[RELEASE] Forwood Farm | Emerald Scenery Design & Got Friends

Rotornut44 · December 7, 2022, 5:40pm

Welcome to Forwood Farm!
Forwood Farm (EGH2) is a quiet farm airstrip in the countryside of East Retford in the UK. The airstrip is a popular Caravanner location with miles of trails to explore and is also home to towplanes.uk which operates the PZL Wilga 35A G-BUNC offering towing services from banners to gliders around the UK.

This scenery has been created in partnership with Got Friends who traveled to Forwood Farm to record sounds from G-BUNC for their Wilga addon. Mykrode and 270inc played a huge role in the modeling and texturing of assets for this project.

Forwood Farm has been brought to life in incredible detail, using nearly all custom libraries which have been directly integrated into the package, requiring no dependencies. This is a rarity of Emerald Scenery Design addons and will not become the norm, but due to the collaborative nature of this package, and the fact that it has also been bundled with the Got Friends Wilga, it needed to be stand-alone!

Features

30cm/px custom ground textures.
Corrected and color-matched to the surrounding terrain.
1m/px hand-corrected Digital Elevation Model.
Nearly 100 custom objects and buildings.
Up to 4k resolution PBR textures.
Custom vegetation.
Including 3D Trees, 3D garden shrubs, vines, flowers & groundcover.
Animated Hangar door.
Multiplayer triggerable!
Includes the nearby Solar Field.
Fully compatible with Mamudesign’s freeware Powerlines and Solar Farms addon (PC Only)!

Dynamic Features

Windsocks – Do whatever it is that windsocks do when you are not looking.
Rain Puddles – Puddles are only visible while it is raining or when rain is reported in the area.
UK-native Butterflies – Butterflies are only visible during their most common times of year (See documentation for more info).
Animated Horses – Horses are visible and audible until the ambient temperature reaches 0C / 32F.
Chimney Smoke VFX – Chimney smoke is only visible once temperatures fall to 10C / 50F or less.
WWISE Sounds! – Horses: see above! Bees can be heard buzzing around the bee hives until temperatures reach 13C / 55F or below.

Still not convinced? Check out the trailer and get the full cinematic experience, or watch the entire hour long walk-through!

See one of our product pages for more screenshots!

Where can you purchase Forwood Farm?
Forwood Farm comes included with the Got Friends Wilga and is also available as a stand-alone product for those not interested in the Wilga!

Check out the Got Friends Wilga here:

The stand-alone scenery is currently available at the following locations for $9.99 USD:

Forwood Farm will be coming to Marketplace in the future. No other vendors are currently planned!

Product Support
Please do not send PMs, create, or comment on threads for support! Emerald Scenery Design only offers support through our official channels: Email & Discord!

Contact Us
Join the Discord!

Note: Proof of purchase is required for payware support!

Thank you for your interest in Forwood Farm!

Rotornut44 · December 7, 2022, 5:45pm

A note on Marketplace release:

Forwood Farm was submitted to Marketplace just over a week ago. It has not yet entered testing and I suspect that it may not for another week or so. It is also scheduled to come out at the same time as the Wilga.

This is a friendly reminder that we as developers do not know when our product is going to launch on Marketplace until just a few days prior. Microsoft (Asobo does not handle Marketplace) is also short-staffed because of the holidays and is likely working through a large backlog due to SU11.

Please be patient, but it could be late December or early January (speculation) before Forwood Farm and the Wilga become available on Marketplace!

Rotornut44 · December 8, 2022, 5:07pm

Notice: Website Downtime

This is not the post I wanted to make, but an update that needs to be put out.

I had to pull the ESD website offline and have removed the link from the post above. Something happened to corrupt the site’s database, and it’s unfortunately looking like it cant be repaired. Luckily all customer information is still intact, so I’ve made the decision to shut it down before any more damage is done.

I am working to possibly get things restored, but worst-case, it may be a week or so if I have to rebuild everything from scratch.

