Updating Tauranga...

[toprob]

After all the times I've said that I don't do updates, I am thinking about updating Tauranga in time for the airshow. Tauranga is still one of my favourites, but since it is the oldest commercial Real NZ product, it would be nice to redo it as the Real NZ flagship.

The update will be based on a few photos from a fleeting visit in 2006, so it won't yet include the latest alterations.

Does anyone have a photo of the front of the repainted fire station? I am redoing the textures where I have updated photos, but I didn't get to photograph the front. Doesn't need to be a great shot, just a glimpse would do so that I can see the doors...

Any recent shots of the terminal would help as well, although I may not update this until after the show. I don't plan to replace the photo scenery, either, as I have not been able to source a replacement colour image within my budget.

The update will be FSX only. It won't be a major update, but it will have one extra feature which will put it back as the best Real NZ scenery ever... And no, I don't mean the giant Buzzy Bee which showed up occasionally in the FS2004 version!

[NZ255]

QUOTE (toprob @ Dec 15 2009, 03:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The update will be FSX only. It won't be a major update, but it will have one extra feature which will put it back as the best Real NZ scenery ever... And no, I don't mean the giant Buzzy Bee which showed up occasionally in the FS2004 version!

Any clues?

[toprob]

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Dec 15 2009, 03:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Any clues?

It's the sort of thing which you really need to see -- so give me a week to come up with a screenshot.

[NZ255]

Oh man. Now I'm really wondering. Does it fit into a category?
Mesh
Imagery
Objects



For you orignal questiong, hae you tried Airliners, jetphotos (and the like), youtube,

[Nzeddy]

Yay!

This is great news Robin! Thanks. I know someone that can help you.

[pilotgallagher01]

Yay!!!

Robin I can go and get some shots of the fire station for you since I can walk around Air Side Legally.
Please let me know what exactly you are wanting and I will go and get them from you.
I am happy to walk around the Airport and take photos of updated buildings and hangars in good detail so you could update those without worrying about finding pictures?? eg the new terminal, new classic flyers hangar, new taxiways parallel to the grass runways.

Give me a buzz Rob and I will help ya out

Also can you fix the windsock ontop of the yellow building near the fire station as it's grey at the moment not orange!!

Cheers

P.S I know you said this would only be for FSX, Flight Experience at Tauranga Airport currently use your 2004 Real NZ Tauranga in there B737 that I work on.
Im sure they would appreciate an updated scenery for there simulator, would this be too big to update??

[NZ255]

He's possibly using technology that only FSX can use?

[toprob]

QUOTE (pilotgallagher01 @ Dec 15 2009, 04:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Yay!!!

Robin I can go and get some shots of the fire station for you since I can walk around Air Side Legally.
Please let me know what exactly you are wanting and I will go and get them from you.
I am happy to walk around the Airport and take photos of updated buildings and hangars in good detail so you could update those without worrying about finding pictures?? eg the new terminal, new classic flyers hangar, new taxiways parallel to the grass runways.

Give me a buzz Rob and I will help ya out

I'd certainly appreciate that -- I just need to see the front of the fire station, really, the rest I'm 'painting'. However the terminal could do with a makeover -- a complete walk-around with some nice straight-on shots would be ideal.

QUOTE

Also can you fix the windsock ontop of the yellow building near the fire station as it's grey at the moment not orange!!

Cheers[/quote]

I did notice that it had changed colour, and it is on the list.

QUOTE

P.S I know you said this would only be for FSX, Flight Experience at Tauranga Airport currently use your 2004 Real NZ Tauranga in there B737 that I work on.
Im sure they would appreciate an updated scenery for there simulator, would this be too big to update??[/quote]

The updated photos I took back in 2006 were in fact for Flight Experience, but from memory there was an issue with some extra resources. However I do owe them an update, that's for sure:)

toprob

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[pilotgallagher01]

Sweet as Rob, I'l get these to you this weekend.

[toprob]

Ok, here's an early shot of the Tauranga FSX update.

