Gibraltar X Questions And Feeback Request

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Fellows, I just saw the news that this scenery was released. I am interested in buying but have a few questions first since I have never purchased any Sim-Wings sceneries.

1. Are the textures already mip mapped or do the customers have to do that themselves?

2. Are the textures in .bmp or .dds format?

3. Are there static AI and if so, are they easy to remove? I ask this because I bough Lisbon X the other day for FSX and the installer didn't give me a choice and installed the static stuff, which was easy to find and remove.

4. As far as performance goes, how is it and has anyone flow any complex aircraft into it yet like stuff from PMDG or LDS, and what speed CPU were you using, I'm running an E8400 at 3.85 ghz. The reason I ask is that I would assume the performance is good with the little FSX ultralight, but is probably 10 to 20 fps worse when you put a complex airliner.

Thanks in advance for the help and feed back.

Sean

[OPabst 2091]

Hi,

as a nvidia User I can say you, no flicker problem, the BMP Format of the Bitmap generates no issue, there is no static aircraft in the product and if you have a Frame issue with this scenery, you will have it with all products you will buy, because this one is optimized in performance in all possible ways, the FSX will give us, related to the complexity the scenery has.

Balearen X was already a very performant scenery, Gibraltar X is a small step better, more is not possible, when you want to have same details on the area

When this is your first simwings product, it will not be the last, I think

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Hi,

as a nvidia User I can say you, no flicker problem, the BMP Format of the Bitmap generates no issue

Thanks for the input Oliver. Yes I am an nVidia user, but that doesn't answer the question of the textures are already mip mapped. I just bought LisbonX 2 days ago and while its not a Sim Wings product, I had to spend an hour or two going thru the textures and seperating the DXT1 and DXT3 textures and then adding mip maps to them. I am hopping to avoid going through the hassel again as I would rather fly than mip textures, not to say that I wouldn't, but I would prefer not to.

and if you have a Frame issue with this scenery, you will have it with all products you will buy, because this one is optimized in performance in all possible ways, the FSX will give us, related to the complexity the scenery has.

With all due respect I have heard this before from one of Aerosofts own developers, Peter who made Nice X and also had a hand in Lisbon X. For whatever reason Nice X only yields about 20 FPS on my system with the LDS 767, while Lisbon X gives me about 25 to 30 FPS in the LDS 767 and with more AI on the ground. I know you cant compare Sim Wings to Peter from Aerosoft since they are two different developers, however I have heard about things being "optimized" before and then when I buy a copy its almost unusable. Frankly I am not sure if any developer has fine tuned the art of "optimizing" sceneries for performance more than FSDreamteam and FlyTampa. I'm not sure what those two developers know that no one else does, but you can pretty much always count on them for being good performers. I have no prior experience with Sim Wings scenery for FS9 or FSX, so thats why I was asking.

Anyway Oliver, thanks for providing your view, hopefully some more people on here will buy it and give me their opinions of the scenery as well.

By the way, if I get it and there are no mip maps and it shimmers then I can look for you to spend the time mipping it for me, lol?

Regards,

Sean

[OPabst 2091]

Sorry, but when I told you, that the issues you expect with the BMP will not been seen here, then this will have nothing to do with the question not answered. Because if a BMP has MIPs or not is define much more complex then only have or not have. It depents on the object and the size it is use and if MIP are needed there or not. So to add MIP to all BMP is nice to have, will prevent flickers, but is not helpful in all cases. To MIP those BMP where it is important, that's the trick. Maybe it's not done by user developers, but in this cause of Simwings it is done correct.

The question for frames is also not ansering anything. How many frames you will have is depending from so many parameters, that nobody can give you a clear answer here. The aircraft is not the only aspect here, settings, weather, AI, Tweaks and so on will effect the frames.

The only compare between different sceneries can be done by check it with native components, means clear weather, no AI, Default aircraft with hidden 2D Cockpit, same Time of day. Then you can check the frames on Scenery A and switch to Scenery B. Then you can say which one is better performing under the same conditions. The rest depents on other components of your personal installation.

