New Texture Balkans
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No doubt that FSX has potential for very impressive virtual landscapes. It is a result of nearly 2 decade work of team of MSFS team of paid professionals who had the opportunity to improve and modify this engine no less than 12! times having all of to pay for it nearly every time again and again .
During all of those FS iteration most of the development resources were committed to graphics. AI, UI and sounds were not advancing at the same paste as the graphics. And yet this final result is not something, which really came close to resemble a reality. Apparently from some valid reasons they decided that with current graphic and computing technology it is not feasible to advance it any further (and make a buck!)- so they closed the show!
I think that drawing parrarrel comparison between FSX and Falcon is not effective or of practical use. Sure we would perhaps love to have same here, but it is not the same league.Over 50 different textures all with ability to have autogen, real time textures blending and transitioning, vector graphics in respect to water and roads, etc., etc. All is much more advanced than older original Falcon terrain concept with nothing, but few flat prerendered generic and transition textures and few sparse 3D objects in database. Bottom line of end point of my “tyrrade” here, that with very small exceptions, we cannot generally match FS terrain standards in Falcon.
DSC’s EDGE (not shown) terrain system on the other hand is reportedly simpler but rather even more impressive than FSX. Perhaps it is there is where some of our attention should be directed and inspiration and experience drawn from. If information is available, that is……
FSX vfr addons do look astonishing, no mistake there however they usually come at a price of performance and humongous disk space consumption if one wants to have all the eye candy.
now i can’t say if it is simply due to poor software dev. on m$’ side OR simulating such an environment while doing a plethora of other activities like ai, wx and what not is still not within the capabilities of recent hardware but my from pov, tile based approach is NOT the way of the future unless there is an insane amount of fold in the cpu capacity and memory management in the pc-land… which i don’t see happening soon with amd being so incompetent these days.
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@Fighting:
Update river.
Hi,
Nice quality on terrain tiles!
Watch:-
Have you visited this thread what are your thoughts looking forward on BMS theaters
Check it……https://www.benchmarksims.org/forum/showthread.php?12073-3D-Cities-for-Falcon
Keeping the faith hoping all goes well with Theaters and Campaigns for BMS!
Balkans is a must have in the tradition of Falcon!;):p
Cheers,
:drink:
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It would not hurt if you could remove the roof 256 set the code falcon is limited to this.
if you could then balakans would be 100% photoreale. -
Wip….wip…wip
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@Fighting:
It would not hurt if you could remove the roof 256 set the code falcon is limited to this.
AFAIK every theater dev is waiting for this to happen.
Very nice WIP screenshots once again.
Cheers,
LS -
@Fighting:
Wip….wip…wip
Hi my friend Rudy.
Awesome work with the latest tiles of Balkans. Just GREAT. Thank you very much for your hard efforts mate !
Now may i suggest to get the color of the rivers slightly to the blue, i think that there are close to a grey color.
But this is my personal opinion, so don’t bother if you don’t want to change it.
See you my friend.
Nikos. -
Hi my friend Rudy.
Awesome work with the latest tiles of Balkans. Just GREAT. Thank you very much for your hard efforts mate !
Now may i suggest to get the color of the rivers slightly to the blue, i think that there are close to a grey color.
But this is my personal opinion, so don’t bother if you don’t want to change it.
See you my friend.
Nikos.Thanks Nikos try a version with water more blue … Thanks to you …
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Very nice work!
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Wow…thats impressive what are the elevations if I may ask…drooling for more views
Thanks Enjoy making it!
Cheers Bud,
:drink: -
No doubt that FSX has potential for very impressive virtual landscapes. It is a result of nearly 2 decade work of team of MSFS team of paid professionals who had the opportunity to improve and modify this engine no less than 12! times having all of to pay for it nearly every time again and again .
During all of those FS iteration most of the development resources were committed to graphics. AI, UI and sounds were not advancing at the same paste as the graphics. And yet this final result is not something, which really came close to resemble a reality. Apparently from some valid reasons they decided that with current graphic and computing technology it is not feasible to advance it any further (and make a buck!)- so they closed the show!
I think that drawing parrarrel comparison between FSX and Falcon is not effective or of practical use. Sure we would perhaps love to have same here, but it is not the same league.Over 50 different textures all with ability to have autogen, real time textures blending and transitioning, vector graphics in respect to water and roads, etc., etc. All is much more advanced than older original Falcon terrain concept with nothing, but few flat prerendered generic and transition textures and few sparse 3D objects in database. Bottom line of end point of my “tyrrade” here, that with very small exceptions, we cannot generally match FS terrain standards in Falcon.
DSC’s EDGE (not shown) terrain system on the other hand is reportedly simpler but rather even more impressive than FSX. Perhaps it is there is where some of our attention should be directed and inspiration and experience drawn from. If information is available, that is……
Hi Polak, agreed, if you are talking about using a similar system of textures and autogen. But when using simple photoscenery and no autogen or textures, it immediately becomes very different and much simpler, both in FSX & I presume in BMS, because all that’s going on is draping an image over a mesh. I think Falcon has shown and also the guys working on Guam and Israel, that photoscenery based tiles can and do work pretty well in Falcon, using the basic terrain system that we have already.
Moort: as long as there is no autogen being rendered, the FPS hit is negligible in FSX using photoscenery, however, true about the disk space, my FSX install is approx 1TB……!!! I have photoscenery for France, Germany, Holland, UK, USA, Switzerland…
Cheers, Mark
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how is FPS ? i think of it
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I think Falcon has shown and also the guys working on Guam and Israel, that photoscenery based tiles can and do work pretty well in Falcon, using the basic terrain system that we have already.
