• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Bear Island v2 - Open Beta (FSX, P3Dv2, P3Dv3)

Rotornut44

Resource contributor
Messages
637
Country
us-florida
I'm excited to announce that Bear Island v2 is now available for download as an Open Beta. Any and all feedback is welcome.

Download Bear Island v2 Official Release!
Download EOLv2 (Required) Official Release!

Installation
Both packages use a installer that will install all the needed files, programs, and directories into FSX, P3Dv2, or P3Dv3. The installer should automatically activate the scenery upon install. Installation order doesn't matter, as long as both packages are installed and activated.


Known Issues Updated 5/29/17
Model LODs will transition quite clearly in the cases of some models. This is intentional as its purpose is to keep polys at an absolute minimum until absolutely necessary. Furthermore, the distance at which a certain LOD appears or disappears may be different between some sim platforms. (As I found between FSX:SE and P3Dv3) An attempt has been made to fix this issue, but it has not been fully sucessful. Revision 2 does contain some LOD tweaks. I will be investigating this issue further, but it seems to be a quirk with FSX:SE itself. (It would be nice if someone with FSX boxed could confirm)

FSX:SE Users! If you experience issues with models not appearing until you get right up on them, make sure you have SmallPartRejectRadius=0 set under [SCENERY] in the fsx.cfg. This only applies to FSX:SE! - Thanks Andreas (addman) for the tip-off!


Beta Notes
With this beta, I'm specifically looking to see how this scenery impacts performance on different users computers. Providing your computer specs, average FPS, and Bear Island config settings is highly appreciated and will help me to optimize things even better in the future.

Remember to play around with disabling different parts of the scenery. Let me know how disabling each feature affects performance.


SODE Feature Notes
SODE is used to control a few different environmentally-dynamic features in the scenery.
  • Windsocks - 4 levels of animation are provided. No wind, Low, Medium, and High. This object will display year-round.
  • The Frog - This frog REALLY loves the rain. You will not be able to find him at any other time. You can find him perched on a rock near the dock during the rainy days of March-October.
  • Ambient Cicadas - These guys are noisy, but leaving them out would leave out a big part of the Florida ambient sounds. They can be heard during the day in May and June. Want them to shut up? Pray for rain.
  • Ambient Crickets and Treefrogs - These can be heard at Dusk and Night, year-round. Rain will silence them.
  • Ambient Birds - Songbirds can be heard at Dawn and during the Day, year-round. Rain will silence them.
  • Rain Puddles - Puddles will only appear when it rains.

The above beta downloads may be updated from time to time, so check back to ensure you are testing on the latest version.

ESD_BearIslandv2_6.jpg

See more images here.
 
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Rotornut44

Resource contributor
Messages
637
Country
us-florida
Hmmm. I get a "banned from this site" message trying to download the open beta :scratchch

That "banned" message is a pain in my rear. It's a false positive made by the page caching software. Have been working with the author to get that fixed on another site for over a month now. Great to see the problem is starting to show on my site now.. :mad:

Anyways, cache is cleared. Give it another try and tell me if the message reappears.
 

euroastar350

Resource contributor
Messages
826
Country
us-delaware
All working now. Much appreciated and looking forward to trying out the new scenery:cool:
 
Messages
41
Country
netherlands
First: Looking great, absolutely.
Second: a set of small adaptions, based upon the two screenshots your shared with us.
Just non-professional remarks, you do much, much better that I can.
Based on the first screenshot: can you lighten up the color of the reed at the background or create some colorvariations in it?
A bit more color variation in the grass texture would be nice to, in my opinion. You could use the same model, with three different kinds of grassgreen, possibly?
Based on the second screen, I wonder, if the color difference between the groundtexture and the grasstexture could be a bit less.
But, I do not know how things look in reallife there, so if it is this way in real, please keep ik that way.

All respect for your work!
Kind regards,
Bram Stikkel
 
Messages
75
Country
us-southcarolina
I love this scenery package! One observation I have made is the autogen trees seem to pop in/out very close in or close range. Is this because of my LOD setting in the sim (FSX-SE), is it something that can/cannot be controlled in the configurator, or is it the autogen pop stuff inherent with FSX? I do have everything set to "on" in the configurator. Thanks for listening!!
 

Rotornut44

Resource contributor
Messages
637
Country
us-florida
I love this scenery package! One observation I have made is the autogen trees seem to pop in/out very close in or close range. Is this because of my LOD setting in the sim (FSX-SE), is it something that can/cannot be controlled in the configurator, or is it the autogen pop stuff inherent with FSX? I do have everything set to "on" in the configurator. Thanks for listening!!

Hi Robert,
I have noticed this in FSX:SE as well. LOD is driven by your screen resolution, but it seems than for some reason, there is a slight difference between FSX and P3D. I think I remember reading somewhere that P3D changed something with it's aspect ratio as compared to FSX, I wonder if this is an influence in any way? I'll look into making some tweaks to the FSX model LODs.

If anyone has any information as to why this issue could be, do let me know!
 
