• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

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My opinion of 'scenery design' for FS.

scruffyduck said:
Certainly that is good news Bill. That can only make it easier for everyone. I suppose the issue here is that for a lot of tools such as dotNET DirectX etc MS write the SDK for developers and that is what they would generally do. The FS SDK is being taken up by a much wider range of people than traditional developers. Just seemed to me that the work of a lot of people to make design tools more friendly and accessible should not be lost in the discussion that is comparing expensive tools for real world simulators with the FS SDK :)
Click to expand...

I fully agree! I think that ACES is on the right track by seeking to provide both professional quality SDKs and APIs. ACES are very much aware that the continued success and health of the franchise is - in a very large way - determined by the efforts of the third-party community. Because third-party efforts have consistently expanded what's achievable far beyond what ACES themselves had envisoned as the "limits" of the sim!

Two years ago, ACES hosted the first ever "DevCon" to which > 350 commercial and freeware developers were invited. This year, they are hosting the 2nd "DevCon," and have as of September 1 issued a public invitation for any third-party developers who're interested to submit an application for one of the open slots.

Much to my sorrow, I myself will be unable to attend this year, largely due to faltering financial health... :rolleyes:

Personally, I think it would be a mistake of biblical proportions for ACES to develop and release a "Swiss Army Knife, unified development tool" for their FS franchise. It would effectively make it a "closed system" and stifle the ability of third-parties to extend the sim beyond the limits imposed by such a tool. :yikes:
 
Hi

I've been reading this thread and there are some interesting views!

I've been building scenery for FS since FS2002 and have always used freeware programs. I think if some people are going to complain about the state of tools available now, they should fully realize that these tools are built by people who don't work for ACES or MS, and do it in their spare time, unselfishly to provide us all who build scenery a easy or easier way to implement functions of the various SDK's that I know I just wouldn't understand without them.

OK they aren't perfect and it would be great to have one program to do everything, BUT WE DON'T, and surely that's up to Microsoft to supply a user interface that 'does it all' and not be solely relied upon by the general public to build these programs. I think everyone who builds freeware programs for FS deserves a large pat on the back for the job they do and if they didn't do it, it would make our job much more difficult.

I really like scenery design and no matter how good or bad a program is we the community have to 'make do' with what we have available, here and now and not complain that the software available is a mess.

Even if MS supplied a user interface for the SDK, I feel there would still be other programs built by our friendly freeware software builders, and I for one would be glad of them all. :D

Finally, I don't think anyone has the right to say if a program is bad or good or if the various programs available are a mess, especially if they are freeware. If you don't like it, it's simple don't use it or build your own 'does it all' program and let us all use it for free. It will never happen! if a multi-million dollar company like MS can't spend their time doing it for us! Why should anyone else spend their time doing it?

Stevo ;)
 
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I agree Stevo.

At the end you wrote: "if a multi-million dollar company like MS can't spend their time doing it for us! Why should anyone else spend their time doing it?"


Remember that MS tools will never provide satisfaction to the 3rd party, because the 3rd party will always have creative folks with a different focus from the ACES team.

Whatever MSoft provides forms a playpen for developers. Developers that remain within the playpen will eventually be viewed below state of the art after crafty folks expand the playpen beyond what MS imagined by a 3rd party tool.

It always happens.

Bob
 
Hi

Whatever MSoft provides forms a playpen for developers. Developers that remain within the playpen will eventually be viewed below state of the art after crafty folks expand the playpen beyond what MS imagined by a 3rd party tool.
Click to expand...
Exactly Bob!! :D and thats probably, I feel, why a 'all in one program' would never happen.

Stevo :D
 
My 2 cents - as regards "Tools". They are what they are, just a tool. IMO one has to be willing to invest the time to understand what the tool does and why?

Whether this understanding comes from reading code, SDK documents, or asking questions in forums - it is important to have this known ledge. There are some great little tools out there and I have some in my "Tool Box".

As far as one all encompassing "Tool" with a GUI - don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. It would be nice though, to open my garage someday and have just one shinny tool with a LCD screen that does it ALL!
 
