Yes, it was Texel. And I do think the result is pretty good; the hard part (and I'm not too happy with) is the color/contrast balance. The hard work is in getting the scale and resolution correct. Once that's done, it looks pretty good in the sim but it takes a long time to load; in rendering, the VTP textures get the lowest priority, therefore it remains blurry for a long time on approach and if the sim is busy doing more important stuff (aircraft and effects), it really is just a pixel soup when the area covered is so large. You certainly wouldn't want to cover every visible pixel with VTP textures.... not practical even if it is technically possible.Sander,
Thanks for the explanation, makes more sense now. It's remembering how the scenery is built up of several layers, and just what you are modifiying to achieve the results. I like the fact that the 'ones' and the 'zeros' are doing most of the work for you...
I remember you doing the above, wasn't it Texel?, potentially good but it's always the resolution that lets texture down in CFS2.
...
Cheers
Shessi
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The Staff of SOH
Victory! The CFS2 world is ours.
- Thread starter Sander
- Start date
kelticheart
Charter Member
My personal opinion
Well, the improvements, compared to what we are used to, are already so great that I do not think there will be many unhappy users when all of the above will be released!
Anyway...
Hear! Hear!
Nothing new on the Western Front, the same ole'......
Cheers!
KH :ernae:
Well, the improvements, compared to what we are used to, are already so great that I do not think there will be many unhappy users when all of the above will be released!
Anyway...
Sander said:
Hear! Hear!
Sander said:
Nothing new on the Western Front, the same ole'......
Cheers!
KH :ernae:
Fine.
This is the last week I can spend on programming for the foreseeable future.
Therefore, I now have to wrap up on functionality and focus on testing/bug fixing.
I'm ironing out a few minor things now, and will ship the final preview as Release Candidate tomorrow to the test team.
That should give me a few days to polish up and get the final release out the door.
Stuff to do:
-Change layer ordering to CFS2 style
-Prevent roads/rails to run over water
-Implement extended VTP data area
-Test stand-alone build environment and MAKE scripts
-Import custom landclass.raw with SBX
-Various minor bug fixes
Some of the features that unfortunately didn't make it for this version, but will remain on the to-do list:
-Utility lines (electricity pylons)
-Bridges/railway crossings (with corrected crossing angles)
-LOD8 Mesh with stream/road/rail correction
-Land Class editor (I have not found a way to read SBuilder's land class function)
Another thought: it would be cool if I could pre-release a demo region. Somewhere with nice ocean shore, islands, lakes, mountains and cities... any ideas? Somewhere in the USA perhaps? Or Scotland? Norway? It would be like a 20/25 MB download, and include a complete texture set. And we would need a nice military WWII airfield there obviously, or a mission with a carrier.
:salute:
Therefore, I now have to wrap up on functionality and focus on testing/bug fixing.
I'm ironing out a few minor things now, and will ship the final preview as Release Candidate tomorrow to the test team.
That should give me a few days to polish up and get the final release out the door.
Stuff to do:
-Change layer ordering to CFS2 style
-Prevent roads/rails to run over water
-Implement extended VTP data area
-Test stand-alone build environment and MAKE scripts
-Import custom landclass.raw with SBX
-Various minor bug fixes
Some of the features that unfortunately didn't make it for this version, but will remain on the to-do list:
-Utility lines (electricity pylons)
-Bridges/railway crossings (with corrected crossing angles)
-LOD8 Mesh with stream/road/rail correction
-Land Class editor (I have not found a way to read SBuilder's land class function)
Another thought: it would be cool if I could pre-release a demo region. Somewhere with nice ocean shore, islands, lakes, mountains and cities... any ideas? Somewhere in the USA perhaps? Or Scotland? Norway? It would be like a 20/25 MB download, and include a complete texture set. And we would need a nice military WWII airfield there obviously, or a mission with a carrier.
