If there are two take-away points from this post, they might be this: there are a lot of new scenery system features in X-Plane 10, and I spend most of my day looking at surreal stuff.
Exhibit one: this is a next generation facade. Facades have been in X-Plane since 8.0 – they provide a way to construct a building from a polygonal outline.
In X-Plane 10, the facade engine is greatly enhanced, for the purpose of creating airport terminals. The facade on the left is a partly completed major airport terminal, with some random stuff put in by me for testing. Some of the new facade features:
- Facade walls are 3-d, containing real architectural features.
- Facade walls can support some level of translucency. You can see inside those windows.
- Facade walls can have objects attached – that’s where the jetways come from.
- Facade roof texturing is enhanced, for repeating, tiled roofs.
- Facade roofs can have objects placed at periodic intervals – that’s what all of those cars are. (I just grabbed the first object I found in the library.)
- In version 10 facades can go around bezier curves.
This is the same shot at night. The headlights from the cars illuminate the roof. No special trickery is needed for this – the cars have named lights, the cars sit on the roof, the light hits the roof. That’s the nice thing about global illumination: you attach lights and it just works; you don’t have to worry about what spill has to be baked into what texture.
This is a wider shot of the airport terminal with cars on the roof – as you can see, there’s a lot of cars. Since X-Plane 8, the sim has been able to cope wieth large numbers of objects visible for small distances. This is why we can build 10,000 3-d light fixtures at KORD and it doesn’t affect framerate. X-Plane 10 has some enhancements to the OBJ engine, including instancing, that should let us see more objects from farther away.
This is the matched night picture for the one above; you can see that having a large number of small lights casting global illumination doesn’t fps. With global illumination, the area of the screen the light covers affects fps but the total number isn’t so important.
Here are the cars with shadows turned on; like global illumination, shadowing affects everything, so you don’t have to worry about what scenery element is shadowing what other elements. The cars are on the roofs, ergo the cars shadow the roofs.
(You can see the shadow running out of resolution in the far ground – I still need to do a lot of shadow tuning; they’re really picky.)
Finally, one not totally ridiculous picture. (Poor Tom – I just post his art assets to the web regardless of what state they’re in; this’ll be the last time he sends me an updated library!) The building casts a shadow on the jetway, which shadows itself and the tarmac. It’s not until you take the shadowing away that you realize how much they sell the image.
Can you possible post a picture of that last picture without the shadow. You mention how the shadow sells the scenery, but you didn’t give us the contrasting image….please? :-).
Actually Ben, when I first saw all that traffic, I thought you’d perfectly matched Melbourne, Australia’s average traffic pattern!
As ever, great developments, especially the Bezier feature.
Hi,
Thanks for the information. I am looking forward to the X-Plane 10 improvements. So far, they look extraordinary. Keep up the good work.
Looks great, keep up the good work guys, we’re all waiting somewhat patiently. I have a question about those framerates though, they drop pretty significantly both at night and even more with shadows on. I know, dev version blah blah blah, but what’s the performance hit for shadows/lighting?
Nice effect the lights getting blurrier and bigger when far.
And can the blog be considered the new “News” page (http://x-plane.com/pg_news.html)?
And the URL parser needs to deal better with parenthesis 🙂
No, the news page is the news page. I think this blog will be remained focus on: tech inside X-Plane, scenery tools, how to make third party stuff, etc. Hence most of the pics I post are dev pics … that’s kind of the only pics I have.
Looking excellent.
I sure hope that all those nice grey vehicles remain that way. Early-on in Ver 9 I edited the vehicles texture file to eliminate distracting colors. IRL, traffic seen from above is essential a vague trail of grey-scale ants. Not an endless procession of cherry-red Austinvettes…
:>
@Ben: Look what i found on a partner website … just an FYI http://digitaledgepc.com/x-planeV10.aspx
dont tell me we have to wait until AUGUST!!!???
Nooooooooooooooooooooo
Where’d my link go? you guys should know its out there http://digitaledgepc.com/x-planeV10.aspx
I am lost with X-Plane 10. Is this a driving sim or a flight sim. I have found nothing dealing with aviation. What do the airports look like; center lines, runway markings, taxiway markings. Will I find trees in the middle of taxiways? I have only been able to find space and military aircraft; all from the outside. I normally fly from the inside. I have been doing a lot of reading and believe X-Plane an excellent choice.
Awesome!!! The new global illumination system is surely going to give us an enhanced visual experience, closer to reality – the shots look terrific. As for C90’s comment, I wouldn’t worry too much – having worked on some sceneries myself, I think the airport markings system is already very good in V9, so it would take very few tweaks in V10 to raise the bar. Nevertheless, one or two pictures showing signs and markings would be welcome…
In fact, since we now have to wait until August, how about bringing V10 Tuesdays back from the dead?
Hi Y’all,
August is not an official ship date. It is not even an unofficial ship date. It is not correct. There is no pre-sale of X-Plane. That web page has been taken down, as it never should have existed in the first place.
So i just gave in and ordered x-plane 9. So please take your time with x-plane 10 haha
Ben, why your pictures are always without anti-aliasing?
Do you turn it off to test something while developing?
Anti-aliasing. I do not turn it off. I simply never turn it on. I generally run only with the rendering settings of interest for a given test.
Please don’t take anymore time with v-10 than needed, sooner the better lol