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GEX Europe has been released!

I'm going to leave it on for a week and see how I feel then. There's clearly been a great deal of time, effort and beta testing on the product but at the end of the day, colour preferences are very personal.
At low level (500') the 3d effect looks similar to the "dappled" FsX standard effect in woodland (which I detest at low level). The summer green seems to be almost monotone shades of the same base colour and August is my favorite time of the year for my low and slow flying preference.
One problem I have is that after install and running through the set up procedures I had a BSOD (overclocking related) and had to use a restore point prior to GEXE installation which left me with the textures installed but no set-up .exe. I reinstalled but now the set-up wants to create a backup over my previous backup. This will overwrite my true backup with GEXE textures so I may have to do a manual reinstall if I decide to go back to default. However I don't know where all the textures belong? Scenery/world/textures seems the most common but I really don't know. This could end up being the cock-up of the year for me, needing a reinstall of FsX and if I had to do that I might just give flightsim a rest for a while.
Screenshot...

GEXE-1.jpg
 
I was quite tempted until I came across this over at AVSIM..

With no landclass installed Europe will be far less correct and very bland due to poor texture layout. The default landclass is very poorly defined which is why we suggest UTX and another 3rd party LC such as SceneryTech be installed.

I wonder if this is why some people are disappointed while others are ecstatic?
 
Steve Halpern said:
I think that should be UTX Europe, or Ultimate Terrain X Europe, which means it cannot find Ultimate Terrain X Europe in its proper location in FSX... or if UTX Europe installed, it could mean you have an orphaned install of FSX and things are crossed in the settings.
Click to expand...

Yup UTX. Installing all my other programs hasn't been a problem. As far as I know it isn't "orphaned". If it is orphaned then I would probably need to re-install FSX?
 
Roger, the option to skip the backup is there. You will see that in the interface when you start it. Then it will not ask you the second time around.

MudMarine... if you indeed have UTX Europe installed, you may need to reinstall it (you would not need to reinstall FSX). Make sure your path to FSX is correct in the settings screen also.

And do not forget to visit the GEX forum at http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_topics.asp?FID=38. Nick and others can provide a lot of information or answers there.
 
And make sure that both GEX and UTX are keyed to the proper folders.

I have excellent landclass via UTX-Europe.

Dover, still wish someone could correct get the cliffs white though.

dover.jpg


Chunnel - Calais: Wondered what this was until I dialed it in on Google Earth, fantastic. :icon_lol:

chunnel_calais.jpg


Caz
 
Looks as though autogen is completely turned off. You can actually up your sliders with GEX as it handles autogen in a somewhat different way.
 
I'm a little disappointed with the textures in GEX Europe. Southern Europe looks good, but northern areas look like a combination of the mottled effect and the landscape looks to have white blobs everywhere as though it's 1/2 covered in snow (at least in Scotland in the fall) I also use UTX Europe. I think the "3D" effect looks to large and that on the fields you would find farmers and their tractors being lost for ever!
I'm sure that future updates will address some of those problems, I'm particularly concerned with the "1/2 snow "look.
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Ian
 
We posted a test patch for the airport pads at the top of the GEX forum.. some found the ground zero pad look at airports was a bit hard on the eyes so we softened them up to appear a bit smoother. The v1 patch is softer but retains the harder colors where the v2 patch we softened both color and contrast

anyway, once we get enough feedback and possibly make a few more adjustments we will have a full patch available in the UPDATES section of the GEX EU interface


GEX is not photoscenery.. its textures, and its designed to be used with autogen for a reason. Without autogen you wont get the feel or the effect the textures are designed to provide. Here are some shots from EBOS (summer) and EGLL which are Fall in mid October

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=179545&st=0&p=2227915&#entry2227915

http://www.flightsimworld.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=179545&st=0&p=2227915&#entry2227927

autogen makes a world of difference and we planned it that way. We also fixed the autogen tree issue with FSX that hits perf like a ton of bricks that will expand from Europe into North America and most are telling us they can now increase their AG slider a notch as compared to default


Cliffs of Dover - are covered with the same rock texture as the Alps however we did take that into account and worked in some of the limestone white to try and give the cliffs a whiter look. Pure white is not possible unless a custom scenery model is made and covered in custom textures just like its not possible to make the Grand Canyon in the USA look right without a complete custom scenery addition.


