How to make scenery make an appearance further away?

[barryward12345 0]

Obviously there are 2 kinds of scenery - addon scenery and autogen - and I am interested in both. But I am specifically interested in making addon scenery appear at a further distance. Right now I have a setup which causes scenery to suddenly appear when I am fairly close to it - firstly it takes away the realism and immersion and secondly it is difficult to navigate VFR when I can't see addon waypoints until the last minute.Any help much appreciated.ThanksBarry

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Barry,I may be wrong, but I thought during the scenery design process there was some parameter that would allow for scenery displaying from a greater distance. Either that, or it's hard coded into MSFS and can't be changed. Add on Landclass appears from as far as 60 miles out, but outside of that distance it will fade into the generic distant scenery used by MSFS.-John

[Guest gasebah]

The distance when objects pop up is hardcoded in the Scenery. A lot of airport add-on designers use this technique to make objects appear rather late in order to keep the frame rates up. This was especially ludicrous with LAGO's Maledives. You had to fly below 2000ft. otherwise the obejcts never did appear.Alex

[ronzie 21]

Hello, John:I recall that scenery can be built with multiple LOD (Level Of Detail) parameters. The aircraft distance from the scenery determines the detail viewed.If one searched for the parameters for terrain.cfg in this or the scenery forum, I think settings in that file affect the LOD viewed based again on the distance radius around the aircraft.

[scott967 62]

In FS9, MS created the method of using "model" (.mdl) files for 3d scenery, somewhat like had been done for aircraft models previously. The intent is that multiple LOD models can be created, and the engine will select the appropriate model to draw based on distance from the viewpoint.Preivous versions of FS (and these methods still work in FS9, though who knows about FSX) used single LOD models for scenery, and instead the designer provided a fixed "view distance" at which the object would be drawn. In some cases it is possible to reverse engineer the scenery using BGLAnalyze. This tool will generate SCASM-style code and the visibility distance (v1) can be changed for any of the objects. The file can be reassembled using the SCASM assembler. Naturally, such modified files should not be distributed without the original author's permission.In both cases, the designer can set the scenery density/complexity slider level at which the object will show.scott s..

[Guest lmoelleb]

>In FS9, MS created the method of using "model" (.mdl) files>for 3d scenery, somewhat like had been done for aircraft>models previously. The intent is that multiple LOD models can>be created, and the engine will select the appropriate model>to draw based on distance from the viewpoint.>>Preivous versions of FS (and these methods still work in FS9,>though who knows about FSX) used single LOD models for>scenery, and instead the designer provided a fixed "view>distance" at which the object would be drawn. In some cases>it is possible to reverse engineer the scenery using>BGLAnalyze. This tool will generate SCASM-style code and the>visibility distance (v1) can be changed for any of the>objects. The file can be reassembled using the SCASM>assembler. Naturally, such modified files should not be>distributed without the original author's permission.Almost correct. Lod support is nothing new in FS2004. FS2002 (and earlier, though I do not know how far back) do indeed have the range parameter as you specify, but once inside the range the LoDs can be handled the same way as for FS2004 (same BGL commands).While the FS2004 format does not have a max distance coded in each object it would still be relatively trivial to limit the visibility distance - which can be an advantage to ensure the custom models do not stand too much out from the autogen stuff.

[duckbilled 310]

>The distance when objects pop up is hardcoded in the Scenery.>A lot of airport add-on designers use this technique to make>objects appear rather late in order to keep the frame rates>up. This was especially ludicrous with LAGO's Maledives. You>had to fly below 2000ft. otherwise the obejcts never did>appear.>>AlexI'll have to check that out next time I fly there. IMHO, that is pretty retarded on LAGO's part to limit sight distance at that airport. I know a lot of developers us this feature on major airports to keep up the fps but there is nothing around VRMM and there is limited traffic at that airport.

[scott967 62]

Thanks for the info Lars. I tried to do some reading. I see there is a BGL command IfSizeV which can be used to select a specific model, which could be a different LOD. I didn't see anything to indicate that having object names like LOD_100 or LOD_050 would do anything in the FS2002 makemdl. Judging from the problems folks seem to have getting scenery LODs to work in the FS9 gamepack / makemdl it doesn't seem like too many can be doing LODs of scenery. I see Arno also has a "mdl_tweaker" tool that creates a conditional display in FS9 sdk scenery models.scott s..