ACG Coningsby

[fishlips]

Yes, I've done that techique a few times in the past with small airport scenery design with good results on structure models and all my updated sceneries are now using the multiple tree techiques.
A heck of a lot of time and patience is required for a large airport using this techique, not that the end result is not stunning or rewarding for the developer/s and all who happen to use the scenery. I find the scenery going by the photo's posted to be among the best detail I've seen for a freeware project and is an inspiration to all freeware scenery developers.

Mark

[BadPvtDan]

Completely off topic...what's the name of the tucano manufacturer? I have never been able to get that question right to register on the forums! Lol!

[jimrodger]

The Tucano T1 is a modified version of the Brazilian Embraer EMB-312 Tucano aircraft, and is built under licence by Shorts of Belfast.


"Google is your friend"

[BadPvtDan]

Um yeah, I know all this but it's looking for something specific that I'm obviously not entering.

[jimrodger]

Apologies, thought it was a bit of an easy one for this site

Seems to be a bit obvious, so I can't really see what they're really looking for.


Hope you get there.

Jim

[rocket_26_]

Whilst I cant comment on performance in FS9, I am getting good FPS in FSX with the sliders high up. As for AI, they significantly hammer my FPS (or did on my last pc) on default airfields in FSX, I have found FSX is not AI friendly in comparison to Fs9. Mainly because FSX is more sensitive to drawcalls etc, and each repaint or AI aircraft is a new drawcall.

With the twins I get 25 FPS with sliders high with AI and 60 (limited to 60 in fullscreen mode) with no ai. On my old machine i still managed 40-60 fps with the scenery with no ai and 12-15 with ai. Now compare with FS9, I can run full sliders with full ai at the Twins and hit 60 FPS either way with my new system. To sum up if you run Fs9 no matter what machine you use this scenery should run fine with AI. Only time it could be a issue is when its a weekend and there are 30 ac on the ASP. For the simple reason is that all the AC will be at the most detailed LOD. Thats the nature of the beast and the downside to the layout of Coningsby. They will take a hit on FPS with my scenery or default.

As for building high detail scenery with decent performance, the tutorial that John and Stevo created explains all the techniques I use. What I will say is GMAX in my opinion is the way to go in building sceneries like this. Im not sure whether its a possibility to weld texture vertex's (not object vertices) in FSDS.


Ive used a example of one of my scenes from the scenery to show how Ive included details such as signs etc without placing hundreds of objects and creating hundreds of unecessary drawcalls.

Below is a screen shot of GMAX with the Station HQ scene at its most detailed LOD.


You can see that there are lots of signs and small objects around the buildings, there are around 50 objects in this scene. Normally placing these objects seperately would result in 50 drawcalls but the same amount of polys in the same area. In my scene because they all share the same sheet, and are applied once, they are one drawcall. Not only that duplicate objects such as light poles can have there tverts welded together to enable quicker loading. Poly count for this scene is 2500 actual polys and tverts are 400 instead of 3-4000 which it was before. Now the other advantage of this method is that you only have the LODs on the one scene rather than 50 objects, which mean less memory.

Below is the next LOD.



This scene bascially has all the signs/poles etc removed and the result is 2500 polys down to 450.

Below shows the texture sheet which has all the detail crammed onto one sheet.



The whole scenery uses this method apart from odd places where its not beneficial. Although the saving for one scene may not be noticable, when building on the scale of this project big savings can be made FPS wise. If someone was to re place all my models (not scenes) through a program such as instant scenery, I would imagine the perfromance drop would be extreme.

Cheers

Ian

[MIKE JG]

Ian that's a great explanation of that method. It certainly requires more planning ahead of time to get everything in its place and make everything fit.

What do you use for a reference for placing the "scenes" inside of Gmax. Google Earth pics or what?

