Australian scenery project updates

[merspieler]

... or totally change terrain engine.

Thanks for volunteering with the implementation - we're eagerly waiting for your first results and merge requests.

What about the VPB? Do you have any information, how far Scott has got?

[DFaber]

Best solution: Photo scenery

unless you need the type of terrain you're on, to land/walk/drive upon, which is quite annoying in Photo Scenery.

Greetings

[V12]

Thorsten :

I have not spare time, developing for P3D
It is much simple, for one added taxiway You need not rebuild all continent or island

merspieler :

I have not any info, project is probably frozen, or dead.

[legoboyvdlp]

Do you need to spread misinformation? If you "don't have any info" - how can you assume that the project is "frozen or dead" when in fact it is not?

[vnts]

That's right. I suspect that the most robust solution would be for roads to be handled by terragear by reimplementing the nice junction algorithms of osm2city in terragear. Bridges would still be produced by osm2city.

Terragear btg roads have the advantage of being in binary format. There will likely be a big space saving, and small loading time improvement compared to AC files. Roadside barriers, hedges, streetlamps may take up too much space though.

If WS 4.0 uses a raster format for landclass type as discussed (maybe using Virtual Planet Builder), then roads & verges may need a huge(??) increase in resolution of the raster image. IIRC reading in the sourceforge mailinglist page on the WS 4.0 discussion that was mentioned on the forum (e.g. link), WS 4.0 was to become the main focus after the WS 2.1 world build and accompanying infrastructure to automatically do world builds regularly .

WS 4.0 may mean going back to roads from OSM2City. If that's the case instancing road segments with verges using a simple list of road points might be more robust/fast, as well as faster & less space consuming to do 2nd/3rd/4th passes over the list of points adding verge trees/roadside objects/moving vehicles.

Kind regards

[V12]

Do you need to spread misinformation? If you "don't have any info" - how can you assume that the project is "frozen or dead" when in fact it is not?

No progress - no info and no progress = frozen project.

[merspieler]

I've got no info nor progress on V12 -> He must be a dead person

[Thorsten]

No progress - no info and no progress = frozen project.

Told V12 some things a dozen times - still he's replying the same. He told a dozen times he's leaving FG, still hanging around and posting how bad FG is - no progress at all.

-> Frozen person.

[GinGin]

The sky colors, Cloud darkness on the edge, and the cliff are really superbs

[V12]

This new scenery is really perfect. It is fully comparable with payware sim and some addons :

Over Katoomba, view on Mount Solitudo :



View from Mount Solitudo on Katoomba



Lakes in Blue Mountains region :



Big congratulation to all contributors !

[frtps]

That is not the Australian scenery from any version of FlightGear. You will note that the cliffs have an obvious slope to them and are the wrong colour, and the trees are not those we provide. There is clear photoscenery (e.g. flat houses) in some places. Still, nice-looking scenery, I wonder which sim + package they are from? If Orbx, I have always wondered what Katoomba looks like as the cliff construction algorithm we developed was, as far as I know, original and something that aerial photography alone can't fix.

[V12]

Yes, it is ORBX Global and FTX Vectors, not photoscenery in P3D. ORBX has package for Australia and NZ, but I don't fly in this regions.

[frtps]

I see. I think Orbx released a special Australia version? I've always wondered what their Blue Mountains and Sydney shoreline cliffs look like, as basing everything off photoscenery and landcover info you can't easily texture a cliff. I did see one online youtube Orbx flight near the Blue Mountains in which the cliffs looking completely wrong (more like rocky hills sloping down).

[V12]

ORX cliff texture is not very good, especialy color tone. But texture in FG is not optimal, too. It is too flat, without bumpmaps or normal map simulating roughness and rock structure. Without that effects looks like old corroded metal sheets.
Does FG support normal maps or bump maps ? It should significant help...

[frtps]

Funny you should mention cliff bumpmaps, I'm working on that at the moment. The problem in FG is often that quite sophisticated mechanisms are present, but the scenery artists don't use them or can't get hold of decent textures. With cliffs the problem is even trickier as it appears that the normal coordinates that should be generated by OSG are not getting through to the shader so the bumpmap doesn't show up. I'm trying to debug this at the moment as it seems that bumpmaps are working for aircraft models using the same (I presume) mechanism.