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Vfr London X Autogen


Ciderman

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I purchased VFR London X yesterday. First of all the scenery is stunning. I frequently visit London and feel this scenery does reflect the looks of the city very well. I've got a framerate of about 20fps at dense so the scenery runs okay on my machine considering the massive amount of data.

However, there is one thing I don't like. The photorealistic area around the inner city is totally flat without any autogen objects. Aerosoft have done a great job with the photorealistic Germany series and generic autogen so why isn't it possible for a rather small area? Just a few buildings and trees should do the trick.

Thanks, Martin.

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I purchased VFR London X yesterday. First of all the scenery is stunning. I frequently visit London and feel this scenery does reflect the looks of the city very well. I've got a framerate of about 20fps at dense so the scenery runs okay on my machine considering the massive amount of data.

However, there is one thing I don't like. The photorealistic area around the inner city is totally flat without any autogen objects. Aerosoft have done a great job with the photorealistic Germany series and generic autogen so why isn't it possible for a rather small area? Just a few buildings and trees should do the trick.

Thanks, Martin.

Hi Martin,

Is this opposite London Helipad by any chance? This is the only place I have found upto now that looks weird! Do you have a screenshot of it?

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Hi Martin,

Is this opposite London Helipad by any chance? This is the only place I have found upto now that looks weird! Do you have a screenshot of it?

No, I was referring to outer London in general. Unfortunately there is no generic autogen at all, which creates a sharp contrast between the very detailed city centre and the outer suburbs.

http://www.fsx.airmensworld.com/bilder/London/17.jpg

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  • Aerosoft
No, I was referring to outer London in general. Unfortunately there is no generic autogen at all, which creates a sharp contrast between the very detailed city centre and the outer suburbs.

http://www.fsx.airmensworld.com/bilder/London/17.jpg

Well the scenery is indeed sharply defined but with something as large as London there is no way to avoid that. Both in work and also in load. So we depend on the AutoGen of FSX for those regions.

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So we depend on the AutoGen of FSX for those regions.

Mathijs, that's exactly what I'm saying. BUT there is not autogen at all. The vast area surrounding the city centre is simply flat and empty. The photorealistic area should have either been reduced to the part actually covered by the custom objects or it should have been equipped with autogen objects.

Will there be a patch to fix this?

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Hi,

I'm glad someone else has bought this up!!

I posted about it on the Horizon forum and they said there was nothing they could do. They said the phototextures are a defined size and there is nothing they can do to reduce them. Their solution was go buy GenX - I then got attacked for daring to say I didn't like photoscenery for the whole country!

I also believe that this outer area is only 2m per pixel and the quality is not that good. You can't just remove the 2m per pixel layer as the higher res stuff in central London doesn't have any mipmaps so you get the default textures before the 1m per pixel res snaps in.

I have worked out a method to remove the phototextures completely so that you get the 3D buildings from VFR London and then autogen surrounding them. Of course this means you have to have the default textures underneath - although not too bad if you have UTX EU, its probably horrible if you just have the default. I reckon it'll be great with the upcoming GEX EU. Unfortunately its only a compromise.

If you want me to post this method let me know - its totally reversible if you don't like it.

I agree that the phototextures should have been reduced to the area covered by the custom buildings - Fly Tampa managed it with Kai Tak (and blended perfectly with the default) so why can't Horizon. I haven't tried any other Aerosoft releases. I understand that it was made to compliment their GenX photoscenery - but in that case they shouldn't be marketing it as a stand alone product.

By the way, I have also worked out how to reduce your VFR London scenery to 'sparse' or 'normal' while still having FSX set to dense or higher. Handy for the fps! Again if anyone is interested I'll post the method.

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In the meantime I have also disabled the photo textures and made the scenery compatible with Ultimate Terrain Europe. Except for some minor glitches (e.g. the Millenium Bridge is too short, some buildings are not aligned with the road layout) VFR London X blends in much better that way.

(BTW, I had quite some problems with the London installer and UTX EU. The installer disabled most of the UTX topography. However, copying the folders manually fixed the issue.)

To improve the framerate at a scenery complexity level of "dense" I simply disabled the outer areas of central London (which works quite well and is hardly noticeable) but I would definitely like to hear about your method, too.

Here is a picture of VFR London X plus Ultimate Terrain Europe (although there is no autogen in the background it actually turns up as you close in). To my mind the scenery looks best that way (at least as long as the photo area is not cropped).

post-17761-1223042319_thumb.jpg

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Yeah thats the look I get too. Its not bad - just a shame we can't have the Central London area as photoscenery. Do you have the minor urban roads turned on in UTX in that shot?

