NL2000

[HardCorePawn]

as mentioned in this post, I am busy downloading version 3 of NL 2000.

PM me if interested.

[peebee]

Just saw the previeuw of the latest NL2000 version, looks awsome
I have the earlier version, which I found a little hard on the framerates, I just wonder if this one is better and how it would run on FS9

[HardCorePawn]

QUOTE(peebee @ Jul 27 2007, 01:19 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Just saw the previeuw of the latest NL2000 version, looks awsome
I have the earlier version, which I found a little hard on the framerates, I just wonder if this one is better and how it would run on FS9

Well I had been planning on running it last night... but was testing some aircraft performance for the big ARNZ FNF NZAA to NZWN race while I was installing it all... so the install took the better part of an hour or so!

By then I was too tired to actually try it out, but the feature panel that it installs is very cool... allows you to turn on/off lots of things (AI - commercial + GA doing TnG's or little AtoB flights, disable 2004 default, Big Giant town names so you know what is where, real-world Navaids + disable 2004 defaults, runway textures etc etc.)

For the rotorbunnies, there are at least 40 helipads spread over the entire country at airports, hospitals, a couple of ships and about 3 or 4 oil rigs...

I hope to get a good run at it either tonight, or over the weekend and put up some screenies

[Jimmy]

I too have heard about the fps problems of this.. but man I can't wait!

Just gota get some photoreal for southern England, mmm London to Amsterdam trips in the 763, as it is done in real life.

James

[ardypilot]

Just gota get some photoreal for southern England, mmm London to Amsterdam trips in the 763

Get JustFlight's VFR photoreal. It has no autogen and is awesome on FPS, although looks a little unrealistic from certain altitudes.

I think the London- Ampsterdam routes are done in Fokker Friendships with VLM by the way.

[HardCorePawn]

For those who asked (Charl, Ran, Jimmy & Mike), I have burned the discs today and chucked them in the post... I would assume they would arrive either Monday or Tuesday next week (depending on your proximity to the Auckland Central Mail Centre ), as I am fairly sure that even NZ Post will be able to get them to ChCh over the weekend!

If they have not arrived by thursday then give me a shout!

The offer still stands... $5 to cover the blanks, postage and packaging...

[Charl]

QUOTE(HardCorePawn @ Jul 27 2007, 04:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

For those who asked (Charl, Ran, Jimmy & Mike), I have burned the discs today and chucked them in the post... I would assume they would arrive either Monday or Tuesday next week

You da man HCP...
Some trepidation/anticipation here, it is kind of large isn't it?
So much to go wrong, maybe?
These guys certainly have pushed the envelope, again.
Can't wait.

[HardCorePawn]

Quick first impressions (from mucking about for 15-20 minutes)

1. It is BIG! It swallowed up 28gigs of HDD...

2. FPS could be problematic, granted I have just done a standard install, have not 'configured' or 'tweaked' it in any way (and I did see some suggestions on their website for mitigating it, but while flying in the vicinity of Schiphol (Amsterdam, EHAM), if I look directly at the airport it drops to around 12-15fps... turn my head 90-180 degrees and look the other way at its locked at 23fps... having said that, the airport is about the size of RealNZ Auckland City!! (might be a slight exaggeration, but you'll see what I mean when I put some screenies up)... and most of the other area's seem to be OK... and I do have all Graphics settings totally maxed out... (C2D E6400 CPU, 4Gig DDR2-800 RAM, 7600GT GPU)

3. Its kind of 'odd'... some lovely photoreal scenary (screenies to follow soonish), but quite a lack of buildings (and no autogen)... so everything is flat and then all of a sudden you have a big giant building... things actually look a lot better from altitude (ie. 3000'+) as you dont notice the buildings 'popping up' as much and they blend into the photo textures better. I think part of the problem may be that I have shadows on... so the 3D buildings cast shadows over the photoreal which make them stand out.

At this point in time, I would have to say that my first impressions are generally positive... the area looks fantastic (however I've never been so can't say for sure that its accurate or not)... and the photoreal looks sweet...

[toprob]

I'd definitely be interested in your opinion of this, although I might never find the time to test it myself. However NL2000 was one of the main reasons why I got into scenery design -- here's a quote from my old website, back in 2001.

Take a look at the screenshots here. The first picture shows a virtual me having just buzzed the airfield at Seppe in The Netherlands. It's a lovely autumn day, the sun is shining and if it wasn't for the noise of the engine you could hear the insects buzzing and birds chirping in the hedge below...
As an aside, why am I flying all over The Netherlands?
One reason is that it is quite flat, so you know that if you are on the ground when you hit zero feet! (Actually, parts of the Netherlands are below sea level, so you still need to take care!) But that's not the main reason.

