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Victory! The CFS2 world is ours.

Sander,
I laugh every time you post new bits, it's just superb....

You clever so and so!!

Cheers

Shessi
 
Sander

Brilliant work, it will make a huge improvement. Many thanks for all of your efforts.
Dick.:applause:
 
The fun thing with bringing the various aspects together is that -even though it is rather rough technique at a very low resolution- it brings a lot of variation, and surprises.
 
YEAH!

Sander said:
The fun thing with bringing the various aspects together is that -even though it is rather rough technique at a very low resolution- it brings a lot of variation, and surprises.
Click to expand...

Sander you are a genius! Forgive me for being so direct, had those screenies been posted anonimously without comments, I would have not been able to tell in which simulator they were taken.

I would have probably discarded them as being another addon for FSX with a sigh, thinking CFS2 is far too old for anything so sophisticated.

Isn't that wrong!!! :redfire: CFS2 FOREVER!!!! :redfire:

Cheers!
KH :ernae:
 
kelticheart said:
Sander you are a genius!
Click to expand...

Hardly! Just a frustrated end-user (with an obsession for maps and interest in WWII history) who could not live with seeing the unfulfilled potential of the graphics engine, and happens to be a scripting guy. There are many geniuses in the FS design world that helped directly and indirectly with advice and tooling that was required to get this far.

:redfire: CFS2 FOREVER!!!! :redfire:

Cheers!
KH :ernae:
Click to expand...

Amen! (Well, at least let's squeeze some more fun out of the old beast)
 
Hi All.

Something to remember is this is Step 1. Use Fs9 polys and lines to create a better world for CFS2.

Step 2 is to find better sources of polys and lines to improve Step 1.

Step 3 would be to use satellite and aerial imagery, as well as historical mapping to fine tune what had been made with Step 2.

It is a long process, but there should be something for Step 1 sooner, rather than later. Some frustration with errors in the FS9 data right now... not so much any big problems with Sander's programming.

Dick
 
Sander,
So, with the tweaking you are doing will you/we will be able to have pre-selected and accurate forests, rivers, lakes, roads, shorelines and possibly railway lines(?), for specific areas?

Will that be possible with block algorithm settings or will that take a huge amount of time and effort in each area?

Such things as definitive Ardennes, Black Forest, the Dam-buster lakes etc etc will be possible?

Shessi
 
Shessi said:
Sander,
So, with the tweaking you are doing will you/we will be able to have pre-selected and accurate forests, rivers, lakes, roads, shorelines and possibly railway lines(?), for specific areas?

Will that be possible with block algorithm settings or will that take a huge amount of time and effort in each area?

Such things as definitive Ardennes, Black Forest, the Dam-buster lakes etc etc will be possible?

Shessi
Click to expand...

Interesting question! I guess I've been a bit vague in what EXACTLY the tool does (from the end-user perpective) and what is and more importantly what is NOT possible. I'll try to go over those points:
  • The output of rivers/lakes/roads/shorelines are derived from an existing data set. Because the FS9 data detail and formatting matches up with cfs2's capability, this is what we use at the moment. Not for specific area's, but for the whole world.
  • Because there is no complete digital data set in existence for the roads/rivers/streams in the 1940's, true historical accuracy will bee incredibly difficult to achieve on a global scale.
  • Since we first load the data in SBuilder, it will however be much easier than before to "zoom in" on specific area's of the world that played a significant role in WWII and make adjustments to enhance realism, but it will still be a manual process (using aerial photo's and period maps). The old method was using ground2k, and that was pretty painful work.
  • The tweaking I'm doing now (past week), enforces a few "laws of nature" on the EXISTING STOCK Land Class data by processing the combination of Mesh, Land Class and Lines. In the stock data, the Black Forest, Ardennes etc. already exist, but the texturing is rather bland. Enforcing laws of nature makes the terrain look much more varied and credible. But it's still impossible to achieve 100% accuracy. Some improvement can possibly be made with better land classification source data, but, again, that's unlikely to be available for the 1940's (for instance, the town I live in has about 100.000 inhabitants now, in WWII it was just a tiny town of about 3000! The exact spot where my house is, is now "towns & crops" texture in CFS2, but was Fields in 1940).

rhumbaflappy said:
Hi All.
Something to remember is this is
Step 1. Use Fs9 polys and lines to create a better world for CFS2.
Step 2 is to find better sources of polys and lines to improve Step 1.
Step 3 would be to use satellite and aerial imagery, as well as historical mapping to fine tune what had been made with Step 2.
It is a long process, but there should be something for Step 1 sooner, rather than later. Some frustration with errors in the FS9 data right now... not so much any big problems with Sander's programming.
Dick
Click to expand...

So, is it going to be a definitive Dam Busters lake, Ardennes, Normandy, Leningrad etc.? As far as I'm concerned, at this stage we're just laying down a new foundation for the whole world, with a higher credibility level than the default. Perhaps it's definitive, perhaps not. It will be when the last developer hits the Compile button the last time and says "that 'll have to do". We're approaching the 14'th anniversary, so who knows....
As Cesar says: live in the now!
 
Ettico said:
That's how it should have been all along. Why couldn't Microsoft do that? :salute:
Click to expand...

You know, I'm a systems administrator working mainly with MS technology, that is a question I ask myself every day with every product they release... half baked bug ridden releases all the time. Don't get me started.
 
Ettico said:
That's how it should have been all along. Why couldn't Microsoft do that? :salute:
Click to expand...

This is a very good question. At the time CFS2 was being made, the most complete, and free, sources of data were the Digital Chart of the World and the Olson Land Classification. These sources were pretty crude, but they have been the basis of all further flight sim data. Over the years, these have been refined a bit, but traces remain in FSX/P3D.

The short answer is the Aces team had limited time, resources and budget.

Microsoft would have needed to vastly increase it's FSX budget to include all the best commercial data... for CFS2, it just wasn't even available for the project. We're lucky we even got CFS2, as it was a rushed project to preview the development process for FS2002. FS2002 was a huge step up from FS2000, regarding terrain. But for CFS2, they did have the ability for better terrain, and better detail. We still haven't tapped the full range of VTP1 poly representation, which gives us full control of the view down to 4.8 meters per pixel, just like resampled photoreal. Now, CFS2 wouldn't even be politically correct. And Microsoft has changed it's direction. They will spend billions on cell phone development. Nothing on flight simulation.

The Open Street Map project is a good example of what can now happen. Microsoft is allowing Bing! map data to be traced without restriction for the OSM project, which greatly helps with the legal restrictions previously holding up that project. This will yield much better free data down the road.

To date, we still have very few sources of free vector data that accurately portray the world's coastlines, roads and waterways. That would represent the Step 2 I posted above. We can trace lines and polys from better sources, but that would be Step 3 referenced above.

Dick
 
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.

Ettico,
I was thinking the same, and thank you Dick for that potted history, and the reasons why. I think we all forget that the availability of non-military, free, world-wide, digital data has just exploded in the last 10 years...linked of course to greater internet and storage capability.

Cheers

Shessi
 
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