" or so. It also explains the limits of LOD tweaking and in the case of the case the support team can directly refer to the explanations.

 

Wulf

[Tom Schroeder]

Hi Jarrad,

thanks for the explanations but in fact I´m still disapointed with the scenery. The image quality of the surrounding area is relatively poor and far off the ususal FTX quality. I bought KSEZ because it's "Americas most csenic Airport" and I don't want to take screenshots but to fly!

I think the screenshots in the announcement and sales pages are the problem. Lots of closeups of buildings and plants and when the scenic shot were taken according to your hints above, they will look good, no question. But unfortunately that's far from the "flying" reality in P3D. I'm sorry to say that but KSEZ is the first FTX scenery with which I am really unsatisfied.

But maybe in the closer future (!) there will be an update with the scenic photo parts in a higher resolution? This will not help too much with the vertical texture stretch but will give a much better and impressive view and feeling.

The example screenshots below are taken with a freeware scenery of Spain, zoom factor 1.0 (!), cockpit view (panel disabled). Off course there are still bluries, but I think this looks better than KSEZ and maybe this could be a solution for an update?
 

 

[Jarrad Marshall]

G'day Tom,

 

I'm very sorry that you feel underwhelmed by the surrounding terrain, however I stand by the quality of my work and can assure you that there is no difference in the resolution or quality of the source base imagery nor of the time and effort that went into the surrounding terrain compared to any other similar airport (KJAC, KPSP, KBZN etc). As I mentioned elsewhere the other day, because of the interesting terrain and difficulties with working with orthoimagery in these circumstances I ended up using the best samples from three different sets of USGS orthos, and actually declined purchasing same-resolution imagery from another (commercial) provider given that the USGS sources were better colour and definition quality. Three weeks of full-time work were spent in photoshop balancing, editing, patching up and blending these sources into the final PR's - these are heavily edited from the original source to best suit the sim's (ageing) terrain engine. 

 

I take screenshots as I use the sim for my GA flying - in FSX DX10 mode, mostly without HDR/SweetFX and with my LOD=8.5 - the shots of the airport are obviously going to be more important as this is an airport product (and likewise where the most detail is surrounded). My first single set of preview shots (which I agree ended up dominating the product page shots) focused less on the terrain because it wasn't in the final completed stage at that point, but we were very careful to include many preview shots outside the airport before release, including threads 1,2,3,4,5 & 6 that featured many shots of the surrounding terrain from all angles. As well as this was a live stream of the scenery in P3D2 conducted by D'Andre over at ADX - something we conducted and broadcast before KSEZ was released, in a non-tweaked, unscripted, real-time P3D2 live-streaming setting - about the closest thing you can get to flying around the scenery yourself I'd be a little bit disappointed to think that anyone might consider that I didn't make every effort to show exactly what the Sedona product entailed (both in terms of scope and quality) exactly so that you could make an informed decision about your purchase. 

 

Lastly, thanks for taking the time to put up those photoscenery shots, they are lovely and congratulations to the developer for some very fine work. I'd respectfully point out that it is a little bit of a case of comparing apples to oranges though - the terrain whilst mountainous only shows a minor examples of stretching in that first shot. I'd also take a guess that (though it's hard to say without a reference such as a vehicle or building) that it is sampled from 80cm or 50cm source - a little higher than the 1m NAIP source used for Sedona. 

 

So back to the opening topic - I hope that I've been open and transparent about the limitations of the FSX/P3D terrain engine and some of the hurdles I've come to with the project, but more importantly I hope that a few users will learn a few extra tips to get their scenery looking the best on their machine. 

 

Cheers

Jarrad

[Jarrad Marshall]

 One more question, Jarrad: I assume that for Sedona there is no difference between setting it to 1m or 7cm, since it's res is 1m as you say?

 

Sorry Erik, I missed your question earlier today;

 

The 1m resolution is only for the outer scenery area; the large center section including the airport, townsite and a couple of the closer Mesas is at a higher 30cm resolution, so this would be the minimum resolution you could have your slider without effecting the quality of the ground PR. If you are worried about performance impacts by having the slider higher (ie 7cm), it shouldn't make any impact until you fly into an area that actually has higher-resolution ground PR textures - for example one of the most recent products of ours to include a 7cm ground PR was Monterey Airport. It's for this reason that we recommend keeping the slider at 7cm for all ORBX areas - it covers the few products that high ultra high-res imagery, whilst not impacting the FPS of areas with regular-resolution imagery (1m, 60cm or 30cm). 

 

Cheers,

Jarrad

[robmw]

As Jarrad points out the only way of overcoming vertical stretching with photoscenery is Frank's technique of 3D terrain modelling. The poly count soon goes through the roof though and even with this solution a high LOD (8 and above) is necessary to get the best detail of vertical cliff faces and mountain walls at a distance. Unfortunately this also eats up VAS but these types of scenery are best explored locally so that a minimal scenery library can be loaded.

 

An example is Frank's previous Dolomiti scenery which does need tuning to get the best result (which is then spectacular) but it doesn't include any airports or many local scenery items (other than autogen) on the scale that Orbx produce.

 

By way of comparison look at the shot below from the Dolomiti scenery - the mountains across the middle are 3D models with real photo textures. But in the lower foreground is some normal terrain photoscenery which shows the characteristic stretching where the terrain gets steep.

