As many know, I like to do more general analysis on why FGFs is not at the same level of X-Plane to the visual presentation layer. I hope that my notes can serve as the basis for a development more focused on quality and not only to the efficiency. I must also say that the wonderful work done by ALS can eventually be a good starting point as it allows you to have good visual effects with a relatively low cost CPU.
(1) Accessories are important and it would be desirable to insert automatically depending of the planned spaces, perhaps even with the possibility of independent movement, the airport organization provides specific routes known as the tracks of a train, it would be great to be working on such effects . In X-Plane it has been played a very good and especially to get an animation of the world outside work, especially in the case of roads and the car and truck traffic, including night lights. Something was attempted in FGFS few years ago, but the project did not go forward.
(2) The airport grounds are too clean, and this makes them far from reality, I thought it was possible to automatically generate the dirt through the same method used in ALS to the ground, what do you think, is it possible? I think that would be a very easy way to get an even more real world.
(3) The quality of road markings is not at the same level of X-Plane, a reason is immediately apparent, there are too few polygons and then, in the curves, the effect is very fragmented. Then you move the quality suffers rather quickly, seems an interpolation problem. In tests I entered the interpolation (Anti Aliasing = 4) at the highest level.
(4) The shadows in X-Plane give a greater depth of the scene, and allow to increase the 3D effect. In the case of FGFs in ALS mode, the shadows are provided for the aircraft in use. I was thinking, it is only a working hypothesis mine, if it was possible auto-generate the box of automatic shadows (on the fly) redoing the same work is done manually. At this point it might be possible to generate shadows for all objects in the scene (with a separate task so it does not slow down the rest of the execution). You could then put these boxes in a cache file, not always having to be recalculated.
(5) Increase the planes, perhaps using those found in fgfs-Aircraft, in this case it would be necessary to define a criterion (a special folder or an appropriate?) Algorithm in order to extract the aircraft present in the folder only those essential elements in order to reduce the complexity of scene.
(6) The land in the airport does not follow the same rules used by ALS to the external ground, this makes the airport very detached from the ground that covers the whole scene. I reflected on whether it was possible to unify the two rendering modes? This would make it much more natural the whole scene.
(7) The sky would say that, in ALS mode is considerably higher than that of X-Plane
(8) The reflexes, always in ALS mode, are very interesting, but lack dynamic as it is well managed with Rembrandt, do not understand why ALS does not allow to achieve this result. Surely the scene in X-Plane has been made in HDR mode, but I wonder if it is possible, in ALS, get a similar gloss or better if you can be able to change according to your own tastes and characteristics of the monitor and the type of scene.
(9) Currently, the ALS mode, the quality of the soil is high, although there is still some effects, like the shattering of the waves on the rocks and beaches and the effect of water on the rivers is very low, but these are arguments to be treated later.