as for snow.. we have NO control over where/when/how that appears, and it shows the same way in default

GEX is not a landclass or a season.bgl file.. its textures with a autogen layout

UTX is a landclass, SceneryTech is a landclass.. those files tell the sim what textures to land on the mesh and where

The snow is the seasons.bgl file in FSX and its very poorly designed. The Fall season, although date and time may say its fall, stops showing fall textures after October 31st and in some places as soon as October 7th-15th. Again, thats the FSX season file and we may look at editing it some time down the road but its not part of our scope of work in texture/autogen replacement.


and last.. yes, this is a new way of making textures and we expected it may take some people time to get use to them visually. Some may not like it, most probably will if they give it a chance and not judge it on first look. There is a lot of information in those tiles and its not just 'bumps'... those tiles are made to force the rendering engine to do things flat, bland, hazy textures wont and after a few good flights I think most will see what we did and why. We are planning on upgrading textures in patches as we update the product and complete other areas too. Textures are shared in FSX between regions and there are changes we would like to make as well that will upgrade the Europe product.


:ernae:
 
Thanks Roger, dappled is a great way to describe the look I am refering too. IMHO (based on real photos and what I see every day with my own eyes) the 'dappled' effect is too heavy in GEX Europe, it just doesn't look realistic.

When I am flying around in Ireland and the UK I don't think wow, I think bleh, looks like lumpy puke. Thanks for all the screenshots proving my point guys. Thanks Cazzie, those screens you posted show exactly how poor GEX Europe looks. Everything looks so subdued and monochrome, even the browns have a green look to them. That dappled effect is just so wrong, they tried to make it look 3D but instead it looks like everything is made up of large dots.
 
ICDP said:
Thanks Roger, dappled is a great way to describe the look I am refering too. IMHO (based on real photos and what I see every day with my own eyes) the 'dappled' effect is too heavy in GEX Europe, it just doesn't look realistic.

When I am flying around in Ireland and the UK I don't think wow, I think bleh, looks like lumpy puke. Thanks for all the screenshots proving my point guys. Thanks Cazzie, those screens you posted show exactly how poor GEX Europe looks. Everything looks so subdued and monochrome, even the browns have a green look to them. That dappled effect is just so wrong, they tried to make it look 3D but instead it looks like everything is made up of large dots.
Click to expand...

F1 has a generous 30 day money back guarantee.
 
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I am not sure if there is something wrong with monitor settings, color profiles, AA/filtering settings, etc however this is the Cliffs of Dover area on my system in Winter, Summer, Fall and Spring





When autogen is used it becomes quite obvious the relief that is shown, which is usually a crop in a field, is quite in scale with the autogen.


I had UTX running as well as SceneryTech LC layered with UTX for the veg LC and it was also enabled. The only thing different I did with UTX was disable UTX roads in the scenery library because unless I need them for VFR (especially at night) I dont use them that often.








Dover1.jpg











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Dover3.jpg









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Dover6.jpg













Dover7.jpg










Dover8.jpg
















Dover9.jpg
















Dover10.jpg
 
Fantastic shots Nick.

I was capturing video when I did those screens and I always turn off Auto-gen to increase frame rates. At altitude, FSX looks better without Auto-gen IMHO, the terrain textures and bumps are good enough.

Caz
 
Thanks for replying Nick,
as I said in my earlier post, I'm confident that GEX Europe will get better as the updates come out.
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Regards,
Ian.
 
I may be wrong, but it looks to me like the "dappling" effect is caused by a slightly overzealous bump map as it looks very similar to what happened when I put bumps on my grass textures for incredibly-simple-scenery-object-#1.

I can't say I'm overly fond of it from screenshots, but to see Britain green again, I could be tempted.
 
Looking at the screenshots, I think I'm going to give it a miss.
While it looks a whole lot better than default, it still looks a bit too unnatural to me. I can't really put my finger on what is wrong, but it does not feel right. Could be the colors, could be the texture layout, or a combination, but I have not yet seen a single convincing screenshot.
Somehow, FTX Australia looks more convincing, so I guess I'll stay down under for now.
 
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