Big progress this weekend with a few of the large tasks knocked over. I’ve removed all the clouds that are large enough to really notice this week and now masked the harbours and inlets that I’d done previously. I’ve removed the boats around popular Northland spots, like Paihia and Russell. I’ll look to do this a little more to catch up to where things were previously.

Here’s a look at recent work in no particular order:

I’ve not been happy with Milford Sound with long shadows flattened into the imagery depending on the sun position at the time of capture. You can see the original imagery here:

You can see odd flares of lighting, cloulds, and dark shadows that look pretty poor for a desirable area to fly in.

So, I edited the walls of Milford Sound and the airport area to remove clouds and also take away the shadows. The shadows will still be created in sim by the engine. You’ll also want to change the NZMF airport from the one used by default. It has ‘always flatten’ enabled which crushes the mesh and gives it shear cliffs around the airport. Here’s what it looks like now:

No more black walls!

For the next wee while I’ll dither some of the colour shift into metro areas, particularly around the north of Auckland, then plug any other little issues I come across as I test it out.

The country is big, so it’s hard to know if there isn’t a major problem somewhere lurking, but the to do list is now pretty short.

Categories: Flight Simulation

Tags: x-plane