Update on FSX SP1 and DX10

Phil Taylor gives us a bit of an update on upcoming patches for FSX.  He confirms that SP1 (Service Pack 1) will be a separate release prior to the DX10 patch, and that SP1 coding is almost complete.

Bulk terminal nears completion

… and from the overview shot you can see also more docks have been completed.  Although not the Eastern berths yet, Bill!

Also completed or nearly done:

• Larry has added the marina, although we haven’t populated it with boats yet
• White Pass Port Operations building
• Petro Marine building
• Container port building
• Airport fencing and signage is almost done
• Seaplane dock and ramps built, but not textured.

Recent chatter about Vancouver+

Here’s some recent comments about Vancouver+ from the non-sim world:

Thelobby.com (article)

Justagwailo.com

Darrenbarefoot

Ufies.org

And  to clear up some of the minor ambiguities in those posts:

• Vancouver+ Part 1 (City and landscape) V1.1 for Flight Simulator 9 (aka FS2004, A Century of Flight) is available from Simflight.  Product support is available here.
• Vancouver+ Part 1 for Flight Simulator X is under development, no announced release date.  That’s what the screenshots you see more recently here are from.
• Vancouver+ Part 2 (Vancouver Int’l airport, CYVR) for FSX is under development, no announced release date.  No FS9 version is planned.
• Products are not all “by Jon Patch”.  Although I’m the lead on Part 1, there are many other contributors, particularly Holger Sandmann.  For Part 2, Bill Womack is the lead.

More Skagway goodies

Here’s a view of the harbour taking shape, and the PAGY apron.  Note the cruise ship, the beginnings of the large berths, the floatplane, the container port, and the photoreal PAGY apron (that’s the only part of the PAGY maneouvering surfaces that’ll be photoreal).  Also there’s a view of the PAGY terminal from the container port.

I do try and make things more complicated than they need to be … fortunately I had Bill Womack saying, “Ah, that’s how you’re going to do it?  Sounds fine, but wouldn’t this be simpler?”  (And nicer looking…)

And then Holger weaves his magic …

Holger has added gravel beds to the Skagway River, and it adds a lot to the realism of the 02 approach to PAGY.

Must be a ripple in the Force …

Owen Hewitt, modeller with Eaglesoft and Microsoft MVP (aka Polypoke) has shifted his blog to Windows Live Spaces.

More detail on Skagway

I’m wrestling a (now improving) case of laryngitis, but I’ve squeezed in a bit of time to add some more stuff to Skagway.  Thanks to the airphoto acknowledged in a previous post, we’ll show a lot of the harbour area in 30cm resolution photoreal.  So here’s another shot of Temsco, with some bits added.  I still need to complete the fence and put the shadows under the vehicles.

Another ACES blogger…

Paul Lange tells that ACES member Mike Singer is now blogging. 

And Hal Bryan has a new blog home.

And to keep track of all these, I try my best to keep the blog links up to date in my blogroll.  See Microsoft Flightsim Team

Train sim and more new blogs

Microsoft ACES studio (which develops Flight Simulator) has revealed that they are resurrecting the Train Simulator, completely rewritten from the previous version which didn’t meet expectations.

And Tim Gregson lets us know about a couple of new blogs: Rick Selby (on the train sim team) and Pat Cook (Design Director for ACES).

Temsco Helicopter Terminal at Skagway

Here’s a couple of early screenshots of the Temsco terminal.  Much to do yet, but it’s starting to come together.

 

Some FS updates

Add to the ACES blogroll Brett Schnepf, Community and Partner Development Manager.

And Microsoft has been clear that the upcoming Service Pack (SP1) for FSX is performance focused, but Tim Gregson lets us know that Multiplayer hosts should have the ability to boot misbehaving players.

As noted in some comments, folks with Silicon Image RAID controllers may have activation problems.  That is apparently fixed by a BIOS and driver update for the RAID controller. Without the update apparently the raid controller tells windows inconsistent information about hard drives which leads activation to think that the hardware keeps changing.

Skagway Terminal

I’ve added to my duties on Glacier Bay: I’ll be doing some features of the City of Skagway.  I’ll include some airport buildings, the bulk terminal, and cruise ship berths.  Larry Silsbee will be doing the marina.  Here’s the first couple of screenshots of the PAGY terminal building.  We will be able to represent Skagway with some accuracy to the generous help from the Tlingit Regional Housing Authority in cooperation with the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development (Commerce).  They have kindly supplied recent hi-resolution georeferenced orthophoto data (airphoto) for the area.

For example, I was able to measure the footprint and locate the building below with 1′ resolution and 2′ accuracy.  I then added features and textures taken from photographs I took last summer.

Texture conversion

I was about to start on the Patullo Bridge, and got distracted converting the CYPK Tower to FSX materials.  Once that was done, I carried on and have converted 28 building models and many more object models.  In most cases the user won’t notice a difference, but a few buildings have some tweaks.

More interesting perhaps is that I’ve converted the fences, and they no longer block visibility at random times, which was a big problem with DXT3 transparency in FS9.  Most designers reverted to using DXT1 (single bit alpha) textures, with resulting shimmering and flickering for many folks.  There is much more control in FSX of the drawing order behaviour of transparency, and with some fiddling and help from Dick, it’s very nice to see the fences behaving so well.  This shot may not look like much, but to be able to look through a fence, to see (a) through the next fence properly, and (b) through the tower glass inside and through the other side is a clever accomplishment for FSX.

CYPK Tower

It’s a bit hard to show the effect of the windows in a static screenshot, but they do look cool.

Improvements at CYPK

As well as pretty reflective glass in the CYPK tower, in FSX we’ll add a little bit of multi-seasonal phototerrain around the airport.  Resolution will be dependent on your overall ground resolution: for best viewing set to 30cm.  Click here for a higher-resolution version (500kb+).

One more Lion’s Gate shot

I realized I could do a bit more before getting more Engineering documentation and onsite photos…

Early Lion’s Gate Bridge

Vancouver+ for FSX will have a custom model for the Lion’s Gate Bridge.  Here’s a couple of early screenshots, including a comparison to the MS model, which is not too far off.  The real bridge as you can see is much more graceful though.  Note also that parts of the new bridge are hidden by the old bridge: this is an issue in FSX with old FS9 models that use transparency.  It’s not a problem with new models made for FSX.  With the basic bridge done, I’ll wait until some photography gets done for more detail.

Tim’s moved his blog

Tim Gregson, member of the MS ACES FS development team, has moved his blog.  Find it now at http://beatlesblog.spaces.live.com

Time for a swim!

I filled the pool today, added some fences, and provided some deck chairs.  Also added light poles, flags, and the deck patterns for the upper decks.  You’ll note a change from earlier screenshots: the top floor of the white hotel section is now (more accurately) reflective glass.