Terrascene 2.1 use

[wsieffert 0]

From the gist of the readme file that comes with Terrascene and discussions in the large post by Dick Ludowise below, I cannot use terrascene without having a copy of Fly! or Fly!2. Am I correct? How about Fly!2K?If so, then there is a fly in my terrain soup!

[rhumbaflappy 113]

I don't have Fly!2, and I've been using the program a lot!What you need to do is get textures. Fortunately FS2002 has tons of textures... but in the wrong format, because you need all your textures in GIG or JPG format ( JPGs seem better ). CONVIM by Martin Wright will convert them in a huge batch to the folder of your choice. Make a subfolder in Terrascene's Textuure folder, and convert them all to there. These can be selected within Terrascene, and specified as 4.8 meters resolution.And that gives you lots of textures for all seasons, and night.Dick

[greggerm 312]

Where was this program a week ago... I've been converting files essentially one-by-one with Imagetool. ACK!Thanks for the headsup on that file - I'll be sure to use that next time around!-Greg

[akriesman 0]

How much is your time worth ?I just thought I would mention that you can pick up a copy of Fly II for very little money these days. If you do, you will also get the very nice textures done by Jak Fearon of HITW fame.I am not trying to force Fly II on you, but I thought that I would mention this other option a a possiblity. It might save you some time.Cheers,Allen

[Guest]

Hi ya Allen,Long time, my friend. I hope all is more than well with you and the family.To the Fly! II textures problem: I of course agree with your recomendation of Fly! II to all who haven't experienced it yet (specially since its bargain bin priced these days)... But in this particular case where textures are needed for FS TS2 sceneries, Fly! II textures just don't fit right. They are indeed beautiful and some of Jak's best work (I wish we had access to the originals though!), but since they were for Fly! II, they are 7.5m/p in res instead of the much higher 4.8m/p that FS has. Even if they were the same res, they don't mesh with FS generics simply because of the different design(ers).When it comes to FS TS2 projects, nothing beats the FS generics, both for their resolution and beauty. I'm suprised, however, that someone hasn't whipped up a quick little utility to auto-import them into TS2 (along with TS2 mapping files for all seasons). I guess TS2 just hasn't had the exposure to the FS community that wide enough to prompt TS2 specific FS tools just yet. Maybe you've happened along in here at just the right time :-).The best as always,Elrond"A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle."

[wsieffert 0]

Dick,Thanks for your reply. I was leary of trying to install TS2.1 since the readme indicated it wanted the location of the fly! executable. As things go, I could just imagine it saying, "Can't find fly.exe or fly2.exe" and aborting.Thanks also for the Convim pointer!Don't tell Elrond, but I'm gonna tell him, "We were waiting on him to develop the quick little utility for auto-importing the graphics!!":-lol

[akriesman 0]

Long time, my friend. I hope all is more than well with you and the family.We are doing great. Thanks for asking Elrond.Maybe you've happened along in here at just the right time :-)I played with TS2 and FS2002 for a bit, but became dissatisfied for a couple of reasons:(1) The higher resolutions of FS2002, plus the 24-bit BMP textures (or 32-bit), caused the storage requirements for FS2002 to far surpass what was required by Fly! for the same area. I know that the end product is a little sharper with FS2002, but it would quickly eat up my 80gb drive (no chance of covering a large area of the U.S. with TS2)(2) The FS2002 loading times became almost unbearable for the TS2 areas.Maybe these problems are due to some inefficiencies on my part. I hope so.Boy, I sure do love seeing those TS2 road layers again though. The roads are a very important aspect for me.Allen

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Elrond and Allen.The massive storage needed for textures is a "big" problem. :-lol Puns aside, I'm hoping Chris Wright's AutoAsm will evolve into a VTP/LWM poly reading program. Right now, a Terrascened CUSTOM BGL for an LOD8 area is about 2Kb, while the texture requirement is about 44Mb, and with seasons and night textures, it mushrooms to around 265Mb... all for an area of about 25x25 miles.If the images can be 'translated' to VTP Method2 polygons, the BGL would grow to perhaps 300KB, while the textures could go to 0, by calling the default textures for the polys... and they'd have autogen, night, seasons. This is a savings of about 264+ Mb, and the load times would be insignificant. We could actually share sceneries, and sourcecode. And they'd look just like the CUSTOM... but better, because we can add more polys to them if we desire, unlike CUSTOM.Also, the sourcecode could be altered, to change a poly's texture, etc...Dick

[Guest]

Nail on the head, Dick. That too is my hope now that TS2 is getting the exposure it has needed in the FS community.Not to be presumptuous, but maybe you and Allen (and possibly even Todd) can get together on an easy tool to automate this aspect. Between Allen's mastery with a compiler, your extensive knowledge of the innards and workings of FS and Todd's brilliance and fully-fleshed existing platform, something revolutionary could happen with FS sceneries (just as it did with TS2 and Allen's TerraModels for the Fly! platform). I'm sure Allen's wonderful wife wouldn't mind such a project again. :-lolAs it stands today, most of the tools and knowledge to accomplish such sceneries already (or near already) exist... But the tools are so diverse, many and complicated for the average or even advanced user to belt out LandClass/Poly'd sceneries in this fashion. Yet, again, the methods and procedures are close to being fully developed. Now all thats needed is some brute force, compiler time and occasional brilliance. :-) Between you three (and maybe many others here if the project is setup right), that isn't really much of a hurdle. Getting it started and mobile is. As usual.As a parting rant: dealing with FS innards sure is like the early days of micro pc computing, isn't it? Arcane to the core (hand coded assembly, even if scripted? Still?! Good lord). There are layers upon layers of "improvements" and great functionality grafted onto the beast, but still built upon the same ancient foundation. In this regard, the death of the Fly! franchise is all the more sad. Its foundation and innards are/were refreshingly modern (to most degrees), if not fully fleshed out at the time of its demise. But alas, thats the market for you - so, back to the stone ages it is. Since its obvious that MS can't/won't rewrite the code base from scratch, lets hope they start spending a heck of a lot more time obfuscating the underlying nature of the beast by providing fresh, new - and modern - tools to access it in the near future.And of course, I won't even bring up documentation, or developer participation... Rant mode off. :-)Take care,Elrond"A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle."

[akriesman 0]

I'm sure Allen's wonderful wife wouldn't mind such a project again. Funny you should say that Elrond. She is already dealing with a new large project of mine :) She has her own hobby right now, so she does not seem to mind me staying up till 2am every night coding away.BTW, I loved your rant.Allen