Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:26 pmA couple of things have kept me busy lately, sort of related. First, I've been looking at the possibility of converting my scenery for use in X-plane. This doesn't mean that I'm looking to move development to X-plane, but it may be that a percentage of my customers may move over at some stage. The first problem I have is that X-plane is kind of frustrating for someone who has lived and breathed MSFS for a decade. The main problem is the limited view system, but then I thought to switch on TrackIR, which helped a lot. However TrackIR in 3D cockpit view behaves quite strangely, shifting about in the cockpit when I turn my head. Still, it helped me see the scenery outside the window.
I'd previously done a quick conversion of Real NZ Wellington, so I took a look there. I only use the demo version of X-plane, so there's no actual scenery for NZ -- no land, and definitely no elevation -- so it looks a bit funny. However it did at least show up, which surprised me. The conversion process was pretty opaque -- I just pressed the buttons I was told to press, and let it run -- I have no clue how X-plane scenery works...
The initial view was pretty lame, mainly because my settings weren't optimised, but with a bit of a play around I managed to get sharpish textures. However X-plane keeps on dropping the display quality of the ground textures, kind of like super-blurries, which is frustrating. I guess it requires more graphics power than I have at the moment.
Once I got it working ok, with no rain to obscure the view, I took a look around. The first thing I noticed was the cloud shadows -- very, very nice, and an obvious short-coming of FSX.
This is the Real NZ Wellington FS2004 version of the photoscenery -- not up to FSX standard, but it may be possible to use higher-resolution images. The conversion process only works with FS2004 scenery, though.
The flat terrain is only because I don't own X-plane yet -- apparently the NZ mesh is on a par with FSX, but I've yet to see this myself.
My city buildings -- I need to figure out how to add autogen.
The airport looks good, some obvious faults with transparent textures, but nothing which can't be fixed -- I think...
I still have a long way to go before I can say I've got the hang of X-plane, but it may be worth persevering. I will need to buy it though, which is $99 I don't have at the moment...
My initial tests with X-plane gave me very funny clouds and visibility, quite arcadey, but I've had a play and now I like the clouds. However this brings me to the second thing I've been testing this week...
Since I'm getting Supercity ready for release, I wanted to get some really nice screenshots, so I looked at some environment addons for FSX In the end I settled on REX2, and I must say it does what it says it'll do. FSX plus REX certainly puts X-plane to shame, but I guess that it all comes down to what you want from a sim -- and what your system can handle. X-plane seems to perform better, but it does 'downgrade' the graphics at the first sign of trouble. FSX doesn't perform well with a lot of clouds on my system, although I love clouds. Still, a bit of tweaking should give me a very nice display in both sims.
I'll post some screenshots of FSX/Supercity/REX shortly, and maybe a review of REX...
Oh, ok, here's a couple of sneak looks at Supercity with REX...
I'd previously done a quick conversion of Real NZ Wellington, so I took a look there. I only use the demo version of X-plane, so there's no actual scenery for NZ -- no land, and definitely no elevation -- so it looks a bit funny. However it did at least show up, which surprised me. The conversion process was pretty opaque -- I just pressed the buttons I was told to press, and let it run -- I have no clue how X-plane scenery works...
The initial view was pretty lame, mainly because my settings weren't optimised, but with a bit of a play around I managed to get sharpish textures. However X-plane keeps on dropping the display quality of the ground textures, kind of like super-blurries, which is frustrating. I guess it requires more graphics power than I have at the moment.
Once I got it working ok, with no rain to obscure the view, I took a look around. The first thing I noticed was the cloud shadows -- very, very nice, and an obvious short-coming of FSX.
This is the Real NZ Wellington FS2004 version of the photoscenery -- not up to FSX standard, but it may be possible to use higher-resolution images. The conversion process only works with FS2004 scenery, though.
The flat terrain is only because I don't own X-plane yet -- apparently the NZ mesh is on a par with FSX, but I've yet to see this myself.
My city buildings -- I need to figure out how to add autogen.
The airport looks good, some obvious faults with transparent textures, but nothing which can't be fixed -- I think...
I still have a long way to go before I can say I've got the hang of X-plane, but it may be worth persevering. I will need to buy it though, which is $99 I don't have at the moment...
My initial tests with X-plane gave me very funny clouds and visibility, quite arcadey, but I've had a play and now I like the clouds. However this brings me to the second thing I've been testing this week...
Since I'm getting Supercity ready for release, I wanted to get some really nice screenshots, so I looked at some environment addons for FSX In the end I settled on REX2, and I must say it does what it says it'll do. FSX plus REX certainly puts X-plane to shame, but I guess that it all comes down to what you want from a sim -- and what your system can handle. X-plane seems to perform better, but it does 'downgrade' the graphics at the first sign of trouble. FSX doesn't perform well with a lot of clouds on my system, although I love clouds. Still, a bit of tweaking should give me a very nice display in both sims.
I'll post some screenshots of FSX/Supercity/REX shortly, and maybe a review of REX...
Oh, ok, here's a couple of sneak looks at Supercity with REX...
maybe you should make it work on the ipod/iphone version of x-plane 
now that would be fun.
You didn't tell me you came up here, Chris! 