slices

[Guest]

Excuse me Rhumbaflappy, I'm here again with my requests.I'm interested of Your wrote Sept 23-02 on this Forum about the possibility to place single slices anywhere, but something escapes me. Can You kindly axplain me this procedure step by step, from making BMP with a paint program, to creating BGL ?I hope You will help me.Thank YouClogi

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Clogi.You'll have to give me a link to that post. :)I'm not sure what exactly you want. 'Slices' generally refer to the textures made from resampling a bitmap, during photoreal creation.Dick

[Guest]

Sorry, I've used wrong words : tiles and not slices.Thank YouClogi

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Clogi.I'm still a little in the dark as to what you want. :(Are you meaning landclass? Or placing a CUSTOM texture?If you can find the old post, just copy the html address and paste it in the response. Then we can all find it.Also, if we knew what you had in mind for covering the ground, you'd get more help. :)Dick

[Guest]

I think Clogi means: what is exact procedure of main background bitmap preparation for use with Ground2K? Should this not be the case, that is then my question anyway. I am dealing with map equal precisely size of LOD 13 area, which is georeferenced. Latitude of my area is spanning 53.4375 deg N and 53.7891 deg N, Longitude 14.5312 E and 15.0000 E.My question is : how should I resize the bitmap and do I need to care about Cos factor and if yes then how.Thank you for help as always. Ted

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Ted.For Ground2K you shouldn't need to resize the bitmap at all. As long as you know the bounds, and as long as the bitmap represents an equilangular projection ( NSEW not tilted, tipped, or skewed ) then it should be OK.Dick

[Guest]

Ok, that sounds pretty simple. Loading up Groud2K, then. Thanks for all your kindly shared knowledge specially in the recent thread "Are we close". Your comments really cleared for me some ambiguity about this subject.....at least for now I think they did. Ted

[Guest]

I am through with the first step. Loaded bitmap and entered all georeference informations. Here what I get (pic below). Grid of 32 columns in direction W-E which leads me to believe that this part is OK , but 3 groups of rows 32 each plus one group more counting 27. Is this right?Second problem is that so far I cannot see any textures displayed in the window when I go to screen assigning Landclass or Waterclass. This leads to even more general question: from the info on the background map I can only differentiate areas of water, land, habitats, roads and forests. Where to look for other "landuse/landclass" informations for area of my interest? Ted

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Ted.Something's wrong with your Ground2K setup.If your bitmap is exactly trimmed for an LOD8 Cell, your bounds are off. I'll attach a picture of what you should have entered.=============I don't know why you cannot see a picture of the texture you are assigning... maybe something different about your locations for default files? ( You don't need to trim an image to an exact size for Ground2K... you just need the right boundries entered. )Each LOD8 Cell will be bounded by a red line, and inside each Cell will be a 32x32 matrix of the LOD13 Areas. These are the groundtiles.... but as I have explained in other posts, you assign landclass to vertices ( corners of the groundtiles ) not the groundtile itself. The LOD13 groundtile is where the 4 corner assignments blend together. CUSTOM ( value #252 or #253 ), or a water texture, do not blend, and override underlying landclass blending. When one corner is assigned, all 4 tiles that touch that corner are affected... so when it is a "water" landclass texture, or a CUSTOM texture, all four groundtiles will become water or CUSTOM and will not blend. All other types appear to blend with surrounding verticies to form groundtiles.A web search for landclass or land usage might help, but usually these sources will need translating to FS2002. Some sources have HUGE images, that you can't even see on your PC!Maps and local atlases are good sources for landclass. The good way would be to get a map, and drive around the area! If you can mark the LOD13 Areas on the map, you'll see where the verticies are, and then can guess what type of landclass would fit well.Here's a couple of pics:Dick

[Guest]

