Posts by pmb

  • A few observations on AeroflyFS2 scenery design

    I would like to share a few experiences from my attempts of scenery design. Sorry if this grew too long. Let me start with a few shots.

    [Blocked Image: http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/02/01/aeroflyFS2_EDBJ.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/02/01/aeroflyFS2_EDBJ_1.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/images/2018/02/01/aeroflyFS2_jena_2.jpg]

    These sceneries were made by someone who has been simming since 1991 but never did any serious steps into scenery design, except a hand full of Ortho4XP tiles. Given this was a low-res AeroflyFS2 pixel desert before, I think they speak for themselves, and I would sincerely thank Karl-Heinz "Rodeo", Arno Gerretson (probably not around here), Phil "Spit40", Jeff "drhotwing1", Uwe "admoore63" and all the others for their tools, bright ideas and tutorials.

    I also would like to stress IPACS' superior display engine providing an amazing atmosphere and landscape experience, and all this with 120 fps without blurries or stutters - in my mind the best engine we have for a civilian sim today.

    What I did was creating my homebase EDBJ, a smaller (27 km x 72 km) area of photoscenery around it and making cultivation for a larger part of it. Here are a few more technical questions and hints I collected during the making which maybe someone can answer. Please bear with me, I have been following the forum more or less from the beginning of AeroflyFS2 but certainly missed a lot.

    Geoconvert

    1. FSET worked 3 h and Geoconvert 8 h for making the photo ground with 1 m/pixel. This is fine, however, my next project was my home state Thuringia being one of the smaller German states. After running more than a day I stopped as I extrapolated to need around 4 days for Geoconvert to finish. I might take the burden but not just for me but if I could redistribute/share the result for free. That's the same dilemma as with Ortho4XP, it's such a waste of resources having ever new people doing this stupid number crunching over and over. I am pretty sure there is no legally usable map material available from the German "Landesvermessungsämter" - or is it?

    I didn't do a strict comparison, but I am under the impression Ortho4XP is "a bit" more speedy in calculating (comparable) ZL17 tiles.

    2. I noticed the hard disk working quite heavily under Geoconvert, and much more than under Ortho4XP. I even got a bit worried and I certainly will not task one of my SSDs with Geoconvert. Maybe there is room for optimizations reducing the IOs?

    3. Why is it necessary (or at least suggested) to make all the resolution levels of 9, 11, 12, 13, 14? When I create Ortho4XP sceneries for XP I only make ZL17, and maybe ZL 18 around the airports. And, btw., it would be lovely to have a similar possibility to define higher resolutions for certain regions like e.g. airports without having to restart the process.

    Cultivation

    4. I understand I can select a certain area on OSM for export, but this is rather restricted (by OSM). Is there a way to export larger regions?

    5. Why have Cultivation patches to be bound to airports (or at least dummy airports) at present? Wouldn't it by better to just define an arbitrary anchor point?

    6. While the first impression on the images is overwhelming, a closer look shows the variance of objects being quite limited. In general, there are quite a number of non-fitting (mostly too large) buildings. There are rows of (larger) apartment buildings concatenated to just one large one etc. Is there someone working on extending and differentiating the object library? (And to begin with, I didn't even find who maintains it :))

    Simple airports

    7. I just foresee this to populate the AeroflyFS2 world quite quickly after people get used to it. There is certainly room for extensions like adding VORs, ILS, and the like. In the beginning, these might be simple, a VOR just needs an anchor point and a couple of frequencies - or is it more?

    What is missing?

    8. Have a look here.

    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zent…_2008-05-24.JPG

    That is a major landmark and it is badly missing in Jena. This is the question of general landmarks as Günther Kremp creates them for X-Plane. Now the models are all in the Warehouse, but I am afraid, contrary to the tools above, there is nothing available for a layman like me to convert them into AeroflyFS2. I would even be willing to spend a few Euros and learn something new but AC3 is without reach for me. Any chance I could import the Warehouse model of just that business tower?

    I tried to understand the intended scenery creation workflow at this point. As far as I ses the idea is to

    1. Make a low resolution larger Ceoconvert area, say something like 100 km x 100 km

    2. Make an airport you are interested in within it

    3. Build a higher-resolution (say 10-20 km^2) area around that aiport, add cultivation to the area

    Finally: I do not at all intend to become a scenery designer but just want to understand how things work and, perhaps, help testing stuff. Nonetheless, I will try to pay back a bit in reporting in a few fora (not the technical issues, but the results, of course) as a little support for AeroflyFS2. However, given two updates for Prepar3d and FSW are pending and distracting people right now I'll better wait a few days.

    Kind regards, Michael

  • Please help with simple airport file

    Hi,

    I want to do a few elementary steps into scenery design, mainly just to understand how things work.

    I already made a smaller Geoconvent area some time ago. Now I would like to step up with Cultivation. As I understand, there has to be a simple airport .tsc file (dummy or real) in place to begin with. Thus I tried to make one for my home base EDBJ according to the Wiki (as a hint; the example file promised in the Wiki is missing, but I found the nas_fallon.zip as an example elsewhere).

