ORBX Palm Springs Intl - Now Available!

  • I love all the details!

    A pity the people is not playing animations. I really like those ones at Innsbruck. :)

    The sweeper is animated and the radar antenna. A bus or truck drives by near the tower, the Chevy Tahoe. We might find the guy walking the dog someplace in the scenery. I really enjoyed the butterflies in the PNW scenery. I also liked the tractor mowing the grass at one of the airports in PNW.

    Animated Marshals should be easy enough ( I could be a technical advisor, but Jarrad already knows a lot of Marshalls) ;), also the gas pump guy and the two old coats chatting would be nice. Remember the guy reading the newspaper.

    Of course, the couple chatting at the Cessna out in the desert could be added easy enough.

    hmmm, I have to go flying now and see if I can find the wind turbines.

    Regards,

    Ray

    Wind Farms - wind turbines - animated wind turbines

    hmmm. I am totally befuddled as to why the wind turbines in the Palm Spring Scenery are not animated. I remember reading that Orbx stated they had figured out how to add something less than a gazillion animated wind turbines to their Southern California scenery pack a few years ago.

    San Gorgonio Pass alone has 4,000 active wind turbines and just off the end of the runway at Palm Springs are a few thousand. :(

    Jarrad must have a compelling reason for the still born blades in this hot new scenery for AFS2, I am anxious to hear that reason.

    Regards,

    Ray

    I'm guessing, but maybe the spinning wind turbines will be an option that can be turned on and off with a checkmark in the box. This might help the mid powered systems and also keep those with 1080 ti equipped pc happy also.

    I read through the User Guide and found not one word about wind turbines, which has to be strange since just the name Palm Springs is normally associated with Golf Courses and Wind Farms. :/

    Regards,

    Ray

    Some good reading from the KPSP User Guide . . .

  • Sightseeing in Palm Springs - Enjoy the video

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  • Be sure to fly west toward Los Angeles and toward the San Gorgonio Pass area. There are some great new scenery just as the improved area runs out. There are some really nice mountain scenes both north and south.

    pI especially like the Morongo Casino and Resort hotel complex. The coverage seems to stop in the shadow of the Banning airport. hmmm Maybe we can fsCP and ScenPro a small addition here.

    The large non- descript building with the undeveloped parking lot and the hundred or two tractor-trailer rigs is the Nestle Waters bottled water plant on the Morongo Indian reservation.

    Be sure to check out the dinosaurs - tell 'em Large Marge sent you.

    Even the rest areas are finished off. Near the Whitewater split on the Christopher Columbus highway.

    Regards,

    Ray

    Is the aerial tramway animated?

    Regards,

    Ray

  • Thanks guys, glad you're all enjoying it so far :)

    Animations: there are quite a few more small animations that no-one has posted about yet; I won't give them away, but rather let you guys find them as you explore :)

    Aerial Tramway: Yes indeed it is animated. There is one car per direction; from memory it takes about 10-15 minutes to get from top to bottom or vice-versa.

    Windfarms: Exactly the same as the FSX/P3D version, these are not animated, for three reasons:
    1. Performance
    2. Optimization
    3. Performance and optimization (!)

    The windfarm is a unique model created specifically for PSP, and was done using a vastly different approach to the Netherlands and older FTX Northern California (FSX/P3D) models. Because the San Gorgonio wind farm is so densely populated, it is not prudent to add animations - even animating 10% of the turbines would have a serious performance impact. Useless trivia; there are more wind turbines packed into the small pocket of land west of Palm Springs than there are in the entire Netherlands! So rather than placing 3000+ model instances into a TSC file (which in and of itself would seriously impact performance), I created a single huge model for the windfarms, using a terrain model in 3DS Max to ensure the towers aligned correctly with the elevation mesh. You may also notice (if you get close enough), that the turbine models themselves have a very low polygon count - again a very different approach to the turbines seen in NLD. As a result, the entire windfarm has roughly the same performance impact as 4-5 animated people.

    Lastly, there are quite a few landmarks and POI that I intentionally didn't include in the promotional screenshots. I've seen a couple in the discussions so far, but there are plenty more dotted around the coverage area to check out. As Ray has noted, the coverage area roughly ends in line with the Morongo Casino (the hotel tower at the western end of the valley), and the Indian Wells tennis arena to the east. Everything in between is fair game :)

    Cheers,

    Jarrad

    ORBX Lead Airport Developer: Innsbruck | Palm Springs | Monterey | Eagle County | Jackson Hole

  • Aerial Tramway: Yes indeed it is animated. There is one car per direction; from memory it takes about 10-15 minutes to get from top to bottom or vice-versa.

    Cheers,

    Jarrad

    info

    Palm Springs Aerial Tramway http://pstramway.com/  

    Starting in Chino Canyon near Palm Springs, the tram takes passengers from Valley Station at 2,643 feet elevation to Mountain Station on the edge of the wilderness, elevation 8,516 feet. The Mountain Station features a restaurant, gift shop, snack bar, and the state park visitor center. In Long Valley, a short walk from the station, you will find the Long Valley Ranger Station, a picnic area with barbecue stoves and restrooms, a ski center, a self-guiding nature trail, and Desert View Trail which offers panoramas of the high country including several peaks over 10,000 feet in elevation. You can also enter the hiking trail system from this point.

    This alone should keep us occupied with the R-22.

    Those landing pads look even smaller than a postage stamp.


    Regards,

    Ray

  • What great feedback Jarrad. To know more about the intricacies of development helps me appreciate even more the quality of work we are treated to in this scenery pack. Thanks for keeping the performance high, now I get why animating the wind farm was not done. Keep up the good work!

    I still think we need a few rotating blades. After all, it is Palm Springs - home of the USA wind turbine farms.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • Palm springs video by airjuneau

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