FSDreamTeam forum

Developer's Backdoor => Los Angeles LAX Backdoor => Topic started by: Kappa on August 29, 2011, 10:53:50 pm

Title: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Kappa on August 29, 2011, 10:53:50 pm
.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: FlyNext on August 29, 2011, 10:59:31 pm
i just found my next airport im gonna buy :)
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: DJJose on August 29, 2011, 10:59:59 pm
LOOKING GOOD! Release imminent.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: frankj76021 on August 29, 2011, 11:52:59 pm
Cant wait to add it...simply amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: wb2002 on August 29, 2011, 11:58:41 pm
In a way, I wish I had NOT looked at these night scene of this scenery. It's almost like watching the "Iorn Chef" compitition on TV, where you will never be able to taste the wonderful dishes that you see. Will this ever be available to purchase? With all the wonderful sceneries and addons for FSX, I am discovering that FSX is becoming more exciting with other things than flying. I will now spend quite a bit of time just traveling in motor vehicles and walking around airport, looking at all the buildings, hangers, roads, fences and other objects. It makes no sense just to only fly into and take off from an airport with scenery as nice and realistic as this.

Congradulations . . . . . . .


Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: 01pewterz28 on August 30, 2011, 12:35:01 am
All I can say is I am glad I switched to FSX :)
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: sjt375 on August 30, 2011, 01:07:18 am
you have left me speechless once again FSDreamteam
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: scarebus on August 30, 2011, 01:19:44 am
All I can say is I am glad I switched to FSX :)

I was a staunch FS9 supporter and was adamant that I would never cross over to the other side (FSX) but I am soooooo glad I did, these screen shots are jaw droppingly delicious - they've got us all creaming our pants!!!! You (+FT) really have reset the bar and it's a whole lot higher now... bring it on  :o :P :-*
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: PUP4ORD on August 30, 2011, 01:25:15 am
I am so amazed :o Wonderful night shots :)
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: CX 747-400 on August 30, 2011, 01:28:58 am
WOW... Amazing! Stunning! Magnificent!

 I cant wait till you so us some images with the AI running. But we have to be close.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: feer on August 30, 2011, 01:35:45 am
no word fsdt. top quality now i can dream with miami intl like this regards feer.. ;)
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Silverbird on August 30, 2011, 01:58:49 am
I gotta be honest here I'm just about for the first time about to delete my fs9 folder only reason I'm still holding on to it is because of a few scenerys that are fs9 only like the overland airports and my old imaginesim newark airport lol and the fact that I'm able to run fsx now vs my old computer setup :D   klax looks great!   :)
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Thunderbird Fan on August 30, 2011, 02:41:30 am
Awesome!!!Flight Sim Porn!!!!!Pix look great.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Johan on August 30, 2011, 03:13:34 am
You guys are good! Two more days till the end of August...
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: aircanadajet on August 30, 2011, 03:31:55 am
this is a bad sign! It means that is not ready yet!. It looks absolutely beautiful.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Johan on August 30, 2011, 03:49:36 am
this is a bad sign! It means that is not ready yet!. It looks absolutely beautiful.

Well, we have to understand FSDT strategy, which is to release a product only when it is fully ready to their knowledge. This is a good strategy. If released to early, then it is weeks of responding to legitimate questions from unhappy buyers, and that is damaging. I hope they come up with the perfect product from the get-go, let's give them that chance and the time to do it.

Johan
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: truthknown on August 30, 2011, 04:27:35 am
Wow... i don't usually post to these WIP shots, but I must say that looks beyond amazing!

I too would like to know if the lighting actually reflects off of aircraft and objects. Is it truly a light source?

Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: theshack440 on August 30, 2011, 06:32:00 am
Wow that's a sight to behold! I need KLAX!
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Anders Bermann on August 30, 2011, 10:32:43 am
this is a bad sign! It means that is not ready yet!. It looks absolutely beautiful.

Well, we have to understand FSDT strategy, which is to release a product only when it is fully ready to their knowledge. This is a good strategy. If released to early, then it is weeks of responding to legitimate questions from unhappy buyers, and that is damaging. I hope they come up with the perfect product from the get-go, let's give them that chance and the time to do it.

Johan

Well said!