And, that what I say, in this compare Gibraltar is the best performing scenery I have seen and this based on the technical optimizations Simwings has done here, which is not done in this form at other Airport of Aerosoft before, not in Lisabon X or in Nice X

But feel free to wait for other reports, but positiv feedbacks are mostly less frequent then problemposts, so if it is silent, it's a good sign.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Thanks again Oliver. Your explanation of the mipping was easier to understand that time. So what you are saying is that they mipped the textures where they were needed and skipped them where they weren't needed based on the size and the model they were covering.

On comparing performance of a scenery, I use the same menthod basically. I set the time at 12:00 PM, completely clear the weather, no AI, set scenery density to very dense since some designers link some of the objects to the complexity slider, then use the LDS 767 which is my main mode of transportation. Doing this is how I compared say Nice X to Lisbon X. Maybe you can tell me since you are provided the internals of a scenery to make AES for it, how a scenery like NiceX which is pretty small in geographic size and not a lot of buildings, gets bad FPS on my system, while using the same settings and parameters, Lisbon X proves about 10 more FPS? And, aside from the mipping I have already done with Nice X, is there any more optimization that I, as a consumer, can do to improve performance at that airport?

Back to Gibraltar, thanks for the info. Like you said with all they did maybe we will see some glowing reviews from some of the others and I will go buy it. The price is very nice for that little airport :-)

Regards

Sean

[TangoGolf 6]

Hello Sean,

I'm an GTX260 owner and nHancer user and I've had pretty bad shimmering problems with certain other developer's airports (do you know the way to San Jose? ), and even in spots on a few German airports. In fact at some stock FSX airports (yes, they still exist) taxilines and runway lines will dance and glimmer for me as I move.

I'm a nitpicker at heart, but I have to say I'm totally happy with my purchase of Aerosoft's Gibraltar. The relative performance I have versus other airports is great. As for shimmers, I see little things here and there - the netting around the tennis court is obvious but not obnoxious, the radio tower on the northeast side of the runway will glimmer when the sun's just right, and the "guard rail" around the VGSIs that jut out over the water shimmers slightly. But there's nothing with GibraltarX that bothers me in the least. I've taken several circuits around the city and the rock today, admiring the detail.

And when I'm not flying, I'm having a blast sitting at the gas station, listening to the tower and playing traffic cop. I'm very impressed with how the ground traffic looks and acts.

(Too bad about NiceX and LisbonX, I've been considering picking them up. How difficult is it to mip the textures? I've worked with ImageTool at some of my "problem" airports, but I've never been happy with the results.)

Regards,

[OPabst 2091]

I'm a nitpicker at heart, but I have to say I'm totally happy with my purchase of Aerosoft's Gibraltar. The relative performance I have versus other airports is great. As for shimmers, I see little things here and there - the netting around the tennis court is obvious but not obnoxious, the radio tower on the northeast side of the runway will glimmer when the sun's just right, and the "guard rail" around the VGSIs that jut out over the water shimmers slightly. But there's nothing with GibraltarX that bothers me in the least. I've taken several circuits around the city and the rock today, admiring the detail.

Yes, you will have such effect sometimes, but that is not based on MIP Map items, it's more a "Display as it is" issue: When you have a very thin object, which has in distance a very little size, you get in the problem, that this object will only use 1 pixel. When the contrast to the background is very hard, then it looks the same as if you have Bitmaps, which hard contrast and no MIP's which produce the pixel flipping. But with the thin object you have more or less no option, only by using different Models for higher distances. But this could generate other strange effects, when user with high screen resolutions will see this less detailed object earlier then users with low resolutions.

So, it's impossible to find a workaround for all pixel flickers, but you can keep them less then possible.

BTW: Thorsten Loth gave me the info, that all BMP's in Gibraltar X have MIP's.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Hi Travis. Thanks for the info. BTW, I do know the wasy to San Jose California if thats the one your talking about? Funny you should say that because another fellow on the FSDT forum asked me the same thing the other day about San Jose but had a different name, I though you where him for a moment.

