Author Topic: Autogen with CHPro FSX  (Read 15435 times)

BernhardS

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Autogen with CHPro FSX
« on: September 26, 2008, 09:42:33 am »
Hello,

as in the older version of CHPro FS9, there are lots of autogen missing at some parts around Zurich airport with CHPro FSX.
I know you are aware about that, but are you working on a soultion for that problem?

Thanks

Bernhard

etien

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2008, 10:15:15 am »
I just tried this airport.
(1) It is amazing / brilliant / efficient / great / true to nature etc ...  :D
(2) I am not buying and removed it from my hard drive after 5 mins.   :-[
For exacly the same reasin than Bernhard is raising.. it is removing the CHPro FSX Autogen for quite a big zone around it !!
Why someone would spend $$$ to a get a local - amazing improvement - to destroy what is around?

I am not a specialist, but your exclude zone is Far too wide and/or you need to add some basic autogen around the airport.

If it is not as simple as replacing your big rectangle into a more beskope polynomial of exclusion, maybe you could liaise with the CHPro guys and see if they could give you a local listing of the buildings? it would be a win-win situtation for both of you guys. Look at what LLH (www.llhinfo.com) is doing with France VFR - Alpes du Nord (http://www.francevfr.com/scenes.htm), they collaborate and both a winning !

I am dreading to think that Geneva X will have the same issue (again a non starter for me).

Fix that and you have a garanteed client for all your Swiss airports [and probably more than 1], dont fix that and miss out. Etienne.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2008, 10:16:52 am by etien »

virtuali

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2008, 11:44:14 am »
I am not a specialist, but your exclude zone is Far too wide and/or you need to add some basic autogen around the airport.

That's the problem. Since, as you said yourself, you are not a specialist, you are assuming the scenery as a "bug", that the bug is the exclusion zone, and it can be fixed relatively easily. Don't you think that, if it was an easy fix, we would have fixed it ourselves long time ago ?

The missing autogen is NOT caused by an exclusion zone!

The problem is caused by a side effect of a special FS9 command used in FSX, that is needed to create the custom ground, without having ground flickering issues. The amount of the effect is related to the size of the ground polygons tiles AND even to the airport heading compared to an hypotetical north oriented ground polygon grid. Nothing related to exclusion zones in any way.

An hypotetical fix would require redoing the ground polygonal grid in smaller steps. But that will NOT fix it entirely! It would simply reduce the size of the exclude autogen. But, it would have other side effects too because, assuming we are now losing autogen up to 4 km outside the airport (it's not a correct number, I'm just making an example), if we decrease the grid size in half, the problem will still appear, at 2 km, but the number of ground polygons would increase 4 times. If we would like to reduce the effect at 1 km, the number of polygons would increase 16 times! AND, it wouldn't be just that, on top of increasing the number of polygons, since each polygon is mapped to a texture, we'll increase also the number of materials used. Since each material change on the video card is costly, an important fps optimization step is to keep the number of material changes as low as possible so, it's better to draw less larger textures than to draw more smaller textures. So, this fix would increase BOTH the number of poygons AND the number of materials at least 4 times, and perhaps even 16 times, if we want to reduce the effect to be less noticeable. And, nonetheless, it will NOT go away entirely.

We always put performances first. Everybody is able to create a nice and slow scenery, but we try to create nice and fast sceneries so, there's no way we destroy our good performances only to gain some autogen, which will decrease fps even further...

Some other possible solutions would also have worse side effect than the disappearing autogen. For example, switching to a native FSX photoreal background, like in KORD or KJFK, would DECREASE the ground sharpness compared to the current version. People will rightly complain that the "fix" fixed the autogen, but made the whole scenery look worse.

This is what happens each time an FS9 command is used in FSX: unexpected side effects appears, like in the case of missing AI at Zurich, when used with FS9 AI models, because of the FS9 commands needed to create the custom runway texture (which of course is not possible to create in any other way).

But unfortunately, the definitive solution wouldn't make much commercial sense: because it would mean designing airports without custom ground in a fully FSX native mode (using only AFCAD ground), something that the market doesn't accept.

Also, it seems that the problem is more apparent with CH Pro. You might believe it or not but, according to our download stats, only 2% of Zurich users downloaded the specific CH Pro version. At THIS low rate of usage, we might not even be able to *buy* a copy of it to check for compatibility, let alone spending time to analyze the problem or looking into alternative solutions.