My method to reduce the levels is this: If you look in the scenery folder for VFR London you will see, for example, 'Waterloo_dense.bgl', 'Waterloo_sparse.bgl', Waterloo_verysparse.bgl' etc. (not too sure of the exact names as I'm not infront of my FSX PC. If you move all entries for every area ABOVE the setting that you want to display to another folder, then only the ones left display.

For example, to display VFR London at normal levels while having FSX set to very dense, move the 'dense' and 'verydense' scenery BGLs to another folder. You need all the ones below the level that you want to display at.

This can be done area by area so you can have, for example, Greenwich at dense levels and Waterloo at sparse.

If anyone else wants to remove the photoscenery you need to disable the photoscenery layers and also remove the default exclusion file from the main VFR London folder (I can't remember the exact name of the exclusion file...I'll post it later - its not the files that actually say 'exclusion' - they exclude the default buildings which you still need, unless you want two Big Bens...)

REMEMBER TO BACK IT ALL UP FIRST BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY OF THESE - for want of a better word - HACKS.

Maybe if Aerosoft put a bit of pressure on Horizon they might be able to find a fix for this...? pretty please... :rolleyes:

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I think the easiest way to describe it is that the phototextures extend a long way past the boundary of the custom 3d buildings - since photoscenery disables autogen - there is a area with no autogen around the custom buildings.

Imagine area of central London as an oval - this area is covered by 3d buildings and is fine. Then drawn a large square around the whole thing. This is the phototextures.

vfr.gif

This looks weird as the default scenery has autogen, Central London has its custom buildings and the area in between has nothing.

What we ideally want is for the phototextures to just cover the Central London part and not the outer London section.

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I totally agree with Paul. Cropping the photo-realsitic area so that it covers central London only would be the best solution.

In general I think that photo textures work perfectly for small areas such as inner cities, islands or coral reefs. I am not so sure about larger areas because a lot of compromises have to be made (no seasonal textures, sometimes even no night textures, little or no autogen objects).

@Paul: I will add the suburbs I erased from VFR London X in lower detail according to your description. I will let you know if/when it works out.

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Thanks Mathijs - thats much appreciated.

Ciderman - if you hav any probs just let me know.

The two files you need to move out of the VFR London scenery folder nefore you turn off the phototexture layers are:

cvxLONDONX4QMIDS2.BGL and exxLONDONX4QMIDS2.BGL

Then just switch off the 2m, 1m and 60m layers in FSX and you'll see the default textures and autogen with the custom 3D buildings.

To go back just put those files back and turn the layers back on.

Paul

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Thanks Mathijs for your effort. Using the 1m texture resolution they should be able to reduce the photo-realistic area decisively.

@Paul: I tried different complexity settings and BGL files and came up with a great compromise for my machine. Only Westminster has now got a scenery complexity of dense while the buildings fade out towards the outer suburbs. At a general Flight Simulator scenery complexity of dense I get around 24 fps over central London (that is with Aerosoft Heathrow Airport enabled).

I have attached a list of my London BGL files for your reference.

post-17761-1223199370_thumb.jpg

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That looks great Ciderman!

I only have Greenwich set to dense (thats where I live) the rest is set to normal. I get around 20fps if I turn AI traffic off. Its great to be able to tailor individual areas of London though.

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I only have Greenwich set to dense (thats where I live)

What a coincidence. I was in Greenwich last week with some students of mine. It's always a pleasure to be there. I hope the Cutty Sark will be restored soon. BTW, what happened to Gipsy Moth?

Martin

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Do you mean the pub on the corner by the Cutty Sark? The last lime I was in there it was OK - I haven't been in there for a while though...

Apparently the Cutty Sark will be unveiled in 2010 - assuming someone doesn't set fire to it again! The last fire was caused by a vacuum cleaner that was left on for two days!

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Do you mean the pub on the corner by the Cutty Sark?

I actually meant the sailboat that used to be there, next to Cutty Sark. I saw the pub last week and remembered that there was this second ship some years ago (right in front of the entrance to the Foot Tunnel).

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Apparently she's now sea worthy!

From wikipedia:

"In 2004, in a joint proposal with Yachting Monthly and Gipsy Moth IV's owners The Maritime Trust, the yacht was purchased by the United Kingdom Sailing Academy for the sum of £1 and a Gin and tonic (Sir Francis' favourite tipple). She was taken by road to Camper and Nicholson's yard in Gosport, Portsmouth Harbour, where she had been built and launched in 1966, for restoration. Although C&N did the work at cost price,[3] the restoration cost over £300,000.[4]

Gipsy Moth IV set sail from Plymouth Sound on the first leg of the 2005-07 Blue Water Round the World Rally on 25 September 2005."

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