This is a huge update considering the last one was only a week ago, but I have a lot of new things to show you that are new! Firstly, the Project YVR branding hasn't changed, however, I have renamed the site to ProjectVAN, as my goal for the future of this project is to make more mods around Vancouver, in addition to CYVR and CBQ2. However, these future plans are only plans, and will not take away from Project YVR's development resources until Project YVR is fully released.
So, basically Project YVR and Project BQ2 will now be apart of Project VAN instead of Project BQ2 being apart of Project YVR.
Secondly, I am now using a new system to create taxiways for Project YVR. Before, to get the black outline for the taxiways, I used Aprons behind the painted lines. However, this was very time consuming, and they often looked weird around turns. With the new projected mesh system, I export taxiways and parking spots from Blender. I have done all the parking spots in Blender, and it does seem to be causing some instability in the sim, but I will attempt to resolve it, or seek out a different solution. However, I haven't isolated the issue to the projected mesh, so there could be a different cause for the issue.
Project YVR is also starting off the new year with some new buildings! The Airside Operations building and the Air Canada hangar beside the north runway are in early stages of modelling. I don't expect those models to take long, however, I have only added in simple models so far, and will add more detail once the full terminal model is complete.
With the terminal now being in late stages of exterior modelling, while there are still details missing in certain places in Piers A, B, and C, the majority of the exterior modelling is done, which means texturing can now ramp up. While you'll notice there have been textures for months, most things were not UV unwrapped, resulting in textures being stretched. I have now UV unwrapped some objects around the terminal, however, I finally found the root cause of an issue that I've been having with Blender for the past few days, so not much progress was made.
Essentially, the texture resolution I was using was too high for Blender to handle, especially since the textures are re used in many objects, since this is an international airport. This resulted in many crashes. By dropping the texture resolution from 8K to 1K, while the textures were noticeably lower quality from close up, from the apron and parking spots, this is barely noticeable, and greatly reduces the performance impact of YVR, and will allow me to increase the level of detail and texture variations when I model the interior, which I'm hoping to do to a high degree of accuracy. This might explain why the SDK was crashing in Flight Simulator, and when I removed some objects, it would become stable again, so it's possible that the projected meshes I mentioned earlier were fine, but the textures in the terminal model were causing the issues.
My break ends next week, so this blog will become quieter again, but I'll try and keep updating every month (on the 18th like the last few updates). And, with the model entering later stages of development, once the SDK update is released that allows saving of airports with unconnected parking spots, I'll be able to work on adding taxiway points and then I can start talking about release!
Please enjoy these last few screenshots below, and see you on January 18th!
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