OT:
Very nice, FSDT!!! As usual, you've done it again...
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: aircanadajet on August 30, 2011, 12:44:58 pm
this is a bad sign! It means that is not ready yet!. It looks absolutely beautiful.

Well, we have to understand FSDT strategy, which is to release a product only when it is fully ready to their knowledge. This is a good strategy. If released to early, then it is weeks of responding to legitimate questions from unhappy buyers, and that is damaging. I hope they come up with the perfect product from the get-go, let's give them that chance and the time to do it.

Johan

You are absolutely right Sir, my apologies. My intentions were not to hurt the reputation of FSDT in any way. You are absolutely correct.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: AA777-200ER on August 30, 2011, 01:14:03 pm
Excellent work FSDT, can't wait to fly the NGX to this airport!

I now assume a Sept. delivery?

Darryl 
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: aircanadajet on August 30, 2011, 01:27:25 pm
Excellent work FSDT, can't wait to fly the NGX to this airport!

I now assume a Sept. delivery?

Darryl 

Please, please do not make any assumptions. People here are very sensitive about that. Just stay tune and don't say words like: delivery, release, when, bad, question marks, and news. As this just triggers the alarm. Thank you for visiting the forums though. Have a look at the other airports this amazing people have designed already. Enjoy!
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: NZEddy on August 30, 2011, 02:14:43 pm
FSDreamTeam KLAX will be my first purchased airport from FSDT when it's released! (I've got the others thanks to the trial mode thing :D)

Looks friken amazing!  ;D

All we need is Orbx Southern California, GSX and then it's complete!
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Anders Bermann on August 30, 2011, 03:14:23 pm
... All we need is Orbx Southern California ...

LOL :D

Is that even on the 'road-map'? Or was it just wishful thinking? :D
ORBX Southern California - sounds very nice!!! ;)
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: space_coast on August 30, 2011, 04:14:39 pm
great pictures!!!
Can't wait for the release, hope it's not too far away  :D
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: member111222 on August 30, 2011, 05:01:13 pm
Well, that is actually not too bad. ;D
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: cmpbllsjc on August 30, 2011, 11:57:56 pm
Looks absolutely amazing.

I am just hoping the lights on the poles are like KDFW where they always stay on regardless of where you are on the airport, unlike JFK, ORD, FLL, where the lights dont come on until you get within a certain radius and even them sometimes they dont all turn on.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: NZEddy on August 31, 2011, 01:28:25 am
Is that even on the 'road-map'? Or was it just wishful thinking? :D
Yup, it's on the road map. :D
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: hockey122332 on August 31, 2011, 05:18:09 am
i cant wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ;D
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: theshack440 on August 31, 2011, 05:49:45 am
That is exactly what we must AVOID. You never see lights in the day time, take a look:
http://www.airliners.net/photo//1705490/L/&sid=43de533904f993680a17eed8b89ad5d0 (http://www.airliners.net/photo//1705490/L/&sid=43de533904f993680a17eed8b89ad5d0)

I do like the night lighting FSDreamTeam has produced, because it is a first. But in my honest opinion, we still haven't gotten to the point where night lighting looks realistic enough. We need a variety of different light colors to be produced, and they must actually be light sources to bounce off of objects. ...

Although I feel that would be incredible, I have a feeling that that would kill fps. I'm no scenery developer but I it seems to good to be true if it was the same on frames.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: virtuali on August 31, 2011, 11:02:00 am
I do like the night lighting FSDreamTeam has produced, because it is a first. But in my honest opinion, we still haven't gotten to the point where night lighting looks realistic enough.

It's always wrong to post night time pictures to show how a scenery should look like. This because, quite simply, night photos are always invariably wrong, because they don't represent what your EYE sees, they represent how the camera sensor records light, depending on the exposure/white balance settings, which are never correct if the picture was taken in automatic mode, and anyway almost impossible to get right setting them manually, because the digital sensors simply don't have enough dynamic to capture the big difference between dark areas and light sources. A camera exposure usually average giving preference to the center of the image, which means the dark areas are usually too bright, and the light sources are burned out of scale. And of course, the white balance of a night shot it's really a guess, because if the picture was taken with automatic white balancing, the camera will try to make the most dominating light color to be more neutral.

