I must say after flying FSX for over a year both beta & release, the first thing one notices when flying CFS3 is the low resolution of the terrain textures. Actually I'm finding them not as bad as I first thought. The ground textures in CFS3 are slightly better than the stock terrain textures in FS2004, however FS2004 wins over CFS3 with building autogen. FS2004 terrain textures are more aliased, jaggy, than CFS3. FSX's 1024x1024 terrain tiles offer a considerably sharper experience than the other two MS sims. Aircraft in CFS3 however do look nice & sharp and are well shaded, and while CSF3's material system is not as fully featured as FSX, offers more options than FS2004.
Anyway my first step is to gain an understanding of CSF3's texture rendering methods, which employs a layered technique modulated by xml mos files. This will involve systematic analysis of all stock ground texture files in CFS3 and pouring through the CFS3 Terrain SDK documents.
I'm also trying to decide on an area to test first. Presently I am looking at the Solomon Islands area and have carried out a few days research on the geography, WW2 history of that region, and looking at the available GIS data. I have also had a quick gander at Spain. I may end up doing something totally different, perhaps a small area.
I have already set up a second CFS3 installation to form the basis of my test region. Today I will set up an additional installation basically to experiment with the guts of CFS3. I know a few others have done likewise however I believe in finding out things for myself and also greatly enjoy experimentation.
Why CFS3?
Why am I focusing on CFS3? A number of reasons - There is no indication of another combat flight simulator from Microsoft and given their current projects i.e. DX10 for FSX, Acceleration Pack for FSX and Train Simulator, Aces will be occupied for quite some time. MS/Aces will also have to start developing FS11 soon too, given that it takes a couple of years to produce a version of FS. There are some other interesting things happening at Aces too, as witness advertised jobs.... Montauk, but no sign of a combat simulator. Given their current projects, even if MS decided on a CFS, we wouldn't see one until 2010 or 2011 (unless of course, there is an ultra top secret one on the way). That's a long time to go without.
Aviation history & also military aviation are consuming passions for me, and FSX while being very nice graphicly just does not cut it from the historical perspective. Even if MS do not add combat to Flight Simulator, they have to, at least consider adding the fourth dimension i.e. time & history to the simulator, the ability to have autogen & scenery appear by date, similar to CFS3's xdp files for sim objects.
Thus CFS3, despite its shortcomings offers the only possibly venue, for me at least, as a sand box to explore & satisfy my interest in military aviation history, in the short term. I do hope to create terrain & scenery for FSX at a later date too... especially my local area. My aircraft creation activities will continue too. Now that much of the learning curve for FSX is behind me I can spend more time on scenery creation & CFS3.
I am also inspired by especially by MAW and also OFF.
I expect progress in the coming months to be haphazard given health matters. So don't expect anything too soon.
Some resources -
- CFS3 Terrain SDK
- Martin Wright's tutorial on the scenery SDK. Also CFS3 SceneDB and his multi CFS3 utility.
- Some useful material on the Korean Skies site (on the Maintenance page).
cheers
Rob
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