Texture Resolution of TVD polygons?

[Guest luissa]

Dear scenery designers,I am sorry if the answer is in the new MS SDK (which I did not fully research) but is there any kind of resolution limit to the new "vectorized" textured ground polygons ? In others words: would it be possible to use a textured polygon for an airport ramp with all the detailed markings drwan in the texture? or we have the same 4.8 meter/pixel limit as in photoreal tiles?Thanks in advance and regards,Luis

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Luis.4.8 x 4.8 at the equator... slimming west-east as you approach the poles ( something to keep in mind if using VTPMethod1 polys ).Not suitable for details... in fact, not really suitable for a lot of things. Roads look great at 10000 meters up, but look pretty bad at 100 meters. Terrain textures at ground level aren't very good, but autogen helps.Microsoft will have to improve this for FS2004... we'll see what CFS3 has.I don't know if you could use VTP polys under runways, roads, etc... then play with the v1 and v2 settings for the detailed runways, roads,... to alieviate the framerate consumption at greater distances while still displaying something. Might be the best of both worlds... or might not look good at all.Dick

[arno 1]

Haven't tried this, but with the polygon type that also lets you set the U and V coordinates of the texture I think it should be possible to get a certain image displaying on a certain polygon. But I haven't tested what the resolution will be.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]

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Arno.The VTP Method1 polydraw does re-scale the bitmap, but sim's display is still 4.8 meters resolution.Here's some code that displays a 4 pixel wide marker around the LOD13 Area, and a 2 pixel wide lined star shape, remapped by 1/2 to 128x128...include TDFMacros.incinclude TDFHeaders.inc; PolytestBGLHeader 53, 49, 5, 2, TerrainHeaderStart , VTPHeader VTPHeader label word VTPFileHeader 256, VTPIndexStart, TextureStart, VTPEndVTPStart label word; --------------------------------------------------------------------; Cell_391_110v poly1_14_29 label word VTPDataArea 2, 0, 14, 29 VTPLayer 8, 0 VTPNumTexturesInLayer 1, 0 VTPTextureId 0, 0 VTPPolyCount 1, 0 VTPPolyMethod1 4, 0, 1 VTPPointXYUV 0, 0, 0, 0 VTPPointXYUV 255, 0, 255, 0 VTPPointXYUV 255, 255, 255, 255 VTPPointXYUV 0, 255, 0, 255; poly1_14_29_end; poly2_14_29 label word; VTPDataArea 1, 0, 14, 29 VTPLayer 4, 0 VTPNumTexturesInLayer 1, 0 VTPTextureId 1, 0 VTPPolyCount 1, 0 VTPPolyMethod1 4, 0, 1 VTPPointXYUV 0, 0, 0, 255 VTPPointXYUV 127, 0, 255, 255 VTPPointXYUV 127, 127, 255, 0 VTPPointXYUV 0, 127, 0, 0 poly2_14_29_end label word; --------------------------------------------------------------------Cell_391_110v EQU VTPCellID 0, 391, 110 VTPIndexStart label word VTPIndexHeader 1, VTPIndexData, VTPStart VTPIndexData label word VTPIndexEntry Cell_391_110v, VTPStart, poly1_14_29, poly2_14_29_end; --------------------------------------------------------------------TextureStart label word VTPTextureListHeader 2, TextureIndexStart, TextureDataStart, TextureDataEndTextureIndexStart label word VTPTextureListEntry TextureDataStart, texturemark_0, texturemark_1 VTPTextureListEntry TextureDataStart, texturemark_1, texturemark_2TextureDataStart label word texturemark_0 label word VTPTextureName "red.bmp" texturemark_1 label word VTPTextureName "star.bmp" texturemark_2 label wordTextureDataEnd label word; --------------------------------------------------------------------VTPEnd label wordFrom the attached jpegs, you'll see the star's line ( now reduced effectively to 1 pixel width ) is clearly visible. Reducing it any more will start to break up the line into dots... so this is the minumim width.As you can see from the plane, the actual width is about 4.8 meters ( about 15-16 feet )... and very fuzzy ( as are all VTP polys, VTP lines, and photoreal tiles ).So VTP is not suitable for detailed ground-level images. However, VTP might be used as a 'backdrop', and the older-style polys could work well for close up views. Let the VTPs dominate for viewing from farther away... I think that could be controlled by v1 and v2 settings? FS2000-style road lines can be forced to the mesh by segmenting the lines at closer intervals. I don't know what kind of framerate hit we're going to get with this idea.Note also, the texture is mapped to the ground as a N-S mirror of the VTP poly! ( Y is reversed )VTP 0, 0 ( NW ) = image 0, 255VTP 255, 0 ( NE ) = image 255, 255VTP 255, 255 ( SE ) = image 255, 0VTP 0, 255 ( SW ) = image 0, 0Another way to look at it is that 0,0 is the SW start of the texture, while 0,0 is the NW of the VTP poly.So caution if using VTPm1 polys with sliced photoreal textures!The older VTPm1 strips were used as shorelines in CFS2. M$ didn't complete the world's shores in CFS2 because of time constraints, and no wonder they invented VTP Method 2!M$ promised to have detail down to the fencerow level for CFS3... so perhaps they are going to LOD15 ( 1.2 meters ) or less. Or perhaps there will be a new Directx drawing routine in the terrain engine, that finally clings to the mesh.