Landclass Assistant - next release

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Been a while before I could sit down and code again. Anyway, I've made great progress on my next release of LCA.... Among the key changes:-Switch to support for 257x257 raw file format. I finished coding this on July 15th, and it was a big hurdle. I was able to complete it with no changes to the grid interface, other than the underlying code. There will still be a 64x64 point window, which will divide the .raw file into roughly 16 quadrants. An extra click in the far right or far bottom quadrants will allow access to the 257th row of points.-A conversion utility for older LCA .raw files. Basically, it will read in the rows from the older format .raw files, and port it over to the 257x257 format. I may make this seamless to the end user, so the application will recognize the format of the .raw file and convert it if needed.-"Move" utility. It will allow one to "shift" a landclass area up/down and right/left. This ties into an existing utility I wrote for one user when they landclassed a large region and found it "off" a few miles. I will likely make the utility avail within LCA, so the results can be seen straightaway.-The grid will now "remember" where you are, and return there if you access the main screen for grabbing more coordinates from MSFS.-European users will no longer have to edit the .inf file to switch commas to decimals. LCA will scan the fields in the apps, and convert them on the fly when writing to the .inf file-Tentative support for FSConnect as the interface to MSFS. I just need to test this in FS2004 in the next day or so.Landclass is working well in FS2004. No ETA on LCA's next release. Much will depend on the responses I receive--positive motivation always helps us folks who grind away our hours on this stuff :)-John

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi John.I do encourage you to develop LCA. Lots of users are getting results that they could not otherwise attempt.And using FSConnect may encourage other freeware developers to try this as an alternative to FSUIPC for FS2004, and break that monopoly.If you could see what odd things I've been doing with landclass, it would probably make your hair turn grey! Look at this:{Source}Type = MultiSourceNumberOfSources = 2{Source1}Type = ClassU8SourceDir ="."SourceFile = "Bastogne_LC.raw"Lon = 5.625Lat = 50.625NumOfCellsPerLine = 112NumOfLines = 84CellXdimensionDeg=0.00833333376795000CellYdimensionDeg=0.00833333376795000{Source2}Type = ClassU8SourceDir ="."SourceFile = "transparent.raw"NullCellValue = 255Lon = -180.0000Lat = 90.0000NumOfCellsPerLine = 100NumOfLines = 100CellXdimensionDeg = 3.636363636363636363636363636CellYdimensionDeg = 1.818181818181818181818181818{Destination}DestDir = "."DestBaseFileName = "Bastogne_LC"UseSourceDimensions = 0NorthLat = 50.652SouthLat = 47.8125EastLong = 7.5WestLong = 3.75=============That's the INF of a landclass to place an LOD7 area inside a transparent LOD5 area. ( I just wanted to increase the forest area for the LOD7 area containing Bastogne, Belgium, for CFS2 ). It works... worse yet, the forest contains only one landclass, so I made a custom texture set for that one class, and placed them in a local 'texture' folder. The textures show as replacements for the forest areas I added. But for the default forests of the area, they show the default texture set!*:-* 257x257 does give the best chance of controling the exact ground tile representation... as long as users remember we are assigning the verticies ( the groundtile itself is a blending of the 4 surrounding verticies ).Dick

[spotlope 0]

That's great news, John! I was hoping FSConnect would keep LCA alive, 'cause I know there was some consternation about Pete's announcement. I'm looking forward to using LCA with FS2004.Thanks for all the work so far,

[John_Cillis 2,406]

You're welcome...I tested LCA/FSConnect/FS2004....and the combo works. Just need to finish the conversion utilities, and the release is ready... I think those who've had trouble getting textures positioned on the right vertice will like the new 257x257 .raw file format. Anyone who can make scenery with LCA 1.3 will be able to use the new FSConnect enabled version with no learning curve--the interface will look exactly the same.

[Wolfko 0]

>Much will depend on the responses I>receive--positive motivation always helps us folks who grind>away our hours on this stuff :)>Go, Johnny, go...Wolfgang :-)