The Emerald Scenery Design website is pretty big with nearly 8 years worth of information and articles packed into it, so maybe this is a sign that it’s time for a new build, new storefront, and some simplification.

Not the best timing at all, but it’s the hand we were dealt. Now it’s time to play it out.

Rotornut44 · December 16, 2022, 5:26am

Thank you all for your patience while I cleaned up the mess left behind from the old website and built our brand new site over the last week. Not the best launch week, but at least we got a new website out of it.

Forwood Farm is now available directly from our site again!

Rotornut44 · January 12, 2023, 8:43pm

Forwood Farm | v1.0.1 Update

Forwood Farm has been updated to v1.0.1 and is available to download now from our store and flightsim.to! A patch is also available for users of the Got Friends Wilga (requires v1.0.2), which will overwrite the necessary files to bring the included Forwood Farm scenery up-to-date. Look for the green download button in the description!

To download the update on ESD, log into your account and visit:

v1.0.1 Changelog

Added LODs to Hangar (Withheld before due to an odd script conflict).
Adjusted audio levels and falloff distances for Horses and Bees.
Fixed hangar door closing for some users while spawned in the hangar.
Emissives will now produce light bloom when bloom is enabled in settings.
Removed collisions from small campers, as they do not work as a SimObject.
Reworked hedges to be much higher detail and darker in color.
Tweaked placement of haybales, including the addition of a few more rows.

Marketplace Update
Microsoft seems to still be sifting through their backlog from December. Forwood Farm has not entered testing yet, but v1.0.1 has been pushed and will be available when Forwood is released on Marketplace!

Rotornut44 · February 3, 2023, 6:02pm

Forwood Farm | v1.0.2 Update

v1.0.2 for Forwood Farm is now available to download from our website. The update has also been submitted to flightsim.to, which should be approved soon, as well as to Marketplace while will likely take a week or two to arrive. The update has also been sent to Got Friends who have published an update for the Wilga on their website. The update for the Wilga has also been pushed to marketplace and should be available in the next week or two as well.

To download the update on ESD, log into your account and visit:

v1.0.2 Changelog

Fixed Butterflies flickering.
Fixed Main House and Garage lights disappearing at a distance.
Fixed missing vertex colors on LOD3 of the Main House and Garage.
Fixed some apron texture artifacts near the open barn.
Horses now use fallbacks to default textures vs. having duplicates included.
Chimney Smoke VFX: Smoke will now fade out and no longer pop.
Improved Main House textures: Fixed wrong front door area Soffit texture.
Reworked Solar Panels using Vector Placement.

Marketplace Update
Forwood Farm and the Got Friends Wilga (Which includes Forwood Farm) in now available on marketplace!

Rotornut44 · May 11, 2023, 11:02pm

Forwood Farm | v1.0.3 Update
I forgot to post this one back in February

This is a bit of a housekeeping update - addressing, as well as mitigating a few potential issues. v1.0.3 is now available from our website and has been submitted to flightsim.to and Marketplace. Expect the update today on .to and Marketplace likely next week.

Changelog

Changed package Title from EGH2 Forwood Farm Airport to EGH2 Forwood Farm.
Fixed Bathroom light emissives not turning off during the day.
Moved Solar Panel vector placement parent from EGXM (Closed) to EGH2.
Reduced Object Test Radius for EGH2 & EGXM (Closed).

To download the update on ESD, log into your account and visit:

Rotornut44 · May 11, 2023, 11:08pm

Forwood Farm | v1.1.0 Update

This is a massive update focused on aggressive optimization for Xbox. Nearly every model has been touched with fixes for shading, LODs (if missing), & memory optimization.

Vendors
flightsim.to - Released.
Marketplace - Released.
Got Friends (Wilga) - Submitted.

Changelog

Some files have changed. Please remove the old package to ensure there are no leftovers!