[fishlips]

This is similar to how some of the VOZ developers were doing sceneries using Gmax however FSDS does not seem to lend it self well to the process and it would appear that a lot more fiddling with the joined objects and textures are required.
I can't see to many FSDS FS9 developers being able to achieve such high results without placing a lot of forethought and many hours/days/months of additional time into the project.
Of course some such as my self will use the technique but in a lessor capacity, which any saving on draw calls is better than none. Thanks you for your explation.

Cheer's

Mark

[rocket_26_]

Ian that's a great explanation of that method. It certainly requires more planning ahead of time to get everything in its place and make everything fit.

What do you use for a reference for placing the "scenes" inside of Gmax. Google Earth pics or what?

First thing I do is build the main object in the scene which I would like to be the reference point (in this case the Station HQ itself) . I export that and place using ADE over a sat image. Then I build around it using a small screen dump sat image within gmax which is on a plane, but only use this as a guide. I then re export and re compile ADE which updates the model.

That Station HQ model took only a couple of hours to build, the texture took a bit longer but after a lot of practice and smart use of the GMAX tools, these scenes can be built quite quickly. I cheat most of the time and merge parts of the other scenes into the new one.

cheers

Ian

[fishlips]

Ian,

Please excuse my ignorance here of Gmax but are your models textured individually before welding (joining) them as one group or is that done after you join the models???

Mark

[rocket_26_]

Ian,

Please excuse my ignorance here of Gmax but are your models textured individually before welding (joining) them as one group or is that done after you join the models???

Mark

Mark

In gmax, I can do either. If I want a lightpole in my scene, I merge from another scene and apply with the current material/texture and move the points if necessary. If its a new model/object, I can apply or reapply the textures whenever needed. I can do this prior or after attaching them to one object.

Cheers

Ian

[fishlips]

Ian,
Then Gmax is the way to go with this type of group modelling as FSDS is rather time consuming.
Objects which only require texturing on two sides IE: left & right, will texture correctly no matter where you place them as blank models and have joined as a group but when you have more parts that require a texture, such as a top then that becomes a problem in FSDS unless you use a material colour to replace a sheet texture.

I constructed four basic office buildings, I found to apply the textures to all four joined models I needed to separate the left & right side/ front and back and the roof. I then had to select the points of each part, move them into position and reform each of the models, only using points to move the parts.
Rather then being a 10 minute job to construct and texture a single model, it took me an hour & half to by the time I got all the points to realign. While this group of four objects have a texture draw saving of 75%, all this hard work can be brought undone by one single AI aircraft that was constructed using older methods.

I am eager to continue to find an easier method of doing this in FSDS.

Mark

[rocket_26_]

Just a quick update to say I have converted 75% of the WIP so far to Fs9 and the results are good. Im locking at 60FPs with ai, the asp is full as per on a weekend in the MAIW package plans. Now my PC is not slow, but even modest systems should see half that.

[Stewart Pearson]

Just a quick update to say I have converted 75% of the WIP so far to Fs9 and the results are good. Im locking at 60FPs with ai, the asp is full as per on a weekend in the MAIW package plans. Now my PC is not slow, but even modest systems should see half that.

That's great news Ian.

[rocket_26_]

Another update. Not much left to do now.

[ronniegj]

Good golly Miss Molly! That is AWSOME!!!!!

Ron

[fishlips]

Truely a master piece.

Mark

[Firebird]

*hehe* The thing that amazes me is that Ian ALWAYS has one more thing to do to it.

[rocket_26_]

*hehe* The thing that amazes me is that Ian ALWAYS has one more thing to do to it.

Too true. That being said there are some things which ive bitten the bullet and decided to leave out. Such as the approach lights and ive limited cars/vehicles to up to the hangers (basically where they can be seen when on the flightline). Im now down to only having the fence to finish and night textures.

I am really wanting to get this out the door because I really want to get on with my next project. I havnt touched any other scenery bar this for over a year.

Cheers

Ian

[Firebird]

Cool. Well I don't think this is too far off now.