:salute:
Sander,
With all this 'construction' going on, would it be possible to programme/automate the population of the CFS2 world with trees and buildings, as in CFS3/FS9/FSX? Use the info that determines what is displayed on certain tiles to put trees and buldings etc?
They would of course have to be of an extremely low poly level, muti-LOD, with low res texs, so would not have too much FR hit.
Shessi
With all this 'construction' going on, would it be possible to programme/automate the population of the CFS2 world with trees and buildings, as in CFS3/FS9/FSX? Use the info that determines what is displayed on certain tiles to put trees and buldings etc?
They would of course have to be of an extremely low poly level, muti-LOD, with low res texs, so would not have too much FR hit.
Shessi
Test team: sorry I missed my (self-imposed) deadline today; family obligations....
Hi Shessi,
There is one obstacle: we know which Land Class type is placed on each LOD13 tile, but not exactly which texture (the fields/city types that consist of 5 or 7 textures). It can't be a very complex algorithm, but we need to know, in order to have perfectly aligned objects. If we just placed them at random, the visual result would not be worth the effort, IMO. Once somebody reverse engineers that algorithm, we could go a long way....
Then, we could make an equivalent of AGN files (could be as SCASM API's, or tables of object/heading/location).
To populate the whole world, might be a bit too much: In my experiments, I found that you need AT LEAST 20 objects on each LOD13 tile. There are 65536 LOD13 tiles in an LOD5 tile. There are about 1164 populated LOD5's in the FS world. Given that a rough estimate of about 80% of these consist of land, that would be 1.220.523.840 objects.... At minimum each object would consist of: 16 byte GUID + 2x4 byte Coordinate x,y, 4 byte altitude, 2 byte(?) heading, 2 byte(?) scale = 16 bytes. But I suspect it will probably be more. In best case:
19,528,381,440 bytes = 19070685 KB = 18623 MB = 18 GB! So, for each object added to an each LOD13 tile, it's almost an extra GB of disk space (if the whole world is covered)
When I think of it, if 1 object with multiple buildings/trees is made for each texture variation, it could be a lot smaller. Edit: no that wouldn't work because be need to be able to exclude single buildings/trees where there are roads/rivers/rails/water...
Either way, the impact on the FPS would be considerable. The trick for that is to keep the amount of different objects as low as possible; it's much easier for the graphics engine to display 100 instances of 1 single object than to display 25 different objects only once.
Don't even think of putting that all in the GSL.... Maybe with some clever SCASM programming we could get some collision detection working, but that's as far as it could possibly go.
But it would be FUN and COOL for sure!
Hi Shessi,
There is one obstacle: we know which Land Class type is placed on each LOD13 tile, but not exactly which texture (the fields/city types that consist of 5 or 7 textures). It can't be a very complex algorithm, but we need to know, in order to have perfectly aligned objects. If we just placed them at random, the visual result would not be worth the effort, IMO. Once somebody reverse engineers that algorithm, we could go a long way....
Then, we could make an equivalent of AGN files (could be as SCASM API's, or tables of object/heading/location).
To populate the whole world, might be a bit too much: In my experiments, I found that you need AT LEAST 20 objects on each LOD13 tile. There are 65536 LOD13 tiles in an LOD5 tile. There are about 1164 populated LOD5's in the FS world. Given that a rough estimate of about 80% of these consist of land, that would be 1.220.523.840 objects.... At minimum each object would consist of: 16 byte GUID + 2x4 byte Coordinate x,y, 4 byte altitude, 2 byte(?) heading, 2 byte(?) scale = 16 bytes. But I suspect it will probably be more. In best case:
19,528,381,440 bytes = 19070685 KB = 18623 MB = 18 GB! So, for each object added to an each LOD13 tile, it's almost an extra GB of disk space (if the whole world is covered)
When I think of it, if 1 object with multiple buildings/trees is made for each texture variation, it could be a lot smaller. Edit: no that wouldn't work because be need to be able to exclude single buildings/trees where there are roads/rivers/rails/water...
