New version of AutoAsm released

[Guest Richard Hill]

Chris;I had made TerrAscene scenery FOR FS8 FS2002 at 4.7 pixel and except for the ground texture and slow loading I was very pleased. If you wish I can send you a DVD of my FS2002 Scenery.1. Is there a reason why you have limited texture to one pixel? To get true effects of river varying widths, one pixel will not do FS9 justice2. Why have you limited the TRIP resolution to 15.0 and 7.5, I would think 4.7 setting as used in FS9 would be better. If one uses 4.7 Meter Pper Pixel there is very little missing river and no missing roads.3. You said you had thought of having the program reading the text that TS produces, do you still plan on doing this? Richard;

[Guest cwright]

Hi Richard,1. Of course, for roads and shorelines one pixel is appropriate as AutoAsm requires a single pixel-width line to read in. It could be different for streams (which is what I assume you're referring to). However, I'm sure TS regards a stream as just a line and it has no width information. But if you set the stream width to, say, 10 then it does work. TS draws a polygon ten pixels wide and AutoAsm can read in the polygon. But of course the width will always be the same. Unfortunately the polygons produced by this method are not very good and I had to edit them to get it to work properly. But after editing the VTP streams did indeed show up as LWM water, which of course is far more realistic. I have been thinking of adding this feature: to automatically convert VTP stream lines to LWM water with a defined width.2. There's no arbitrary limit in AutoAsm. You can set any resolution you want in TerraScene (though when I tried a number smaller than 7,5 in TS it immediately reverted to 7.5).3. I just got that feature working so it'll be in the next release! Best regards, Chris

[Guest Richard Hill]

Chris;I produced my entire state of West Virginia, using TerraScene, and found only one place less than 2 miles long that did not produce a river polygon, narrow with lots falls and fast water. The only place I had to do much editing was for Stonewall Jackson Lake opened in 1988 near me that is not in USGS DLG or LULC Data, and thus I had to use Shape files for it. Two sections highways also had to be added each less than two miles. If you wish I can send you a CD of the Clarksburg area at no cost, to fly over and see the rivers and lakes if you send me your address. richardlhll@wmconnectRichard;

[bob.bernstein 0]

I've been learning Ground2k for a while, and find it to work well at doing my limited understanding of the list of functions listed for your tool. It seems that users of terrscene are showing great interest in your work. Is that what the main difference is, some connection to terrascene, or perhaps I don't understand the list of functionality well enough..Bob Bernstein

[Guest cwright]

Bob, that's an interesting question. Ground2k is an excellent program. I think there is one fundamental difference between G2k and AA, and that's the method of data input. With G2k you would import a map as background and use that to construct your polygons by clicking along the map lines. With AA, you don't create the polygons in the program. Instead, you create a bitmap and import it. AA reads the bitmap and converts the lines to LWM and VTP lines. In your paint program you could load a map or FS screenshot etc and draw lines on it to define LWM and VTP lines. You then read the prepared bitmap into AA. Finally you would set the various parameters (height, width, shoreline texture etc) and then create the scenery files. Because AA reads in bitmaps it naturally lends itself to importing bitmaps created by TerraScene. One TS bitmap could define a million points (the asm files can easily exceed ten megabytes), so the reading-in process really has to be automatic (though in practice the TS bitmap may need some editing to remove TS defects, such as breaks in line polygons). As AA uses bitmaps you can use all the power of the paint program to edit the polygons. If you draw solid polygons you can edit thousands of points with a few sweeps of the mouse. But, because of the relative complexity of the process, there is a bit of a learning curve. I included several tutorials that should make it a bit easier. In addition AA can also create terrain mesh and add objects linked to VTP lines (not unlike vector autogen!) I hope that clarifies it. Best regards, Chris

[Guest cwright]

Hi Richard, to be honest I'm not exactly sure what your concern is. You first raised the issue by mentioning the single pixel-width. This does *not* affect the accuracy of the water polygons - in fact a single pixel-width line is essential for maintaining accuracy. Of course, I'm assuming the TS bitmaps have the same accuracy as the input data. By the way, I'm not a TerraScene expert as I don't use it for my own scenery work (for some strange reason, finding coastline data or maps for the Karakam peninsula is impossible!) If you still have concerns, state them as specifically as you can and I'll do all I can to address them. By the way, I found a fix that works quite nicely (subject to further testing!). I set the stream width to 5 pixels and AutoAsm read the streams in as LWM polygons instead of VTP lines. Streams with real water look much more realistic! Best regards, Chris P.S. thanks for the very kind offer, but I won't take you up on it for now.

