Alaska Screenshots (RTM version)

Nome looks nothing like the default FSX shot....

That's all for now...

WOW!! is right!

Pretty dramatic differences. There was never any doubt in my mind as to whether or not I would purchase UTX Alaska, and I was patiently awaiting it's availability.

Okay, I'm tired of being patient.

(That being said, take the time needed to get it as right as possible before release).

Will it be available on disc at the initial release?

FWIW, here is the feature set for this product:

• Accurate roads, with moving traffic on major roads.
  
• Accurate railroads
  
• Extremely accurate water features and coastlines.
  
• Detailed ground polygons (parking lots, parks, grassy areas, etc).
  
• Enhanced vegetation landclass, with optional urban landclass textures (urban landclass not recommended with this product to retain accuracy).
  
• Accurately placed bridges for roads and railroads.
  
• Night lighting using light point models.
  
• High resolution terrain Mesh.
  
• Over 220 accurately modeled scenery areas (cities, towns and villages).
  
• Almost 200 airports corrected from a location and elevation standpoint.
  
• New Glacier technology, with almost 400 hand-drawn glaciers included.

Looks Great!

Looks great and I'm sure you are talking to one another but..

Regarding your Terrain Mesh and airport elevations.... how will this effect my current install with FSGenesis Mesh and Tongass Fjords?

Anything I will need to be aware of?  Or change?

Thanks

RTM version? That sounds like it's very, very close to public release.

...(cough) this weekend?? ...(cough)...

Originally posted by batt Just curious:  Is the TransAlaska Pipeline (TAPS) and associated pumpstations included?

No.  Sorry.     The thought crossed my mind.   But, technically, I could not even imagine how you could pull something like that off (long distance connecting pipes using object models).   Maybe the autogen bridge technology could work.  But, it would still be very, very messy.

There is something very important that needs to be noted here.   This information will probably not be understood by many, except for other scenery developers.

One of the goals of this product is to get the urban areas looking as realistic as possible from the air, without making FSX unflyable due to performance issues.    We spent a lot of time making sure that the object models were absolutely as efficient as they could be, because we are displaying a lot of them at once in the larger urban areas (i.e Anchorage, Fairbanks, etc).    In order to pull this off, the models have to be low-poly and use a lot of shared textures.  

Aces dramatically improved FSX performance with SP2, at the expense of supporting models with LOD in an efficient manner (LOD=models with different levels of detail) .  If you are going to have tens of thousands of models displayed at once in FSX, you have to use single LOD, low-poly models with SP2 (like autogen buildings).   Multiple LOD models eliminate the optimizations that were put into SP2 and make FSX SP2 performance much, much worse (we tried and our product was unflyable).

How does this information effect Ultimate Alaska X ?   Well, you can expect to see lots of appropriate generic buildings put in their real world locations.  And, you can expect to see a large portion of the larger buildings that are roughly the same size and shape as the real world buildings.   But, if you get close up to the buildings, you won't see a lot of detail or extreme texture clarity.   This was all done in the name of performance.  

I will probably post the Ultimate Alaska X users guide this weekend, which might help answer some questions that people with have (especially performance related questions).

Unfortunately, the product will not be released this weekend.  The product is basically finished.  But, there are quite a few administrative tasks left before it can be released.

If you are really interested in getting the product ASAP, I would start checking the forum for announcements starting in the middle of next week ;)

Originally posted by akriesman Originally posted by batt Just curious:  Is the TransAlaska Pipeline (TAPS) and associated pumpstations included? No.  Sorry.     The thought crossed my mind.   But, technically, I could not even imagine how you could pull something like that off (long distance connecting pipes using object models).   Maybe the autogen bridge technology could work.  But, it would still be very, very messy.

 

No worries.  I fully understand the problems of making a round 3d object 800 miles long.  Really; I was just imagining it to be a 2d line representing the ROW similar to a road or railway and polygons w/ some generic tanks/buildings representing the pump stations.  Same idea with the very extensive North Slope facilities at Deadhorse/Prudhoe as well as the terminal/port in Valdez.

Anyway, thanks for all your hard work.  I look forward to purchasing this product.

Thanks Nick.

I am glad that Nick mentioned the new GEX textures.  They look awesome.

The 2nd set of Unalaska shots.

Jeff mentioned something to me, which I have to agree with.   The best part of this product is probably flying between the smaller towns and villages, while sightseeing along the way.

Port of Valdez (Oil)

Thank you very much for the Unalaska screens !!!

Looks wonderful !

And since GEX is compatible with UTX AK, don't know why not buying it !
Thanks a lot.

Originally posted by BaronKen I also hope that this means you'll soon be continuing your work on "New Product X"; after a break of course!

Yes.   The feedback that we get from Ultimate Alaska will help guide our future plans regarding "Product X".   Alaska was built on the same technology in place for "Project X".   However, Alaska has more hand drawn features, because it has less urban area.  And, we could not get any good commercial POI data to use for automated development for Alaska (it doesn't exist).

Wow !!!!!

Nice !
Great work... again !