Lines
Lines can be used for taxiway center-lines and roads. It is possible to draw taxiways using the line tool, but it is recommended to use polygons instead. Lines can be colored or textured. Preferably use colored lines for taxiway center-lines; enable textures for roads. Night light effects can be enabled for lines: moving dots at night for roads, green dots for taxiway center-lines. If you want full control of the dot's positioning, disable the night feature and draw a dotted line on top.
When enabling texturing, keep in mind how FS applies textures. The texture is scaled down so its width equals line's width. The texture is tiled vertically along every line segment. Sometimes the texture is squeezed vertically which doesn't look good. There is no way to get around this.
When textured, seasonal and night effects can be enabled.
Notes on drawing lines
Don't make lines too long. The term long is related to the width. Main roads can be up to 2000 meters long (6000'), taxiway center-lines shouldn't exceed 200 - 300 meters (600' - 900'). Split long lines into shorter ones. This is very important, especially for center-lines, since extremely long lines may not be drawn when moving to far away from the shape's center.
There are no restrictions on 'corners', turns, or intersecting segments...
Setting line properties
In order to access the settings dialog, make sure only one line is selected. Double-click anywhere on the map to open the dialog. You can also access the settings through the SELECTION\ PROPERTIES... menu item or by left-clicking the line's handle.
Enter a comment in the COMMENT box. Comments are only there to help you identifying shapes. They appear in the SCASM source file. This is useful in case some hand coding is needed.
Enter the line's WIDTH. Lines shouldn't be thinner than 0.25 meters. Realistic values are: 0.3 - 0.5 meters for center-lines, 6 - 64 meters for roads/highways.
Some EFFECTS are available. Choose the ROAD option to see moving dots at night, simulating cars headlights. The dots move in the direction you drew the line. The CENTERLINE option will automatically add green dots at night on top of the line. Use it for Taxiway center-lines. If you want full control of dot positioning, use the dotted line tool instead.
Checking the COLORED option will disable texturing. The line's surface will be filled with a plain color. Set that color by clicking on the PICK COLOR box. A standard RGB dialog will be shown. Here is a tip in case you want the get the color that you have set for another shape. Access that shape's settings and click on its color box. In the RGB color dialog, click the ADD COLOR button on the right. This will copy the shape's color to one of the 16 CUSTOM COLORS on the left. The RGB dialog will 'remember' the added color and make it available whenever you open it again. Set the line's transparency by moving the slider.
To select a texture, click on any of the listed files. A preview will be visible on the left. The textures listed are those found in the folder you can set in the FILE\ PREFERENCES... menu item (Click the DIRECTORIES tab). The default TEXTURE folder is in GroundMaker's directory. These textures are also used for OpenGL rendering (when enabled).
If you want seasonal and night light effects to be applied to your shape, check any of the options on the left. FS will then load another texture depending on the chosen season or time of day. The texture you select in the list is the summer and day texture by default.
You will find more info on textures by reading the TEXTURE topic.
The VISIBILITY settings influence the shape's appearance. The most important option is the visual RANGE. Is the viewer's distance to the shape's center greater than the value set here, the shape will be not drawn. You should pay great attention to those values, since setting too large ranges for all shapes will lead to a bad performance of FS. The bottom line is: the less FS has to draw, the higher frame-rates. Small details cannot be seen from far away anyway, so use short ranges for such. To give you an idea what reasonable values are, check out the list below:
Type of line Visual range (meters) Highway 15,000 - 20,000 Main road 10,000 - 15,000 Road 6,000 - 12,000 Small road 4,000 - 6,000 Taxiway center-line 400 - 600 If you are not confident with the metric system, simply use the CONVERTER to convert miles, feet, ... to meters.
Sometimes it is necessary to hide a shape at certain times of day. Push any of the the three buttons (DAY, NIGHT, DUSK/DAWN) to make the shape visible at the chosen time of day. For example, releasing the DAY button will make the shape invisible at daytime.
There are no LAYER options for lines since FS rejects layered lines. Lines are always drawn on top of polygons. If you want lines to be visible on top of runways, use custom surface runways. The default FS2000 runways do not allow lines to be drawn on top.
Checking the NO LEVEL OF DETAIL option will deactivate LODs for that shape. This will only have any effect when LODs are enabled in the FILE\ PROJECT settings... menu item. LODs are for the advanced user only. Go to the LOD section to learn more. Note that lines wider than 2 meters do not feature LODs.