FS Specific Glossary of Terms?

[brucets 94]

I have been reading posts here for a couple years now and still don't have a clue what a lot of abbreviations and terms really mean. I know that AFCAD has to do with airport scenery---but what specifically??? Landclass, mesh, LOD, .bgl, .ini, .dat, .bmp, .xml, etc, etc.???? I did a search for some sort of glossary of terms, but did not find any. Is/are there any? Thanks.Scott

[Jim Robinson 122]

Well, I don't know of any glossary, but AFCAD is a program that you can use to modify things like parking spots, gates, taxiways, VORs, ILS's, etc. It's not really a visual scenery design program, although I believe you can add a runway or taxiway and it will show up visually in the sim. It's mainly for modifying the airport and facilities database that the sim uses for the GPS map, AI aircraft, and stuff like that. Stuff that you generally can't see.I assume that the name AFCAD comes from "Airport & Facilities" and CAD, as in "Computer Aided Drafting" since it uses a vector based graphics interface like a CAD program. I'm sure someone with more knowledge of AFCAD will come along and explain it in greater detail.Jim

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

we should start a FS oriented Wikipedia

[AlaskanFlyboy 7]

Landclass are sceneries specifically dealing with the autogen and terrain type (landclass) dipiction in flight simulator, whereas mesh is the scenery for the terrain elevation data (which when in wirefram looks like a mesh screen.LOD stands for Level Of Detail and is a technique inwhich a model actually contains multiple levels of detail. AI traffic and terrain mesh benefit from this technique the most. The best way to view what this is is to take a plane and jump the rate to 4X or greater and fly througha valley, you'll see the mountains look simple. Now drop the rate back to normal and watch the mountains slowly increase in detail. This is done to reduce the polgygons of far objects that you can hardly see anyway. As you get closer and can see the detail, it uses a model of increased detail.All the others are just file extentions like .jpg, .gif, .exe, .bat, etc. .blg denote scenery files, .ini are initialization files and just hold the settings for a program at start-up, .dat is short for data, .bmp are bitmap graphic files, and .xml are extensible mark-up language files.----------------------------------------------------------------John MorganReal World: KGEG, UND Aerospace Spokane Satillite, Private ASEL 141.2 hrs, 314 landings, 46 inst. apprs.Virtual: MSFS 2004"There is a feeling about an airport that no other piece of ground can have. No matter what the name of the country on whose land it lies, an airport is a place you can see and touch that leads to a reality that can only be thought and felt." - The Bridge Across Forever: A Love Story by Richard Bach

[brucets 94]

Thanks for the feed back and explanations! It would be nice to have some sort of master glossary for all the FS related terminology though.Scott

[Guest neslesman]

There is a 47 page Glossary in FS'04. I know I printed it last night. It's one of the main topics in the main page of the "Learning Centre". Unfortunately you can't just create a saved file as far as I can see and MS doesn't seem to have it on their web site so the only alternative I could think of was to print (from the learning centre there is a print option) it or go into FS9 each time you want to look something up. That gobbled up a good chunk of HP inkjet ink, enough to kill that cartridge anyway. It's a small font too so you have to dial up decent print quality if you don't wish to go blind reading it.BTW FS Genesis has a great detailed explanation of Mesh, Landclass, different resolutions etc. from their Home page. I looked high and low for that "glossary" file in the FS9 directory but didn't find it although it has to be their.