Posts by Jarrad - ORBX

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

G'day everyone,

Thank you all for the wonderful support over the weekend for Palm Springs; as I promised on Friday, it's now ready for you all to pick up your copy!

https://orbxdirect.com/product/kpsp/afs2

Whilst we will be releasing it on Steam too, we haven't locked down a release date for that version just yet. If you own KPSP for FSX/P3Dv4, you will also receive a 40% discount (discount only applies if purchased from orbxdirect.com).

Anyway, please enjoy the scenery This project has been a long time in the making, and I do very much hope it brings you many (many!) hours of entertainment.

Cheers,

Jarrad

Key Features

• Ultra-detailed rendition of KPSP Palm Springs International Airport
• Enormous 1500sq km coverage
• Beautiful hand-edited ground textures at 30cm/1m resolution
• Impeccable 10m high res mesh
• High-detail ground poly with bump/spec mapping
• All-new custom vegetation cultivation
• Dozens of custom landmarks
• Palm Springs Aerial Tramway helipads
• Unique static aircraft and vehicles exclusive to KPSP
• Extraordinarily detailed Airport Terminal
• Incredible virtual reality integration: optimized for performance and smoothness
• Extreme high-density vegetation and building cultivation
• 3D Night lighting for the entire city
• Advanced rendering, ambient occlusion and unique night-lighting techniques used for maximum realism
• Custom animated content
• Orbx PeopleFlow technology
• Designed to blend seamlessly with default Aerofly scenery
• Incredible performance on even mid-range systems - far superior to FSX/P3D/XP11!

Quote from Jet-Pack

It's so funny that they actually write on the taxiway that it is not the runway you should land on. I'd love to hear how many people have done it before they decided to add the big red labels on the ground.

Apparently it used to happen all the time. If you have a read of this NTSB report (page 6 onwards), you can even see the much-more-drastic markings they had back in the mid-'90s.

Cheers,

G'day guys,

I thought I might post a few screenshots of my latest airport for Aerofly - Palm Springs Intl in Southern California. This has been a project going on behind the scenes for some time now, and aside from a few last tweaks, is very close to release. I chose this airport as, much like Monterey and Eagle County, it is located in the heart of the default scenery areas, and as such is surrounded by plenty of beautiful (default) scenery to explore. The airport itself includes an enormous coverage area, a highly-detailed rendition of the airport and city, dozens of landmarks, and even a special helipad feature in anticipation of the R22 The cultivation is hand-placed and highly detailed, as is the photoreal base. I've used the IPACS-recommended workflow as much as possible to ensure best optimization and performance within the sim.

Unfortunately there isn't a release date just yet, but I can assure you it's not too far off As with my other airports, this will be released through ORBXdirect first, and then via Steam a little while later.

These are a small selection of the screenshots; for more detailed information and (many) more pictures, please feel free to visit the main announcement topic over at ORBX.

Cheers,

Jarrad

Hi guys, just chiming in quickly as there seems to be a bit of discussion here (and elsewhere) regarding coverage size;

- KEGE is much larger in coverage area than KMRY

- KEGE and LOWI are in the same ballpark in terms of coverage area; KEGE is 65km from one edge to the other, versus 70km for LOWI

- ORBX coverage areas for airports include complete cultivation (buildings, vegetation, 3D lighting). We use a mixture of hand-placement, in-house tools and commercial GIS data for our cultivation, which means it is far more dense and comprehensive than you would get from OSM data. In the case of KEGE, all building and vegetation data was placed by hand, a process that took me about 7 weeks of full-time work

- ORBX airport PR areas are heavily edited, balanced, colourised and cleaned-up from the original source. Again, a great deal of work, but we hope that this correlates with a better-quality product for you guys

Cheers,

Jarrad

Hi guys, thought I'd pop over here and say g'day

Thanks for all the support with Monterey - I'm really enjoying working on Aerofly FS2, and the IPACS team have been most generous with their time and assistance.

As some of you are aware, the Steam version should be going on sale very soon, all things going well. There will be some small updates included in the Steam release, based on your feedback here and over at the ORBX forums:

- Updated cultivation building textures - colors more suited to mid-Californian architecture.

- Added the swimming pool to the Naval PostGrad Academy

- Moved the starting position for Rwy10R so that taildraggers no longer have issues with the edge lighting.

The water issue needs to be investigated at a deeper level, though I can confirm that it only affects users who have the US high-resolution texture pack installed.

These updates will of course also be rolled out to those who have purchased via ORBX Direct, though I can't give an exact time frame on this due to the holidays.

Thanks again for your support, hope you all have a great Christmas.

Cheers,

Jarrad