As far as your experience have you tried Gibraltar with a complex plane yet like anything from PMDG or LDS? I would imagine every one would get good performance with some small GA a/c, but its the airliners that I am mostly concerned about. I'm running a card similar to your but a GTS 250 OC 1GB and an E8400 OC'ed to 3.85 ghz

On the issue with Nice X and Lisbon X. Nice X has never run well on my system even with all the patches. I have eliminated the shimmering at Nice X, but get lower than normal FPS at that airport, especially considering the size of the place. I am actually running what you could call a Frankensteined version of Nice X right now where I took some parts from the Aerosoft version and combined them with the version from FranceVFR. It took me a few days and a lot of experimenting to get it to work, plus I am still working on the AFCAD/ADE file to sync up the two versions, but overall it works well and I have good FPS now. Seems that the building in the FranceVFR give me better FPS, but I am also using some items from the Aerosoft verson to make it look better.

Lisbon X I am pretty happy with. I get about 25 to 30 FPS there with 100% AI and heavy weather and the LDS 767. I did have to spend some time with mipping the textures because some where shimmering like crazy. One thing that does annoy me about Lisbon X is that some of the signs on the buildings flicker on and off. If you hit the pause key at the right time you will not see a sign on one of the hangers, then when you unpause the sim the sign will reappear. I think it may have something to do with that particular texture missing an alpha channel, but I am not 100% certain if that is the problem. However, like many sceneries that come out of Aerosoft its just one of those things you will have to get used to. Plus you probably know the standing joke in the community, when your flying around Europe if you cant find the airport just look for something shimmering in the distance and that will probably be it, lol. (No offense to Aerosoft, it's not my joke)

As far as how to mip map there are a few ways to do it. I use Image Tool and use a batch process so that I can do a lot of textures in one key stroke, but it only works for .bmp file. I also use it to mip map AI a/c textures to keep them from shimmering. If you have DDS files that need to be mipped, I use a free tool called DDS Converter 2 and I allow it to automatically set the number of mips for the texture you are converting. Lastly I use a tool called DXtBmp, which is also free. I use it to open textures to determine if they are DXT5, DXT3 or DXT1.

The one thing that is time consuming is looking at all the textures in DXTBmp to determine if they are DXT5, 3, or 1. Once I have all the textures seperated by DXT format, then I will run the batch converter on all the DXT3's then the DXT1's. Also I usually only mip the day textures and leave the light map texures alone, unless when I test the scenery at night there is too much shimmering, then I will mip the _lm textures as well using the same way by grouping all the DXT3's and DXT1's and running a batch.

Sometimes you will find scenery textures that are in 32bit format, like photoreal ground textures. They typically have larger file sizes and I often convert them from 32bit to 16bit DXT3 fies.

A lot of the folks at Aerosoft, including the skipper Mr. Kok, insist that mipping takes away from the sharpness of the texture. I, and many others disagree and maintain that it doesn't blur the texture, but provides a less detailed version of the same texture when you are farther away from the object being viewed. Basically a mip map takes a texture and makes more copies of the same texture from large to small. Then depending on the distance you are from the object a resized version of the texture will be displayed. It is also easier on the video card to render, which is why some people claim they increase FPS when using texture that have mips as opposed to not having mips. It is also why premier developers like FlyTampa, FSDreamteam, and ORBX you mip mapped textures. You will never see there products shimmer unless you have improper settings in your video card.

There is a lot more to it and I am not sure if I really explained it very well and maybe made you more confused. If you have anymore question let me know and maybe I can help you to try a few textures, just make sure to backup your orginal textures in case you mess something up.

Regards,

Sean

[OPabst 2091]

A lot of the folks at Aerosoft, including the skipper Mr. Kok, insist that mipping takes away from the sharpness of the texture. I, and many others disagree and maintain that it doesn't blur the texture, but provides a less detailed version of the same texture when you are farther away from the object being viewed. Basically a mip map takes a texture and makes more copies of the same texture from large to small. Then depending on the distance you are from the object a resized version of the texture will be displayed. It is also easier on the video card to render, which is why some people claim they increase FPS when using texture that have mips as opposed to not having mips. It is also why premier developers like FlyTampa, FSDreamteam, and ORBX you mip mapped textures. You will never see there products shimmer unless you have improper settings in your video card.

