Basic VFR Landmarks for X-Plane

[Calvin Waterbury]

X-Plane auto-generates a lot of objects based on land-class data. I would avoid duplicating the effort for things which X-Plane may eventually generate automatically. For example, if there is a land-class representing golf courses, then X-Plane may automatically do those at some point in the future. Ditto for things like towers. Might be a good idea to get some feedback from Laminar about what they intend to implement, if possible.

The nice thing about their approach is that is scales very well, because they can use existing data and avoid creating content manually. If there is publicly available data of some other type that they're not already using or intend to use, it could be useful to generate scenery from this data. This approach definitely requires some technical skills though.

One item that needs to be kept in mind is I am only using XP970. I do not own XP10 and don't plan to for the foreseeable future. Given this and having observed LR/Austin since ver.3, I really do not have a lot of confidence they will address land class, etc. in ver.9. I would be happy for them to prove me wrong. As a result, my efforts should not be wasted or duplicate. I'm not arguing with you. This just the way I see the situation. Feel free to offer additional information if available.

Yes, the scaling allows for just the sort of thing we're about here. Otherwise, I'd be in the soup without a cracker or a spoon!

[Cyrus]

Calvin, sorry for the slow reply.

After giving the evaluation of X-Plane 10 almost twenty hours of my life over the past few days, I've finally come to a decision: I'm going to stick with MSFS. This means a simple and fast setup, and best supports my current learning objectives, i.e. to improve my ATC interaction and to master VFR & IFR navigation. I'll probably never take up r/w flying again, and I'm just not *that* interested in having and mastering a real-physics flight model (that is to say, MSFS is *good enough* for me at the moment). I realize that this may sound like sacrilege to some, but it's where I'm at. Of course, that could easily change in the future....

Having said all that, I think what you're attempting here is a wonderful thing, and I know most X-Plane'rs will love you for it! It also sounds like a big task, but I'm sure you'll find lots of support from the forum.

For me, spending the last few days tinkering with X-Plane has been a huge distraction from what I really love doing, which is simply to get airborne on the PE network with a Sectional in one hand and a yoke in the other. But I do wish you good luck with this project. And I'll be monitoring the X-Plane posts to see how things evolve. Just don’t spend too long in the design shop, and remember why you came to PE in the first place.

[Keith Smith]

Cyrus, when have a moment, check out these stills from XP10.20.

I've flown coast to coast in XP without tuning a single VOR or GPS (joined by 10 other people a few years back). Pilotage is quite possible in X-Plane with the stock scenery.

I know you've made your decision, but I thought you might enjoy seeing what it's capable of rendering with stock scenery.

[Calvin Waterbury]

Cyrus,

Thank you for your kind words. First thing, fly whichever sim makes you happy and don't worry about what anybody else thinks. I actually fly FS9, FSX, XP9 and XP10 (when the mood strikes me) depending upon what I am trying to accomplish even if it's just for fun.

As far as the project is concerned, my primary motivation is my children are all interested in becoming real world pilots. I'm hoping to provide them an accurate enough model of a VFR experience. The rest of you folks are just getting gravy.
Since they all fly on PE it makes sense to focus my effort on ZLA airspace. Unfortunately, my first try produced many errors in the log.txt file in X-Plane. I will have to figure out why there were so many errors and correct them on the race track before I try to model the next landmark. My general plan will be to start modeling the landmarks on the sectional centering on KLAX and spiraling out until all are complete and error free. Whether anybody else uses it or not, is not particularly relevant since I am doing this for my family. My main interest in publicizing it is to receive feedback that will help me. You may still benefit from my efforts because I have to duplicate my modeling in FSX/FS9. Half of my children don't use X-Plane (yet).

[Cyrus]

I know you've made your decision, but I thought you might enjoy seeing what it's capable of rendering with stock scenery.

Now that *is* interesting. My X-Plane 10 didn't look anywhere near that rich, in terms of scenery details. In fact, the whole LA Basin looks like some sort of apocalyptic wasteland on my setup.

So now I'm thinking that my main scenery gripe is that I have to turn the rendering/performance sliders down so far that it results in graphics not seen since the days of SubLOGIC. Perhaps there's a whole X-P world out there that I'm just waiting to see. Yes, now that I think about it, I did wonder about this at first (but I got so caught up in the flight model/testing that I just ignored the scenery issues at the time). In fact, I remember watching Austin Meyer's "Plausible World" presentation some time ago and figured that the yellow areas on the Sectionals should at least have some pretty decent coverage based on the type of land (industrial, residential, forest, desert, etc.).

