Landclass Assistant & Small Areas

[rhumbaflappy 113]

I used a FSUIPC input for LandCalc2 and TDFCalc3. A problem I had was a couple of users who apparently could not figure out how to get FSUIPC installed in FS2002 ( drop the fsuipc.dll in the Modules folder ). One user was helped, and one user was particularily nasty, so he got no help. A caution to you on that, John.Other than that, those programs work perfectly, and FSUIPC, by Peter Dowson, is a real blessing for people that use a 'slew' to find areas of the sim. No need to type anything in, and no 'fat finger' mistakes that waste time. You can get the exact numbers FS2002 ( or CFS2 ) uses for it's calculations.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Yes--I'm quite appreciative of FSUIPC...Autoland 2002 (and Autoland 2001 before it) were both written with FSUIPC as a "go-between".I've had nasty users for all of my program releases. Needless to say, I tell them to RTFM, and never respond to them again. Neither of us is paid for what we do on our FS projects, and such user-caused grief comes with consequences...When I wrote Autoland 2002, I wrote an include file which handles all the calls quite well. Shouldn't be too difficult to port it over to Landclass Assistant... I envision a few minutes work.....My major hope for LCA is to add a project management interface to it. Rather than call up the Terrain SDK tools via a batch file, my goal is to add a Landclass processing screen which will process the .raw file into a bgl, regardless of where the Terrain SDK tools are located. Users would be able to manage projects by name, and recall previously saved .raw and .inf files. Anyway, that's long term.... :)

[Guest christian]

Just to add to the FS2000 confusion...I updated my tmfdoc, but it's not finished yet. I'm quite convinced that you can update the land class scenery in FS2000, but it's quite bit more work.As noted before, you simply can't make a regional land class file like you can in FS2002. FS2000 doesn't look for regional files. That means if you really want to have land class scenery in FS2000 you will have to replace the WHOLE worldlc.bgl! Thanks to TMFViewer it's actually possible.Here's what to do:1) Load worldlc.bgl in TMFViewer and take many, many screenshots and glue them together in Photoshop (or whatever program). You want to have the whole contents of the worldlc.bgl as a bitmap. Once someone has done this that file could be made public...2) Edit your area in that file3) Calculate the correct parameters for an inf file (LOD5 and the whole world), and run resample.exe. That should give you a new worldlc.bgl that you can use instead of the default worldlc.bgl...Someone could do step 1) and 3) and make these files available, then FS2000 land class scenery generation will become as easy as FS2002 land class generation.Seasons will work the same, water class and regions won't work, since FS2000 doesn't know them...Cheers, Christian

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Christian.Just wondering... if FS2000 also treats value #254 as 'transparent', then perhaps it could be used on the world scale of 'worldlc.bgl', and we'd only need to change a little here and there as we do for FS2002, with the vast majority of the world 'blank'. I'm suspecting this is possible, and if so, is this also a way to add FS2002-style photoreal to the old FS2000? ( Not that anyone but you and I would care :-lol ).Right now I'm bogged down trying to figure out how to import vmap0 data into Terrascene. ( A convoluted way to add roads to CFS2 ).Dick

[Guest Richard Hill]

Jay;Where can one find Land Class Assistant?Richard;richardlhll@wmconnect.com

[rhumbaflappy 113]

John Cillis' filesYou'll want lav1-2.zip, and la_inf.zip ( the updated INF template ).

[Guest christian]

Hi Dick,Not a bad idea, but:there is only one worldlc.bgl. I doubt FS2000 even looks for different files. So all land class info probably has to be in one file. For the 254 value to work, you need at least 2 files...But as you said, probably noone else cares anyway, and I'm certainly not going through the trouble extracting the data out of worldlc...:)Cheers, Christian

[Guest]

Hi Dick ... thanks for the example you gave to James. I noticed you were able to apply a landclass change to a small area of the Midway airport, namely the green grass with palm trees on the south end of the airport. I'm trying to do the same thing with CYTZ. In your example, are you suggesting that if we use a 257x257 array, we can accurately place landclass changes to small areas? I'm trying to change some of the vegetation around the runways at CYTZ and having a heck of a time doing it. Thanks for any advice ...Jay

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Jay.I hope I made a point with this long thread, that landclass is assigned to a vertex, and from that point, it will blend into the four surrounding groundtiles ( LOD13 Areas ). And that's it. There is no more measure of control. The sim controls the actual blending. ( and note how well it does blend, by looking at how a forest meets rowcrops or a city! )----------------------------If a smaller areas is desired to change, that may be done with either VTP Method1 polygons, or VTP Method2 polygons. This is the same as the airport background polygons.VTP1 is especially interesting, as a portion of a poly may be cut and rotated as desired. Also, because VTP1 uses the alpha channel for transparency, custom textures may easily be used that can blend into the landclass lying underneath the poly. My Cellgrid BGLs use placement, rotation and transpareny of a custom texture with VTP1. Any texture you desire can be placed anywhere you want, with any Layer you want. Even water can be tinted with VTP1 and VTP2 using custom transparent polys. VTP2 are 'tiled' automatically to the grountile... VTP1s can be rotated, flipped, a portion used wherever you like ( a lot more flexible ).So changing a small area with landclass is probably not the answer you need. I think the 257x257 grid can place it accurately on the LOD13 verticies, but precise polys need to be made with VTP1 or VTP2 'fans' ( polys ) as described by the FS2002 Terrain SDK.Dick

[Guest]

Dick,Your point throughout the thread was clear and appreciated. Thank you for explaining why landclass wouldn't be the best option in this case ... and for pointing me in the right direction of what will work best.Jay