I know this discussion and position of the internal developers of Aerosoft and it is different to the position of the external teams (like simwings, GAP or Flytampa) and as I say before, for me, MIP less BMP are only useful in some very special cases. Blurry Texture you normally only get, when you don't take care about DXT BMP, which have no Alphachannel and no MIP's, because in this case the FS will autogenerate the MIP on runtime with terrible results or you mix in 32Bit high memory consuming textures, which overkills your GPU/Memory.

So, as always there are different position within the developer groups, but I think with the time the position will change to a final and global view and so more static results.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Good to hear Oliver. Thanks again for all the the info you have given tonight.

Seeing how active you are makes me want to give your AES product a try one of these day's. I must admit I have been putting off trying it for years, but maybe now is the time to give it a shot. :-)

[OPabst 2091]

Good to hear Oliver. Thanks again for all the the info you have given tonight.

Seeing how active you are makes me want to give your AES product a try one of these day's. I must admit I have been putting off trying it for years, but maybe now is the time to give it a shot. :-)

When you have Gibraltar X (I think this will happen), then you can use AES for free, as I have just upload the need files for Gibraltar X for AES 2.07 here.

The link for the installer you find on the product page, it's free to download.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Great thanks for the links. I will admit though that I never tried AES because of the cost. It was more because I was scared of causing conflicts with other addons or utilites. I have gotten to the point where now that I have a sound and solid running FSX that never crashes, why take a chance adding more to it. However if AES is pretty fool proof and has show not to cause interferience with other addons like PMDG, LDS, ActiveSky, Ultimate Traffic 2, etc., then I will give it a try.

Plus I was worried if there was any performance hit with AES when your on approach to an airport, or if the AES vehicle only appear when once you are on the ground?

Thanks again.

[OPabst 2091]

Plus I was worried if there was any performance hit with AES when your on approach to an airport, or if the AES vehicle only appear when once you are on the ground?

There is no performance hit reported and there is not much running before you reach the gate. In some cases, based on the situation that the jetways of the scenery are replaced by the AES version, it could happen, that the performance is going up a littlebit, but this depend on the airport and local situation.

And you can always check it in Demo Mode, before you assign credits to the airport.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Thats interesting to know. How about conflicts with other addons or utilities that I listed in the other post?

[OPabst 2091]

Thats interesting to know. How about conflicts with other addons or utilities that I listed in the other post?

Non. Why should they? AES is only incompatible to the FSX default Apron Traffic, this must be off to prevent conflicts.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Non. Why should they? AES is only incompatible to the FSX default Apron Traffic, this must be off to prevent conflicts.

I dont know, that's why I was asking. I though I had read something a while back regarding an incompatibility between AES and another addon.

When you say the default Apron Traffic needing to be turned off, is that the slider inside the FSX UI for the airport vehicles like fuel trucks and push back vehicles?

[OPabst 2091]

When you say the default Apron Traffic needing to be turned off, is that the slider inside the FSX UI for the airport vehicles like fuel trucks and push back vehicles?

Yes, because there is no way to exclude them automatically and they will stay around and will conflict wiht the cars of AES, looks not good.

But, try it yourself, you always can remove the AES Basepack Entry from the Scenery Library and AES will be off.

[cmpbllsjc 2]

Thanks for all the time you spent today Oliver. This is probably more interaction than I have ever seen between a customer and a vendor on this site in such a short amount of time, especially since your not really part of the staff of Aerosoft, or maybe you are?

Anyways, I guess I will be getting Gibraltar and will give your product a shot as well.

Regards,

Sean

[Jeroen Rutgers-Herenius 167]

Thanks for all the time you spent today Oliver. This is probably more interaction than I have ever seen between a customer and a vendor on this site in such a short amount of time, especially since your not really part of the staff of Aerosoft, or maybe you are?

Anyways, I guess I will be getting Gibraltar and will give your product a shot as well.

Regards,

Sean

Hey Sean, warning though, once you fly with AES, you'll never go back

[helitom 5]

hello from ETHB,

just one question: sim-wings is talking about animated cable-car, do we have that already in the aerosoft-version? I havn´t found it yet!

regards

Thomas

[Goair-18 7]

Its a great scenery!! i just brought it today!!!

[Shaun Fletcher 570]

Hello Thomas,

Do you have a link to this please.

