How to create photoreal sceneries for FS2004 ?

[Guest cwright]

Richard, thanks for the encouragement. If I know people are interested it will encourage me to devote more time to it! Your mention of the autogen/photoreal problem has prompted me to describe one of the new features I mentioned. The new version allows you to automatically attach objects to VTP lines (similar to the new FS2004 autogen). You can use any Airport-compatible object such as Gerrish Gray's superb trees or any autogen objects with known library ID numbers. A number of FS2004 autogen ID numbers are known, so I was able to add road signs and telegraph posts along roads - as well as icebergs along the coast! The program generates the Airport scenery file so you just need to run it through Airport to create the bgl file. When you add an object to a VTP line you input a number of parameters such as density (the number of objects per unit length along the line), offset from the line and object size. Each setting actually has two parameters that define a minimum and maximum value. The program randomly chooses values between these two, so that objects do not appear to be unnaturally regular. As parameters also define the Gerrish Gray tree types, you can get a random mix of tree types. If the FS2004 scenery SDK (sometime this decade, hopefully!) includes a complete list of autogen ID numbers, it should be possible for the program to automatically pull out the ID numbers of specified objects, create the API file and load it into Airport. By using large offsets you can fill regions with objects, particularly useful for trees. You could also create zero-width VTP lines specifically for objects. I hope this is of interest. I intend to write a longer post detailing the current AutoAsm features in the next week or so. Of course, if anyone has any suggestions.... Best regards, Chris