If you loaded up your Flight Simulator and and flew from Voensdrecht to Seppe, which is what I've done here, you wouldn't see what I see, and herein lies the strength, or weakness, of this simulator.

The scenery I see is from The Netherlands 2000, an addon scenery package covering the entire Netherlands. Basically, apart from a few select cities -- most in the USA -- the default landscape is somewhat generic, but more accurate, detailed and realistic scenery can be added either by buying addon packs, or by downloading free files from the Web.

The Netherlands 2000 is a particularly effective addon, and is available free. It is a large download, about 50 megabytes, so be prepared for a lengthy download time if you use a dial-up connection.

This is from FS2000. I mentioned the huge download size -- 50MB. I guess that the NL2000 have never been afraid to ask us to use some serious bandwidth...
The screenshot is dated 29 Oct 2001. Note the frame-rate -- 7.8fps. This thing has always been a hog.
This scenery was the first to cover a whole country, and I guess even back then I wanted something similar for New Zealand. However I did refer to the ability to design addons for FS as a weakness... I think even then I was afraid that I'd get so obsessed with this that I wouldn't have time for a proper life

[Charl]

There are obsessions, and then there are magnificent obsessions...
The confidence these guys show is part of the ethos.
And BTW, NZ has some signs of serious commitment to the hobby, too.
Your sceneries have acted as a catalyst for a huge number of movies, screenshots, spinoffs...

[Charl]

OK it's installed, many thanks to HCP for generously downloading and acting as a virtual bit torrent distributor.
So why bother to discuss this in a NZ context?
Apart from the fact that this is a positively monumental work in the flightsim world - it's an entire country for goodness' sake - there is the small co-incidence that our country's name was attached by a passing Dutch explorer.
So we'll start at Midden Zeeland:



There are no mesh issues, as there is essentially no elevation anywhere in sight.
The photoreal is seamless, and loads beautifully at the speeds this Fokker is capable of.
Framerates are generally OK, but take a 10fps hit at Schiphol airport.



Around airports there's a nice blend of 3d artifact and photoreal



Plenty of windmills



Google Earth has this airbase pixellated, but fly NL2000 v3 for the true story:



Airports not as detailed as, say, Real NZ, but good standard over the country.



I'm still flying around the place finding things, but first impression is the jaw-dropping scale of the endeavour.
The manual speaks of thousands of man-hours, and it shows.

[ardypilot]

There are no mesh issues, as there is essentially no elevation anywhere in sight.

Thats the reason I don't particually like my Getmapping UK VFR photoreal. It literally looks like you are zooming over the top of a photograph- not nearly as realistic as the original Godzone magazine stuff

[Ian Warren]

Look at this way HCP and congrads on effort to d/load ! WOW huge , .. your D/loading / Via Charls screen shots seem to have a lot of NZ already there ..... Zeeland Airport , ..mm ... Charl jumps in with an aircraft , had he painted it VH-USU , to close The First International flight to New Zeeland on 11th September 1928 landing at Wigram , Charl ? es Kingsford Smith with kiwis H.A.Litchfield NAV and T.H.McWilliams Radio ... .. for interest sake ...14hrs 25 mins flyin time

[Charl]

QUOTE(Ian Warren @ Aug 1 2007, 11:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...The First International flight to New Zeeland on 11th September 1928 landing at Wigram , Charl ? es Kingsford Smith with kiwis H.A.Litchfield NAV and T.H.McWilliams Radio ... .. for interest sake ...14hrs 25 mins flyin time

Wonder if there's a colour picture of that aircraft somewhere?
Fokker's range was maybe 700 miles
14 hours at 100 kts - inside must've been full of 44 gal drums and the Kiwis would've pumped gas all the way.

I digress:
Having done the low 'n slow, time to get up 'n high to see what the photoreal does.
So a trip from Dusseldorf to Glasgow, takes us nicely across the Netherlands.
Here's Germany as rendered by GE PRO: (If it looks dark and murky, that's your monitor - time to upgrade)



and looking the other way, onto NL2000 photoreal



At this altitude and speed, things start lagging badly within a short time:



although curiously EHAM loads pinsharp



The verdict?
For this scenery, fly Fokker low 'n slow.
Anything else, you will feel as if you are scooting over a washed-out flat sheet.