Who do you think are those “guys” Mark? Well …… at least one of those guys?
So yes, this is also one of my strong convictions and contentions, that photoreal scenery IS so far the best (and practical) solution for Falcon. I was recently surprised to hear opinions that was not the case , that photoreal work is no work at all , maybe bordering with cheat and massive 3D is the answer to everything. I do agree though that from the close quarters resolution of 512 pixels smeared across 1 tile worth 1000m looks not appealing. However, from the certain altitude , specially higher altitudes such a tiles look right.
IMHO Falcon BMS should strive to having good and possibly 100% photoreal terrain being available at higher levels L3, L4. That would give pilots at least good feel while flying most of the time without being distracted by unrealistic scarce details or bad resolution from close ups. Tiled terrains (mixed occasionally with smaller swaths of photoreal) should be possibly derived from the colors and shapes of that large 100% true to life coverage in L3 and L4 to minimize sudden transitions when coming lower.With some experimentation, I believe it can be done.
I do not have any recipe how to make it look good and 100% foolproof from close ups. I honestly do not think there is any…
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Hi Polak, of course, I include you in that generalization… I see from the posts here how involved you are and where you are with things. My personal feeling ( although please remember, I do not have the knowledge of the workings of Falcon that you guys have, so my comments need to be taken in context) is also that the photoscenery route is the way to go, a the moment, as it is so nearly there, in Guam, Israel, Spain and Balkans. you are right about the close up problem though, even 60cm res tiles in FSX look bad when on the ground! We just have to deal with that, after all, most of the time in falcon is sent at higher altitude…its all compromises…
regarding how the tiles look close up…I think all the mods that people are working on now are an improvement on what we have now, so that can only be good. keep up the good work, and look forward to the improvements in the pipeline. i only wish I had some more in depth knowledge of how this works in falcon, to contribute myself…
Cheers, and thanks for your work, Mark
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One always hopes to improve …… always
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Who do you think are those “guys” Mark? Well …… at least one of those guys?
So yes, this is also one of my strong convictions and contentions, that photoreal scenery IS so far the best (and practical) solution for Falcon. I was recently surprised to hear opinions that was not the case , that photoreal work is no work at all , maybe bordering with cheat and massive 3D is the answer to everything. I do agree though that from the close quarters resolution of 512 pixels smeared across 1 tile worth 1000m looks not appealing. However, from the certain altitude , specially higher altitudes such a tiles look right.
IMHO Falcon BMS should strive to having good and possibly 100% photoreal terrain being available at higher levels L3, L4. That would give pilots at least good feel while flying most of the time without being distracted by unrealistic scarce details or bad resolution from close ups. Tiled terrains (mixed occasionally with smaller swaths of photoreal) should be possibly derived from the colors and shapes of that large 100% true to life coverage in L3 and L4 to minimize sudden transitions when coming lower.With some experimentation, I believe it can be done.
I do not have any recipe how to make it look good and 100% foolproof from close ups. I honestly do not think there is any….
I agree to “disagree” my friend……
Original Falcon Texture on the Objective “Feature” i.e.
Demers 9m(best I can do ATM) PR tile:
So you see, it is somewhat possible to do.
I think,could be wrong??, that the rendering code cause’s the Gaussien blur.Not sure??
But,a few “Tricks” in PS and we get something acceptable at 9m. Seems the blur is caused by the AC Model as the image “Outside it’s Box” exactly to the right and behind of the AC is rendered correctly…Weird Huh???
Go figure……Dave
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Dave ,
sharpness of the terrain the way I know is the function of number of pixels xy of the terrain tile in relation to area those pixels are supposed to cover.For one tile 1kmx1km 1024x1024 texture renders roughly in 1 pixel per 1 meter. 512x512 is 0.5. All that is rather blurry specially when compared to (sitting on that texture) models and objects which are much smaller and yet they are being textured with nearly same, if not larger in size textures. Take a texture of the plane - roughly 1024 pixels would need to cover 15 m (lenght of F16)give or take and depending of configuration of texture mapping. So the ratio and resulting resolution here is nearly 68x higher.
If you have other “tricks” here then I am all ears……
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This post is deleted! -
:razz:Jeeeeezusss……maybe some stronger medication needed:razz:
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This is absolutely FANTASTIC. Can’t wait to bomb it.
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Dave ,
sharpness of the terrain the way I know is the function of number of pixels xy of the terrain tile in relation to area those pixels are supposed to cover.For one tile 1kmx1km 1024x1024 texture renders roughly in 1 pixel per 1 meter. 512x512 is 0.5. All that is rather blurry specially when compared to (sitting on that texture) models and objects which are much smaller and yet they are being textured with nearly same, if not larger in size textures. Take a texture of the plane - roughly 1024 pixels would need to cover 15 m (lenght of F16)give or take and depending of configuration of texture mapping. So the ratio and resulting resolution here is nearly 68x higher.
If you have other “tricks” here then I am all ears……
'Kay,all ears.I thought we had discussed this via PM???Maybe not…:(
But for Y’all,this is how I am getting around it,so to say.
Because Guam has only 5 Land Airbase’s and under 1200 Individual PR Tile’s.I have the “luxury” of doing this with the 12 or so AB Tile’s per base.Now mind you, the image size used, 4096x4096 @ 535 ppi are HUGE byte wise on your HDD, >10,000 KB’s…LOL. But they are only rendered\listed once.So Guam can “afford” this when it comes to FPS.
Don’t think this approach would work with a Korea sized Theater i.e. 20+ Air Bases.demer