FlightSim Development Group

Hi there,

Just bought the aforementioned and while I think there is a lot great about the scenery, there are a few things I'm concerned about.

First, the landclass. The default landclass is rather inaccurate so I was please to see that a developer took the time to adjust the surrounding landclass presumably to 1) make the entire area a more accurate representation of the real world and 2) to better blend with the airport scenery. Full disclosure: I currently use FTX Global and Vector but no sort of landclass (ORBX's landclass product for this region is likely years away). I noted this in the SimMarket description (although I bought directly from FSDG): "Landclass, coastlines and roads adjustments for smooth transition to default scenery."

The included landclass files have done this to the area:
Removing the landclass files largely fix the problems but I still raise this in case there's either another issue at play here or if you wish to use customer feedback to adjust future versions or updates.

The next shot is from the opposite side of the airport--and facing the opposite direction--but you'll see how much more proper the region looks (at least based on a Google Maps search). The developed area closest to the aircraft is perhaps a bit off but I can tell that that's default landclass and textures and there is no landclass designation (or texture, for that matter) for, essentially, "desert city." Again, though, this is with the files named "LC_5721.bgl" and "LC_5722.bgl" removed.
Second, there is some particularly bad shimmering emanating from the balcony railings of a lot of the residential buildings and apartments (specifically, the ones underlying the northeastern approach). As most folks are aware, as P3D moves forward, it seems like shimmering becomes more and more of an issue. Especially considering the lack of a proper nVidia driver profile. However, is there a way to add mipmaps to the building/railing textures? I don't think I stretch reality here when I say it's some of the worst shimmering I've seen (but, in fairness, I'm sure it's inherent to the nature of texturing and modeling buildings with small, thin railings and such). Obviously, forceful anti-aliasing will solve the issue (i.e. SGSS 8x) but the moment any clouds become present, the video card will bottleneck the sim quite significantly (I have a pretty powerful system, by the way).

Lastly, I'm seeing what appear to be custom PAPI lighting on top of what looks like ADE default runway/PAPI lighting. I've of course checked for duplicate AFCADS and I don't currently have MyTraffic running (I'm intrigued and waiting for v6 to be released) so I can rule those issues out.
Thanks for any help or input you can provide. Again, it's a great scenery in whole and a wonderful destination in real-life and in a largely neglected sim region.

Garrett

garrettprs wrote:Hi there,


Lastly, I'm seeing what appear to be custom PAPI lighting on top of what looks like ADE default runway/PAPI lighting. I've of course checked for duplicate AFCADS and I don't currently have MyTraffic running (I'm intrigued and waiting for v6 to be released) so I can rule those issues out.

The attachment 2015-2-23_22-58-18-621.jpg is no longer available

Thanks for any help or input you can provide. Again, it's a great scenery in whole and a wonderful destination in real-life and in a largely neglected sim region.

Garrett

Thanks Garrett.

I assume its P3Dv2?
First, PAPI issue. Extract the zip, and drop the included airport AFD file into: FSDG\FSDG-Sharm El-Sheikh\scenery
Replace when asked, and let me know if this worked.

Checking on the rest now.

Hi Emilios. Yes, P3Dv2.5.

That file fixes the PAPI issue - thank you!

As for the Landclass issue, you are correct that the green area has something to do with the custom LC we included in the product. We used default Landclass definitions for those areas, so if you use default LC texture sets, everything should look perfect.
Unfortunately, some addons that exchange default Landclass texture sets changed brown textures to green ones, which obviously changes the appearence of those areas that are covered with those textures. I'm not really sure why they do it, there are probably some areas in the world where those textures add more realism, but it can lead to issues with all addon sceneries that make use of default LC textures and definitions.

If you want to enquire more deeply into this or try to fix this (it's rather difficult for us to do so since there are a few LC texture sets out there, each one changing different LC definitions and textures), I'll include information on what LC definitions we used for the area:

Dry Grass and Dirt Skirting - Textures 142b
Medium City Urban Non Grid Dry - Textures 036b
Medium City Suburban Non Grid Dry - Textures 048b
Desert Rock - Textures 040b

You can always copy the backup'd original P3D textures into the Sharm El-Sheikh texture subfolder to see them around the airport instead of those from the addon texture set. The textures that cover those ugly green areas are 142b (5 textures, only summer variations need to be replaced).