Here's why I made this post guys, and I hope after all the debate, some will agree with me here. My point was not to stir up a bunch of commotion, but to get people to start thinking outside of the box here. Coming from my own personal experience with scenery design, and graphics in general, I've come to the opinion that the SDK is complete crap. Why? Take a hard look at it, you pretty much need to foster a major in computer science to understand it. This is not to be 'computer science' and/or programming. This is 'scenery design'; don't confuse the two. However, it seems MS is getting the two confused here, and it's really beginning to erk me. Case in point, 'why reinvent the wheel?'. It seems MS is forgetting what 'industry standard' is for 3D-realtime graphics, and what's used out there, and how it's used. In fact, if this was 'industry standard', databases for full-flight sims would be almost non-existent. The time it takes to try and learn the SDK from start to finish is enormous to say the least. That's if you're able to learn it all. What does that equate to? Nothing gets done! Then, we come along with another 'SDK'. Again, the entire process starts all over again. Again, little to nothing gets done. In the 'industry' as I call it, the basic building blocks for a database do not ever change. However, with MSFS, it seems to ever-change. The only thing that does change in the 'industry', are the runtime engines and how they process a database. Changes will be made here, or there, in order to optimize rendering, or include an addition feature, or change a feature. Nothing in the 'scenery design' element changes. Again, the only thing that changes, are the runtime engines and how it will process a database. Polygons, lightpoints, and textures stay the same. So, why are we having to constantly change the way we do things and how they are done? It makes no sense at all. It's completely absurd, and am getting tired of it. Just to put in a trivial directional lightpoint takes an enormous amount of knowledge and time; something that should only take seconds if we had the correct tools geared toward getting the job done. If it seems to you like I am not happy, you're right, I am not happy. This is next to reinventing the wheel, and some of you get this one-track mind thinking that MS is making things better. In some ways they are, but in many ways, they're not, and they're eventually going to cause MSFS to meet it's demise for lack of support into the developer community. You can't reinvent the wheel twice and expect it to succeed the second time around. They're failing in many areas here guys. I think the biggest mistake they're making is not going with the industry standard type applications.



Allan
 
You really don't get it Allan.

Scenery Design IS "computer science and programming". If it was anything less it would be boring.

You need to try a different hobby.
 
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If that were the case, I'm sure that's how 'everything' would be based. However, it is not. I think you have the wrong idea of the 3D-realtime graphics industry. As I said, you can't reinvent the wheel twice. That's one of the problems with a lot of people who do scenery design; they have the complete wrong idea of what the industry is, and flight simulation in general. Unless you've worked in it, most people have a warped look and sense of what's really out there. One thing in particular that gets me each time is, people expect more and more out of a scenery engine, and airport scene in general. Truth of the matter is, what's required in a full-flight sim and what is in a full-flight sim, is drastically less than what a lot of people think. The scene content is pretty bland and generic.


Allan
 
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But surely you've just answered your own question? Professional sims often look a lot blander and generic because they have less demanding user requirements? FSX has to be cutting edge for the consumer market, and MS's business model demands that it be updated and released every few years to generate revenue. This is a program that sells many thousands (millions?) of copies every few years for very low cost, in comparison to software that sells small copies for *very* high cost. Therefore to continue the revenue stream, MS *has* to update it to take advantage of the latest hardware capabilities.

We could have just settled with FS98, developed some cracking tools by now, have accepted its database formats as a standard, and then left FS2000 and all since to gather cobwebs. But there'd have been no significant progress. Sure the renderer could have been updated, but it wouldn't support all the nice DX9 features FSX does.

Basically, I think you just have to accept that this is a different market. FS is written for hobbyists, not professionals. Hobbyists like to tinker, so MS provides the basic tools to do so. Professional sims are built for users, with toolkits that allow designers, (not engineers), to expand them.

But all that's not to say that I don't understand your frustration! However, being an enthusiast, I'm enjoying learning. It would be interesting if MS did ever release an all-in-one tool, but I hope they'd still document the APIs and utilise an XML intermidiary step as there's still going to be an enormous amount of enthusiasts that want to go one step further. Professional sims just don't need to cater for that market. (Or when they do, you have a high cost support contract that allows you access to the developers and they can make that change for you.)