 

 

The reason I've posted this is that I think Sedona does a good job with the available photoscenery and the colours can easily be adjusted with the right sky textures etc.

 

(Frank's scenery was freeware so I think I'm ok to show the picture...)

[Tom Schroeder]

Hi Jarrad,

 

thanks a lot for your elaborate answer! AFAIK the spanish photo source are also 1m res pictures and the vertical bluries in the example shots get better when you get closer. But off course it's impossible to do a good loking vertikal projektion to an almost 90 degrees vertical object or in this case an elevations mesh. The spaniards use a 5m res mesh which is included in the scenery, making the thinks look a little more detailed.

 

Please understand it right, you did a great scenery but all the promotion had put the stakes real high, and so became the expectations. I know these problems very well because i have an advertising agency and founded a company for the development of flight sim instruments and motion platforms half a year ago. And just telling that to a few friends caused 3 magazines to terrorize me every month via phone to get some test examples and demonstration appointments. So I hope that I can fulfill the expections of press and market and I'm shure that KSEZ will do so (and even better!) with the next service pack. 

 

Best regards from within the German mountains  
Tom

 

[fabs79]

As Jarrad points out the only way of overcoming vertical stretching with photoscenery is Frank's technique of 3D terrain modelling. The poly count soon goes through the roof though and even with this solution a high LOD (8 and above) is necessary to get the best detail of vertical cliff faces and mountain walls at a distance. Unfortunately this also eats up VAS but these types of scenery are best explored locally so that a minimal scenery library can be loaded.

 

Another problem of the 3D terrain modelling I encountered is that P3D treats those mountain models as buildings, not terrain. I disabled all building and vegetation shadows in P3D because on my setup they flicker like mad (not matter what AA or filtering settings I use) and ruin my flying experience instead of improving it, but I do use dynamic terrain and cloud shadows. This causes sceneries like Monument Valley or Yosemite to look very strange, because when the sun is low, the surrounding mountains cast long shadows, while the 3D modeled mountains don`t cast nor receive shadows at all, and when the sun sets the models are much brighter than the surrounding terrain. The only cure for this is flying in those regions only arround midday, when the differences in shadowing are less obvious. So you see, every approach has it`s pros and cons, and developers have to find a way that best suits their intention of how a scenery should look and what is important for them.

[John Dow]

My 2c worth here is that for a 32 bit program that dates from 10 years ago the scenery that is represented around Sedona is amazing.  I enjoy flying around the mountains even though they are often blurry, and one important thing I need to do is to accept that as the aircraft moves through the scenery the limitations of the platform WILL become evident.  Screenshots by definition are from a particular point in time and at a particular zoom, which any of us can duplicate if we have a mid range machine or higher.  However, to expect that as we fly around such high detail scenery using a 32 bit program, the scenery will remain in perfect crisp detail across the entire field of view, is just totally unrealistic.  

 

I understand that there may be a feeling that the screenshot quality should be evident across the scenery at all times, however it's not a realistic expectation.  I guess an analogy is you might see a screenshot of a 4WD in an outback location all polished up and you think I'd like to have a car that looks like that out in the middle of the bush, so you go and buy one, drive it out there and guess what, the car doesn't look the same because of the mud and dust that has settled on the car.  You could complain to the manufacturer about the deception in the screenshots but I think most people realise that screenshots are generally an indication of what a product is capable of looking like, not necessarily exactly what you will see as other factors come into play.  

[Orbx Flyer]

Hi Jarrad,

 

thanks a lot for your elaborate answer! AFAIK the spanish photo source are also 1m res pictures and the vertical bluries in the example shots get better when you get closer. But off course it's impossible to do a good loking vertikal projektion to an almost 90 degrees vertical object or in this case an elevations mesh. The spaniards use a 5m res mesh which is included in the scenery, making the thinks look a little more detailed.

 

Please understand it right, you did a great scenery but all the promotion had put the stakes real high, and so became the expectations. I know these problems very well because i have an advertising agency and founded a company for the development of flight sim instruments and motion platforms half a year ago. And just telling that to a few friends caused 3 magazines to terrorize me every month via phone to get some test examples and demonstration appointments. So I hope that I can fulfill the expections of press and market and I'm shure that KSEZ will do so (and even better!) with the next service pack. 

 

Best regards from within the German mountains  

Tom

 

Tom, if you are using P3D, then you are limited to only a capped LOD of 6.5, but since I fly FSX:MS, and took up Jarrad's advice of cranking up the LOD in FSX to 9.5....well....the monuments and cliff faces took on gobs of definition, compared to even a LOD of 6.5 (which is my norm).  If you have FSX, crank up the LOD to 9.5 and take another tour. You'll soon see the in-your-face, difference to the rock faces.

[FireRx]

OMG< Jarrad thank you for that LOD suggestion. I've been flying 4.5 all this time. 

[Kev D]

Whatever anyone says, I think the Sedona scenery package is second to none! I get totally immersed in the airport and surrounding scenery as it is on my machine, and I can't thank Jarrad enough for all the exceptionally hard work he has put into this. I have been to Sedona and the local area, and Jarrad's scenery in accurate, detailed and, above all, totally immersive.

For anyone to expect more from this package, you would have to go to Sedona, hire an aircraft and take your own real live shots!!

Kev