NO WAY I am the first one here to see this!!!

FS9 developers don't have to settle for low-rez textures at all. From nose to tail, the texture map for Posky's 747-400 is 2432 pixels. All you have to do is slice up a fuselage side among two or three 1024² texture sheets and you can have all the detail you can stand. 95% of the time, that will only be displayed at 800-900 pixels on the screen, and often quite a bit less - much less in Tower View. So what good is all that detail if it's lost because of distance? All it does is eat up hard-disk space.

The majority of the planes I still fly are actually four years old or more. As long as the textures aren't just plain fugly, as long as the plane has all the "usual" animations, as long as it flies the way my very subjective beliefs say it should, and as long as it doesn't bring my system to its knees, that's all I need. And I dare say that's all 99% of us need.

Edit: Mind you, I'm talking about freeware here. I'm pretty sure that Bill's new GMax methods are going to toss the payware bar so high that a lot of the big design houses will be sweating bullets in the near future!
 
Tom Clayton said:
FS9 developers don't have to settle for low-rez textures at all. From nose to tail, the texture map for Posky's 747-400 is 2432 pixels. All you have to do is slice up a fuselage side among two or three 1024² texture sheets and you can have all the detail you can stand. 95% of the time, that will only be displayed at 800-900 pixels on the screen, and often quite a bit less - much less in Tower View. So what good is all that detail if it's lost because of distance? All it does is eat up hard-disk space.

The majority of the planes I still fly are actually four years old or more. As long as the textures aren't just plain fugly, as long as the plane has all the "usual" animations, as long as it flies the way my very subjective beliefs say it should, and as long as it doesn't bring my system to its knees, that's all I need. And I dare say that's all 99% of us need.

Edit: Mind you, I'm talking about freeware here. I'm pretty sure that Bill's new GMax methods are going to toss the payware bar so high that a lot of the big design houses will be sweating bullets in the near future!
Click to expand...

...I don't think i could have said it any better!
 
Tom, you cut the pie up pretty well in my eyes. I'll take a second helping any day it gets offered. :)
....Come to think of it, last I recall (no names mentioned intentionally) there are a few very nice models coming in the near future.
 
Kiwikat said:
I mean the modeling looks nice, but it doesn't affect the texture limitations nor how the plane flies or sounds. Adding something like Accusim to a Stearman would be a lot more exciting than adding more polys. Having more polygons doesn't make a product better. You can make a low poly model look wonderful with detailed textures. You can't make a high poly model look wonderful with poor textures. I guess I just don't understand the point of adding more polys into FS9. It isn't going to revive the sim.

:salute:
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If you don't know the process involved or what it means to be able to add more polys to an FS9 model, it's easy to say such things. Traditionally developers were limited to a fixed number of polygons permitted. To go over that number would crash the model rendering process. Also they were limited to a 4mm weld which means, any detail, switch or button smaller than a .004 one created in Gmax would be crumpled in the simulator. Not very pretty. Prop Trash and Bill have figured out how to "trick" the rendering process using something similar to creating LOD's and resizing the model which makes MakeMdl "think" the model is larger than therefore will render far more detail. This is an amazing revelation to aspiring FS9 developers like myself. I am using this technique with Bill's help in my Firefly to really replicate the cockpit detail as best I can. Without the use of this " new" technique, simplistic details like real-like switches, small nobs, protruded bolts and nuts, were just not possible. Now it's possible to do all this. Since I am a new developer, I want to learn this process. It's exciting, and a lot of fun. The immersion factor of the sim just went up 10 fold. Hats off to Prop Trash for sharing this " expensive" knowledge to the flightsim community for free. Hopefully it will encourage new developers, like me.
 
I'm so excited to see all the really neat stuff being created by all of you super dooper fs designers. I was looking at a few of the stock fs9 airplanes last night (Extra 300, Caravan) Etc. They look amaturish by today's standards. I know nothing about designing or painting this stuff, but I thought I'd take a moment and say "Thanks" for all you guys and gals out there doing this stuff; For pushing the boundaries of and making flightsim that much more enjoyable. I certainly appreciate it. Keep up the good work, and I'm absolutely thrilled to see this new stearman coming down the pipe!!!!!:salute:
 
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