Si
 
I’m going to quote from two of your posts. I think together they say a lot.

“Most of you have never had the opportunity to use tools for full-flight sims, and I can sympathize with those of you who don't know what they are like. However, I'll tell you from experience, they work very well, and get the job accomplished in a fraction of the time it takes for 'FS-style' scenery design. There is no coding!!!”

“Truth of the matter is, what's required in a full-flight sim and what is in a full-flight sim, is drastically less than what a lot of people think. The scene content is pretty bland and generic.”

Seems logical to me to assume that “bland and generic” would be much easier to make than what most FS users demand.
 
Hi

B757 yes you do have a valid point that the SDK for FS is not very user friendly for the average Jo to use, but everyone won't have the same opinion as you. I imagine some people relish the thought of sitting down and learning the new developments in the SDK. Many will find it easy, and others like myself, will wait for other people to built software to make it easier for me.

You have something to compare Flight sim to which is a rather expensive full flight sim. Strictly speaking you can't really compare FS, which costs very little to buy, to a full size filght simulator, its like chalk and cheese, like the Wright flyer to an A320, It a massive difference.

If an 'all in one' program was made for FS, how do we know that it will do everything we want it to. I think it would become old pretty quick because of what the community wants, we always want things to do that little bit more.

Many Freeware and Payware sceneries in recent years, in my opinion, have far exceeded what Microsoft would have expected from the sim. most of which was found out by the community.

And as other people have said here, we the Community are only a very small percent of FS users. And most of use are tinkerers. Microsoft has to try to cater for everyone and keep the money rolling in, in a full size flight simulator you don't need to do that. I don't think you would want to drop bags of flour onto targets from microlight in a full Sim. But I would also image that the average 12 year old doesn't want to built the new terminal at his/hers local airport. They just probably want to roll a 747 and crash it into the ground.

If the freeware FS community was to stop creating addons tomorrow they would still be other Flight Sims created after FSX. Flight simulator doesnt exist because of the community, the community exists because of Flight simulator.

Stevo ;)
 
B757 said:
I think you have the wrong idea of the 3D-realtime graphics industry. As I said, you can't reinvent the wheel twice. That's one of the problems with a lot of people who do scenery design; they have the complete wrong idea of what the industry is, and flight simulation in general.
Allan
Click to expand...

I suppose it depends on your goals. If you want to just whine and complain, perhaps you're right.

On the other hand, if you want to design scenery for fsx...you have to learn to use the sdk, hack the sdk by finding unknown capability and/or use the many tools that provide interface to the sdk.

Its pretty simple, there are no other options as far as I can see.

All the rest of your self promotion, boasting of your experiences, and condemnation of fs and fs tools is just blah blah blah...worthless.
 
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I think people are getting the wrong idea of my post. First though, I'll say you're right Larry, people do expect too much out of scenery. A good case in point is, 3D taxiway/runway lights; only lightpoints are present. These 3D objects aren't modeled in a FFS. In fact, a good majority of things that people want modeled in FS, aren't modeled in a FFS. A real-world pilot does not care what a taxiway light looks like, or even where it is for that matter, just that it serves the functional portion of flight for which they are meant. I would think if a pilot would sit and count, and care where they were, they would never be flying. When people complain of FPS, I tend to laugh a bit. The scenery engine in FS is a very powerful platform, however, when you begin feeding all of this nonsense into it, is where the degradation of system performance begins. Another good example here is, the autogen trees. They're using double the amount of polygons that should effectively be used. This is a massive waste in system resources.

About the SDK now... Again, why reinvent the wheel twice? If it's not broken, don't fix it... The SDK is a very primitive 'bare bones' set of documents, in which to build a platform on for scenery design. However, the current form in which it is being released, is incomplete. Now, if MS turned around, and integrated this into modeling programs to model necessary elements into scenery, we'd have a much better platform to work from. It's not difficult to do, and would be minimal to do on MS's part. There are several modeling programs out there which this could be done with. However, I see no initiative on MS's part to do such. Needless to say, we're really not even getting the full use out of these modeling programs due to that. These programs are extremely powerful if used to their full capacity. I don't think we can even use over 5% of the modeling program's capacity to build from. This to me, is nothing short of spitting on the end-user and developers. Some of you say 'well, I don't have the money for that'. Is Gmax not free? I don't see where that complaint does anything. Sure, there's a lot of programs out there that cost several thousands of dollars, and I'm fortunate to have access to such. However, the SDK could be adopted to be used on any one of them, including Gmax.