[wsieffert 0]

Chris,I fiddled with Terrascene when I put FLY-II on my computer about a year ago (long since removed). It is amazing the bitmaps you can get from the data.I did several in Northwest Pennsylvania area were I was born. Comparing the finished bitmaps to satellite data was neat.W. Sieffert

[bob.bernstein 0]

THanks Chris, great explanation. I can see the advantage to your proggy...cheers,Bob

[Guest Richard Hill]

Chris;I have two questions. I have been trying to do a 1/4 tile of NW Morgantown West Virginia with no sucess.1. Everytime I attempt to create a BMP I get a Runtime Error 9 Subscript out of range.2. In TerraScene 2 two autoasm_lwm texture options although there is only one autoasm_lwn.TRIP file listed. Which do I use? Richard;

[Guest Richard Hill]

W. Sieffert;I live in Clarksburg, WV and made TerraScene 4.7 M texture for my entire state and sourrounding area, almost 7 CD full, yet I have not been sucessful with Autoasm.While I have used TerraScene from it's birth when I used Fly! and I also Converted TerraScene Texture to FS2002, I have yet had any luck with AutoAsm. If you could or would you send me one of your Project files .TSP, and step you take after you get your TGA files. I have edited missing stream/river areas, yet everytime I get a runtime error 9 Subscript out of range. I work with 1/4 tiles and run an AMD 2800+ 128MB Nvida AGP and 512 400 DSR RAM, under Windows XP.richardlhll@wmconnect.comThank You;Richard

[Guest cwright]

Richard, sorry to hear you're having problems. I'm sure we can sort them out. First, on the .trp files. If you are creating a TS bitmap that has both LWM and VTP lines, then use autoasm.trp. For just LWM water polygons, use autoasm_lwm.trp. For just VTP lines, use autoasm_vtp.trp. These files are just intended as guides. You need to decide which lines the bitmap should generate - disable everything else. For example, I think the files disable railway lines - if you want railway lines you'll need to enable them. Also be sure the lines are defined as single pixel and without aliasing. You can create LWM and VTP in one image, but for now it would be safer to do it in two passes. First, create a LWM bitmap and make the lwm scenery. Then create another VTP bitmap and make the VTP scenery. The advantage of this is that there can be no interference between VTP and LWM lines. When you've created a TS bitmap, check that the lines are 'clean', without extra pixels, lines or breaks. VTP lines are quite forgiving, but LWM lines need to be good, otherwise spurious water areas may be created. LWM polygons cut off at the edge may need special attention - look at the TS1.bmp tutorial. Runtime Error 9: I have a fairly good idea of what the problem is. By chance I had the problem yesterday and spent time looking into it. Here are some suggestions and requests for more information:1. I need to know whether the bitmap was LWM, VTP or both.2. If you haven't done so already, disable AUTO CULL (uncheck it) and tell me the result. The bug is quite likely a part of the culling routine, though it only seems to occur if there is a problem with the bitmap. I found a possible cause of the error and fixed it, but I can't be sure that it's a 100% fix yet.3. Have you successfully tried the TS_demo.bmp tutorial? If not, I highly recommend that you do, as it will show whether your installation is capable of correctly reading in a TS bitmap. It will also give you some confidence in what the program can do. By the way, I'd strongly recommend working through *all* the tutorials. It would take maybe a couple of hours but it would be worth it. If you can't load TS_demo.bmp and generate the scenery, then let me know and we can concentrate on that. If TS_demo doesn't work, then there'd be no point in attempting to read in your own bitmaps. Either way, please let me know how you did with TS_demo.4. Are the lines on the bitmap clean, without spurious pixels or lines and without breaks? Remember, any lines enabled in TerraScene must be single pixel-width, with no aliasing and no texture.5. I'd be happy to take a look at the bitmap. If you wish, email me a zip with the bitmap and the corresponding .ini and .dat files (in the settings directory). With those I should be able to duplicate any problems you're experiencing. My email address is in autoasm.doc. I know you were very keen to use AutoAsm - and I'm just as keen to fix any teething problems! I'll put out an update shortly. It has improved read-in accuracy, makes setting the memory more intuitive, has a fix for the error you mentioned (probably!) and can now automatically read-in the TS text file with the coordinates. Best regards, Chris

[Guest Richard Hill]

Chris;Thanks for the help, I will go through all the tutorials again. I went through and edited the both bitmap, closing all open the river segments, one thing I noticed, there were some variable shades of grey pixels along the borders of the lakes, I don't know if this is one of my problems or not. I will make some more attempts this weekend. It seems it must be me as I see someone has had sucess with N/W Pennsylvania, and that is right next door.Again Thanks;Richard Hill

[wsieffert 0]

Richard,I never went past letting TerraScene built the files of interest. I haven't used it in over a year. I see I still have the files in the various folders if you want them. Let me know.W. Sieffert