Arguments for and against photo scenery

[ATAG_Dutch]

Whilst the forum is pretty quiet, a couple of weeks ago a guy posted a video clip to show how good photo scenery in x-planes was.

Here's a sample of VFR photo scenery in FSX.

I'll leave you to decide whether it's good or bad.

Sorry about the frame rate! Which reminds me, FSX with full settings is still capable of slowing my FPS down to 10-15, so maybe Cliffs of Dover isn't as bad as we're making out! :grin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3eAnhu_beo

and here's the original one I posted, shot at dawn to show some strange REX lighting effects. At the end, you'll also see how much it costs to have this kind of environment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQZeEkUus6s

[VO101_Tom]

I see nothing, too dark the sunset landscape... this deliberate? :rolleyes:
Satelite (or aerial photo) images good for google maps, good for FS, but ugly if u fly low (and slow).

[AndyJWest]

How are you going to get hold of 1940 satellite photo's?

[ATAG_Dutch]

You aren't!

If you watch the clip, you'll gather that I'm not a fan myself.

Of either the looks or the cost.:)

[Liz Lemon]

Plus scenery from satellite photos will make implementing proper HDR very hard.

[ATAG_Dutch]

Plus scenery from satellite photos will make implementing proper HDR very hard.

Indeed. This photo scenery stuff is ok in its place, such as flying at 15,000ft from London to Edinburgh in a Learjet.

As far as I'm concerned it has no place in a combat flight sim.

Not yet at any rate. :)

[Codex]

I get what they're trying to do but using satellite images for the land scape "looks" fake anyway. The problem is not that it's a photo, the problem is that its a static image, i.e. the lighting and colour doesn't change when the camera changes position.

A somewhat better approach might be to use photos of objects and use those images as textures, but you'd need to run some pretty intensive pixel shaders to make even these look realistic as you'll always have the lighting of the object to content with when the image was taken.

To recreate photo realistic images is the holy grail of the games industry, and from what I've learned the only real solution is ray tracing but we're a long way off from that being a real time possibility.

[Ali Fish]

To recreate photo realistic images is the holy grail of the games industry, and from what I've learned the only real solution is ray tracing but we're a long way off from that being a real time possibility.

5 years ! thats what the head of nvidia stated not so long ago.


its funny all these topical debates. because in the end theres somthing we dont like about Clod scenery, but it beats all other sceneries out there for flightsims. its marvelous in its construction imo.

[Rattlehead]

but using satellite images for the land scape "looks" fake anyway.

In my eyes it does too. Not a fan of it myself.

[Redroach]

You aren't!

If you watch the clip, you'll gather that I'm not a fan myself.

Of either the looks or the cost.:)

I'm confused. Why do you bring it up again then? People will jump on the bandwagon again :(

Btw: The first one to destroy a house with bombs or cannons in this photo scenery thingy gets a cookie!

Red,
born and raised on a lime green field!

[Doc_uk]

I'm confused. Why do you bring it up again then? People will jump on the bandwagon again :(

Btw: The first one to destroy a house with bombs or cannons in this photo scenery thingy gets a cookie!

Red,
born and raised on a lime green field!My words as well, why bring it up again, pointless,
you fail, goodbye, And have a nice day :rolleyes:

[speculum jockey]

The amount of new content has reached such a low point that threads like this are popping up.

I think that it's now official!

Maddox Games, 1C, and Ubisoft have carefully calculated exactly the worst possible decisions to make, and have executed them perfectly. There is no other explanation for this. You have a brand new sim, little to no included content, and then you stonewall everyone so that the community starts to get stale and people lose interest in it.

Bravo MG/1C/Ubi, you are master trolls!

[Codex]

5 years ! thats what the head of nvidia stated not so long ago.

If he was referring to OptiX it's still only a software engine at the moment (I think) using the GPU, and even with 3 Fermi cores in SLI, displaying one model, you get a slide show at best. Maybe in 5 years you might get it smooth enough, but to use it in a sim, even after 5 years from now, I doubt it. It would need to be hardware implemented meaning part of the graphics pipeline and that would mean a HUGE video card, like an Octo GPU solution or something crazy like with an equally crazy power supply ... lol. It is promising though. I'd give it 10 years :cool:

[ATAG_Dutch]

Why do you bring it up again then? People will jump on the bandwagon again :(

I suppose I'm just a bit fed up with all the threads which say 'Look at this! It's better than Cliffs of Dover!'

When it's not.:)

[Jumo211]

I don't think FSX looks bad at all from close distance , with a good global scenery package and individual airports you get also a very good looking textures around the ground level .:cool:

Tileproxy video from 2009 :
Created as FREEWARE by Christian Buchner, it's a real-time interface between Microsoft's Flight Simulator X and the Internet. It will download photo-terrain textures from online map services by acting as a proxy server and file format converter. This tool turns your Flight Simulator into an interactive 3D map browser unlike anything you have experienced before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAgcAVJ9MJE

Some different kind of ground scenery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbq77WeJl-8

and custom scenery airport:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZGfUWCDyO0

Cheeers ,
S! :cool:

[SsSsSsSsSnake]

nice

[Redroach]

I suppose I'm just a bit fed up with all the threads which say 'Look at this! It's better than Cliffs of Dover!'

When it's not.:)

Funny, I'm a bit fed up with those "landscape is too lime-green" complainers. As if they all came from the Gobi Desert or from Antarctica... :rolleyes:

[speculum jockey]

Ughhh! Do we have to say this every week?

1. FSX cherry-picks the scenery they show.
2. FSX does mountain very well, I will give them that.
3. Most of the stuff is aftermarket 3rd party pay-ware.
4. They usually only put decent detail around landmarks and airports. Everything else looks the same.
5. Does earth have 2 suns? Because Sat photos have shadows from buildings and mountains that cannot move because they are part of the texture.
6. Still looks like crap up close, you have to stay in the "sweet spot" which is usually a few thousand feet to get the "good views".
7. Satellite images don't really work for WWII sims due to all the overpasses, 8 lane highways, modern buildings and landscapes, etc... Removing them would have to be done by hand, and that would take a hell of a long time.

See you all in the next exact same thread in 10-20 days.

[Chivas]

Photorealistic scenery is well suited for civilian airline sims where you only need detailed ground graphics at airports, the rest of the time your flying above 10000ft. In other areas they generally use low resolution photorealistic graphics that looks quite ugly when you add 3d trees and buildings.

In combat flight sims the fighting can get quite low especially when doing jabo ground attacks. There are some aspects of the COD terrain I don't like but I'm sure the developers will fine tune what they have and modders will also add alot to the overall look of the terrain and it won't cost me a cent.

[Timberwolf]

Hey without bashing ether/or. I think a good between would be to have a cookie cutter or stencil of the maps and take out highways and modern citys and keep the landmarks ... i mean if fields have 8 diffrent shades of green then copy the sat, shot paste it into country sides ..blend in low level flying and add depth of grass trees hills etc.. I know its alot of work but If you atleast look at diffrent ideas more doors open .. I haven't yet played a sim where diffrent lenghs of trees or houses were present ...i'm sure in years to come we wil have best of both games Hell i still remember playing pac-man for 6 hours

[Jumo211]

Ughhh! Do we have to say this every week?

1. FSX cherry-picks the scenery they show.


So many similar amazing looking videos on youtube it's almost disgusting , what cherry picking ?
some of them are made with even older FS2004 :lol:
Yes , such scenery packages can cover the whole globe and take 100GB+
of hard disk space but that's not a big deal these days :cool:
FSX globe size coverage against CloD Battle of Britain ground coverage .
BoB textures could have been almost gold plated by this time , really .
There is indeed no point at all in comparing commercial airlaners simulator with WWII simulator ,
yes but FSX is not even close looking to what was
originally released by Microsoft and the game is also old by today's standards .
We will have to wait and see how many 3rd parties will jump on CloD and
start pumping out some of the new ground and aircrafts visual amazing stuff :cool:
Thus far number of private businesses and companies still working on FSX
is beyond believe .
FSX don't have shitty ground looking textures anymore .

S! :cool:

[SsSsSsSsSnake]

lol