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MSFS20 MSFS Brisbane City - Work in Progress Thread

=Hollywood=

=Hollywood=

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us-florida
So I've been fiddling with MCX and the MSFS SDK's and been discovering the quirks, but think I've nutted out most of what has been happening. One model didn't convert well and when it failed the whole scenery library failed. I'll do up a video tutorial once I get settled here in Texas.

This is a project I started for FSX but because the default elevation data was pixel is point rather than corner all of Australia's DEM was 15-30m off which made the city a pain to work with and looked terrible with the default scenery base... Not so with MSFS 2020, for some reason the photogrammetry for Brisbane isn't currently in Bing maps so I decided to port the models over. This took all of 2 days from never having seen the SDK's.
  • Transparency Textures - I need to see if I convert them to PNG first if that will help with transparent textures
  • Missing Textures - I need to manually re-work some models that seem to be missing their textures
  • Materials - I've learned that if you attach a concrete/road material this is how you get vehicles to travel along bridges (according to someone who showed how to do it in blender, I need to see if I can do that in MCX)
  • Missing Models - Some models are missing, I need to go see if I can get them into the sim or what's wrong
  • I need to remove the master exclude and build individual excludes to re-introduce the generic scenery for the missing buildings
All in all it's pretty easy and fast to convert your base FSX scenery to MSFS scenery (minus PBR etc). I'll try and do up a quick tutorial to show what pitfalls to avoid.

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OzWookiee said:
Ohh this is lovely. Makes me miss my home state! Looking forward to your release.
Click to expand...

Same here, I just moved to Dallas from Los Angeles.

I'm now starting to QC what's missing etc. I'm using GE to build my excludes for the buildings as it's much easier and way faster to trace around KMZ models in GE than in the scenery editor. Hopefully I can get it to work :D

I may ditch the custom riverside expressway as the default seems to be modeled better and looks better.
 
Okay, figured out the transparency issues, and am coming to grips with the inbuilt excludes, I couldn't get my externally generated ones to work but it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other. Accomplished today (Day 2):

  • Completed importing 99.5% of buildings
  • Generated first street's worth of excludes (to weave the scenery into the OSM based scenery)
  • Solved transparency issues
  • Fixed Story Bridge, Gabba, Telstra Building, Quay West, Stamford Plaza, 29 George Street, and a few other buildings along George Street
Debating whether or not to remove the old Qld Govt Building, the sim is using old aerial imagery, not sure if I should tear down the building or leave it up for now.

Will work on the other side of George Street tomorrow.

I've learned a lot about the process to port stuff over. My initial problems were because of a bad model convert to gITL which causes no models to show up. There's a few quirks, but now I'm getting used to them it's really easy to convert and place scenery.

Wanting to make a tutorial video but for some reason GEForce Experience won't record video.
 
Looks quite amazing from that perspective in the screenshots, the buildings look SO SO good that it makes it feel like you need a higher res terrain still even yet, but the terrain isn't too bad. Just the buildings are "that cool" good.
 
SceneryFX said:
Looks quite amazing from that perspective in the screenshots, the buildings look SO SO good that it makes it feel like you need a higher res terrain still even yet, but the terrain isn't too bad. Just the buildings are "that cool" good.
Click to expand...

It looks a lot better when the exclude is turned off and the vegetation and OSM based buildings come back into the fray. I'm going block by block and merging the buildings with the MSFS OSM buildings an building excludes for the custom objects. It's quite laborious and my XML for the scenery placement got borked yesterday so it wiped out most of the day.

I'm still needing to get GeForce Experience to record video again, not sure what's happening there, super frustrating as I can't make tutorials on how to port your old dev scenery to MSFS. There's a few pitfalls to watch out for as to why things don't show up etc.

Anyway here's some screen grabs from the other day, debating whether to leave in old buildings such as QUT and the old Executive Building which were there till recently, and the MSFS photoscenery still shows old imagery.

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Today a lot of rebuilds and building excludes:

Rebuilt Brisbane Eye for Transparency
Rebuilt Story Bridge for Transparency
Rebuilt William Jolly Bridge for Transparency
Rebuilt Rail Bridge for Transparency
Rebuilt and Placed Kuripera Bridge
Rebuilt Goodwill Bridge for Transparency
Rebuilt Gabba with Higher Res Model and Transparency
Excludes built for all blocks between Charlotte and Alice Streets

Shot below with the new Gabba Stadium. Really happy with how this scenery is turning out.

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The city is looking so familiar now. Have a few OSM buildings remaining for the new taller ones as I don't have any models for them right now. I want to add some boats anchored along the river front. Unfortunately the MSFS model library only has a small choice of models, so I may have to invest in some or find some royalty free.

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Goodwill Bridge remastered, I removed the old 3D built Riverside expressway as it's not as good as the OSM generated expressway. I've kept the old QUT engineering building in for now just because that's how I remember Brisbane, although that building has been razed now and grass is in it's place. One thing that is funny is the imagery along Southbank is from 2017 when there was some sort of temporary tent structures which they added OSM models for even though it's just pavement, so I excluded those. Can't wait for the new effects system to be implemented in sim as I am looking forward to hopefully re-adding Riverfire to the scenery. Unfortunately I don't have a model for the Queensland Museum and State Library...

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In this shot, the work that has been completed is the right half of the picture, except for one missing building which I will add soon, and then the blocks with the Treasury Casino and the Myer Centre. Tomorrow I should make further headway at completing the city layout (although there's more models I want to add that weren't in my original development build). I have to say going from this back to the default scenery there is a huge difference in the way it feels. Am absolutely loving developing this project. Knowing my luck they'll switch on Photogrammetry next week :laughing:

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=Hollywood= said:
So I've been fiddling with MCX and the MSFS SDK's and been discovering the quirks, but think I've nutted out most of what has been happening. One model didn't convert well and when it failed the whole scenery library failed. I'll do up a video tutorial once I get settled here in Texas.

This is a project I started for FSX but because the default elevation data was pixel is point rather than corner all of Australia's DEM was 15-30m off which made the city a pain to work with and looked terrible with the default scenery base... Not so with MSFS 2020, for some reason the photogrammetry for Brisbane isn't currently in Bing maps so I decided to port the models over. This took all of 2 days from never having seen the SDK's.
  • Transparency Textures - I need to see if I convert them to PNG first if that will help with transparent textures
  • Missing Textures - I need to manually re-work some models that seem to be missing their textures
  • Materials - I've learned that if you attach a concrete/road material this is how you get vehicles to travel along bridges (according to someone who showed how to do it in blender, I need to see if I can do that in MCX)
  • Missing Models - Some models are missing, I need to go see if I can get them into the sim or what's wrong
  • I need to remove the master exclude and build individual excludes to re-introduce the generic scenery for the missing buildings
All in all it's pretty easy and fast to convert your base FSX scenery to MSFS scenery (minus PBR etc). I'll try and do up a quick tutorial to show what pitfalls to avoid.
Click to expand...

I'm trying that built-in PBR Material utility "Principled Baker", I was curious if you ever tried to convert any object by manually recreating the textures in substance painter vs. one of the automated utilities, and what the differences in your results were?

Just curious if you did, I haven't gotten that far into texture conversions yet, but I'm just now experimenting. Was too busy modeling to experiment with the texture conversions just yet.
 
SceneryFX said:
I'm trying that built-in PBR Material utility "Principled Baker", I was curious if you ever tried to convert any object by manually recreating the textures in substance painter vs. one of the automated utilities, and what the differences in your results were?

Just curious if you did, I haven't gotten that far into texture conversions yet, but I'm just now experimenting. Was too busy modeling to experiment with the texture conversions just yet.
Click to expand...

I'm not quite near the point of trying to mess with PBR material, right now just focused on getting the city layout complete and transparencies sorted out, textures optimized for draw calls etc. I am mulling it over in the back of my mind though, what I thought was going to be a simple conversion is turning into a much bigger more ambitious project long term.
 
Lots of work today...


Added Garden City Shopping Centre
Added QEII Stadium
Had a Mishap with the Marriott
Added some missing buildings
Main CBD area has all excludes built
Still need to do New Farm and two more bridges

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More progress today, I realized I can actually use terraforming to come up with an approximation of the dry dock at the Brisbane Maritime Museum. Also re-worked the William Jolly and Story Bridges and terraformed the terrain so the ends of the bridges blend into the surrounding terrain. I know the vessels in dry dock aren't the HMAS Diamantina or the Life Raft Vessel, but it'll do for a stand in imposter.

I'm really starting to fall in love with the MSFS SDK. I am finishing up editing a video of a flythrough yesterday, but I have to mix the audio tracks as the mic and sim audio are separate and I needed to drop the ambient sim sound.

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OzWookiee said:
How are you churning this out so fast? :D
Click to expand...

A lot of very long days and heading to sleep at 5am, the slowest part was building the excludes. Most of it I had completed for FSX/P3D a few years ago but never got around to releasing it for various reasons. 4-5 years later it’s a different story and MSFS makes it look spectacular.

Here’s a fly through from the other day. A lot has improved since this, all OSM/Detected Buildings have been excluded so the glitches are now gone and it’s a lot cleaner. I recorded a new video last night but still need to do a sound mix.

 
Unbelievable work! Do I get it right, lots of models were finished those days and you did convert your fantastic objects into MSFS?
 
Really looking forward to this dropping. Will be even better when we get Heli's in the sim so we can really appreciate it. Please say you'll try get the river cats (ferry) in there.
 
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