An important part of future airport releases will be high resolution aerial ground textures. This is the new feature I mentioned -- I wasn't quite sure whether it would eventuate, but things worked out this week, and I've purchased a 10cm resolution image of the airport, which will be released at 15cm:



The update will also include new night textures:

[Bazza]

As a denizen of Tauranga, and having newly gone over to FSX (the Dark Side) it looks great to me....good stuff.

[NZ255]

Cool! Why are you resampling down 15? It will still take 10cm won't it?

[toprob]

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Dec 17 2009, 07:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Cool! Why are you resampling down 15? It will still take 10cm won't it?

Since it is LOD-based, it can either be 7cm or 15cm. 7cm increases the file size by four, to 1.4GB. In reality, with this sort of image, it is pure vanity to release it at 7cm. If there is a difference on high-powered systems, then it will be minimal, and doesn't justify the excessive file size increase.

[NZ255]

Fair enough, thought there would be a good reason.

So does the LOD option in the .ini file set the resolution, or how far away it appears? I've always left it on Auto

I thought it was the ground imagery ever because I remember seeing it on Google maps and thinking maybe Rob can do something with this, but then you through me off when you said "I don't plan to replace the photo scenery"

[Naki]

QUOTE (Bazza @ Dec 17 2009, 06:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As a denizen of Tauranga, and having newly gone over to FSX (the Dark Side) it looks great to me....good stuff.

Oh yes..Ditto!

[toprob]

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Dec 17 2009, 07:38 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Fair enough, though there would be a good reason.

So does the LOD option in the .ini file set the resolution, or how far away it appears? I've always left it on Auto

I thought it was the ground imagery ever because I remember seeing it on Google maps and thinking maybe Rob can do something with this, but then you through me off when you said "I don't plan to replace the photo scenery"

A couple of points about the aerial image -- this covers the airport only, I couldn't manage to get a replacement city aerial within my Tauranga budget. As I've said before, I would never use a Google image, because of copyright issues, although this image does appear on Google. Be assured that I paid very good money for the image:)

There are two separate and different FS features called LOD -- one refers to 3D models etc, where the actual model is swapped out at different distances to help performance. The other refers to the grid which divides the world. The top LOD is the entire world, then each subsequent LOD is a quarter quadrant of the previous LOD. When you get to ground texture resolution in FSX, you can go up to 7cm, in LOD increments -- FSX lets you set the ground texture resolution based on LODs, and the resolution is normally given in metres per pixel. The choices are 10m/px, which is actually 9.6m/px, 5 which is 4.8, 2 = 2.4, 1 = 1.2m 60cm, 30cm, 15cm and 7cm.

When you use LOD = auto, Resample rounds down the actual image resolution to the highest full LOD. This is what I've done here -- Resample downsamples my 10cm image to 15cm automatically, since 'auto' will never up-sample. You can force an extra LOD, in this case I could force Resample to go to 7cm, which will use the full resolution of the source image. But each LOD is four times the file size of the lower LOD, so in this case you'd get about a 40% increase in resolution at four times the file size, which isn't a very good return on your investment... And since the original image is a typical NZ aerial image (quite grainy -- very similar to the stuff which Orbx uses) I doubt anyone would be able to perceive the extra detail.

[Nzeddy]

15cm/p! YAY!

This is awesome. Cant wait.

[pilotgallagher01]

Looking great Rob, Will the following things be updated?

The Shell Fuel Pumps near the control tower (these wern't in your previous version)
The new Hangar at Classic Flyers
The New Tauranga Aero Club
Bay Flights parking pads made to the correct size and a seal taxiway to the concrete pad
FInally the new harbour bridge??

I can provide photos (good ones) to help you if required?

Cherers

[toprob]

I don't intend to do any model updates at the moment, apart from a few I had left over from my last visit. A full update would take 3 months, and I only have 2 weeks to put it together for the airshow, and a budget of about a quarter of a full scenery.

Some scale issues will be fixed -- these days it's easy to fire up Google Earth to measure a building, but back then we didn't have that luxury:)

The update will rely a lot on the aerial image, much like Paraparaumu.

[Grumble]

Drool. And I mean DROOL. I've always thought this was the best RealNZ scenery... Hurry up Rob, can't wait...