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I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaack!

S

Sander

Charter Member
More coastlines and roads, anyone?

Hello my friends,

After a bit of a break, I came across the source files for cfs2autocoast, and felt the urge to complete the &#&%#%^&%%^ VTP line generation algorithms that I just couldn't get my head around and got stuck on. (To the point where it was affecting my Real Life)

I'm now a few weeks back on track, my geometry and programming skills improved, and the VTP1 textured poly/polyline code is now working more or less; a few minor bug fixes to go. Then I''ll add a few more "icing on the cake" features.

I'll release cfs2autocoast then as RTM product for whoever is interested, no more of that "beta" baloney.

What can it do? Throw any set of coordinate-lines at it, and it will poop out (a set of) BGL's. Import files can be Sbuilder SBX, Ground2k project or Surfer BLN at this time, but that can be easily extended.

Also a "landclass gadget" that can capture LOD3 size chunks of existing landclass BGL's by capturing the screen shot of TMFviewer, and adapt it to CFS2 style.

Why am I announcing it now? Well, I'm curious to see if anyone is still interested at all, 13 years after CFS2 release... maybe even someone who can help with testing and/or content creation...

Either way, I'm soooo relieved I reached this stage after all. I hate abandoning projects, especially at such a late stage, but nothing is more important than HEALTH!
 
Hurrah!

Welcome back Sander, I'm pleased you are feeling much better.

Although there are only a few die hards making scenery, mainly to fit Rhumbas new world mesh, we slog on.


I'm very keen on this - having a tool to speed up scenery creation may not just make things quicker & easier, it may act as a catalyst to get new people involved. :sheep:

:costum:

I think the clunkiness of G2K puts a lot of newbies off. Hand-drawing takes time & requires much patience - and there is so much of the world left untouched.
 
That's reassuring to hear!
Ground2k can go out the window pretty much; where Ground2k took at least 2 hours to compile a LOD3 square (such as in my old scenery files) with a 20% chance of compilation failing :) , cfs2autocoast does it in about 10 seconds! And you can import either fs9 converted files or fresh GIS real-world data sets.

Note: you can still create ground2k project, and import/compile them in cfs2autocoast if you so wish. If you want to hand-draw stuff, I think SBuilder is a more user-friendly option though.
 
Welcome home Sander!

Your Europe West package along with Rhumba's mesh have become necessary add-ons for CFS2.

UncleTgt, Jean Bomber and Tobob have been doing a magnificent job in your absence. Now that you're back with your cfs2autocoast the sky is the limit!

I would certainly be interested in trying my hand with your new scenery utility.

Cheers,
Kevin
 
Maskrider was already using the Sbuilder/CFS2autocoast route with some success (see his new Solomons thread for some WIP shots).
I'm afraid I missed the boat with autocoast first time round, so stuck to using G2K & hand-drawing:banghead:, with "mixed" results.

Anything that speeds up coastline generation can only help get those creative juices flowing ...

Also, look in the Landscapers forum & pick up a copy of Rhumbaflappy's LOD 8 map tool - very useful for generating mapping backgrounds for projects.
 
I sympathize with any developer that stuck it out with G2K.... cfs2autocoast is born out of frustration (and to hear from Christian that he lost the source files... oh boy... at least I have several backup copies of my sources.... I'm a network administrator in real life, so that's second nature!)

About creative juices: Korea, Vietnam, Falklands, China... WWII Pilot Career campaigns going from ETO to Pacific (a lot of US/Royal Navy pilots moved to face the Kamikaze's after VE day after all; I'm thinking of a fellow dutchman in particular whose diary was published as book)

More creative juices, if I get around to it (uh-huh :) ) to add some level of autogen; bridges and railroad crossings for sure. Trees and buildings..... maybe. Line smoothing is definitely something I'll include, for better looking FS9 conversions.

And if I can find an easy way to add flattening for lines directly in the mesh, I'll surely do it.

