http://www.flightgear.org/

[Clive2670]

WOW: What a change, looks fantastic! Need I say more except WELL DONE!

[D-ECHO]

Yep! I just saw it, very very good job!

[Catalanoic]

yes, looks more updated and accordingly to this times
all on few clicks

[CaptB]

A step in the right direction. I like how the screenshots are taking a central stage, however positioning the ad above the FlightGear Flight Simulator text is plain annoying, the FGFS logo is not to be seen anywhere on the main page, why? And why not update the 2.10 gallery or remove it all together and just stick with the front page screenshots?

[FighterAce]

I agree with CaptB. The new look is great, but the ads really get in the way.

[bugman]

The ads can be removed using an ad blocker, however I would highly recommend disabling your ad blocker for http://www.flightgear.org! The ad blockers will remove a small revenue stream that is used to partly pay for running some of the FlightGear infrastructure.

Regards,
Edward

[CaptB]

@bugman:

Let me clarify. I Have no problem with the site displaying ads, in fact I have adblocker disabled on the domain. What I mean is that the location of the mentioned ad breaks the site's design/aesthetics.

[Catalanoic]

i'm with CaptB, some sided ad would be better

[Parnikkapore]

Or under the menu bar, like the old theme!

[agough]

Looks very nice, the horizontal ads don't bother me at all.

Unfortunately, there's a major flaw - the hover menus for the options drop down, not up. Therefore, for me to use literally anything on the site, the first thing I have to do is scroll down. Not a very good design in terms of usability!

The lack of a logo is a fairly major issue - no offense, but the site looks like a well put together personal website or blog - not the official FlightGear website.

[CaptB]

I'm happy to see the ads were moved down from the screenshot area to the content, looks clean and professional now. Going back to the logo, why not just add it to those screenshot images themselves, this way there is no need to do anything with the web design/layout.

[vnts]

I've thought previously[1] that Flightgear may benefit from a recent gallery page Right now it displays 1 random screenshot at top with no way to see all. Existing gallery is old, v2.10. Reasons: Acting as cue to what is possible as features are off by default and some settings are hidden away somewhat. A gallery declares what FG can look like upfront on high settings. It can avoid misconceptions from what I've seen [2] [3]. Useful for: news websites, reviewers, simmers not thinking FG is a new project from looking at old screens, people wanting an idea of what FG looks like before committing to download/setup/learn a sim.

AFAICS A gallery should ideally be for a specific performance & hardware category - 1080p, 20-30 FPS reasonable at certain settings on hardware exceeding Y specs. This way simmers know what to expect on their systems. Typical commercial product galleries may only feature screens on extremely fast, uncommon, systems. For example: High settings FG gallery would be almost certain[4] to be lower than: 7500 GPU rating [5], 4 core i5 2500 or faster, 8-12(?) GB RAM at default LoD, 7200RPM HDD(?or SSD?). Settings: everything maxed except for: trees: very high (maybe fine for ultra?), Transparency AA: Multi-sampling, AA: 4x, Multi-frame AA optimisation: not needed.

I have had a very limited amount of time using FG in last year - just a few flights to test some old 2018.3 nightlies. Screens should look roughly the same currently. Sorry as some craft have been updated since & there seem to be lots of new OSM2City I have not looked at (some craft in albums are not in launcher yet):

https://imgur.com/a/oMSLfLh

Pre-2018.3:

https://imgur.com/a/xkMtthJ

https://imgur.com/a/8NVfAXz

https://imgur.com/a/a8Y2LKz

https://imgur.com/a/Z4xdz

2020+

https://imgur.com/a/E1a45Yl

Edit: update links

I can contribute these to start a max-ish settings gallery off, but there are quite a few in monthly screenshot competition I think. Not certain when I'll fly much in 2019.1 or later. But I'll try to add to album when I do.

If updating a gallery is time consuming for the website maintainers maybe updates could be automated somehow(?). Screens and text descriptions could(?) be automatically moved from a wiki page periodically (security or spam issue? trusted people could move screens from a submissions page to a locked wiki page).

I apologise if this has been discussed previously.

Kind regards

[wkitty42]

one could also use the SOTM submissions or just the winners... i suggest to go for all of them but...

[V12]

Use SOTM winners is very good idea, that pictures are very nice.

[vnts]

If for official use in the front page & by media sites [1], I think it might be nice to ask if some of the wonderful high-settings SOTM ones could be re-uploaded to reduce bluriness[2](?).

I found imgur heavily lossily compresses large-ish images, unless uploaded with a (free) imgur account. FG screens contain lots of fine detail (high frequency data) that get hurt by lossy compression. Maybe this info should be included in SOTM top post.

My Gimp 2.8 JPG settings: I use 80-90% (too high?) compression with smoothing turned down (too low?) to preserve detail [3] after a quick glance at gimp docs[4]. It's not optimal, should have floating point DCT & maybe progressive off I think. 90% gives 170-500kb JPGs from 1-3 MB PNGs.

Most SOTM entries would go in one of the lower settings galleries(?). I'm not sure how many past SOTM entries are close to max-ish settings gallery (trees on very high or ultra, cloud shadows, overlays & grass - with transparency antialiasing on, OSM2City, AA up, cloud render distance up, likely lots more FG settings I don't know yet). Pausing and changing settings to take a screenshot works if settings are optimised for different altitude flight (tweaking LoD ranges takes care of it too), or display resolution is set too high for GPU (higher than 1080p - 2k/4k) so low settings have to be used when fragment bound.

Kind regards