Howto:Starting Eye Candy Development

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Status

Last updated in 08/2012 All based on this discussion: http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=17349&p=164971#p164971

FlightGear compared to other simulators?

Compared to the simulators that you mentioned, the visuals probably won't be too impressive - especially not for low-altitude VFR "bush" flying during daylight conditions.

FlightGear can look pretty compelling already (see the media/screenshots forum), especially weather modeling has really caught up significantly during the last 2 years. However, vegetation modeling in particular is still fairly basic at the moment - it's mostly about "random trees" at the moment and flat textures otherwise.

Procedural Texturing

As of 09/2012, Thorsten is working on procedural texturing: http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=16884&hilit=procedural#p161441

Some more screenshots are to be found in 07/2012 newsletter (procedural texturing section): http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_Newsletter_July_2012

Cities: Random Buildings

Autogen-based "city" modeling has just started a couple of months ago with the new "Random Buildings" system: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Random_Buildings

Airports

One of the most developed airports is LOWI (Innsbruck/Austria): http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8438&p=164854#p164800

Weather Modeling

Screenshots showing the latest weather developments can be seen here: http://www.flightgear.org/category/tours/

Overall, I'd suggest to take a look at the media forum and see for yourself: http://forum.flightgear.org/viewforum.php?f=19

Vegetation

However, FlightGear's support for shaders is steadily improving, and it's definitely possible to develop such features - even without touching the C++ code.

In other words, many of the things that would be needed are already possible, but simply not yet done currently, it's just a matter of finding someone sufficiently interested in developing these features. The infrastructure and features are all there, it's just that nobody has integrated them yet or specifically focused on VFR scenery and vegetation modeling in particular.

If you know how to edit textures and XML files, many of these things can already be customized, it should also be possible to introduce additional "vegetation types", beyond just trees. Obviously, you'll need a fairly powerful computer to enjoy all this eye candy

Photo-realistic Scenery

Here's a video showing FlightGear/Rembrandt with shadows and photo-realistic scenery by using aerial imagery, it also demonstrates some FDM features, such as terrain interaction (that's the reason for the flying style):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DILt1dkxMok

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