So, one should be very careful to use real pictures as a comparison, because a scenery should match what the human eye sees, not what a digital camera renders. But of course, since most of the users are not aware of how much a digital picture can be misleading, I guess that trying to match a photo instead of real like *could* be a sensible marketing choice, since most of the people will revert to comparisons with photos anyway.

Quote
We need a variety of different light colors to be produced, and they must actually be light sources to bounce off of objects. In addition, the light poles look like they are raining and they look too large when zooming out.

Having different light colors it's easy enough, and they ARE "light sources that bounce off of objects" already, the scenery it's already like this.

However, they can't bounce on ALL and EVERY object, they behave absolutely and utterly realistically on the main buildings, because they are all part of the same geometry+textures but, for example, it's not possible to have continuity with the jetways BOTH because the jetways are very few different objects repeated multiple times AND because they move!

Realistic light like this is not possible with animated objects, because the FSX engine doesn't really allow what would be *hundreds* of different light sources in realtime. We can have (and we DO have) hundreds or even thousands of light sources, but only at the static level, because they are not inside FSX, they are placed when rendering the textures.

Same as jetways, we can't have the light sources bouncing on all small detail objects like trees, for the same reason they live in a different texture space which is optimized for their small size. IF we would like to maintain the same resolution for all objects, and allow the whole coherent lighting, the texture memory usage would go up dramatically, because every single object should have its own texture space, since it might get slightly different lighting.

Instead, we usually save a lot of memory by, for example, reusing the same texture for an object (like a tree, a pole, a parked car) that is repeated a lot in the scenery.

So, the scenery HAS realistic lighting which bounce of objects, but not on ALL objects, those that are optimized to be repeated many times and the animated ones are not getting this lighting. But they have manually made night textures, as with any other scenery we and everyone else made so far.

IF we ran under a different graphic engine, we could have way better realtime lightning, but FSX is not really made for this.

OF COURSE, if the scenery wasn't KLAX or another big hub but, instead, something much smaller, we might at least get a fully coherent lighting for all objects (consuming the same or aven more the amount of texture memory of KLAX, on a small GA field), but it just can't be done for such a large airport.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: virtuali on August 31, 2011, 01:40:37 pm
You have clearly stated that only static objects will get this treatment, but I am left confuzed: isn't every scenery before this one like that? How would the poles be considered 'light sources' if they do not bounce off of moving objects such as aircraft?

The light poles are not light sources in FSX, but they WERE light sources in the rendering program so, the end result of what you see in FSX, for *static* objects, it's exactly the same you would see if they were light sources in FSX as well. So, at least for static objects, calling them light sources or not, it's entirely irrelevant, since the end result would be exactly the same.

Quote
They wouldn't be considered as actual 'light sources' if they only bounced off of static objects because you guys are just applying different texture coloring in order to create the look of lights shining on objects in the dark.

Which is the only possible way to get that quality, without impacting performances. It's the same concept of using pre-rendered shadows instead of realtime shadows, but here the performance difference between realtime and pre-rendered it's even more dramatic, since the computational impact would increase with the number of light sources (and there are hundreds of them in a big airport), while the impact of realtime shadows depends on the complexity of the objects projecting shadows but with a single light source (the sun)

I don't think there's a graphic engine capable of hundreds of real-time light sources, at the most, the smarter ones have some kind of LOD-like capabilities for lights and shadows, were only those closer to you are realtime, the ones farther away are pre-rendered, with some complex switching methods between the two. Engines like the Unity3d use these methods, for shadows only, to get it for light sources, there are very complex new techniques called "light probes":

http://blogs.unity3d.com/2011/03/09/light-probes/

Which is a combination of pre-rendered and dynamic light, using very smart calculation methods. There are also other rendering method, like deferred rendering, which at least try to keep under control the increase in computational power required to calculate lots of light sources in realtime, which is also used by recent engines like Unreal, Crytek and Unity too.

However, this is all academic, since FSX doesn't allow any of this.

Quote
Is it not possible to create code for each pole to contain a 'miniature Sun' to shine on moving objects, therefore eliminating the technique of rendering textures?

