Dear Gerrish,>because you have raised the idea too and there is a fair bit >of interest/discussion at the moment about 'correct >programming', it could be published as a white paper / >tutorial? What do you think? I agree with you. However it is more with the authors ofGUI tools for scenery design based on SCASM, to implementthat type of support ...>BTW, I know that you love your old ASD, but you really are >going to have to give it up one day! Perhaps once we get >the FS2002 Terrain SDK (if such a thing is EVER going to >appear?!?), because then ASD really is going to start >looking out-of-date. Maybe Airport 3 will be good enough to >convince you when it comes along! ... What I really love is SCASM and the control that I can havein my designs through using it :-). I only quoted ASD because Iknew that it had the facility to set the order of "nested macros".As a matter of fact I do not use ASD for my projects anymore.I do my projects with the combination FSDS/SCASM/SDK2000 and sometools that I write myself to speed up my work. FSDS is very usefulbecause I do not worry with any hard "coordinate hand calculations".Still I do not remember of a single BGL file directly generatedby FSDS in my projects.If new versions of SCASM and FSDS will support "the new BGL codes"I see no reason to change my present way of work. As all of us, Ikeep waiting for a FS2002 Terrain SDK.Kind Regards from Coimbra,Luis

Thanks Gerrish, very interesting thoughts and I agree on most.One question. I use a lot of the IfVis commands in Fs2000 and that worked fine, but it seems they don't work correct in Fs2002. I got buildings disappearing part of the bui;dings due to this (FS thought they were not visible I think). So I removed the IfVis commands.Arno

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Member Netherlands 2000 Scenery Team[a href=http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen]http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen/banner.jpg[/a]

I didn't know about that problem with FS2k2 - you're ahead of me there Arno. Another one to add to the list of visibility and 'disappearing scenery' problems since the advent of the new scenery engine in FS2000. Have you reported to MS that it seems that IfVis() no longer works correctly so that they can (hopefully!) put it right in FS2004?We could really do with a proper repository of all this information about SCASM/BGL programming. Needs some keen type, with enough time, to produce an expanded version of Manfred's documentation and the Scenery SDK(s), and then keep it updated from the forums etc ...There's a really interesting project for someone. Anyone out there interested?Gerrish

>I didn't know about that problem with FS2k2 - you're ahead >of me there Arno. Another one to add to the list of >visibility and 'disappearing scenery' problems since the >advent of the new scenery engine in FS2000. Have you >reported to MS that it seems that IfVis() no longer works >correctly so that they can (hopefully!) put it right in >FS2004?Nope. The strange thing is that I still found some IfVis commands in the default BGL files when decompilin some with BGLAnalyzer. Maybe I must do some more testing on this. >We could really do with a proper repository of all this >information about SCASM/BGL programming. Needs some keen >type, with enough time, to produce an expanded version of >Manfred's documentation and the Scenery SDK(s), and then >keep it updated from the forums etc ... >>There's a really interesting project for someone. Anyone >out there interested? Good idea, but I don't think there are many people with the time and scenery design knowlegde to do that :). Hopefully someone can suprise us positively.Arno

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I would love to see it as chapter two of the awesome scasm website put up by Ralf Triebel, Andreas, and the other mushy ones. Their work on scasm for 3d objects is a foundation I refer to on a regular basis.Bob B

Hi Gerrish,Some months ago I made some tests which included the question of using one or more Area/RefPoint/Rotations (see Reading Topic #242, reply 46, in this forum). To my surprise I could not see a significant improvement in using these "optimized techniques" that you refer to in you previous post.The impact of these techniques in frame rates depend very much on how the FS2002 engine works and we know very little about it. Take, for example, the case of a RotatedCall() and the alternative of using the sin() and cos() SCASM functions at compilation time. Since BGL is also compiled by FS, I see no reason why, all calculations can not be done at "FS compilation time".Going a litle further. It has been reported that the new "gmax supported" triangular polygon texture BGL commands are faster than the old TexPoly() ones. Again, it is up to MS to transalate the TexPoly() (at compilation time) into whatever final format than runs faster.Kind Regards, Luis