NZFF

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:23 pm**

I have ORBX's NZSI, which is great for close-up scenery. The land looks green and lush, and towns are detailed and proportioned nicely. It might be a too Shire-like to be considered realistic, but it's great fun for flying and looking at details close to the ground. It's a undeniable huge step up from the FSX default.

I recently installed some Godzone scenery (Southern Lakes and the freeware near Te Anau), layered on top of the ORBX scenery. The Godzone ground textures look old (pre-FSX) and blurry, but distant textures like mountains look more realistically shaded than the ORBX textures.

I took some screen grabs which show the differences.

What I would love to do is find a way to get the ORBX scenery for the stuff it does better (close-up ground textures), and Godzone for the stuff it does better (distant textures). Is there a way to do that?

Wanaka - Godzone - bland fields, but nice mountains

Wanaka - ORBX - nice fields, but mountains kinda bland

Wanaka - Godzone - great mountains, but town looks awful

Wanaka - ORBX - town looks better, greener

Tekapo - Godzone - bad textures, nice mountains, tiny church (on left) and 2 cars

Tekapo - ORBX - lusher town, church is huge

Tekapo - FSX Default - yuck!

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:30 pm**

Hi ya tripecac and welcome to NZFF

, well least your first post .. Exactly it ! , Use photo real where ever you can and have Orbx fill the gaps , you will find this with all areas , course be using NZSI as the base for further scenery's .

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 3:37 pm**

tripecac wrote:
QUOTE (tripecac @ Mar 25 2012,4:23 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I have ORBX's NZSI, which is great for close-up scenery. The land looks green and lush, and towns are detailed and proportioned nicely. It might be a too Shire-like to be considered realistic, but it's great fun for flying and looking at details close to the ground. It's a undeniable huge step up from the FSX default.

I recently installed some Godzone scenery (Southern Lakes and the freeware near Te Anau), layered on top of the ORBX scenery. The Godzone ground textures look old (pre-FSX) and blurry, but distant textures like mountains look more realistically shaded than the ORBX textures.

I took some screen grabs which show the differences.

What I would love to do is find a way to get the ORBX scenery for the stuff it does better (close-up ground textures), and Godzone for the stuff it does better (distant textures). Is there a way to do that?

Wanaka - Godzone - bland fields, but nice mountains (I agree)

Wanaka - ORBX - nice fields, but mountains kinda bland (I agree)

Wanaka - Godzone - great mountains, but town looks awful (the town is that colour in summer but the image is a bit low res)

Wanaka - ORBX - town looks better, greener (the town isnt green)

Tekapo - Godzone - bad textures, nice mountains, tiny church (on left) and 2 cars (thats the size of it)

Tekapo - ORBX - lusher town, church is huge (its nowhere near that big)

Tekapo - FSX Default - yuck! (yep )

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:01 pm**

The lower resolution is a bit of a problem with the 'legacy' sceneries such as Southern Lakes -- it is lower resolution than default (and Orbx) textures. It will always be dependent on the quality of the source photo, which is quite rough in parts. This was an issue when I first released this scenery and even more noticeable when I did the recent autogen update, as our expectations have risen a lot in the last six years.

So it really comes down to your needs for a particular flight -- whether you want photo accuracy, or the sharper normal texture set. (Again, whether default or Orbx.) I'm aware that there is no one complete solution.

The photo scenery will always cover up the landclass textures, there's no way around that. Real NZ Wanaka (with the update) does include a switcher which lets you turn the photo on and off, which is useful to turn the summer photo off in other seasons. One day I'd love to have access to high resolution photos of the Alps, covering all seasons, but I don't hold out much hope.

By the way, although it is nice to have the sharp, lush Orbx textures, it is never 'lush' around Wanaka and Tekapo, it ranges from dry in the winter to very dry in the summer.

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 5:14 pm**

toprob wrote:
QUOTE (toprob @ Mar 25 2012,6:01 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
By the way, although it is nice to have the sharp, lush Orbx textures, it is never 'lush' around Wanaka and Tekapo, it ranges from dry in the winter to very dry in the summer.

You'd have thought the Aussies would know about all that (brown stuff)!

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:01 pm**

Adamski wrote:
QUOTE (Adamski @ Mar 25 2012,6:14 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
You'd have thought the Aussies would know about all that (brown stuff)!

It's important to remember that Orbx's main goal is great-looking scenery, rather that accuracy. But I just remembered these screenshots, which I took some time ago, and actually offer a third choice:

The Real NZ summer photo, shown here in winter:
(One edge of the photo scenery is visible upper left where you can see snow.)

FTX NZSI Wanaka in winter:

Vector Land Class Wanaka in winter:

VLC is a much better representation of the 'look' of Wanaka during winter, with more realistic colour and tone. Quite obvious too is the fact that VLC has a much better snow coverage no matter where you are in the South Island.

Which is 'better' depends on too many variables.

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 6:19 pm**

Wanaka's feeling kinda lush the past couple weeks due to the recent rain. It actually looks a lot greener than I've ever seen it before!

Thanks for those pix. There's no question that Godzone looks better then NZSI at a distance. The problem is when you get low to the ground, it just isn't as appetizing. I fly a lot with my 3 year old, and we like to look at ground scenery, so the more sharp and dense the ground scenery, the more fun the flying, even if it isn't realistic.

I was hoping that Microsoft Flight would give us the "best of both worlds", somehow mixing photo-real (ideally satellite data) with intelligent autogen and textures, but, well, we all know what happened there. Flight is just a smoother, slightly more detailed version of FSX limited to a very dead version of Hawaii. Even if they do NZ in a year or two (and I doubt they will), it will probably be a very dead version of NZ, and that's no fun.

What would be awesome is a hi-res version of Godzone. But that of course is a lot of work!

BTW, lots of snow on the mountains here today!

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 9:21 pm**

Three samples .. I have my choice and i guess you no my answer

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 10:48 pm**

Ian Warren wrote:
QUOTE (Ian Warren @ Mar 25 2012,10:21 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Three samples .. I have my choice and i guess you no my answer

I expect #3!!!

In many areas, you can't beat VLC ... but for this sample I much prefer Robin's #1 ... but maybe that's because it's photoreal <?> and we haven't got that right across NZ ...

Posted: **Sun Mar 25, 2012 11:34 pm**

Adamski wrote:
QUOTE (Adamski @ Mar 25 2012,11:48 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I expect #3!!!

In may areas, you can't beat VLC ... but for this sample I much prefer Robin's #1 ... but maybe that's because it's photoreal <?> and we haven't got that right across NZ ...

I'm the newest in the line of Super Hero's ... when it comes to photoreal .. its like Spinach , mussels grow .. must fly with my green cape - mask and leap three PC's in a single bound ....

Posted: **Tue Mar 27, 2012 5:34 pm**

I have NZSI & VLC and enjoy them both. However the only season that I use with VLC is winter as to my eyes gives a much better representation of the country than any other time of the year. I would love to use the winter textures for the rest of the season but without the snow. Is this possible?

Posted: **Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:56 pm**

Funny how things come full circle - for all these years people complain about how NZ in FSX is too brown, and then when OrbX release their scenery the complaint is it's not brown enough!

I think the general consensus though is that Vector Landclass gives a more "realistic" depiction but not quite as graphically pleasing, whereas OrbX looks nicer but a bit more "representative".

NZFF

Godzone for distance, ORBX for close up?