Autogen - can you make it create more trees ?

[Guest ThrottleUp]

Hello simmer friends http://www.ifdg.net/forum/style_emoticons/default/bye.gifId like more trees to cover the FS9 world!Is it possible thru tweaking to make Autogen create more trees?Thank you :)

[Guest lemonadedrinker]

Hi there, it's always intresting reading your posts! Yuo manage to pose wierd and interesting questions. Or suffer from curious difficulties in the sim. I don't know anything about this so I'll leave now.:+ In the cfg are references to the autogen- autogen density=2 for instance, I guess they could be tweaked after making a back-up cfg. Post a pic of a highly forested region, before and after- No matches remember.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

There's a finite limit to the default number of trees that can appear with Autogen, but a patient person can certainly add more using the autogen annotator tool.One of the reasons why many photoreal products (Swiss Pro, etc...) don't accomodate autogen is that autogen is programmed on a texture by texture basis, and photoreal projects create hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of unique textures. Even with the default textures, a ton of work went into creating the original autogen "world". MSFS stores autogen info in .agn files created by the autogen annotator. These are basically files which are created using an interface overlaid onto a default texture, and the user chooses which objects to place and where. I've never used it, so my description may not be entirely accurate, but I believe it's fairly close.You can use the annotator, which is in one of the SDK's, to add or delete objects to the .agn files, or even create new ones which work with photoreal textures. Hope this helps...-John

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Nevin,As John says, it is fairly easy, although extremely tedious, to modify the autogen objects.First, you need the Autogen SDK.Then, launch the Autogen Annotator and open the texture that you wish to modify. Each texture has an accompanying agn file that defines the trees and buildings on it. It is easy to modify this using the Autogen Annotator.If you wish to add more objects to custom (photo-real) ground textures, you will most likely soon find it all quite tiring, especially if there are many individual textures.If you modify the default ground textures, then all changes will appear anywhere in the FS world where that texture is displayed.There was some discussion of an automated tool that would add autogen by scanning the ground texture. If you are interested, please search the Scenery Design forum.Best regards.LuisBy the way, the autogen setting in the fs9.cfg file is probably nothing more than the slider in the Options/Display/Settings menu. No need to modify the cfg file when you can change this from within FS and see the results immediately.

[Guest CYYJ1968]

Ed Truthan came up with an interesting approach. He changed the autogen conifer tree files so that 4 trees are dislayed for each autogen conifer object placement. This quadruples the number of conifer trees displayed without increasing autogen density. Look for the file conifers.zip in the avsim library.

[Guest dogknot]

Ed Truthan's "conifers.zip" works well in FS9. "...will replace the...default auto-generated conifers with new and more realistically shaped and colored trees. They also INCREASE the number of visible conifer trees by a factor of 4 to 1..." EDIT: Oops! CYYJ1968 beat me to the punch.

[Guest lemonadedrinker]

I'm going to try the 'conifers.zip' and see how it looks!! These forums are full of interesting people with interesting ideas and knowledge.

[Guest lemonadedrinker]

I've tried them and they seem a bit sparse. I take the point about the flatness of the default but they do seem bigger and fill the hillsides up a bit more. imho.

[Guest ThrottleUp]

Very interesting replies! Thanks very much all of you :)lemonadedrinker: Hee hee, I was trundling around in the British Colombia area and thought it would look even cooler with loads more trees!!JohnCi: Interesting...so thats how it all works! Although I have to admit its all a bit over my head and is approaching my personal limits with FS9 fiddling! *Makes sure CD backups are ok*LuisFelizTirado - Thankx for the advice friend :) I had no idea it was that complicated! I thought it was just changing a number somewhere hee hee. I will have to make sure I have solid backups and do some reading up on "SDKs" and such before attempting this! CYYJ1968: I shall download that and give it a whirl! Thanks for pointing me to that download!:)

[Guest tdragger]

BTW, there's also a hardcoded limit of 600 objects per square kilometer regardless of the number on annotations you create.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

That rules out recreating the Black Forest in Germany :)I'd swear there's 600 trees per square yard in some stretches...-John

[peppy197 165]

I tried conifers.zip in FS9 and FS2002It was designed for FS2002 and FS2004 seems not to really benefit much (matter of opinion), if at all, from it's inclusion as they seem less contrasting in FS9 in comparison to the regular default for FS9 and appear to be of similar population density to the default's.Allen

[Wildblue 244]

Do a search for Gerrish Gray in the avsim library, his trees were well known in the past. In mstrees2.zip he claims to fill a sq km with 3500 trees. This was for fs 2002, i don't know if it works in fs 2004.RegardsEric

[Guest Keyser Soze]

... which is a shame. I can imagine to virtually fly over the black forest with all those hills, villages and trees :-roll I'm there almost every year... a nice area indeed.

[michal 44]

>>>I've tried them and they seem a bit sparse. I take the point>about the flatness of the default but they do seem bigger and>fill the hillsides up a bit more. imho.I fully agree with you. This add-on did little for me. Maybe there are more trees but they seem to be 'thinner'. We need something to produce definite clumps of trees.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2