That would equate to real-time lighting. Just keep in mind that it takes *minutes* to generate a SINGLE frame with realtime lights on a rendering program so, instead of "frame per seconds", we would get "minutes per frame"...
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Silverbird on August 31, 2011, 02:36:32 pm
Umberto have you seen this? http://www.wimp.com/gamesrealistic http://www.euclideon.com with that kind of thinking I believe is the way of the future for gaming and computer  graphics. can you imagines a flightsim with this kinda tech?
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: virtuali on August 31, 2011, 04:08:26 pm
Quote
can you imagines a flightsim with this kinda tech?

It's been more than a year that video is around, and many respected developers in the gaming community believes it's not more than hype to get some funding, see this post here by Notch, the creator of the highly successful "Minecraft" game:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

John Carmack also said there's no chance it will run on any system before several years, but the most difficult issue is producing content for that engine.

In any case, there are lots of engines which are far more capable of advanced rendering compared to FSX BUT, the issue is, they aren't suited to most of the flight simulation needs, like large visibility, no preset path, different light and weather conditions, ease of expansion, etc. In fact, I believe the Aerosoft flight simulator project has stopped now, because they weren't able to find any engine which has the capabilities needed for a full flight simulator program.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: cmpbllsjc on August 31, 2011, 04:10:54 pm
Looks absolutely amazing.

I am just hoping the lights on the poles are like KDFW where they always stay on regardless of where you are on the airport, unlike JFK, ORD, FLL, where the lights dont come on until you get within a certain radius and even them sometimes they dont all turn on.


That is exactly what we must AVOID. You never see lights in the day time, take a look:
http://www.airliners.net/photo//1705490/L/&sid=43de533904f993680a17eed8b89ad5d0 (http://www.airliners.net/photo//1705490/L/&sid=43de533904f993680a17eed8b89ad5d0)


I though it was obvious that I meant at night time, not during the day. The lights at FSDT'd KDFW that I refered to as having the lights all on regardless of where you are in the airport aren't on during the day in FSX.

More specifically what I mean is that I hope the lights on the light poles at LAX are done in the same fashion as they are at DFW, were they all come on and stay on regardless of if your 100 feet away or 500 feet away.

Yes, I dont want them on in the day time and that wasn't what I was hoping for.

Umberto, comments on the lights being KDFW style?
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: virtuali on August 31, 2011, 05:02:44 pm
More specifically what I mean is that I hope the lights on the light poles at LAX are done in the same fashion as they are at DFW, were they all come on and stay on regardless of if your 100 feet away or 500 feet away.

Yes, I dont want them on in the day time and that wasn't what I was hoping for.

Umberto, comments on the lights being KDFW style?

They are entirely different to KDFW, they show up from a large distance and of course they appear at night only.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: member111222 on August 31, 2011, 06:13:59 pm
Soon we will have three airports with outstanding night lighting.

For me the best looking addon is

upcomming KLAX FSDT,
then KSFO X and third YBBN.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Silverbird on August 31, 2011, 07:08:55 pm
Quote
can you imagines a flightsim with this kinda tech?

It's been more than a year that video is around, and many respected developers in the gaming community believes it's not more than hype to get some funding, see this post here by Notch, the creator of the highly successful "Minecraft" game:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

John Carmack also said there's no chance it will run on any system before several years, but the most difficult issue is producing content for that engine.

In any case, there are lots of engines which are far more capable of advanced rendering compared to FSX BUT, the issue is, they aren't suited to most of the flight simulation needs, like large visibility, no preset path, different light and weather conditions, ease of expansion, etc. In fact, I believe the Aerosoft flight simulator project has stopped now, because they weren't able to find any engine which has the capabilities needed for a full flight simulator program.


Thank's Umberto what a shame! but I still believe that genuine thinking like this is the way of the future hopefully someone does it for real this time, the  large visibility in a flightsims engines  is amazing hopefully someone comes out with something great we have to many things that are sort of  preemptive tech wise.

In the case of night scenery I remember posting something before about it, having worked at a real ramp at a small airport kpbi at night it came be very dark depending on the light sources other airports have more lights but there really isn't much light away from the terminal itself so in fsx I can understand designing it can be tricky since the lighting engine in fsx is not good so I'm guessing you have to tweak it for it to look good in the sim in artistic style to it. hopefully that will change a little bit in msflight at least I'm hoping it will great job on klax.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: sjt375 on August 31, 2011, 07:48:24 pm
Quote
can you imagines a flightsim with this kinda tech?

