Greetings, long time now talk. 4 years? Yikes!
A little post to announce that I’m moving over to X-Plane 12.
I’ve moved all the ‘Lyndiman Orthophotography’ over at about 300GB (I think?). It’s running well with a few areas that need to be corrected, I’ve noticed issues in Northland, where the contrast is really blown out. There’s also a big black rectangle that needs to be fix and some other minor problems. I hate the imagery used at the top of the south island, so I wonder if it’s worth redoing that from scratch using some new LINZ data.
I don’t actually have access to Ortho4XP or photoshop right now, so I’m wondering if I should just wrap up what I have and support it with a new release for anyone that’s interested.
X-Plane 12 looks amazing btw. I’m really enjoying the performance, frame rates are perfectly stable and high in all situations. (I have a Ryzen 5800X3D and a 3080 ti GPU). The lighting at night, and at the golden hour are fantastic. More importantly, I just enjoy the flight model a lot more than trying other general aviation sims.
I’ve installed SimHeavens X-World to get a better overlay of objects: https://simheaven.com/simdownloads/x-world-australia-oceania/
I noticed that they have reduced the building height for New Zealand as it tended to over exaggerate our pancake cities and towns.
Unfortunately, the forests have strange stripes through them which looks like some sort of systematic error. It can be thought of as some sort of funny forestry practice perhaps.
I’ve also been exploring World Editor (WED), which with X-Plane 12 now features some much needed improvements. Grass taxiways and runways have a much improved shader and bump mapping. You can now add tracks, wear and dirt, edges and gutters, so the sharp edging we see now should disappear over time. It also has more objects to plop down.
I’ve started building a new, all default NZNS Nelson Airport. The existing one is super basic, and I’m wondering if accepted defaults are ever replaced with more advanced submissions over time?
I’ll share some pictures soon and discuss further.
That’s all for now!
Categories: Flight Simulation
New airport: NZKM Karamea 
Planting seeds 
Landing now: Lyndiman NZ Ortho 2025 is now available. 
Sounds like a good idea 
Lyndiman's Blog 
First, thanks for coming back. We have missed you!
And welcome to XP12, where many of us have resorted to AutoOrtho to make up for the loss of Lyndimanâs famous scenery.
Iâm more than interested in trying out your latest version and reporting back on anything that doesnât look right. The latest version (forked) Ortho4XP is alleged to deal with water for XP, but having tested it, I am not convinced, so abandoned the testing. You might do better than me, particularly because I am no expert. I can point you in the right direction to get the new program.
Iâm on a Ryzen 7950X3D and 3090ti with 24Gb VRAM. It runs really well (CPU is probably overkill for XP12).
I had a discussion some time ago with Armin who wrote the Simheaven XWorld stuff, about the NZ buildings often being too many storeys. He reduced them, but still not quite enough â and he has been unwell for quite a while, so I am not sure if we can expect further improvements. I dealt with the forest issue by installing Global Forests V2 and disabling the forests in Xworld. Good result.
The Nelson airport is indeed not fit for purpose. The Napier airport is generally OK, but the buildings arenât right. Daza in the UK built a nice NZNR, along with dozens of other airports including a good NZCH, but then ruined Napier with terrible tarmac textures. Then he took his ball home and challenged us to fix it. Bit of a shame, that.
Anyway, itâs great to see you back, and Iâm more than happy to lend a hand when needed.
Kind regards
Brian
Hi. Its so good to see you back!!! Your NZ scenery makes my X-Plane Sim flying so great. I fly the Phenom 300 around the country and just love watching the known landmarks appear and pass underneath on cue. I run the latest beta of X-Plane 12 on 5 screens, full set of flight controls and two Servers. Primary is AMD 7 7800X3D RTX 4090. Secondary is AMD 7 3700x RTX 2070 SUPER. I am using your original set of Ortho’s from X-Plane 11 with the graphics sliders all set to mostly maximum. And it all works really great. I would love to see the Ortho’s upgraded for Version 12 and be assured I will be very happy to contribute towards the new product. Regards Sinbad60
Great to hear! Do you see any issues with the orthophotography around water? I know it didn’t go underway properly when XP 12 first came out, but I don’t see that issue anymore, so I’m thinking they may have handled it better with an update. (Perhaps this: https://developer.x-plane.com/2024/02/a-few-notes-on-12-1-0-for-developers/)
I see no problems of any concern with either ocean or lake water. Mind you I dont fly float planes, and so are never really low. The XP12 new ships run about, with wakes that look pretty realistic.
I have seen the trees moving in the wind at my local airport NZKK. So that feature works.
There is, or used to be a couple of tiles with faults. One was at the south end of Stewart Island and the other was in a sea lagoon type enclosure near Whakatane. Not flown over them recently, but could, and report back if interested.
I can fly over my house. Yeh.. Cannot quite tell if the lawns need mowing but its otherwise all there!