Comments on: Light Levels: Don’t Panic https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/ Developer resources for the X-Plane flight simulator Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:02:43 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 By: Anonymous https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/#comment-33 Mon, 24 Jan 2011 08:25:55 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/dev_blog/?p=9#comment-33 Ben, the problem with trucks speeding through neighbourhoods that plenty of us have noticed but not really reflected on can be easily fixed by adding a rule to the autogen algorithm. The problem (in most cases) is not trucks speeding through neighbourhoods but that houses are allowed to be placed too close to -motorways-, which is apparent in the actual screenshot. Simply by adding a rule that neighbourhood houses can not be placed nearer than lets say 25 meters to highway-tagged roads the final result will for sure look a lot better.

I think you already have implemented rules for trucks not being allowed to run down neighbourhood (-tagged) streets.

Happy coding and I am really looking forward to placing an order on XP10! Evan

]]> By: alloycowboy https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/#comment-34 Sun, 23 Jan 2011 20:40:49 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/dev_blog/?p=9#comment-34 Wow Ben,

That is a lot to digest. I just wanted more realistic night skys which simulated normal light polution levels but it seems you guys are going way beyond that. Kudos, I can't wait to see how it turns out.

]]> By: qumake https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/#comment-35 Sat, 22 Jan 2011 18:23:08 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/dev_blog/?p=9#comment-35 Will the runway lights suffer (they are the ones that interest me) of attenuation, loss of intensity as we move away from the light bulb?

A light bulb (blue or green) at 3 Km (about 2 nm) of distance cannot be practically the same intensity as one that is at 10 m (about 33 ft).

This is even more strange when you see the runway lights (departure/arrival) and you go at 10000 ft.

Runway lights intensity (the way we see them) should also be affected by general lighting (sunny day, cloudy day, sunset …)

Regards

]]> By: Benjamin Supnik https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/#comment-36 Sat, 22 Jan 2011 17:17:12 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/dev_blog/?p=9#comment-36 Basically if you produce an output list of object placements and OBJ models, you can continue to do this in v10, and it will work at least as well as in v9. You might want to take advantage of draped geometry:

http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/2010/10/draped-object-geometry-in-x-plane-10.html

that is, the ability to have ground overdraw textures anchored to the object that properly sit on top of the ground. Also, v10 will have some OBJ performance enhancements that you'll want to make sure you are using to get maximum throughput with lots of objects. (Part of this is just having OBJs with no crud, and part is using things like the new draped geometry instead of the old ATTR_poly_os.) There will be authoring guides with instructions on what to do to hit the 'fast path'.

So you don't have to use the new v10 autogen system..the autogen is higher level than OBJs, but placing OBJs still works and the OBJ is the way we draw everything 3-d.

]]> By: Anonymous https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/#comment-37 Sat, 22 Jan 2011 16:20:11 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/dev_blog/?p=9#comment-37 Ben, you've commented in the forums that you'd like to see more regionalisation of scenery for XP10 but that the scenery file formats will be more demanding (not your words exactly but of that tenor). I've been working on a city scenery on-and-off for my hometown which employs rules-based procedural object generation seeded with real world GIS data. The aim is to automate the generation of the final XP file formats into the pipeline as well and my current thinking is to hold the whole project over until XP10 file format specifications are available.

Is there anything fundamental in the object/texture creation that will likely mean I'll have to revisit the current process (which generates a single Blender file full of placed and textured buildings which a script will parse, culling objects into separate files and generating the XP DSF)?

]]> By: Anonymous https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/#comment-38 Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:41:02 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/dev_blog/?p=9#comment-38 A lot of tone-mapping I see in games is more reflective of what a camera sees to begin with… when I'm in the shade of big trees in a wooded area the sky doesn't look white to my eyes…just to my camera. The game effects are largely done just because they can do it and say they've added a feature. It's somewhat distracting when those games are constantly tweaking the brightness of the sky and landscape.

]]> By: Anonymous https:/2011/01/light-levels-dont-panic/#comment-39 Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:14:50 +0000 http://www.x-plane.com/dev_blog/?p=9#comment-39 Interesting post. But we are going mad about just seeing more examples. More screenshots. Just examples of what is being worked on right now and what we have right now. You do not have to unfold every little detail, just give us some little glimpse of what is being worked on atm. Pretty please!

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