Added collisions to multiple clutter models.
Added LODs to (those missing them) and aggressively optimized all Forwood models to reduce texture memory.
Added UTF-8 encoding to all XML headers to ensure proper encoding for Xbox.
Fixed backface highlighting on Chain Fences.
Fixed shading for multiple models.
Improved texturing for: Bathroom & Portable Building.
Improvements to Butterflies: Moved animation code into an XML Include (reduces duplicate code between variations).
Improvements to Chain Fences: Fixed shading & backface highlighting, removed unnecessary materials and UVs across LODs.
Improvements to Left/Right Fence Dividers: Fixed shading & backface highlighting, improved baking & exported textures as 16-bit (Affects multiple Forwood props).
Improvements to Main House: Fixed shading, fixed some misaligned mesh parts, cleaned up some bad geometry.
Improvements to Services.xml code.
Improvements to Windsocks: Fixed shading, fixed a metal bar that was clipping through the sock, & removed an unnecessary material.
Removed DV20 from hangar and pushed VL3 into the back corner to make room for larger low wing aircraft in the parking spawn.
Removed texture FLAGS to reduce memory utilization on PC/Xbox (Doesn’t improve quality enough to warrant the extra texture memory).
Reworked lighting to reduce the amount of lights rendered in the scene (No visual impact).
Tweaked positioning of a few clutter models and fixed some terrain clipping.

To download the update on ESD, log into your account and visit:

Rotornut44 · August 19, 2023, 9:54pm

Forwood Farm | v1.2.0 Update

This is another massive update focused on more aggressive optimization for Xbox. Every model has been touched on once again to improve distance popping on Xbox, as well as to further reduce the texture memory footprint!

Overall, this update reduces texture memory by another 212 MB in the hangar and 343 MB at the runway spawn! You can view the lengthy update writeup on the Emerald Scenery Design Discord. For those not on Discord, you can also visit our news embed where you will find the post under the #dev-updates channel on the left.

Vendors
flightsim.to - Released.
Marketplace - Released.
Got Friends (Wilga) - Released.

Changelog

Some files have changed. Please remove the old package to ensure there are no leftovers!

Corrected scale of Blue Bucket.
Fixed AO banding in Hangar.
Fixed backface highlighting on Butterflies.
Fixed issue where hangar door may be stuck in the ground or floating under certain conditions.
Fixed shading on LOD3 of the Potted Plant.
Fixed Z-sorting issue for Chimney Smoke VFX.
Improved all airport buildings: Reworked and added new LODs to reduce distance popping on Xbox and overall memory footprint.
Improved Brick Pile: Added additional LODs, fixed shading, fixed missing vertex colors on last LOD.
Improved Campers: Added additional LODs to reduce distance popping, reworked window glass and emissive materials/textures.
Improved multiple clutter models: Added and improved some LODs, further memory optimization, fixed missing material for vertex colors, fixed some shading issues, reduced distance popping on Xbox.
Improved Windsock: Added & optimized LODs.
Renamed models as some were being mistaken for Emerald Object Library versions.
WWISE audio now properly insulates when sitting in the cockpit.

To download the update on ESD, log into your account and visit:

Rotornut44 · February 20, 2024, 5:56pm

Forwood Farm | v1.2.1 Update

Just a few days late posting this here, but Forwood was updated last Friday:

This is a small housekeeping update merging in some updated assets from Emerald Object Library. It is available to download now from your ESD account, flightsim.to, and with the latest GotFriends Wilga update.

Vendors
flightsim.to - Released.
Marketplace - Awaiting testing.
Got Friends (Wilga) - Released.

Changelog

Some files have changed. Please remove the old package to ensure there are no leftovers!

Improvements to FlowerPot_Plant: Reworked LODs, fixed collision scale, fixed shading on last LOD.
Improvements to Puddles: Reduced texture resolution (no visual difference, but lower texture memory), rebuilt materials and exported with the latest exporter.
Improvements to Windsocks: Reworked LODs, rebuilt materials, optimized animation, improved behavior code.
Improvements to Wwise SFX: Streamlined Internal/External view SFX, which are now defined in Wwise instead of XML.

To download the update on ESD, log into your account and visit: