VTP1 and FS2004

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all.Gilles Gauthier has written me, and told me CellGrid2 does not work in FS2004. My experiments show me VTP1 is not supported. The sim doesn't crash, but the polys are not displayed.Cellgrid2 was an early attempt to help us see LOD13 Areas, and to help us with stretching and referencing screenshots for making VTP and LWM BGLs.We had been told if we followed the FS2002 Terrain SDK, our sceneries would still work. This isn't the case. Default layer numbers have changed as well.VTP2 still displays textures vertically flipped. So if you want properly orientated textures, you'll need to vertically flip them in a paint program for FS2004. 8-bit textures still have the alpha channel as transparent.Hopefully a new terrain SDK will be arriving to help us out, and maybe some new ( or updated ) tools from MS as well.If anyone has gotten VTP1 polys to display, I'd be grateful to hear about it.Dick

[arno 1]

Humm, I think I got it working before, but the file I looked now does not work. I will try to find back that inital VTP1 file I tested (of which I am pretty sure it worked).

[Guest]

Hello Rhumba,Yes, I observed exactly the same. VTPm1 does not seem to work. But I haven't done any extensive experiments with this. I could not get Cellgridd to work either.However there is a new behaviour I think. The absence of a texture for VTPm2 placement does crash the sim. The changes in the layer numbering also makes some of the projects incompatible with FS9.I am a bit disapointed that some of the bugs on VTP were not corrected (or are these features rather then bugs???)In order to have autogen with the VTPm2 textures, the bmps have to be placed in the sceneryworldtexture folder and the bgls must be placed in a scenery folder without the texture folder at the same level.I still need to check this but I think that the texture sheets can now be defined in the autogen annotator tool.But the difficulty now seems to be the new type of AFD files.CheersJose

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Jose.The problem with the layers is with excludes... The default FS2004 layers use a different numbering sequence. I've detailed that in another post, and they can be easily excluded.VTP2 polys that use #252 or #253 ( for placing vertically flipped, 8-bit, mipped CUSTOM slices ) do need the textures in '...sceneryworldtexture' along with the other landclass textures and their autogen. I don't have a problem with that. Look at this example:First, I use VTP 8-bit, vertically-flipped, mipped, with alpha transparency. Layer 4. NAMED textures ( DelavanWi.bmp;DelavanHw.bmp;DelavanSp.bmp;DelavanSu.bmp;DelavanFa.bmp;DelavanLm.bmp ). This gives me all seasons, and the textures are in a local folder.http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/27192.jpgThen I add a layer 33, with #253 ( no season CUSTOM )... it is 8-bit mipped with alpha... but blank ( excepting one small pixel ). It goes into the '...sceneryworldtexture' folder and also an autogen for it is created there. Now I have a blank one season texture with an autogen sheet... you could give it layer 100 to force the autogen over everything. The autogen shows over the named textures of layer 4:http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/27193.jpgThis still gives us some room to play with the layers and autogen while using VTP2.Dick

[arno 1]

Found back my file, but it seemed to be a VTP2 polygon. That explains why part of the NL2000 test scenery is still not showing.

[Guest schampi]

Hi dick,I have found VTP1 Polys in the standard sceneries of FS9at Scenery/Eurw/scenery/RD941180.bgl.It seems that the arguments of the VTPPolyMethod1 are not the sameas described in the SDK. In particular the thrd. one is no more mandatory to be 1, indicating XYUV coordinates. I also found a lot of VTPPolyMethod1 0,0,0 ????May be the road to success !Regards, Schampi