New FSX

[Charl]

Installed SP1, and I'm sure it improves FPS.
But not being one to do only one thing at a time, I also installed Thomas Trewin's New World textures and landclass , co-incidentally on AVSIM today.
Here are a few random shots around Nelson.
Can't exactly remember what it looked like before, but I wasn't too impressed with especially the landclass as I recall.
Anyhow, this seems to be a step in the right direction, I reckon:

[Ian Warren]

Hey Charl , Myself followed , I have been in contact with Thomas , as i started a flight from Queenstown , findin his work Great but more patch-work style , i asked if he maybe center on NZ landclass , maybe using the 140 mg as a canvas .

I think he may be lookin into it , since u mentioned the Patch , be interested to see or here his thoughts .

[macca22au]

In spite of my username which was given to me by one of the big sites and I have stuck with it, I was raised in Nelson, and though living in Aus since 1963 still use Nelson for my default site. Question, Ian Warren, have you patched your superb Nelson airport for FSX? If so, where can I get it? I use Red Baron mesh and topo which gives fantastic scenery around Nelson, and with much more realistic distribution of towns (some of the buildings on sand spits, and the boulder bank are a bit disconcerting though). Love to get Ian's airport into FSX.

[Christian]

Yes, the FSX landclass. I'm really not happy with the textures in FS, so I've started to do some 'research'.

My first thought was that I could maybe update my landclass and fix some issues. Unfortunately, I found that my FS2004 landclass is in fact still is up-to-date in FSX. You could possibly tweak it a bit, but it really is very good data and selects the 'right' textures. So, tweaking the landclass isn't really going to fix the issues.

So, what is the issue then? Microsoft has changed the textures themselves! If you have a look through the textures, you will see that a lot of the textures look much drier and brown than they used to. This gives NZ that dry summer look. On top of that my season files doesn't work in FSX, I will need to recompile that. The only solution I have for now is to stick to summer.

I have started some developments. One of them is to edit the textures and make them greener. This already looks a lot better! In fact it looks really good. I will post a screenshot soon.

The other thing I'm trialing is to create a completely different landcover set not using landclass but vectors. I get mixed results. In parts this looks absolutely amazing, but in others it still needs tweaking. If I can make this work, this will essentially be the new NZ Topo.

Bottomline: there is no simple fix this time round, but I'm working on it

Cheers,
Christian

[ZK-Brock]

Charl, your Nelson looks better, now we get more grass and less desert and Mapua + rabbit island are looking nice as well. Where can I get this? an avsim search gives no results...

[Charl]

Hey Charl , Myself followed , I have been in contact with Thomas , as i started a flight from Queenstown , findin his work Great but more patch-work style , i asked if he maybe center on NZ landclass , maybe using the 140 mg as a canvas .
I think he may be lookin into it , since u mentioned the Patch , be interested to see or here his thoughts . 

Oops I see what you mean.



I must have picked the only spot in NZ that doesn't go patchy.
Brock the file is newworld.zip at AVSIM, it's 137 MB.



Rest of the world doesn't fare too badly, my benchmark is the south of France:


and even from a trike it's not bad (Actually this is a cheat, it's photoreal scenery for Monaco, but wth I was there...)


What's the short term answer then?
Christian's landclass + Thomas' textures?

[Ian Warren]

Yes, the FSX landclass. I'm really not happy with the textures in FS, so I've started to do some 'research'.

My first thought was that I could maybe update my landclass and fix some issues. Unfortunately, I found that my FS2004 landclass is in fact still is up-to-date in FSX. You could possibly tweak it a bit, but it really is very good data and selects the 'right' textures. So, tweaking the landclass isn't really going to fix the issues.

So, what is the issue then? Microsoft has changed the textures themselves! If you have a look through the textures, you will see that a lot of the textures look much drier and brown than they used to. This gives NZ that dry summer look. On top of that my season files doesn't work in FSX, I will need to recompile that. The only solution I have for now is to stick to summer.

I have started some developments. One of them is to edit the textures and make them greener. This already looks a lot better! In fact it looks really good. I will post a screenshot soon.

The other thing I'm trialing is to create a completely different landcover set not using landclass but vectors. I get mixed results. In parts this looks absolutely amazing, but in others it still needs tweaking. If I can make this work, this will essentially be the new NZ Topo.

Bottomline: there is no simple fix this time round, but I'm working on it

Cheers,
Christian

Thanx Christian , lookin forward to see result If a new payware Topo required then shall it be .

[ZK-Brock]

I had a quick jaunt round murch, with and without this landclass, here are the results


Before


After, the metropolis of Murchison is far more populated.