CFS2 TMF Line Decals

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Christian and Lee.1026... 1080... no difference. Perhaps this is one reason why FS2002 code differs... I need some more time here to explore.On a different note, Christian, I discovered another property of the texture reference:TEXTURE_DATA "1080", 0, 2, 4When this is set to 1, I think all decals and lines set to a higher numbered priority are made invisible. ( DECAL_GEOMETRY 5, DECAL_HYDRO_LINE, 1, 0 sets display priority... what appears over what ).I made a shoreline invisible, and the decal under it was also invisible, but the water ( lower number by default ) was still visible. The decal was there, because the texture-tied autogen is still there! So an visual exclusion of some sort exists. May or may not be useful.

[Guest christian]

interesting (the priority parameter that is)!Hmm, looks like the CFS2 lines don't do animations then. Dunno why that would be the case...Christian

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Christian.I'd say you're right... it looks like CFS2 lines have no wave action... so it isn't simply tied to the texture reference, and that would explain why the data structure is different than FS2002 lines.I'm going to spend some time with the CFS2 structures, and write a guide for them. I'll return to FS2002 lines later. At least we have lines! Is it OK for me to include your TMFmacros.inc in a zipped file? You'll get the credit, of course.( Perhaps there is a work-around for the animation, for now. )Dick

[Guest]

I'm impressed with your findings Rhumba! Bob Bernstein

[Guest christian]

Sure, go ahead. Good someone is writing a tutorial, I was too lazy to do that :-lolChristian

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Darn, I was hoping you'd do it! :-fume Thanks,rhumbaflappy AKA Dick Ludowise

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Christian.The tutorial is going slow, because I keep fooling around with creating polygons. :-lol Just a note about the 'priority' of the decals... The top priority is 100 ( decimal )... so the scale is 4-100. Over or under that is invisible. A decal priority 9 will cover water and shorelines... useful for extending default coasts and beaches.. or placing islands over default water. The decal covered water has all land characteristics.I haven't found any way to increase the priority of water, although you can use CFS2_Texture referencing to draw a water texture ( but it has land characteristics, of course ). So, water can cover landclass ground-tiles, and low priority decal polygons, only.Correcting a coastline would be difficult, because of the shorelines. They would have to be removed from the scenery 'manually', by deleting the shoreline BGL. Or, a hex editor could be used to lower the priority of the lines that are offensive, allowing them to be covered or made invisible. That could be a 'patch' applied to a HYL file, if distribution of the scenery were to be made. I'm still going to search for an exclusion-type polygon, that will take a defined area down to the landclass level, as the 'patching' of default sceneries is not a good practice, and their replacement coud be quite a chore, because the default TMF files seem to cover about 4 LOD8 group areas.You can 'carve' the landclass ground-tiles with water polygons. Then you could extend land, if necessary, with decal polygons of a higher priority. Then, the shorelines could be replaced using a sufficient priority. Incorrect roads and streams can be covered with a higher priority decal polygon, then redrawn with a higher yet priority.I have not found a way to draw a decal over a CUSTOM ( photoreal ) ground-tile.Dick

[Guest]

Hi,These are very interesting discoveries, thank you very much for sharing with us. Just one question, how do yu calculate those 'magic' latitude and longitude numbers as:>>>dd 2667133 ; North Bound>>>dd 2444872 ; South Bound>>>dd 310192082 ; East Bound>>>dd 262470223 ; West BoundThanksRafael

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Rafael.I'd like to take credit for figuring the Bounds numbers.But, once again, Christian Stock has helped us. He has a program called 'txt2asm.exe'. You can find it here, at AVSIM, in the "MASM.zip" file. It will take a text file ( *.txt ) and make an assembly file ( *.asm ) from it. In the process, it will turn latitude and longitude into the 'pseudo' degrees needed for BGLC ( or MASM ) compilation.Here's a quote from Christian's documentation:TXT2ASMAs a bonus, I have include a small utility that will substitute LAT and LON variables with MASM compatible integers. It

[Guest]

If you want to do it the hard way, here is the math...For latitudes (North and South bounds)... Latitude = BoundsValue * (40007000 / 360)Explanation: The value in the BGL (BoundsValue) is actually the number of meters from the equator. The scenery SDK documentation states that the FS earth is 40007 km in polar circumference. So we divide by 360 degrees.For longitudes (East and West bounds)... Longitude = BoundsValue / (360 / 2^32) - or - Longitude = BoundsValue * (2^32 / 360)Explanation: In the case of longitudes, the BGL value is acutally a 32-bit psuedo-degree. These are discussed in the scenery SDK. So all we have to do here is to break down the total number of values in a 32-bit psuedo-degree which is 2^32 or 4,294,967,296 and run it around 360 degress to get a pseudo-degree value per longitude degree. The beauty of this is that as the longitude lines get closer to each other as you move towards the poles, FS doesn't care since were using a 360 degrees broken down by 2^32 values.Last thing to remember, these BoundsValue numbers are 32-bit integers, that means they can range from -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. When converting, make sure you remember this!Lee.

[Guest christian]

Hmm, interesting with the csv files.Apparently there is no way in having float numbers as arguments for macros in MASM, so I wonder how this works...Cheers, Christian

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Christian.The Placer can string together several effects. The CSV file is an easily read txt file... then the latest BGLC will not only place them, but figure the Bounds in the header. Odd.

[Guest Mark Hazeldine]

Is there a way of putting all this into a GUI i wonder?What about Airport for Windows 3? Has anyone told them about this? Maybe they could squeeze it in before release. Who knows!