My Writings. My Thoughts.
Video of New Zealand Pro for X-Plane 10
// February 17th, 2013 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
This video is showcasing the beautiful landscape of my X-Plane 10 scenery New Zealand Pro. Its my first experiment with a “larger” video, as I haven’t done much (well, nothing) in this area before (especially as I am on Linux … but I was surprised how polished video tools are nowadays).
The scenery can be freely downloaded here on my website.
Music is by Mike Andrews from http://audiofarm.org/mikeandrews. Titles are:
- softness
- strings and guitar
X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro chosen as scenery of the year 2012 at X-Plane.org
// February 4th, 2013 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
www.x-plane.org is running monthly votes about the scenery of the month, and at the end of the year a “scenery of the year” contest. Now the voting is over for the year 2012, and X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro came out as winner in the scenery of the year 2012 category!
Thank you very much for your votes, and I hope to have more for you later this year.
Andras
X-Plane 10 New zealand Pro released!
// November 28th, 2012 // 5 Comments » // Uncategorized
The wait is over, and after 3 months of work, the X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro scenery is released!
X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro is a complete replacement scenery package for New Zealand (North and South island). It is a combination of two parts.
- An extremely high resolution base mesh (even a bit higher than the other HD Scenery Mesh regions) with updated (and more detailed) landclass data (riverbeds, mines and morains are entirely new – compared to default Global Scenery), very detailed road / railroad/ powerline vector, and highly accurate water data (you should find most of the relevant rivers / streams, tiny lakes, and more detailed coastlines).
- An additional overlay scenery, which adds treelines (this time they are “real”, derived from GIS data) and tons of objects (mostly houses, but there are also barns, churches, substations, schools, hospitals, shelters – outside the area, which are filled in by XP10 autogen).
This scenery is for X-Plane 10 only, and ideally, you should have X-Plane 10.20 Beta 5 or above (as it brings some art assets – textures – in its default set, which NZ Pro uses). But don’t worry, if you have an earlier version of XP10, there is a “workaround” for you on the download page.
Best of all – as always – this scenery is donationware! Which means, you can freely download and use it, and if you like, you might donate for it (and even then, you decide what its worth for you).
To learn more and download it, click the image below and enjoy!
X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro – PREVIEW
// October 26th, 2012 // 4 Comments » // Uncategorized
I wanted to share some first preview screenshots of my upcoming “X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro” scenery. All screenshots come in pairs, with before-after comparison (I recommend to browse trough them one-by-one at picasa, as this way you should see the differences more easily)… so you can see for yourself what its (and what its not) all about by following this link:
- X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro – PREVIEW
(some of the pictures have 3rd party scenery included, which I have named in the picture captions … all of those you can download freely at x-plane.org)
From X-Plane 10 New Zealand Pro – PREVIEW
Some background on the scenery. First of all – before someone ask – there is no OpenStreetmap data in there! Its all based on data from Land Information New Zealand (LINZ), combined with – tuned – LCDB2 landclass data (almost the same as in the default Global Scenery, but with some improvements) and “classic” (90m) elevation data .
Highlights are:
- High resolution scenery mesh (similar to my HD Mesh series – but even a little bit higher res), which not only improves elevation detail but also the detail of the landclass representation (for example thats why you see much more, tiny forest patches in some of the pictures)
- much more detailed water (especially the rivers, which took two weeks to have it integrated in the scenery base data)
- detailed road / train network (LINZ has a better overall coverage than OSM) and power lines (differentiated by large, pylon based and smaller power pole types)
- a lot of extra 3D clutter like:
- real tree lines (in NZ, the so called shelter belts)
- single tree positions(yes, LINZ has a lot of that)
- lots of real building point data (which are represented with some self made, simple, new 3D objects) … usually generic buildings, but also some special types like small schools, little churches, sub stations, radar domes etc.
- some new terrain types (moraines, river beds, mines … with new ground textures –> thanks to Albert Laubi!)
What might surprise some is, that most of the scenery artwork is still “default” (like most of the ground textures, forest definitions, city autogen) …. But with the many improvements from above, it gets some new life.
