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Blue Mountains, Australia

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Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby vnts » Sun Feb 23, 2020 10:59 am

Not flown in a while. Just had a very quick & short look at the demo scenery release from the Australia scenery project by frtps and others :mrgreen: .

The demo scenery needs engine features from a recent FG nightly for cliffs, plantations, and newer OSM2City.

Thread: link , Instructions link, Scenery link , OSM2City link , YSSY Airport scenery: link, FG nightly: link.

Edit: updated with link to airport models.

Note 23/02/2020 :!: : region_pack.tgz in the scenery pack may need to be downloaded from here: link. Unpack just the NSW/output/terrain folder in Sydney_Scenery.tgz. The other folders are empty linux links which caused problems in windows causing explorer.exe to churn until terminated (for me at least).

Blue Mountains, near Katoomba. Heli: gazelle. Close airfield: YKAT. Coords near: -33.72716594, 150.3036198

Image

The Blue Mountains get their name as a result of Eucalyptus trees which evolved in the Australian region. Sort of the tree version of the Marsupials :) IIRC Eucalyptus elsewhere are imported. AIUI these trees release Eucalyptus oil (a volatile organic compound called a terpene) which combines with dust & moisture to form an extremely fine aerosol smog layer giving the blue colour.

Remember to turn the smog slider up when flying in Australia to approximate this: Environment menu -> weather -> detailed weather -> advanced options. Tree species in other countries also release amount of terpenes. The oak forests of Blue Ridge mountains in the USA and some forests of France or Italy have similar aerosol hazes AIUI.

Under the right conditions the smog helps make certain (thin) clouds pink at day time - in certain areas of the sky but not in others. These screens were with a low morning sun.

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Pterosaur:

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The Blue Mountains region is like the Grand Canyon region (img) in some respects. An uplifted sedimentary plateau heavily incised by flowing rivers. There are steep sedimentary cliffs unlike the Grand Canyon.

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These cliffs need engine features available in nightly.

FG's lighting of cliffs stands out at sunset/sunrise. 3 screens as the sun sinks lower.

1:
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2:
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3:
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Colour change as ice crystals in upper clouds scatter light depending on angles (see near the Pterosaur). IIRC I also increased the ground haze in weather->advanced settings which is responsible for the redness of the trees at the base of the cliff.

Image

Image

Album : https://imgur.com/a/E1a45Yl

Kind regards
Last edited by vnts on Sun Feb 23, 2020 12:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby D-ECHO » Sun Feb 23, 2020 11:08 am

Wow, this looks amazing
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby dg-505 » Sun Feb 23, 2020 11:22 am

That's really impressive!
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby Figaro » Sun Feb 23, 2020 11:53 am

Sydney Airport models released specifically for use with frtps' scenery are available here with a get repo here. All terminals included, plus ATC tower, and some detailing around the airfield, but still WIP, not super compatible with OSM2City just yet, either.

frtps' work on cliffs in particular looks amazing! Really recommend everyone to try it out.

-S
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby vnts » Sun Feb 23, 2020 12:51 pm

Agree! :mrgreen: FG looks phenomenal. The recent engine features on FG nighties & scenery are awesome. This is just one area & it's hard to decide which direction to take a screenshot.

@FIgaro: Thanks, I updated the first post.

Yep, the vertical cliffs are very true to life. From wondering why & googling, the chiseled look comes from harder sandstone blocks falling off and tumbling into the valley below as softer shale or coal surrounding them are eroded by water. There's a history of the evolution of the region from: link.

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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby Figaro » Sun Feb 23, 2020 1:04 pm

Certainly! Whilst the Blue Mountains to the west are definitely an excellent place to explore, I'd also suggest heading south from Sydney and exploring the bounds of Royal National Park and beyond.

Both in sim with this demo scenery as well as in real life too the Blue Mountains are tremendously beautiful. I actually lived for almost a decade in Newcastle (circa 70nm - IIRC - north of Sydney) and visited the Blue Mountains quite a number of times. I'm gonna change my recommendation above - don't just fly there in sim - go there in person, it's a beautiful part of the world.