Hi Thorsten,

That's an interesting idea: I didn't realize you could save original textures and throw them in a scenery's texture folder to recreate what the developer had originally envisioned (which, presumably, was the end-user using the default textures and not a texture replacement package).

I did do some testing with which files were needed and found that you need both the summer and spring sets of all four texture file prefixes that you noted; if you don't pull in the spring files, the sim will pull FTX Global files for winter and one other season (I can't remember whether it was spring or fall).

This is how things look now, which I presume to be the way that FSDG intended:
It seems optional whether or not to bring in the night ("lm" suffix) files for the city/urban texture sets. If you bring them in, you'll have both the default night city textures (with that orange-like glow on the ground that simulates) and FTX Global vectored night lighting (if you so selected that option in FTX Central). Such as:
It doesn't look bad at all but I opted just to use the FTX night textures (with vectored night lighting):
Thanks guys for your help and I hope this thread helps other folks using FTX Global.

I guess the only other items is the mipmapping which I don't know much about but I have seen options in Paint.net to compile a texture file with mipmaps. Is it really that simple?

garrettprs wrote: I guess the only other items is the mipmapping which I don't know much about but I have seen options in Paint.net to compile a texture file with mipmaps. Is it really that simple?

I ve had a quick look looking for shimmering textures, not sure where to look though. Where is the area you get most troubles with that?
(all textures should already have mips)

Hi Emilios,

The biggest and most consistent problem areas are the several clusters of gray apartment buildings. The shimmering, upon closer inspection, is coming from the metal railings on the balconies:

There are also some areas on the airport grounds but they're not nearly as bad. One area, though, that is easy to spot contains, lo and behold, railings on some baggage carts:
I know that a video would best illustrate this--as opposed to still frames--but even in the second shot, you can see some of the white sparkles.

One suggestion, perhaps a last resort, would be to simply remove the railings from the buildings. I'm sure as a developer, that'd go against your desire to model an area and object as accurately as possible but in a practical sense, approaching the airport from the southwest during daylight hours is inhibited by the shimmering. And, of course, you can't see something like balcony railings at altitude, even approach altitude. Just a suggestion though.

Thanks again.

Thanks for the screenshots, as I had suspected, we're not talking about transparent textures (that can cause mipmap issues) but actually modeled 3D objects. P3D seems to have difficulties (in combination with some gfx card drivers) to render small details without those unwanted effects. You should be able to reduce this effect by changing your gfx driver settings, though.

Hi guys,

just to chime in on the issue...I suppose it is the same problem as discussed here. There is massive shimmering going on in LGIR which looks quite awkward, especially from the distance and especially with the power lines:

Any idea what could be changed in the graphics driver (GeForce GFX970) to reduce this effect?

All the best, Benny

Hi Benny,

Looks like the same issue from what I can tell.

SGSS 8x will definitely fix the issue but it'll paralyze even the most powerful system considering that nVidia hasn't made a driver profile for either FSX or P3D that 1) allows efficient and proper antialiasing or, if you prefer brute force instead, 2) SLI.

However, I have noticed that there must be some scenery/graphic design techniques that mitigate shimmering because some sceneries are totally without it. And, again, I wonder if a crude or temporary solution is to merely remove objects--balcony railings in this case--that cause the issue.

CPU and GFX power these days allow us to really go into detail when modeling things. That means modeling 3D power lines, railings, cables on light poles and things like that. Only few developers go into that kind of detail, so you won't have that issue with their sceneries. Changing our policy on quality development wouldn't be the right way to solve a temporary issue like this. As annoying as it probably is, I'm sure it will be possible to solve it through driver or FSX settings. I'm not familar with nVidia cards, but for ATI there are those nice Omega drivers that sometimes can help fixing issues like the one you're experiencing, maybe there are drivers for your cards as well that offer more individual settings.