    Modifying the well-documented file was not difficult according to the good guidelines in the Wiki. I placed it under

    C:\Users\Michael_Basler_2016\Documents\Aerofly FS 2\scenery\places\EDBJ

    However, the airport does not show up when I look it up on the map in sim. The file is attached. edbj.zip

    May I ask a kind soul to give me a hand to find what went wrong?

    Thanks and kind regards, Michael

  • Written Cultivation tutorial?

    Hi,

    is there a written Cultivation tutorial available? I know there are several - excellent - videos out but if you want to do things step by step I find it more convenient to have a printed harcopy instead of continually flipping back and forth between a video and the tools.

    I made a search, but couldn't find anything, neither in the SDK nor in the forum (where it, however, might hide somewhere).

    Thanks and kind regard, Michael

  • This is not a rant… ORBX scenery for AFS2

    I am really happy ORBX has been supporting AeroflyFS2 pretty early on and I got all their AeroflyFS2 sceneries so far. Not many of the big players did so, e.g. Aerosoft is entering the game right now only, but they do at least. ORBX is very well-known in the community and their support sure gave AeroflyFS2 a momentum.

    Kind regards, Michael

  • I can't believe how smooth that scenery is in AF2, KEGE it is (movie)

    I always think my good old Prepar3d4 runs fluently - until I fire up AeroflyFS2. Prepar3d4 runs "sort of" fluently but AeroflyFs2 IS fluent like flying a real plane in a real world. Besides there are a number of Prepar3d "features" like the annoying textue reshaping/morphing in mountains or the mesh issues around some airports, which I never found in AeroflyFS2 yet.

    Unfortunately, this is offset by some basic aspects still missing in AeroflyFS2 like anything bringing motion and live into the sim: moving water, cars, people and AI planes. And I dare to say I still can't get my Saitek Flight Instrument Panels to work and the Switch Panel doesn't work fully either yet.

    So I will have to go back and forth for now. But much looking forward and I think AeroflyFS2 has a bright future ahead.

    Kind regards, Michael

  • Airports in Switzerland?

    Switzerland is a payware addon (~10 €). However, the SW USA is default and should show up. There is an additional high resolution texture pack for the SW USA available which you can install from Steam, however, the airports (like KFSO) should be there from the outset.

    Kind regards, Michael

  • Are all third party compatible with Orbx

    In general. no scenery is compatible if it hasn't be made specifically for AeroflyFS2. Compared to FSX/Prepar3d there are very few payware sceneries available, i.e. only the addons made by IPACS themselves and ORBX (and only a handfull from ORBX were made for AeroflyFS2, if at all). Sad but true.

    However, Aerosoft is about to enter the game. They are working on an AeroflyFS2 version of their Helgoland scenery (with an extended area) and also on Lukla for AeroflyFS2 later

    http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/top…#comment-861988

    Kind regards, Michael

  • New Zealand Scenery Campaign

    Quote from Toprob

    So what NZ really needs is a proper full coverage, and that's what I am hoping to achieve. So IPACS and I will hopefully be able to get this done, and it may fulfill the Kickstarter goal for Aerofly FS2. So Aerofly will get more than initially planned, it will just take longer.

    Amen to that. That would certainly give AeroflyFS2 a push. And yes, it makes much more sense than to start with an airport. That's my issue with Aerosoft Helgoland. I can fly there from EDXH to ... just EDXH. I probably will buy it despite just to support Aerosoft AeroflyFS2 development, but I am afraid I wan't do much flying in it.

    Kind regards, Michael

  • ORBX Germany Photoreal

    Yes, HiFlyer is completely right. They were called Ozx once and started with freeware. The freeware departement is still active under the old name.

    Amazingly, I find their (landclass based) Australia still a remarkably good scenery (without having ever been there, aside two stopovers).

    Kind regards, Michael

  • ORBX Germany Photoreal

    Personally, I can imagine ORBX might switch to photo-based IF the sales for the initial products will be good. NL should be a trial balloon. Australia has been due for a remake anyway, well possible they might do it photo-based for AFS2, P3D and XP. It probably comes down to the question of availability of affordable satellite imagery. I think there is for NZ, but I don't know about AUS.

    Plus this all will take time, although I could imagine photo-based scenery being less labor intense than landclass, even more, as they have some assets (POIs, buildings etc.) already available. Not sure about this, though.

    Kind regards

  • ORBX Germany Photoreal

    Following the discussion on the ORBX forum for some time, I am a bit disturbed. While most AeroflyFS2 users - naturally - like the idea of a photoreal Germany, the Prepar3d/FSX crowd seems to be quite content with landclass regions in general. Now these certainly have their merits, but the future imo will be photo-based + "cultivated". It's like HiFlyer states above.

    I only hope JV doesn't cancel the project at all because of undercritical mass, but at least provide an AeroflyFS2 version. Thanks to all telling him there's some interest from our side.

    Kind regards, Michael