As I indicated as well, the basic concept of modeling doesn't change in the industry. However, I'm finding that it does with FS. We shouldn't have these compatibility issues, nor should there be change the way a specific thing is modeled. The only thing that should be changing is, how FS reads and executes code to optimize things. That's not happening here. Instead, they're changing everything, which in the end, is not a good thing. I don't know of any developer that can take a scenery, or even an aircraft and port it over to FSX from a previous version without drastically changing the entire method on which it was modeled. A good chunk of time was taken to build whatever it was, but now, is a complete utter waste. Again, this goes back to trying to reinvent the wheel. If it's not broken, don't fix it. Think about it. Are you going to go out and fix your car if it's not broken? I would hope you wouldn't. Start thinking about things a bit. That's why I opened this post to begin with. I would have thought people would use it to gain a better understanding of things, but apparently not.


Allan
 
Very interesting discussion -- it certainly shows that scenery design is a very different beast for different people. Personally I think of it if not as an art form, then at least as a craft...
However it struck me that with the release of FSX I tend to rely more and more on SDK tools. A lot of them have become more powerful and more useful, even though there is still the initial learning curve. Whereas I used to use tools like Terrabuilder and EziScenery, now I use the MS tools. Part of this, too, is my gradual acceptance of XML. Don't get me wrong, I will never build an airport using nothing but XML, but I no longer fear having to make my own tweaks via code.
The Resample tool for FSX is a marvel. You just need to take it in little steps. There's also an Effects tool now, which has finally brought me into the 21st century:)
 
B757 said:
The only thing that should be changing is, how FS reads and executes code to optimize things.

Think about it. Are you going to go out and fix your car if it's not broken?
Click to expand...

The first point: I agree on some level but that would mean trying to forsee the future and computers capabilities are changing so fast that it is almost impossible to do. The problem with trying to set and define an all in one standard, as history has shown is:
a) All functionality that may be utilised in the sim in the future needs to be coded, documented and included in the game, even if it is not being utilised in the current version and even if it turns out that it is never used!...this obviously has serious implications on file sizes, time frames, expense of development etc etc.
b) you cannot forsee a radical change that may, for example, introduce a new software standard, hardware processing or indeed interface...so all that work that designers put into FS trying to define 'one standard for eternity' maybe total waste of time, effort and money 5 years down the track....there is a lot of 'wait and see'.

Even the best predictions of what computers can/could do 'in the future' have been very wide of the mark.

Im not sure the second part of the quote is particulary relevant...cars havent actually changed that much in 100 years: I think a comparison to a PC from 1995 may be a better one....it may not be 'broken' in 2007 but i dont think one would get too far trying to speed it up with current parts....even if you could put a nice quad core processor on the MB you wouldnt be able to fit the required RAM....the bus width would be tiny...the OS wouldnt fit on the 20MB hard drive and you would struggle to find a modern joystick with a game port plug ;)

Imagine a computer designer in 1995 trying to predict the state of computing/gaming in 2007...even if he or she could make it 'future' proofed im sure they couldnt make it financially viable.

I think at the end of the day we have to remember that we have bought a Flight Simulator not a 'All in one Scenery and 3D modelling software package'
 
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Well, I'll let those who seem to know more about this that haven't ever done anything in the industry take it from here; it seems they tend to know more than I. They can find out for themselves.

