scenery design

[JFKpilot]

Fsdreamteam,

Thanks for your contributions to the flightsim scene.  Your jfk especially is excellent in execution. The resampled ground with fs9 bglcomp detail layer is very clever and great for performance.  One question -- why wasn’t the fsx bglcomp used? Nevertheless it’s the best looking (almost) 100% fsx-native scenery around.  It’s ironic using the fsx sdk for ground doesn’t allow rain effects (well not without afcad elements anyway), while through transparency you can in the fs2002 ground.  Would putting a native-fsx, transparent object on top of resampled ground allow rain-fx? Just a thought.
Judging by your early Las Vegas preview shots it appears you’ve abandoned this technique for the fs2002-style ground, as with Geneva -- why is this? Also, could bglcomp be used for ground for an entire airport, not just detail?
I hope these questions aren’t too bothersome or consume too much time – you guys need the well-deserved break.  Answer only if you feel like it…

Regards
Ron   

[virtuali]

The resampled ground with fs9 bglcomp detail layer is very clever and great for performance.  One question -- why wasn’t the fsx bglcomp used?

The ground detail layer is not made with bglcomp, not even the FS9 version. Is made with BGLC so, strictly speaking, it's using FS2002 commands, which are *still* supported in FSX, as part of the generic backward compatibility engine. That's the only part in JFK were we don't use the FSX SDK.

Judging by your early Las Vegas preview shots it appears you’ve abandoned this technique for the fs2002-style ground, as with Geneva -- why is this?

Geneva use an even different method, which DOES allow for rain effects, and it's an hybrid AFCAD+FS2K ground+detail.

The reason for this are:

- We can control sharpness better than having to rely to users knowing how to configure their settings, like in case of the native photoreal FSX ground. So, even if the user has wrong settings, the scenery would appear reasonably sharp, so we don't get complains of the scenery being blurred by user that can't set their settings.

- Geneva is smaller that JFK in area. Applying the Geneva method to JFK would have too much of an impact on fps. First, second and 3rd priorities for JFK were fps, fps and fps...

We'll see how KLAS will come out...

[JFKpilot]

Thanks for clearing the BGLC part up. 
The wrong texture resolution setting is the main problem for blurry ground in jfk (only fsx version) as well as the dreaded blurries for some people, not the actual scenery. I set mine at 15 cm so it looks great.
Geneva is nice and sharp with any setting, what most people are accustomed to (besides your own kord, I don’t think anyone has used resample on all surfaces, just grass or LC), and it shows the benefit of smaller airports – time to do KSNA for fsx, anyone? 
Yes, it'll be interesting to see the performance at KLAS as well as KDFW using fs2002 sdk. 
Thanks for your thorough and comprehensive replies.   Keep up the great work, be it scenery, aircraft, or innovation!