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rhumbaflappy

Photorealistic VPT with Autogen....

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Guest Marky Parky

I've developed a way how to display photorealistic textures in a VPT polygons, that allows me to make photo-sceneries that are smaller than an Area ( LOD13 square ) or that cover only part of the Area.I'm writing this post to share this with you and I am looking forward for your experience with such a problems. I use Ground2k for creating my VPT sceneries, but these informations are usable with any method of creation.When you look at documentation to Ground2k, it allows you to use value 252 and 253 for a VPT polygon. I thought it would be a great way to make photorealistic sceneries, with no restriction to shape of the scenery. I made a few experiments and found out two problems:a) Each Area is horizontaly flipped. It is a common know problem, but I write it here, because some people don't know it.:( Autogen feature doesn't work.c) Standard VPT polygons don't show on areas that are not covered by VPT with custom texture.I've been trying some experiments and I've found following workarounds.ad a) Simply flip it once manualy right after the resample.ad :( There is a way how to display autogen in both FS2002 and FS2004 on custom textures in VPT2 polygon. You have to follow following 2 rules:I] Both texture and autogen files must be placed in WORLD/TEXTURE directory. In FS2002 it is SCENEDB/WORLD/TEXTURE, in FS2004 it is SCENERY/WORLD/TEXTURE.II] There must be NO!!! TEXTURE directory in the scenery itself.ad c) If you want for example connect roads from photo texture to common microsoft roads, you have to do it in another BGL file placed in another scenery placed in scenery library. If you want to use LWM plygon for lake or pool, it is possible in the same scenery as your main VPT2 polygon, because it covers the same Areas.There is an simple example of my work on city of Rakovnik ( in Czech republic ).I loaded the photorealistic map of Rakovnik into Ground2k. I fitted it into correct position. I draw a VPT2 polygon exactly around the city borders and made it "253".I've made an .INF file ( Ground2k allows you read all neccessary values almost immidietly with no difficult math :) and resampled the texture. I converted them to DXT1, then I created .AGN files with Autogen Anotator and finaly flip them horizontaly ( just textures ).I put all textures into SCENERY/WORLD/TEXTURE folder. I created a new folder called SCENERY/RAKOVNIK/SCENERY and put my create BGL files into it. I DIDN'T!!! create folder SCENERY/RAKOVNIK/TEXTURE. Even an empty folder of that name causes problems with displaying.Hope this will help you and I am looking forward for your opinions and experience.

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A search of the forum with "autogen vtp flipped" will reveal much discussion of this same topic.VTP lines, like roads or bridges or shorelines can reside in the same folder ( unless this is somehow changed for FS2004 ), but need to be at a higher layer number.I've used a nice "cheat" by using your exact method to lay slices made from GIS road data for towns. That way I can lay down just the roads with autogen for the buildings. ( The alpha channel is transparent ).Dick

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Guest Marky Parky

Wow, I missed those threads because I am new to the forum. I thought I've discovered a wheel and I was just reinventing something that someone did before me ;)))I have one another question about autogen and VPT2.When I am using default landclass textures with VPT, autogen doesn't fit because of the flippeng. I am working on a detailed LWM/VPT landscape of Czech republic. I want to be more exact than landclass allows me, so I decided to make small villages with VPT2.So I used for example tile no. 109 for village. But the flipped texture causes that buildings are not standing on their right positions and it doesn't look good. So I was thinking about an workaround. I'd like to use my own texture. I don't mean 252 or 253 custom type, but custom name ( feature in Ground2k ). I can flip it without affecting the way landclass looks, make my own autogen for it and use it wherever I want the village to be displayed by VPT.I made exactly same things as with 252/253 type - created a texture, fliped it and placed it into WORLD/TEXTURE folder, but I got no autogen.Anyone has some experience with this???

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Hi Filip.Autogen only works with landclass textures. The values #252 and #253 allow the CUSTOM slices to have autogen. ( Photoreal BGLs are simply landclass BGLs with values #252 or #253 ).As far as I can tell, for VTP2, the autogen must be in the same folder as the default autogen, or the sim cannot find it. The same is true for the "slices" made by resample used for values #252 or #253. A photoreal BGL should have a local Texture folder with it's autogen and slices in it... but any other landclass BGL should not have a local texture folder ( it would show in FS2004, but cause a horrible memory leak ). The execption to that is if ALL textures referenced by the landclass BGL are present in the local folder... but I'm not sure where the autogen needs to be in that case.I had hoped MS would fix this flipping BUG for VTP2, but it appears they haven't. VTP1 doesn't work in FS2004, and it wouldn't have autogen anyways.I don't believe I've tried all the possibilities of using a landclass with local textures and autogen... more work needs to be done.Dick

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