[TangoGolf 6]

Yes, you will have such effect sometimes, but that is not based on MIP Map items, it's more a "Display as it is" issue: When you have a very thin object, which has in distance a very little size, you get in the problem, that this object will only use 1 pixel. When the contrast to the background is very hard, then it looks the same as if you have Bitmaps, which hard contrast and no MIP's which produce the pixel flipping. But with the thin object you have more or less no option, only by using different Models for higher distances. But this could generate other strange effects, when user with high screen resolutions will see this less detailed object earlier then users with low resolutions.

So, it's impossible to find a workaround for all pixel flickers, but you can keep them less then possible.

BTW: Thorsten Loth gave me the info, that all BMP's in Gibraltar X have MIP's.

Oliver,

Thanks for your explanations and for your assistance here. I'm well and truly happy with Gibraltar - it may be that it's new to me, but so far it's my favorite airport for 2010.

Also, many thanks for the (free) AES support. I've only been an AES user for a few months but already I'm hooked on listening to the thumpthumpthump as I roll up/down various centerlines.

Regards,

[TangoGolf 6]

Hi Travis. Thanks for the info. BTW, I do know the wasy to San Jose California if thats the one your talking about? Funny you should say that because another fellow on the FSDT forum asked me the same thing the other day about San Jose but had a different name, I though you where him for a moment.

Hi Sean,

By mentioning San Jose (yes, KSJC) I was indirectly referencing the shimmering-est 3rd party airport I've ever seen. The ground textures there are fine, but the fences and buildings are sometimes painful for me to watch.

As far as your experience have you tried Gibraltar with a complex plane yet like anything from PMDG or LDS? I would imagine every one would get good performance with some small GA a/c, but its the airliners that I am mostly concerned about. I'm running a card similar to your but a GTS 250 OC 1GB and an E8400 OC'ed to 3.85 ghz

The most complex a/c I have are my CS 727 and 767, so I don't think I can help you there. I'll likely get the 737NG when it's released - along with the Aerosoft CRJ and AirbusX - but all of those appear to be months off. (I took a 727 from Faro to Gibraltar this morning and noticed no framerate differences from one to the other, FWIW.)

Lisbon X I am pretty happy with. I get about 25 to 30 FPS there with 100% AI and heavy weather and the LDS 767. I did have to spend some time with mipping the textures because some where shimmering like crazy. One thing that does annoy me about Lisbon X is that some of the signs on the buildings flicker on and off. If you hit the pause key at the right time you will not see a sign on one of the hangers, then when you unpause the sim the sign will reappear. I think it may have something to do with that particular texture missing an alpha channel, but I am not 100% certain if that is the problem. However, like many sceneries that come out of Aerosoft its just one of those things you will have to get used to. Plus you probably know the standing joke in the community, when your flying around Europe if you cant find the airport just look for something shimmering in the distance and that will probably be it, lol. (No offense to Aerosoft, it's not my joke)

I'm a sucker for a good deal, and I do want a larger airport in the SW of Europe, so I may bite on LisbonX, but will likely give NiceX a pass.

There's another set of European airports where I find that the taxiway signs of all things flicker like mad. So I count all of these little inconsistencies as part of the great big old PC "platform" that is as different from one machine to the next as night is to day.

There is a lot more to it and I am not sure if I really explained it very well and maybe made you more confused. If you have anymore question let me know and maybe I can help you to try a few textures, just make sure to backup your orginal textures in case you mess something up.

Thanks for your offer - if the Lisbon shimmering is "more noticeable than normal" (I tried to phrase that kindly ) I'll likely start a new thread to ask for assistance in what to do with specific textures.

I found a thread in the forum here in which Shaun had posted a batch file to help mip bmp files. I've clumsily tried to use that with other payware airports but apart from learning to not process the "lm" bmp files, I pretty much find myself cutting down on the shimmers at a great cost to FPS.

To close on-topic, I've flown around and walked over nearly all of GibraltarX and am enjoying every ft². It blends in nicely with GEX/UTX (both sold by Aerosoft I believe?) so much that the "demarcation line" is not blindingly obvious from 10nm.

Best regards,

[helitom 5]

Hi Shaun,

i found it at flightandfun "Vorbestellen", scrolling down to Gibraltar and Details.

regards

Thomas