[Ian Warren]

QUOTE(Charl @ Aug 7 2007, 02:43 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

QUOTE(Ian Warren @ Aug 1 2007, 11:10 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

...The First International flight to New Zeeland on 11th September 1928 landing at Wigram , Charl ? es Kingsford Smith with kiwis H.A.Litchfield NAV and T.H.McWilliams Radio ... .. for interest sake ...14hrs 25 mins flyin time

Wonder if there's a colour picture of that aircraft somewhere?
Fokker's range was maybe 700 miles
14 hours at 100 kts - inside must've been full of 44 gal drums and the Kiwis would've pumped gas all the way.

I digress:
Having done the low 'n slow, time to get up 'n high to see what the photoreal does.
So a trip from Dusseldorf to Glasgow, takes us nicely across the Netherlands.
Here's Germany as rendered by GE PRO: (If it looks dark and murky, that's your monitor - time to upgrade)
(images)
The verdict?
For this scenery, fly Fokker low 'n slow.
Anything else, you will feel as if you are scooting over a washed-out flat sheet.

I have colour photos of the replica they built for the Bi-cen 1988 Aussie airshow , and many b/w pic s from history books... Ill dig all up sat send if required

[G-HEVN]

QUOTE(Trolly @ Aug 1 2007, 12:00 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

There are no mesh issues, as there is essentially no elevation anywhere in sight.

Thats the reason I don't particually like my Getmapping UK VFR photoreal. It literally looks like you are zooming over the top of a photograph- not nearly as realistic as the original Godzone magazine stuff

Coming from New Zealand, you're not exactly short of bumpy scenery. In comparison, almost everywhere else IS flat!


England, being not-flat. Yes I know it's a cr*p approach: the next one was better, when I wasn't busy taking pictures!

Of course, if you want to fly over the top at 36000ft in a tube, it's probably not worth bothering, since all you're going to see with any photo scenery is mush.

[Jimmy]

Okay got mine yesterday. Got it installing about 1430, it finsished at 1700. No problem thow, good opertunity to give the desk a tidy.

My installer got to 100percent then as it said somehting about the scenery.cfg down on the bar where it says what its doing it had come up with an error about there being no CDROM volume in the drive.. After some fidleing I coudlnt' get it going, eventuyl it become unresponsive and I had to use taskamanger to end the proceses... So it didn't finsih the instalation. The control panel thing works. But the scenery wasn't added to the scenery libuary, I had to add it manualy and I don't know what order it was ment to be in. I barely know what ones I was ment to add.


Okay so the instalation turned out to be a mess, I adjust the control panel thing to my likeing and load up at EHAM. I was surprised to see nothing but a airport that gave 4fps and a land scape with the odd building poking up. Total mess looking.

I leave my autogen maxed and turn scenery complixity right down, better perforamce.

So load up at Gatwick, good flight across the channel, getting near photoreal now. Head out of the approach plates, fly downwind visualy, photoreal major blur from my 763. But as in Charls screenshots the airport was perfect (scenery complexity minimal so prety much no buildings). I puase the sim and after about a minute its perfectly loaded photoreal, a few seconds of flying and its blured agian, even on finals at like 150knts...

I love the photoreal, just gota sort out the bluries, get some more RAM and new PSU and I shoudl be able to turn the scenery complexity up, Gatwick-Schipol everyday. Great route in the 763. And yeah KLM used to fly the 763 on that route, I read am article about a flight in the computer pilot magazine.

James


[EDIT]

Sorry about the double post, don't know what happened there. Mod can feal free to delete my other post, just not this one please.

[HardCorePawn]

Sorry to hear about the installation issue... I certainly never had any issues...

the only thing I can suggest is trying it again (2 1/2 hrs yikes!) and see if it does it again... if it does, then it might just be a bad burn/disc... in that case, I will just burn you up another copy of the bad disc and send it through...

[Jimmy]

Yeah I might do that ae. I doubt its anything wrong with the disc... I think its just the end of the instalation that has gone wrong, woudn't be worth sending anothor disc any way mate, its all there.

Will try reinstalling it next time I come across three free hours. Maby need an hours just to delete it off the harddrive first. Maby theres a way to get it to start installing at disc 5 mm play around with the installer maby ae. Might be an idea to email the NL2000 people.

Will be Schipol to Gatwick this evening, if I have time will even fly back again.

Jams

[ardypilot]

a few seconds of flying and its blured agian, even on finals at like 150knts...

Its a well known fact that blurries start occuring once you are flying faster than around 120kias- check the book inside any of your REAL NZ CD cases for more info.

[EDIT]Sorry about the double post, don't know what happened there. Mod can feal free to delete my other post, just not this one please.

Have done