The runtime engine is based on an API, and that never changes. That's hard-coded, which is why I fail to see the reasoning behind how MS is updating FS. It's become apparent to me through my knowledge, that in a lot of ways, MS is back-stepping and doing a great disservice to FS. Does anyone remember the moving lights we used to have on the roads for traffic at night? That's a prime example. As I recall, those were discontinued because of system performance problems. (correct me if I am wrong) Now, we've got these high-poly vehicles in FS which really sucks the life out of a machine. Case in point, it takes much less resources to animate a bi-directional/colored lightpoint, than it does to animate a high-poly object. Where is the logic? You can not see an actual vehicle from the air at night, so why make them high-poly objects? It's unnecessary to have that, and seriously degrades system performance. The only thing I see from the air at night are lights. It's way over-done, and it doesn't surprise me in the least that people have had the massive performance problems they have. Do these objects serve a functional purpose for simulation here? I honestly can not see any, and they certainly do not enhance a 3D perception of depth or speed while on approach, or taking off from an airport. As I indicated previously, the trees are way over-done as well. For trees to serve their 'functional' purpose in the simulation, 2 polys per tree are not needed. It takes much less system resources to render a one-poly tree, and rotate it to the user, than it does to display 2 times as many trees while not rotating to the user. Again, where is the logic? I fail to see it.

One thing I've noticed, people tend to have 'their' own perception of what things 'should' be, but are rarely realistic with FS. As I said, for those those think they know much more, can take it from here. For those interested, I've attached an image to show just how 'bland' the scenery is.


Allan
 

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Whoa Nellie!

I am NOT saying people expect too much out of FS scenery. I AM saying it sounds like you expect too little. The point I was trying to make is it wouldn’t really take that long to whip out an airport with a bunch of pretty white boxes.

It’s the combination of the growing demands of the users; and the scenery designers and tool programmers desire to push the envelope that makes this hobby/game/simulator/etc what it is.
 
There are simply too many errors of facts and assumptions in your latest post to cover comprehensively, but there are two, which are so far off the mark that they simply must be brought to the forefront.

1. Your blanket statement that the API hasn't changed is simply incorrect. If ACES hadn't changed the core API, there would be absolutely no possibility of DX10 rendering via shader code in the GPU versus brute-force rendering by the GPU in a virtual screen buffer.

2. With regards to the so-called "high-poly vehicles" used by FSX for highway traffic, it's obvious you have no concept of LOD models and how they are rendered in the sim at runtime. By the time you gain enough altitude, the sim switches to displaying the lowest LOD, which becomes effectively a single polygon - a moving pixel - on the screen, which - if it is nighttime - becomes no more than a moving point of light. Gain a bit more altitude, and even that is done away with. Indeed, how could FSX display anything smaller than a single pixel? :rolleyes:

Now that you've made it abundantly clear that you do not understand the SDKs, so what then is the factual basis for your pontification on the subject at all? :eek:
 
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Allan,
When you compare FS to professional simulations, consider what each is used for. Professional sim visualisations are there purely to give the pilot a rough representation of the environment. He's really learning the aircraft and its systems. The graphics are secondary and as such 2D trees with half as many polygons as FS are more than acceptable. The experience a professional sim pilot should take away are lessons learned from controlling the aircraft. FS on the otherhand serves (in the main) non-pilots. These are people who want to see what a pilot sees, not what a pilot sees while he's flying a high-fidelity model in a low-fidelity environment.

Professional sims can be used to model accurate airports, as your pic shows, but this still only has to familiarise a pilot under training of where things are, not give him entertainment. No one designs professional sim environments purely for the wow factor.

You seen to be arguing that FS should be scaled down graphically to match mediocre professional visualisations for the sake of long-term format standardisation. But these are different domains designed for different purposes. Professional sim tools are sold without an entire highly-detailed ready made world. It's the customer who has to take the engine and build the environment they (or more likely their customer) is wishing to see. So those integrated tools are required. But we're not all building our FS worlds from scratch, MS provides us with the world in the box. All we're required to do is tinker with it. For that the SDK is often frustrating, but sufficient.

Perhaps it's time for the professional sim engine makers to up their game instead, and take a look at what's possible now, but I bet they'd have to rewrite their formats. I remember seeing what an SGI-based simulation could look like 15 years ago and was blown away. But they still seem to look the same today(!) while MS FS - a consumer "game"! - visually surpassed them all years ago. Of course to keep up they'd have to develop new formats and standards, and maybe it'd take them longer to write the tools. Maybe they would be able to invest in as much time in the tools and produce SDKs instead. Such is the price of progress.

Si
 
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