>>>If your bitmap is exactly trimmed for an LOD8 Cell, your bounds are off<<

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Ted.The above JPG image of the setup file shows you the exact LOD8 bounds you needed.I don't believe trimming a bitmap to an LOD8 Cell size has any particular benefit. The LOD8 Cell edges are clearly marked in the program. The only things that might lap over those edges are VTP polys, VTP lines, and LWM masks... and that shouldn't be a problem.Also, trimming the image won't restrict your drawing lines and polys to the Cell bounds, or even the image bounds. Your actually better off going over the edges, rather than undershooting them, as that would leave odd gaps between adjoining projects. Usually better to overlap, and in most cases, overlapping unnoticed in the sim.==========With the PEIFix.BGL I made, I worked on 15 separate projects.. each bitmap was a little larger than a cell. I cut off the LWM polys just beyond the Cell edges. The resultant BGLS did have LWM masking that overlapped between BGLs, but you can overlap a poly onto another poly of the same type without problems, as long as they are not set as excluding underlying polys or lines.The 15 resultant BGLS worked fine... and as far as I can tell, you can have as many BGLs in a project as you desire, without effecting the sim.After you make a BGL, Ground2K leaves ASM files of your project in a directory. You can rename these asm files as you like... I renamed them as PEI_1.asm, PEI_2.asm... after each compilation. I then had a set of 15 LWM asm files.I used the 15 BGLs to test the project, and when I was satisfied, I used text editors to create one large ASM of the 15 projects, by hacking the code. I only did that because, like you, I wanted a tidy project... one BGL for PeiFix.==============This is way beyond the scope of where most designers will want to go.It's not a problem for me, and perhaps a few other experimenters, but most designers won't want to go there... and it's much too involved to explain. You'd need a good working knowledge of the SDK, understanding header bounds, cell organization and structure for LWMs and VTPs. These things can be learned by reading and experimenting with simple projects.You might suggest an option to be added to the sim, to restrict compilation to a particular cell. Christian might like that idea, and find it could be implemented.Some of your questions should probably go to Christian Fumey, the author of Ground2K:mailto:christian.fumey@wanadoo.frFor calculation LODs, I usually use Richard Marklew's LODCalcDick

[Guest]

Richard, Like in that MC commercial:Your knowledge of the subject - boundlessYour responsivness - promptYour clarity of advice - PRICELESSThank you Ted

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Just a small addendum: In Ground2K, you do not need to know the bounds or extents of the background bitmap. It is true that the program defaults to indicating the NW and SE corners of the image, but, in fact, you can indicate any two points (although they should probably be diametrically opposed) that you want.Just click on the "NW point" button and then click on the image to place a red circle indicating the new location. Do the same with the "SE point" button.Christian Fumey has made every effort to accomodate the user - it is quite an achievement.Best regards.Luis

[Guest]

Luis, I think giving exact geo positions of NW and SE points is mandatory to properly position your scenery in FS world. But where they are indeed it does not matter. Coincidence with LOD8 grid was just suggested for purpose of subdivisions for the larger Projects. BTW as an update to my previous querry it was a typo in latitude (53 instead of 52 deg) which made my grid so out of shape. Still trying to get landclass textures displayed though. I think my FS directory is in drive D: and perhaps this may have an impact, what else?I also found some landuse maps on the net, however they are so far very generic and low res. Will try dig more.Ted

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Ted.Your right that a NW and SE point set has to be established... Luis just explained it doesn't need to be the corners of the bitmap.Ground2k allows you to move the red crosshairs, in the bitmap setup screen, to reference points of known latitude and longitude. Just keep the NW point in the NW general area and the SE point in the SE general area. This is for registering a bitmap that contains landmarks, but doesn't have known bounds for the edges. Works fine, as Luis points out.I used this method with my PEIFix. I took screenshots of TMFViewer for my bitmaps. These are georeferenced.. but the screenshot images have the upper menubar, and the lower statusbar. I was to lazy to edit the bars out in a paint program, so I moved the NW and SE crosshairs in Ground2K when setting up the bitmap, to move the georeferencing to account for the upper and lower bars. It worked out alright. If you position the crosshairs "off" a bit, your work will be off a bit... so it might be preferred if you know the bounds of the image, as then you don't need to position the crosshairs. Sometimes it's not possible ( like when using a screenshot of a map from the internet ), to get the bounds of the edges. But you can usually find a way to get the exact Lat-Long pair for landmarks... like road intersections near the corners of the map, and use those for the NW and SE crosshairs.Dick