Well then, if that's the case, I may simply just have a good old fashioned "not-fast-enough-PC" issue to deal with. I'll play some more with those settings tonight. Either way, I fear that X-Plane will remain a future project for me. Thanks for the pictures, though . They really made me drool. In fact, now I want to mortgage my house and buy a cutting edge PC (case in point: I can't turn on ANY clouds AT ALL in XP-10 without my GPU reaching out and slapping me in the face... let alone turn on rain, lightning, etc.).

As far as the project is concerned, my primary motivation is my children are all interested in becoming real world pilots. I'm hoping to provide them an accurate enough model of a VFR experience. The rest of you folks are just getting gravy.

Calvin, now that's my kind of parenting! Oh, and we'll happily lap up the leftover gravy..... anytime.....

[Calvin Waterbury]

I know you've made your decision, but I thought you might enjoy seeing what it's capable of rendering with stock scenery.

Keith, that was quite a gallery and it has provoked me to want to take my family on an "Across the Nation" tour too. Thank you for sharing those pictures.

[Calvin Waterbury]

I have received a positive response from my scenery-creation mentor of his willingness to support my work toward building a "VFR Landmarks" objects file-base for X-Plane in ZLA. FYI - I intend to do the same for the air field and vicinity where my children will be taking their real world flight lessons. In light of these efforts I need some help with the following....

• I would like to know if these objects I intend to make in v.9.70 will be compatible with v.10.20(?). I don't mind adding a little additional criteria in my work to insure they can be used universally. Unfortunately, I am not qualified to make that call. I am a novice in 9.70 scenery and I don't know diddly about v.10.20(?).

• I still need some feedback on whether it would be more helpful to place landmarks at their absolute coordinates or in a relative location to surroundings? Case in point was the recent attempt at the Irwindale Speedway race track. Absolute coordinates placed the track north of I-210 (due to incorrect data in X-plane), but in reality it is south of the highway.

FYI - I will not be doing any further work on individual landmarks in this thread, but will be doing them in their own individual threads either here on the PE forum or on the x-plane.org scenery forum. Any thoughts on which might serve best?

[Daddy O]

Xplane is fine for VFR. In fact, it teaches a valuable lesson: What shows up on a VFR map may not be exactly what you see. A VFR pilot has to be sure to pick unmistakable checkpoints, or be good with VORs. Checkpoints get missed if you dion't pick solid checkpoints for visual identification.

But for scenery building, you can build overlays that overlay other maps, so you can just enhance existing custom maps already available. Xplanes will render both. KSAN was built with 2 different maps, one for each side of the airport. Your only limitation is the size of the scenery.

[Calvin Waterbury]

Xplane is fine for VFR. In fact, it teaches a valuable lesson: What shows up on a VFR map may not be exactly what you see. A VFR pilot has to be sure to pick unmistakable checkpoints, or be good with VORs. Checkpoints get missed if you dion't pick solid checkpoints for visual identification.

But for scenery building, you can build overlays that overlay other maps, so you can just enhance existing custom maps already available. Xplanes will render both. KSAN was built with 2 different maps, one for each side of the airport. Your only limitation is the size of the scenery.

Thank you for the input. Unfortunately, I don't have a clue what "overlays" are, but I can guess (Note to self: Learn about "Overlays"). Another caveat to my effort is I won't be trying to straighten highways or move lakes. I don't know how. All I will try and accomplish is to place the landmarks in context to surroundings. Since my tools are only OverlayEditor ("Overlay...Editor!" Light bulb just turned on!), GoogleEarth and a Dry-Erase marker, don't expect too much.

[SoCal_Pilot]

Cyrus, when have a moment, check out these stills from XP10.20.

I've flown coast to coast in XP without tuning a single VOR or GPS (joined by 10 other people a few years back). Pilotage is quite possible in X-Plane with the stock scenery.

I know you've made your decision, but I thought you might enjoy seeing what it's capable of rendering with stock scenery.

Keith,

These stills are amazing. Would you be able to share your computer's configuration, and X-Plane settings?

Thanks
Charath