And the best thing last: I will stay true to my previous “principles”, and release this a donation ware (which effectively means: its for free, and you might donate if you like it)!
Estimated release date : if all goes well (and I have no more new, cool ideas or find really bad issues) somewhere in November, or in the “worst case” December.
X-Plane 10 Tree Lines and Farms Scenery released
// July 15th, 2012 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
Today I have something new for X-Plane 10. A scenery, which tries to improve the look of the less “populated” areas of the default (or HD Mesh) Global Scenery, namely the agricultural areas, grasslands and pastures (the place, which can be wast and empty … especially in regions like the US Mid West etc.).
This new scenery will add random tree lines along many-many roads and some – hopefully – well placed farms in the landscape (at least in the continental USA and Europe). After the download, you might be quite surprised by how some regions of the Global Scenery look (as a starter, try some random location in the US Mid West).
To learn more and download this freeware (while considering a donation), click the image below and enjoy!
X-Plane 10 HD Mesh Scenery Set 2 released
// April 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
After the quite successful first release of the X-Plane 10 HD Mesh Scenery, I have added a few new regions to the download section. I hope you will enjoy them too:
- Iceland
- Scandinavia
- UK/Ireland
- East Europe
- Madagascar
- Hawaii
- New Zealand
- A 5×10 degree area in the USA (around Texas)
You can see a lot of new screenshots here: X-Plane 10 HD Mesh 2
IMPORTANT: the old scenery tiles did not change, so you don’t need to re-download what you already have!
The image will bring you directly to my download page (or use the download menu on the top):
X-Plane 10 HD Mesh Scenery released (experimental)!
// March 13th, 2012 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized
I have just made available the experimental X-Plane 10 HD Mesh Scenery. It covers these regions (screenshots are in the gallery):
- European Alps and Pyrenees (and all land in between)
- USA West (Rockies, Grand Canyon … you name it)
- Alaska
- Canada West
PLEASE: READ ALL THE INFORMATION ON THE DOWNLOAD PAGE BEFORE YOU START! There are quite some things to consider, before you start testing this scenery. I am in no way liable if you blow up your machine!
The image will bring you directly to my download page (or download menu on the top):
New screenshots added – Alaska HD
// March 10th, 2012 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized
I just wanted to try, how Alaska (hmm, why Alaska … ) looks with the experimental HD mesh. You can check it out in the new screenshot gallery:
With this “Alaska HD” scenery, the same things apply as with my previous post. The mesh is an experimental, higher resolution scenery but it uses exactly the same artwork as the default Global Scenery (so, its just a “Global Scenery on steroids”). And forests are made – again just for experiments – a little bit more dense. Everything else is … well … just X-Plane 10 
!
New screenshots added – some scenery experiments
// March 4th, 2012 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
I have added a bunch of new screenshots (more might follow), showing some experimental stuff I am trying in X-Plane 10. In those shots, you can see things like:
- higher resolutions base mesh (and thus also even more accurate landuse placement)
- higher density forests (tweaked the default)
- new, experimental tree lines along roads and farms added in
(and some airport scenery is from X-Plnane.it or X-Plane.hu)
You can see them here:
Website relaunch
// February 1st, 2012 // No Comments » // Uncategorized
After many years and the arrival of X-plane 10, it was time for a little overhaul. For one, I wanted to update to a more modern CMS (replaces my aged Joomla with WordPress) and for the other, I am planning to introduce some new content over the coming weeks / months.
The aged forest scenery for X-Plane 8 / 9 is now more or less out of service (especially as the USA pulled the plug on Megaupload, where the big scenery files were hosted). Still, you will find the old documentation and old artwork files in the download and FAQ section. Should you also need the old scenery, I might try to find a way to re-upload it somewhere (but I have no plans to do it pro-actively now).
But stay tuned for some new experiments / content for X-Plane 10.
For example, scenery developers might check out my little DSF-to-GML script, which transforms the DSF base triangle mesh to the generic GML format, which then can be visualized in any modern GIS software (like QGIS).