We can't be more satisfied of how Zurich sales are doing and this, added to the very low usage of the CH Pro version, gives us just one conclusion: the CH Pro autogen issue didn't matter to a lot of users. Unfortunately, scenery design is just a list of compromises, and there's no way we can have everybody happy, we can only try to accomodate what appears to be the majority.

etien

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2008, 01:02:19 pm »
Thanks for the quick answer, I suspect CHPro isnt much bought because it is so expensive. Also your 'natural' clients are flying heavies, not slow and low, so I guess they dont buy much photorealistic scenariis. (or high altitude ala France VFR http://flyawaysimulation.com/article2953.html) or if they do they could not care less about the autogen.

But notice that Swiss CHPro received the second place of the best scenari this year.(You went third for airports ! felicitations !  ;) ) So some people must have paid / voted for it ( http://awards.simflight.com/2008/results.htm ) :D Just probably not your classical clients.

What about repopulating the autogen as an overlay? You could offer the .blg as an optional download to users? people flying 747 and other PMDG MD-11 caring - righlty so - for fast fps would ignore it and the rest of the GA pilots  would propably take the hit and install it?

I created such overlay myself around marseille for some France VFR scenes.
« Last Edit: November 01, 2008, 01:09:55 pm by etien »

etien

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2008, 09:42:05 am »
Was wondering, would it be possible for me to delete the grid .blg (aka the highdefinition runway bitmap) that generates the Autogen exclusion? and use the FSX default one? At least I could enjoy your superb buildings and other animations?
Maybe worth a try. What file should I delete in this case if this is an option?

Etienne

virtuali

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2008, 01:13:27 pm »
Was wondering, would it be possible for me to delete the grid .blg (aka the highdefinition runway bitmap) that generates the Autogen exclusion? and use the FSX default one? At least I could enjoy your superb buildings and other animations?

No, because the default AFCAD will not match our (correct) building positions,  parking positions and basically everything. You will also lose all the ground markings. I'm sorry, but completely destroying the whole airport just to get some trees more, doesn't make much sense...

etien

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2008, 06:17:28 pm »
Thanks again for your prompt answer. I understand that you may feel 'betrayed' as you have done an amazing work on the runway bitmap, still we are not talking about 'some trees' but hundreds of buildings, factories and trees removed in CHPro FSX. Sadly Zurich airport is part of a densely populated industrial zone (I know, I work there from time to time) and close to the city.

I think it is still worth a try. Your buildings and other ground details are very well done and I would love to include them in my Swiss surroundings, moreover I dont really care if the buildings / gates dont match exactly the ground lines as I flight only GA. Zurich runway is not flashing too much in FSX DX10 as well so it is not too bad.

I CRACKED IT
getting rid of LSZH_SFERB.blg _FA.blg and _HW.blg solves 95% of the problem ! And it doesnt even affect the runway.

I am buying now :)
« Last Edit: November 03, 2008, 09:49:05 pm by etien »

Eisbahn

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #7 on: November 07, 2008, 08:53:54 pm »
Hi
I seem to have a different problem with Zürich and CHPROX.
The complete airport is surrounded by dirty brown buildings.
See the screen capture. Is the only solution to remove CHPROX?
Terry

[attachment deleted by admin]

virtuali

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #8 on: November 07, 2008, 09:16:25 pm »
I seem to have a different problem with Zürich and CHPROX. The complete airport is surrounded by dirty brown buildings.

I'm not sure your problem is caused by CH Pro. It look more like a problem with the default autogen textures. Have you replace the original FSX with something else ?

Eisbahn

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #9 on: November 07, 2008, 10:17:07 pm »
I seem to have a different problem with Zürich and CHPROX. The complete airport is surrounded by dirty brown buildings.

I'm not sure your problem is caused by CH Pro. It look more like a problem with the default autogen textures. Have you replace the original FSX with something else ?

Thankyou for the quick reply. I replaced the tree textures a while back and forgot. I have now installed the original textures and everything is fine.

tyrex

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Re: Autogen with CHPro FSX
« Reply #10 on: May 31, 2010, 09:16:03 am »
Thanks again for your prompt answer. I understand that you may feel 'betrayed' as you have done an amazing work on the runway bitmap, still we are not talking about 'some trees' but hundreds of buildings, factories and trees removed in CHPro FSX. Sadly Zurich airport is part of a densely populated industrial zone (I know, I work there from time to time) and close to the city.

I think it is still worth a try. Your buildings and other ground details are very well done and I would love to include them in my Swiss surroundings, moreover I dont really care if the buildings / gates dont match exactly the ground lines as I flight only GA. Zurich runway is not flashing too much in FSX DX10 as well so it is not too bad.

I CRACKED IT
getting rid of LSZH_SFERB.blg _FA.blg and _HW.blg solves 95% of the problem ! And it doesnt even affect the runway.

I am buying now :)


Is this crack still state of the art, because I am also having the same problem with missing autogen around LSZH?

Ty