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Rotornut44

Resource contributor
Messages
637
Country
us-florida
First: Looking great, absolutely.
Second: a set of small adaptions, based upon the two screenshots your shared with us.
Just non-professional remarks, you do much, much better that I can.
Based on the first screenshot: can you lighten up the color of the reed at the background or create some colorvariations in it?
A bit more color variation in the grass texture would be nice to, in my opinion. You could use the same model, with three different kinds of grassgreen, possibly?
Based on the second screen, I wonder, if the color difference between the groundtexture and the grasstexture could be a bit less.
But, I do not know how things look in reallife there, so if it is this way in real, please keep ik that way.

All respect for your work!
Kind regards,
Bram Stikkel

I'll see what I can cook up. I can do a bit of color-matching for the runway grass. It may help a little, but since the runway colors vary in a few places, it will probably never be perfect. I'll look into adding some different vegetation to the textures as well. I'm hoping I can make it look decent without adding any more polys to the mix.
 
Messages
41
Country
sweden
With regards to LOD popping problems, make sure you have SmallPartRejectRadius=0 set under [SCENERY] in fsx.cfg. This only applies to FSX:SE. I had the same problem with some Orbx Airports with small details popping in and out at very close distance, this fixed it. Dovetail, for some reason, made this change for FSX:SE most likely to improve performance by having a very small LOD radius.

Cheers!/Andreas
 

Rotornut44

Resource contributor
Messages
637
Country
us-florida
With regards to LOD popping problems, make sure you have SmallPartRejectRadius=0 set under [SCENERY] in fsx.cfg. This only applies to FSX:SE. I had the same problem with some Orbx Airports with small details popping in and out at very close distance, this fixed it. Dovetail, for some reason, made this change for FSX:SE most likely to improve performance by having a very small LOD radius.

Cheers!/Andreas

Thanks for the heads up! I have added this line to my FSX.CFG and it does seem to help with items disappearing too soon, however, the LOD loading issue still seems to be there. I will most likely need to tweak the FSX MDLs to fix this issue.





Beta Revision 1 Released!
Revision 1 is now available in the OP for both Bear Island v2 and Emerald Object Library v2.0. These new Beta versions feature the following changes:


Bear Island v2
  • Added a Scenery Configurator option to correct elevation issues when using default vector scenery.
  • Corrected Crescent Lake WaterClass.
  • Added an empty LOD to the Super Cub model.
  • Vegetation positioning adjustments.
  • Removed some pointless grass models.

EOL v2.0
  • Color-matched runway grass.
  • Made adjustments to multiple Light Maps.
  • Removed an unused vegetation model.
  • Added empty LODs and Light Maps to 1x1 crates and metal drums.



New Scenery Configurator option

This revision comes with a new scenery configurator option that allows for the adjustment of elevations when using either default or addon vector (waterbody) scenery. From the start, this scenery has been fully compatible with FTX Global Vector lake elevations, however, when using default vector scenery, an elevation issue was presented. This new option allows you to choose the appropriate elevation settings for your sim.

Elevations have only been tested with default and FTX Global Vector scenery. It is unclear at the moment how products such as GEX may effect elevations.

BearIslandv2_Beta-Rev1_ControlPanel.JPG



Notice: Config options should reset to default (by the installer) upon updating. New installers may be ran over the old installers.
 
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Rotornut44

Resource contributor
Messages
637
Country
us-florida
Beta Revision 2 Released!
Revision 2 is now available in the OP for Bear Island v2. This new Beta version features the following changes:

  • (Hopefully) Fixed an installation bug where users were prompted to select if a path is a file or directory under certain versions of Windows. (Discovered under Win 8.1)
  • Tweaked some model LODs. This update mainly applies to FSX users, but also includes some slight tweaks for P3D.
  • Removed a boat and some blank pixels from the photo real.

Notice: Config options should reset to default (by the installer) upon updating. New installers may be ran over the old installers.
 
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Messages
75
Country
us-southcarolina
Hello Chris! Looking forward to the update to Bear Island v2 this week. haha...Bear Island is just one in a growing list of very awesome sceneries. Thanks for your hard work and contributions to the community.
 
Messages
75
Country
us-southcarolina
I think I am confused...

"Beta Revision 2 Released!
Revision 2 is now available in the OP for Bear Island v2. This new Beta version features the following changes:"

I do not find this when I click on the link in the OP. The only thing I see is the v1.1.2

Do I just need to wait on the final release of v2 instead of the Beta?

Regards,
Robert
 

Rotornut44

Resource contributor
Messages
637
Country
us-florida
I think I am confused...

"Beta Revision 2 Released!
Revision 2 is now available in the OP for Bear Island v2. This new Beta version features the following changes:"

I do not find this when I click on the link in the OP. The only thing I see is the v1.1.2

Do I just need to wait on the final release of v2 instead of the Beta?

Regards,
Robert

It looks like the OP link got changed on accident yesterday. I have re-linked it to the Bear Island installer.
 
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