Either way, the impact on the FPS would be considerable. The trick for that is to keep the amount of different objects as low as possible; it's much easier for the graphics engine to display 100 instances of 1 single object than to display 25 different objects only once.
Don't even think of putting that all in the GSL.... Maybe with some clever SCASM programming we could get some collision detection working, but that's as far as it could possibly go.
But it would be FUN and COOL for sure!
I'm glad you worked that one out! LOL...18Gb
In fact it would be more, as it would have to include texs and any LODs etc.
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of when you say one object, not many. What I thought of was having large areas of trees and/or buildings, but made as one object...a large modular process for the world. The viewing distance of the trees/buildings would be very close, so the sim wouldn't have to draw them into the distance.
I played with the API's and vis settings when I did my Kammhuber line, just placing large plates of multiple searchlights, covering from Denmark to mid-France, had no hit on FR's at all. Mind you, they were only a couple of polys each, compared to what trees and buildings would take to build, and the millions of them there are!
That's interesting about which texture is displayed. That surprises me, I thought it was an exact science, knowing which tex goes on which part of the tile, but obviously not! I suppose that's why anyone re-texturing the CFS2 world has to be more general in what they do.
C'mon M$ give us the code!!
Cheers Shessi
In fact it would be more, as it would have to include texs and any LODs etc.
Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of when you say one object, not many. What I thought of was having large areas of trees and/or buildings, but made as one object...a large modular process for the world. The viewing distance of the trees/buildings would be very close, so the sim wouldn't have to draw them into the distance.
I played with the API's and vis settings when I did my Kammhuber line, just placing large plates of multiple searchlights, covering from Denmark to mid-France, had no hit on FR's at all. Mind you, they were only a couple of polys each, compared to what trees and buildings would take to build, and the millions of them there are!
That's interesting about which texture is displayed. That surprises me, I thought it was an exact science, knowing which tex goes on which part of the tile, but obviously not! I suppose that's why anyone re-texturing the CFS2 world has to be more general in what they do.
C'mon M$ give us the code!!
Cheers Shessi
I'm glad you worked that one out! LOL...18Gb
In fact it would be more, as it would have to include texs and any LODs etc.
No, you'd be using Objects (same as GSL Objects, but placed in the Procedural Scenery layer instead - the dp is not used in that case), so the textures would be reused for each instance of it's parent object.
Reply...
Kevin,
I'm dreading that moment. But thank you for the compliments!
P.S. - Has anyone given any thought about Ettico's Eurotargets on the Rhine and Hamburg, for example?
It's looking good Andrew.
The question is will Sander's new accurate coastlines either drown or leave your scenery high and dry. Your rendition of Narvik is totally waterlogged with his new Norway scenery. I suppose it all depends on how soon he releases his new package.
Kevin,
I'm dreading that moment. But thank you for the compliments!
P.S. - Has anyone given any thought about Ettico's Eurotargets on the Rhine and Hamburg, for example?
Please don't dread; such a negative vibe.
Before I release that stuff we need to decide which add-ons to make the packages compatible with. I'm willing to invest time on each, and if there are more developers helping out with it, but only if the add-on can be fully integrated with the new cfs2 world (=packaged & distributed together). For instance, I'm already reworking some of the parts of the Netherlands from the original beta package.
The bulk of the work I've done so far just involved getting the software and World source files together, now comes a period of editing details in SBuilder. Since it's taken 3 months for the first stage, and considering how much got done, I think it would be realistic to set a 3 month time frame on releasing the World Scenery.
A few years ago I made personal inquiries with most scenery developers if it's OK to use their stuff and received permission for everything that was out at the time.
