Hakodate - NEW! :)

  • Yes, sadly no buildings yet because Ipacs hasn't released an SDK for cultivation (buildings etc.) yet.

    I was looking into this, and according to the old IPACS Aerofly FS 2 wiki on the AFFS2 scenery SDK, it seems that a third party tool called sceneProc was used to generate cultivation for Aerofly FS2. If that's the case, then it probably means that the sceneProc developer rather than IPACS would need to update this tool to support the new file formats used by Aerofly FS 4.

    sdk:scenerydev4 [Aerofly FS Wiki]

    scenProc | SceneryDesign.org

    EDIT: Further digging into this, I guess you are right after all. IPACS has not made their Aerofly FS 4 cultivation file format public, so even if the sceneProc developer wanted to update his tool for AFFS4, he cannot at this time.

    Edited once, last by jayeye2011 (May 16, 2023 at 5:46 PM).

  • Ipacs has gave me a cultivation-file for whole Japan. I have some trouble getting it to work with the airport, but I can say, it looks amazing.

    Nice. But going beyond Japan, it seems like having to rely on IPACS to give you the cultivation for each region you want to create scenery for is going to be an exercise in disappointment.. Better that the sceneProc tool gets updated to be able to generate AFFS4 compatible cultivation files from OpenStreetMap so that anyone can create orthophoto scenery with cultivation for wherever they want to fly, much like people over at X-Plane users group have Ortho4XP to use.

  • As far as I know, ScenProc doesn't need an update.

    When creating the cultivation for FS2 there are many different so called templates. These templates have to be adapted to Aerofly FS 4 and not scenproc itself.

    So, if Ipacs uses ScenProc, then they have to provide the community with these templates.

    • Official Post

    @TomSimMuc: Good question. Right now we can easily create a world wide coverage of cultivation data, it's a question on how we distribute this data to our customers. Creating a world wide cultivation data can range from 300 to 600 GB of data, possibly more. Usually we have two options: Download or Streaming, we haven't really decided on this yet. In the mean time, we are building up the infrastructure for creating the cultivation world wide and offering them for download, mainly for developers, so users can see what is possible with Aerofly FS.

  • Creating a world wide cultivation data can range from 300 to 600 GB of data, possibly more.

    Seems pretty big and un-optimalized. X-Plane 11 and 12 have world wide cultivation in the base game files and don't require more than 60 to 100 GB of storage total for the complete game. Granted this is using the generic scenery tiles which do not require much storage, but the cultivation part that provides the trees and buildings positioned about the same as what is in AFFS 4. Personally, I hope IPACS does not switch to a just-in-time streaming scenery system like MSFS 2020 because my old house wiring causes periodic cable modem resets which prevent me from using MSFS 2020 which is why I use AFFS 4 instead.

    Also, did the cultivation generated by sceneProc (not an IPACS product) from Open Street Map data when used by the community volunteer devs consume that much space in AFFS 2 for the regional scenery packages they made?

    Maybe breakup the world cultivation into separate 80 GB regional cultivation (but maybe include better resolution elevation mesh) only DLCs so that players can choose individually which ones they want to download based on what is of interest to them. That way, if a community volunteer developer creates a photoimage scenery of a specific world region (say Japan or Australia or New Zealand) they can just specify which regional cultivation DLC to use if the user wants to see cultivation in that area than rather include the cultivation in their scenery pack. Downloading cultivation only DLC from Steam is much faster than downloading photoimage scenery packages that include that cultivation from flight-sim.org.

    Edited 6 times, last by jayeye2011 (May 17, 2023 at 1:06 PM).

  • As far as I know, ScenProc doesn't need an update.

    When creating the cultivation for FS2 there are many different so called templates. These templates have to be adapted to Aerofly FS 4 and not scenproc itself.

    So, if Ipacs uses ScenProc, then they have to provide the community with these templates.

    I think that the AFFS 4 TOC cultivation files are binary files that are using a different format than AFFS 2. It seems to me that would require a new dll in sceneProc that is different from the AFFS2 dll it uses currently. Not sure if it was the sceneProc developer or if it was IPACS that created the existing sceneProc AF2Utils.dll DLL file used in sceneProc, but a new one for AFFS 4 to handle the conversion to the new binary TOC file format would likely be required made by someone who knows the new binary file format definition. I looked at rodeo's sceneProc definition file for AFFS 2 and it did not contain any code instructions that would generate a format specific toc file. It just specifies option settings for sceneProc to use. Looking at the sceneProc manual, it only has instructions for AFFS 2 cultivation creation. Again, if it was the author of sceneProc who created the existing dll, then IPACS should make the binary file format definition for AFFS 4 toc files available to the author.

    https://www.aerofly.com/community/index.php?attachment/6675-aerofly-rodeo-zip

    Development releases | SceneryDesign.org

    Edit: Actually, I now think sceneProc is irrelevant as there is no indication that the its author is interested in continuing support for the Aerofly FS community. I think, reading between the lines on his website that his primary focus is MSFS 2020 tool support.

    Edited once, last by jayeye2011 (May 17, 2023 at 2:09 PM).

  • we are building up the infrastructure for creating the cultivation world wide and offering them for download, mainly for developers,

    This is an interesting approach, so you can easy concentrate on areas where ortho developers show a great interest.

    Will it take long from a request to the cultivation delivery?

    If I have additional (other) mass objects which I would like to add, will this be possible?

    If they collide with cultivation buildings, what can be done?

    Cheers, Thomas


    Edited once, last by TomSimMuc (May 19, 2023 at 6:19 AM).