Godzone update?

[cowpatz]

Rob could I pull you away from your gardening and scenery design for a few minutes and request an update on your various projects? They are always so interesting.

[Dash8captain]

Id be interested too Rob also are the real nz subscriptions compatible with v4?

[toprob]

Luckily I've spent so much time at my desk lately that I could only manage 30 minutes gardening yesterday, unless I get out and get some exercise soon I'll be desk-bound for life....

First, the subscription update -- the P3Dv4 installers are still delayed, and may be so for a few more months. I think I'm mentioned before that the hold-up is simply due to the bandwidth cost -- if 10% of subscribers updated per month, I'd be spending more on bandwidth than I earn from sales at the moment, and I just don't have any spare funds tucked away. This is annoying for me, and no doubt annoying for a few subscribers, but it is the current reality. Once I have a saleable product again, this won't be a problem. Speaking of the new saleable product...

There's only one project at the moment, that's NZCH. Things are moving forward sincethe last update, but it's still a bit messy to show more screenshots. Well, ok, here's a few:

The autogen is partly data-driven, but the rest needs to be hand-placed. I try and plant 5000 trees per day, and I'm getting there slowly. Note that this shows FTX Tree textures, as well as some of my own. I've been living with TerraFlora trees for a while now, but in the end I found that the colours didn't suit NZ. I've reverted to FTX trees, and I'm very pleased with the result.



Since the last update I've made a change to the resolution of the aerial imagery for Christchurch -- originally the plan was to do a high-res airport (7cm) and 1 metre for everything else. Although 1 metre is ok for large chunks of Canterbury, it became apparent that the city itself needed a lot more detail. I've therefore redone the city area at 30 cm. This works well with the 5 metre mesh, for example here we have the aptly named 'Landfill Ave', which didn't really make much visual sense combining the high res mesh with a mushy low res imagery, and I really wanted to do the post-quake city justice. Of course this new image does increase the size of the final scenery, so I may have to address that at some stage. I have yet to redo the water mask for the city, hence the lack of 'real' water here.


Last month was devoted to the terminal, but it isn't finished yet. This month I hope to make progress in the ground polys at the airport, this is a fun but time-consuming job.



I've approached NZCH a little differently, normally I aim for cross-version compatibility, using the lowest common denominator. This time, though, I'm developing for P3Dv4, and I'll adjust for the other sims later on. The only compromise is that I'm working on the X-plane version now, making some adjustments for X-plane's foibles.

ToDo list:
Lots and lots. I do have a release date in mind, but can't imagine how I'll get there from here... Still to do are the SODE jetways, about 100 stand-alone buildings at the airport, the CBD, night textures, runways etc. I have yet to finish West Melton airfield, as I've never been happy with the starkness of the photos I took, at high summer the sun can be a real nuisance. Also haven't even begun on Rangiora Airfield, not even too sure that it will be much more than a basic tweak on first release. I was hoping to get another couple of trips in to fill in the gaps in the photo coverage, but the money I'd put aside for this is now earmarked for the taxman

[Splitpin]

[cowpatz]

Looking good Rob. 5000 trees a day is more than Labour pledged to plant isn't it?
Flight sim can be a real time waster. I spent ages working on NZQN RNP Y 23 approach coding for the IFly 737 only to learn that Navigraph had already done it!!! (although they have missed a waypoint).
Keep plugging away Rob. Oh by the way were you gardening on Saturday? It was International naked gardening day....yep its true. The NZ president of Naked gardening NZ (yes there is one) was interviewed on National radio.

[officercrockey]

Id be interested too Rob also are the real nz subscriptions compatible with v4?

Hey Cowpatz,

I am using all subscription sceneries without any problem in v4, so rob really don't has to rush and can concentrate on NZCH ))

First, the subscription update -- the P3Dv4 installers are still delayed, and may be so for a few more months. I think I'm mentioned before that the hold-up is simply due to the bandwidth cost -- if 10% of subscribers updated per month, I'd be spending more on bandwidth than I earn from sales at the moment, and I just don't have any spare funds tucked away. This is annoying for me, and no doubt annoying for a few subscribers, but it is the current reality. Once I have a saleable product again, this won't be a problem. Speaking of the new saleable product...

Hey Rob, every thought about a little charge for redownloading / upgrade fee for P3Dv4. I don't know how much you are paying per download but if it is within reason, people will understand. The approach from JustSim was good I guess. They said: The upgrade fee is 5€ (as simmarket wants some money for the installers) but you can use the v3 version in v4 just fine.

[toprob]

Yes, for those who installed the scenery before upgrading the P3Dv4, it was just a matter of leaving it installed and activating in v4, albeit with a couple of tweaks for the files outside the normal scenery folder. I did offer a simple way to do this to those who were interested, just supplying them with a add-on.xml file. And of course a migration tool would work too.

I'm not keen to have a fee, since some people paid a lot for their subscription, and have not yet had 'full' value. Plus one of the things I like about the sub is the simple way access is implemented -- it's an addon which limits access of certain pages, and controls the downloads, even with built-in Amazon Web Services support -- charging an update fee would work against the simplicity:)

[jpreou]

I have yet to finish West Melton airfield, as I've never been happy with the starkness of the photos I took, at high summer the sun can be a real nuisance.

I'd be happy to pop out to West Melton and grab some pics if you like. May not be able to get airside though, and certainly not airborne, but if you need / want something specific I can probably help out.

[toprob]

Thanks for the offer, Jeff, but I've gone ahead with what I have. Getting to the stage now when things need to be finalised, so West Melton will be the 'curate's egg' of airports:)