nothing new so far, but it no longer cuts out the cockpit in this angle.

return of the decal stuff

this is in fact u.s. ww2 "3rd pursuit squadron", a very nice one i think.

These look great Gernot! 🙂

thanks, i do my worst 😉

the decals (some of) i discovered while i was looking for a shark mouth (jaws).

recently i'm working on the buildings because i found them somewhat odd. it won't help to gain fps (that's why i simplyfied them before) but they look quite good now.

i'm aware skyscrapers won't look reasonable on a hostile planet, but i can't seperate them yet thus i create both sort of buildings but mostly common for outdoor worlds.
i know i said once "i don't like skyscrapers", but well the highrise buildings look very big city like.

again i decided to put them on large basements, kinda mix of "city tiles" and the common way.
quarters will be to large or else i have to lift them 50m above the ground so they won't be covered by a possible hillside. i think a tilesize of ~100m is not bad and i only have to lift them 15m above the ground to display them right in most cases (on very steep mountainsides they will still be covered by half). however, maybe i still arrange them in tiles if the collision mesh is sized properly in ralation to the basement they will be almost seamless (maybe you remember the experimental city tiles i made once).

it's not the best solution to put them on such large sockets but somehow i have to solve resp. to workaround the problem of swallowed buildings.

i miss also the possibilty to tag them, it really leaks of this (i wonder why it has been removed at all)
in the old releases (tomm's) you had the possibility to tag them as "city starport" or "city power", this was good to tag i.e. industry as "city power" though they won't be as many as if all buildings have the same percentual use. i have only one factory but it's unfortunately the most "common" building now.
the liquids tanks of course would look best close to the starport likewise i planned them years ago.
(btw, "tank" - i learned that this was a secret name for the "tanks" ;), plus that in WWI churchill made them to "landships" because the army disliked the clumsy tanks thus he made a marine vessel under command of the navy out of them - "landship" ts).

a nuclear power plant is in work, i worry already about how often it will appear, on the other hand a large building like the arcology won't appear often neither in one city (ecxept if city size is set at "very very high") or in general many cities won't show such large buildings at all. the npp will be about 200meter sidelength plus basement thus it will be around 300m finally and such large buildings won't appear often.

maximum density

medium density

they still look best on a flat terrain with or without the "sockets".

it won't have an impact to framerate how many different bld's i use but of course how detailed they are. some are still, quite simple (in general a textured cube) other are very complex like the "twin tower" tile with the additional small city quarter and "art building" on it, this is a real framerate killer and yes ok "useless" for a city, but well it's great stuff to look at.

an already quite large tile and mnot often to see.

closeup

i removed all dynamic parts (except for a couple of lights) and gained some fps (a few).

mainly the "ventilator" (which was always on "factory1") i removed from all buildings, it's really not good to have multiple times a dynamic part it will much slow down the game.

therefore i added many more details to the buildings, it won't harm as much as the dynamic parts.

LOD1 is a plain darkgrey building ( a simple cube in general) and visible in large distance.
LOD2 is somewhat more detailed and textured
LOD3 & LOD4 is most detailed

LOD1 which is also the collision mesh is very simple and displays only the main building which means you could fly through most of the small accompaining buildings.

of course the city still steals a lot of fps but it's quite better without any dynamic model as if i use only one (it will be repetive used).

i'm aware that it looks a little weird with the pyramidal basements but if i don't use something like that the buildings will either stand in the air or are sunk in if they are placed on a hillside.

still some buildings are sometimes inside the terrain even if i lifted them 15m above the ground.
it could be enhanced a little if i use a collision mesh for the "floortile" but then the buildings will stand far from each. it looks like there is a table for the sizes how much space they will use because from on a certain limit you will need much more space even if the collision mesh is only a little larger until you reached again the limit to the next "step" (size).

The pictures aren't showing. Picload says the images were deleted.

i noticed that to strangewiasely my whole picload account was empty (except for the folder structure).

never mind (i do mind)

a preview:

needs only a few tweaks and a proper specularity map.

Pioneer Sim Cit... erm Space Sim

That's a fine looking city!

Thats also a fine looking Sidewinder! 😀

decide which is better 😉

obviousely visually the sgm model looks a little bit better and has a couple of details more.

i didn't hink anyone will use it.
The following model is the starting point for the new Sidewinder model a bit uncommon to get create a model but i liked to mget this model for a own FE2 mod for phoenix which should also contain only scripted geometry (or both) that's why i started it as LMR script.

the model:
Sidewinder for Phoenix

The link to download the SGM version for the recent Pioneer release(s) awaits moderation.
(Oh no not these again)

I think the SGM looks great Gernot and I am having lots of fun in it! 😀

a classic