-S
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby legoboyvdlp » Mon Feb 24, 2020 9:30 am

Very nice indeed, to all involved in making this :)
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby Michat » Mon Feb 24, 2020 11:29 pm

Image



Image

You made my day. :D on my face, feel happier, and got jurassic.

29.92 for Australia in fg, many thanks to fgdevs.
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby GinGin » Mon Feb 24, 2020 11:38 pm

Those screens look amazing, really breathtaking.
The color, diffraction, moisture links to visibility, shade of blue, and those Cliffs that fade away with horizon in the background.
That is so realistic .


The recent engine features on FG nighties & scenery are awesome


You picked up my curiosity as I am still in 2018.
What are those features :)
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby frtps » Tue Feb 25, 2020 4:12 am

GinGin wrote in Mon Feb 24, 2020 11:38 pm:Those screens look amazing, really breathtaking.
The color, diffraction, moisture links to visibility, shade of blue, and those Cliffs that fade away with horizon in the background.
That is so realistic .


The recent engine features on FG nighties & scenery are awesome


You picked up my curiosity as I am still in 2018.
What are those features :)


I'm not aware of any features in 2019 relevant to this particular scenery. The cliffs are constructed entirely in terragear, as you would expect. You do need a set of materials and texture files that are not yet in FlightGear to get the cliff faces textured, but I think they should work fine in the 2018 version.
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby vnts » Tue Feb 25, 2020 9:39 am

AIUI the OSM2City with the new shader building lists will crash if the engine doesn't have support for it, but that is an additional release on top of the demo scenery.

You do need a set of materials and texture files that are not yet in FlightGear to get the cliff faces textured, but I think they should work fine in the 2018 version.

Are plantations in the scenery? Not had the opportunity to fly much yet. I thought the plantations needed a newer version too.

Perhaps the new regional definitions could be synced with the FGdata master before the 2020.1 release(?). Huge improvement (even if they are considered WiP).

as I am still in 2018

In windows at least, I found I could run multiple FG versions installed to different folders fine :mrgreen: . It works with launcher too. The installations share the same Aircraft, custom scenery, and terrasync scenery directories. Main FG settings are saved in different files for different versions AIUI, but multiple night-lies will affect the same settings. I think the launcher settings & state like recent craft/locations are shared for all versions, but that doesn't cause too many issues.

What I did: create and install nightly to new directory e.g. Flightgear 2019.x. Create a new short cut. Change properties of shortcut by right clicking on shortcut. Change the command line with the new executable & fg data directories: <"Path to flightgear directory\bin\fgfs.exe" --launcher --fg-root="Path to flightgear directory/data"> . Change the working folder to "Path to flightgear directory\bin". I also have "--terrasync-dir=Path to custom terrasync dir" as a launcher commandline but it may not be necessary. It's possible to install multiple binary only nightlies to a different /bin folder, and create a new shortcut to fgfs.exe while sharing the same fg data.

If FG data is not specified FG may check the fg data directory of another installation, and come up with an error (or bug if it's the same FG version but with a more recent FG data change). Maybe supporting side by side installations more visibly in the installer UI, and without any additional config & quirks, might act as a cue showing it's possible and might get more people to try & test nightlies.

The linux equivalent to this should probably (?) work fine.

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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby GinGin » Tue Feb 25, 2020 8:14 pm

Thank you for the answers guys.
I really need to have an eye on the 2019 changes.
Plantations, new regional definitions, it seems nice :)
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby frtps » Tue Feb 25, 2020 10:31 pm

vnts wrote in Tue Feb 25, 2020 9:39 am:
Are plantations in the scenery? Not had the opportunity to fly much yet. I thought the plantations needed a newer version too.

Perhaps the new regional definitions could be synced with the FGdata master before the 2020.1 release(?). Huge improvement (even if they are considered WiP).



The plantation effect is only triggered if the material definition asks for it. So there might be plantations in the scenery (I don't know, it is a surprisingly large area), but they will just be rendered as the AgroForest texture.

I/we do plan to gradually feed these textures and materials into the main FGData.
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Re: Blue Mountains, Australia

Postby Johan G » Thu Mar 12, 2020 5:06 pm

Very beautiful screenshots! :D 8)
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