Before I release that stuff we need to decide which add-ons to make the packages compatible with. I'm willing to invest time on each, and if there are more developers helping out with it, but only if the add-on can be fully integrated with the new cfs2 world (=packaged & distributed together). For instance, I'm already reworking some of the parts of the Netherlands from the original beta package.
The bulk of the work I've done so far just involved getting the software and World source files together, now comes a period of editing details in SBuilder. Since it's taken 3 months for the first stage, and considering how much got done, I think it would be realistic to set a 3 month time frame on releasing the World Scenery.
A few years ago I made personal inquiries with most scenery developers if it's OK to use their stuff and received permission for everything that was out at the time.
Reply...
Sander,
I'm not angry or boohoo-ing your efforts, it's just that I'm getting that sinking feeling one gets when they realize they've built their house upon the sand. All the GSL ports I've done in Europe are based on Eurw, and if that changes, I'm in for heaps upon heaps of scenery redos and mission rewrites, something I'm dreading after finally finishing more than 650 missions for that area of CFS2 and feeling like I've finally put it to rest.
That doesn't even take into account Achim's airfields and Ettico's EuroTargets. I heard though the grapevine that my Narvik is waterlogged in the new Norway, for example.
But progress is progress, and I will do what is needed, when the time comes.
Sander,
I'm not angry or boohoo-ing your efforts, it's just that I'm getting that sinking feeling one gets when they realize they've built their house upon the sand. All the GSL ports I've done in Europe are based on Eurw, and if that changes, I'm in for heaps upon heaps of scenery redos and mission rewrites, something I'm dreading after finally finishing more than 650 missions for that area of CFS2 and feeling like I've finally put it to rest.
That doesn't even take into account Achim's airfields and Ettico's EuroTargets. I heard though the grapevine that my Narvik is waterlogged in the new Norway, for example.
But progress is progress, and I will do what is needed, when the time comes.
But what you don't seem to realize is that it now only takes a few minutes to make corrections to the terrain in the SBuilder source files, rather than the painful process of re-aligning with mission builder and FSSC. Granted, given the sheer amount of add-ons to consider, it'll still be a bit of a chore, but an easy one.
I haven't taken the time to download and install all the stuff created during my hiatus. I could follow your Europe installation guide, but we'd also need to do Pacific (Xavier/Maskrider/...). The cfs2autocoast code is almost done now, I'm going to start "dressing up" cfs2 again with everything I can find.
Please let go of the sinking feeling; I need all the enthusiasm, help and support possible to pull this off.
Robert John
Charter Member
Hi Rami,
Don't worry about the new mesh that sander is doing it could be used as a separate entity, we could name it something like CFS4 that is backward compatible with cfs2 with adjustments, the new mesh may encourage new developers, is cfs2 coming near the end of its life or is this a new beginning.
Robert John
Don't worry about the new mesh that sander is doing it could be used as a separate entity, we could name it something like CFS4 that is backward compatible with cfs2 with adjustments, the new mesh may encourage new developers, is cfs2 coming near the end of its life or is this a new beginning.
Robert John
Reply...
Sander,
You said what I wanted to hear. If you can do it with minimal or no damage, and/or make corrections with minimal effort on your part, (if I have to fix something here and there, it's no biggie) I'll back you 110% and jump in with both feet.
One other thing I forgot, because it involves mesh: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links_search.php?action=show&userid=39530&sort=d
Sander,
You said what I wanted to hear. If you can do it with minimal or no damage, and/or make corrections with minimal effort on your part, (if I have to fix something here and there, it's no biggie) I'll back you 110% and jump in with both feet.
One other thing I forgot, because it involves mesh: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links_search.php?action=show&userid=39530&sort=d
Thanks for backing me up, but I'm NOT doing Mesh (in FS terminology, Mesh refers to the Altitude mesh). I'm doing LWM, VTP and Land Class. The Mesh we'll (continue to) use is Rhumbaflappy's SRTM conversion. The fact that the Mesh stays the same, also helps reduce the problems with existing scenery.