I'll try not to get distracted... oh yeah, another thing I forgot that cfs2autocoast can now do is draw CFS1 textures automagically, tiled according to original landclass. For large area's (LOD8 cell) it's way too much load on the rendering engine; it will show up eventually but when flying at high speed, gets a bit blurry for a while. With a bit more work, I can make correctly alpha'd edges for it so it can be used to sparingly give some variation to the default terrain.

It'll also be extremely easy to implement a user interface to directly apply correctly scaled photo-real textures anywhere in the world.

I saw Richard's tool, yeah that's cool but I hope he can scale it up to LOD5 as that's my favorite size to work with.

Ok, thanks and that's all for now... back to work (the weekend has begun and it's ridiculously nice weather outside - what am I thinking? CFS2 IS a disease....) :mix-smi:
 
Hi Sander.

Great to hear from you again! The LOD8_Image tool was primarily for use with Ground2k and matching the LOD8 Bounds. I can make the images much larger to cover an LOD5, or lower the resolution to make smaller LOD5 backgrounds. SBuilderX can just use tiled backgrounds, so drawing from that would be easier, and you can zoom in for details. I like to draw using Google Earth. I save the kml file and use QGIS to change to a SHP file for SBuilderX. I have a rough tool to convert KML to BLN for SBuilder9.

Another tool is Lec_Google... gets the bounds of an LOD... LOD2, LOD 5, LOD6-> LOD13. It turns on Google earth, grabs the center coordinates, and gives the LOD extents, and can save a KML line defining the LOD that can be added to Google earth like any other KML file.

Dick
 
Hi Sander,
very very glad you're back!!!:icon29::icon29: I have a question for you: is there a chance to use SBuilder to place cfs1 textures in the Cfs2 world?
Bye
Gius
 
A pleasant surprise ..!
We hope you find the time to translate the story into scenes.
We will be very interested in these developments.
Greetings. : Saludo:
 
gius said:
Hi Sander,
very very glad you're back!!!:icon29::icon29: I have a question for you: is there a chance to use SBuilder to place cfs1 textures in the Cfs2 world?
Bye
Gius
Click to expand...
Yeah that's going to be possible, either with sBuilder or directly in cfs2autocoast.
 
tobob said:
Welcome back Sander!!!! :icon29::icon29::icon29:

This is SO promising for this great sim! I am very excited!!!

tobob
Click to expand...

This time around, I can seriously say I'm about 99% done with the SBX > BGL functions and 96% with the user interface, error handling and other secondary functions.
Everything after that is going to be icing on the cake, but I expect bulk scenery can commence in about 1-2 weeks from now.
View attachment 90623View attachment 90624
 
That's great news, Sander!

I've got an LOD5 image tool for you to try. It's upper limit is level 12... it chokes up on higher levels. The size is near 11000x9000 pixels for level 12, and the resolution is about 115 meters per pixel. It slows down my SBuilder9. :)

Dick
 
Is it Christmas already??

Welcome back, Sander!

You have given us so much with your tools. So many more would be possible with a working version of your autocoast gimmick.

And I am still hoping to see your Amsterdam Airport objects on my screen, that I I once saw on one of your screenies ;-)
 
Hey Jax! Good to see you are still around too.

Pfff just finished up the final compilation routines. And have been fixing up the GUI somewhat. Just one pesky bug-fix left to do before I can crank out some demo stuff.
 
YEAH!!!!!

:wavey: WELCOME BACK SANDER!!! :wavey:

:jump: :jump: :jump: :jump: :jump:
​

What a nice surprise to read on the same day I returned to work after a two-week vacation in the French Antilles and Paris!

I took away all the back-to-work-blues in a jiffy! Good to read your health is back in shape again, too!

From what I read, I should expect some new improvements in CFS2 sceneries, sorely needed after Rhumba released his corrected mesh set for CFS2!

Cheers!
KH :ernae:
 
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