It's been more than a year that video is around, and many respected developers in the gaming community believes it's not more than hype to get some funding, see this post here by Notch, the creator of the highly successful "Minecraft" game:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

John Carmack also said there's no chance it will run on any system before several years, but the most difficult issue is producing content for that engine.

In any case, there are lots of engines which are far more capable of advanced rendering compared to FSX BUT, the issue is, they aren't suited to most of the flight simulation needs, like large visibility, no preset path, different light and weather conditions, ease of expansion, etc. In fact, I believe the Aerosoft flight simulator project has stopped now, because they weren't able to find any engine which has the capabilities needed for a full flight simulator program.


Ok, but for Flight, maybe I was just seeing things in trailers 3+4, but it looked like the shadows were dynamic and changed based off of where the sun was in relation to the aircraft and actually received shadows from surrounding mountains (trailer 3). I am aware that Flight is a totally new engine, but this is just in response to the light path mentioned at the end with the aerosoft problems and this is not at all related to KLAX.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: Silverbird on August 31, 2011, 08:15:35 pm
Quote
can you imagines a flightsim with this kinda tech?

It's been more than a year that video is around, and many respected developers in the gaming community believes it's not more than hype to get some funding, see this post here by Notch, the creator of the highly successful "Minecraft" game:

http://notch.tumblr.com/post/8386977075/its-a-scam

John Carmack also said there's no chance it will run on any system before several years, but the most difficult issue is producing content for that engine.

In any case, there are lots of engines which are far more capable of advanced rendering compared to FSX BUT, the issue is, they aren't suited to most of the flight simulation needs, like large visibility, no preset path, different light and weather conditions, ease of expansion, etc. In fact, I believe the Aerosoft flight simulator project has stopped now, because they weren't able to find any engine which has the capabilities needed for a full flight simulator program.


Ok, but for Flight, maybe I was just seeing things in trailers 3+4, but it looked like the shadows were dynamic and changed based off of where the sun was in relation to the aircraft and actually received shadows from surrounding mountains (trailer 3). I am aware that Flight is a totally new engine, but this is just in response to the light path mentioned at the end with the aerosoft problems and this is not at all related to KLAX.

That's correct Spencer I'm hoping they really revamp the lighting and shadow in the engine so far from what we have seen on the video is a sign there trying to get things like that working,  as for ms flight being a new engine I'm not sure don't remember the article but I believe its still based on the code from flight simulator Ill have to dig for that one and post it here and sorry to fsdt for getting a little off topic here.
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: virtuali on August 31, 2011, 08:38:39 pm
Ok, but for Flight, maybe I was just seeing things in trailers 3+4, but it looked like the shadows were dynamic

Dynamic shadows are far easier to do than an arbitrary number of dynamic lights, because at least you know that with shadows the light source it's just one, so it's possible to optimize a lot based on that assumption.

And there are several games that have multiple dynamic lights, but maybe tens of them, not hundreds or more (not exactly sure how many were in KLAX, but it's possible they reach thousand or so)
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: jackhendricks on August 31, 2011, 09:25:51 pm
Hey Umberto would you say that this is the last work in progress before release? ;D
Title: Re: Work in Progress / 12
Post by: altstiff on August 31, 2011, 11:14:20 pm
Just to give an example of what Umberto was saying with photo's, here is a shot I took of San Diego from Coronado at night, a few seconds apart...

One:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/V2WDN78gEpWRpq8rWpbhXQ?feat=directlink

Another:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/rS607Suoo1BpW59nDlAwjw?feat=directlink

So you can see how different settings on a camera (ISO speed, shutter speed and so on) can make the exact same image so very different compared to the naked eye. And for the record the darker shot is more realistic (close to what I saw with my eye).

I also did a similar shot of KSAN at night...

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/YlQ9_1Goe5IJc4Y7tyNO9w?feat=directlink

On that shot I used a longer exposure (as you can see by the blurred tail lights on the car going down the hill)....