Interesting product for UK photoscenery users

[Scorpius]

Thanks John, I will have to PM the poster as Just Flight say Revolution X is not compatible with any version of P3D.

Nev

[J0hn]

I'm wondering if this product will work with Revolution-X.

It supposedly replaces the autogen trees, so I think it should do. Might also be a good option for those who wanted to use treescapes, though whether it would give the same coverage would have to be tested.

The Zinertek texture and object replacement progs I have used in the past have left me a little underwhelmed, but that's not to say this one is the same.

Might have to chuck some shingle at it and see what comes out.


Product Page

Later: OK - I bought it. I'll check it out and see and post a couple of screenshots.

[Scorpius]

Revolution X has some funny moments with P3DV2 such as some black holes where trees should be (where others are displayed just fine) and very distorted building shapes!

To be honest I think I would be quite happy with just trees and go without buildings so I look forward to John's investigations

Nev

[J0hn]

Well I relented and bought that migration tool, just to make sure Rev.X went in okay. I'm not happy about the fact that it "calls home" every time it is run, nor that it runs as a service (though that isn't so bad), but there you go, life is short and all that.

It's all installed and ready to go - I backed up the textures in P3D first - it's only about 15MB worth (all the files beginning with "veg").

I'll get in the virtual air this evening and let you know how it goes.

[Brian Franklin]

Just tries the Natural Tree Environment - waste of a few quid! Doesn't work at all with Horizon GenX scenery - nix - not a single tree! Hide GenX and there's tree's everywhere which is great if you like default FSX scenery. My review is necessarily short and sweet, as will be my use of the product. Sorry Zinertek but even Rev-X is a lot better.

[J0hn]

Don't have much time just now - my experiences are similar to both yours, guys - I got some snaps and a stuttering 11-12fps, too!

I'll see what I can do tomorrow - but I wouldn't bother as things stand.

[J0hn]

Well, dear oh dear - something has really killed my P3Dv2 performance, and it's one of these four:

1) JF Real Scenery
2) JF Revolution-X
3) Zinertek Extreme Tree Environment X
4) EstoniaSim Migration Tool

I was getting a solid 30fps beforehand (with frames limited to 30 in the options) but now I'm lucky if I get 13fps, and the norm is 11. The flights are also taking more than 5 minutes to load, as are even the smallest changes to the settings during a flight. I don't get to fly in the day usually, just about 3 hours in the evening, so it limits fiddling time and that means this is taking too long to sort out, when I want to be enjoying flying my new sim.

Okay - here are some screenies. I loaded up the PA46 at UK2K's Fenland strip here in Lincolnshire - not far from where I used to live. It's mostly farmland, but there are plenty of trees. In fact, despite having an NDB, Fenland is notoriously difficult to find (so I'm told).

Looking at these pics, you wouldn't believe it:



The only things sticking out are at the airfield itself



Then, after a minute or so in flight, things just start popping up out of the ground, en masse. But alas - the trees are mostly those awful blocks:



This is the village and street where I used to live. I have labelled the areas where certain features should be and, well, you can see what is actually there:



Now, I know Revolution-X is not supposed to be an exact representation of the real world and all it's buildings and trees, but this is very poor coverage, and the buildings are huge compared to the size they should be - well over scale.

What the bejimminies these things are supposed to be is beyond me!:



High rise houses, maybe? Actually, if they were to be reduced in height to a proper level, they would be about the right scale for the many semis that should be in that area.

On a brighter note - this P3D PA46 is a beautiful aircraft:



with a very nice VC:



It just made it into the air, on Fenland's 670m/2200ft runway.

Here are my P3D settings:



and the Win7 performance:



It was using 972 of my GTX560Ti's 1024MB of VRAM.

btw, Brian, I'm pretty sure you won't get Zinertek trees alone to work with GenX. You need to increase the autogen setting in your options for the trees to show up, and if you do that without Revolution-X, you'll have autogen showing up anywhere and everywhere.

[DaveB]

Deary me JD.. not the success story you were looking for At least the PA46 is a good'un Were you able to try a different aircraft.. just in case the '46 wasn't helping

ATB
DaveB

[Brian Franklin]

John,

I have my autogen set at dense and still no trees. If I leave the area covered by my GenX then there's trees everywhere.

Brian

[J0hn]

Thanks Dave - yes. the aircraft is good on frames - the culprit turned out to be those trees from Zinertek. Once I removed them and put the default textures back in, the load time decreased significantly and the framerates went back up to 30fps.

However, I did get the crappy tree textures back again, where most of the trees are represented by texture blocks of buildings.



Also, once I uninstalled Real Scenery, the load time went to just 45 seconds.

Get this, though - a lot of the textures used for trees are made up of aircraft textures! I was gobsmacked - have to try and find out exactly which aircraft models are shown, as that could help resolve the isuue:



Brian, I would suggest ditching the trees, like I am going to do.

Actually, I think I will give them a try in FSX first, as that is the only place I'll be using Revolution-X and Real Scenery from now on.