Best place to place add-on scenery?

[Guest GerrishGray]

Thanks Christian. Yes, I did indeed mean lclookup.bgl, worldlc.bgl is of course simply the landclass scenery file for the default FS world.Holger, that's a fantastic discovery regarding other ground texture numbers that can take AGN's. Now you have uncovered it, it makes sense: the ground textures that have vegetation AGN's built into lclookup.bgl won't accept custom AGN's because they 'find' the lclookup.bgl version first; the one's with no vegetation and no default AGN in lclookup.bgl WILL accept custom AGN it seems - fancy doing some more tests to verify that? It's very exciting because it opens up the possibility of having a lot more custom landclasses in localised landclass scenery by re-using some of these types.If I didn't already have a business to run I reckon I could spend my whole day remapping the world with custom Autogen containing local building styles and all sorts of different trees etc. What a hobby. Roll on retirement, eh!And, of course, if someone could crack the rest of lclookup.bgl that would open up loads more possibilities too. I suspect that FS already have notions for expanding the use of Autogen etc. as FS develops, because they certainly seem to have created a lot of currently unexploited possibilities in the underlying system.CheersGerrish

[Holger 0]

Hi all,Gerrish, the image above shows LC#19 (025b) with custom settlement textures and agn. Thus far, I have tried classes 8, 19, 42, 53, and 69. The last one didn't seem to work but it only has five variants and two seasons to begin with.While there are quite a few more classes without autogen, I've restricted my first round of testing to classes that don't switch to a different class at intermediate slope levels (which would likely lead to strange visual contrasts). I also haven't tested any of the three-digit single-textured classes (e.g., 131, 138, 141) but they would have limited use anyway.Well, at the very least we'll have about four extra classes to use in custom autogen projects, if you keep in mind the basic limitation of no night maps.Cheers, Holger

[ilovetofly 1]

Wow! I didn't expect this question to generate such a thread. Much of what is mentioned is beyond me as I just have no interest or capabilities in programming. However, another question since this created quite a conversation. I downloaded all of the USA files from FSGenesis. Is there a way to put all of these into one folder and have FS9 see it in the scenery file so that I don't have to load all of the BGL files separately? This way I could just have installed one folder with all the necessary BGL's. Thanks.

[Guest arnaud.clere]

Hi,As a matter of fact, I once replaced all my textures with bitmaps with numbers to determine what texture was used depending on the LC and slope. I did that on FS2002 and updated the data for FS2004 and used it to create an "optimized" LC for France with vineyards, industrial areas, and far better mountain classes (using the gradient map at its best). Recently, I've added classes to represent small towns in the mountains and used it to add some 30 ski resorts. Really nice to fly in the mountains now!I have a rather complete Excel worksheet describing this here:http://arnaud.clere.free.fr/FlightSimulator/landclass.htmlSorry, the page is only in French but the Excel worksheet that is included with the sources should be easy to understand, have a look at :http://arnaud.clere.free.fr/FlightSimulato..._france-src.zipThe LC by itself can be found here. Just follow the very last link on the page to download it freely.http://www.francesim.com/Articles.aspx?C=2...Enr=1243&Cpt=-1Hope it helps!Cheers,Arnaud

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

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[Guest arnaud.clere]

Hi Luis,French seems to be your native tongue! I'll go on in English, otherwise most readers wouldn't understand.Basically, the Excel document contains one sheet describing for each class:- texture number used- default autogen- can the autogen be modified by modifying the .agnAnd this, for the:- steep slopes- gentle slopes- flat areasIt contains another sheet describing the textures:- Number of variations- seasons available- grid-like or not- existence of a lightmap- existence of a .agn- existence of a mask allowing precise merge of adjacent textures.From place to place, it contains some other annotations on the best use cases for the classes that may not be relevant to other areas than A.Is there anything special you would like me to explain with more details?

[Holger 0]

Hi Arnaud,thanks for sharing that table, it is indeed an impressive piece of work! It's actually quite similar to Joachim's draft table so it allows for interesting comparisons.Thanks also for the link to your France LC project; I had an earlier version, which I liked very much, and I'm looking forward to installing the new; those vineyards look very realistic!My question is in regards to the discussion above about custom agn files for LC types that don't have autogen in default FS9. You say that the table contains a column for "can the autogen be modified by modifying the .agn". Maybe I'm not looking at the right column (e.g., Textures FS9 > column Q) but those classes to which I'm able to attach autogen - 002, 006, 025, etc - don't have an "X". Or perhaps you tried modifying only those classes that already have an agn file?Another question is regarding your comments in Classes FS9 > Column F "t056 non modifiable" and "t027 non modifiable". I assume that refers to the hidden autogen assignments?Thanks again for this great resource!Cheers, Holger

[Guest arnaud.clere]

Hi Holger,When I tried to add non-existing .agn files, they were not used. Maybe a problem when you're not in the B area ? I'll have to give it another try.Regarding the Excel sheet, that's right. Since adding new .agn was not working for me for France, I just listed what would be working for sure: modifying the existing .agn; and used that information to make better choices when transforming the textures to "create" optimized classes. Don't feel constrained by what's written in it. There are plenty of things you'd think impossible until somebody does it ;)Interestingly enough, modifying the existing 050b2*.agn does not work for me neither which is why I wrote it in red. I thought it was a packaging error of Microsoft.Regarding the 056 and 027, It's just that I'm using them for what they are in some optimized classes which means I must not change them. I made that choice more explicit in front of any other class using those textures to help looking for classes that can still be transformed. It is just a constraint for future lc_france_opt classes. That's the kind of compromise you need to do with a hard-coded class>texture map I guess.Cheers,Arnaud

[Guest GerrishGray]

Hi everyoneThat was an excellent and meticulous piece of work Arnaud - well done and thanks. I have been able to add some extra info to my own Landclasses table as a result, and attach an up-to-date copy for everyone.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/91196.zipOn my reckoning, the 'candidates' for adding .agn's to classes/textures that don't have them are 8, 19, 42, 50, 53, 56, 57, 59, 69, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 122, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 137, 138, 141 and 142.From what you guys say, though, some may not work (perhaps because of data in lclookup.bgl that we don't understand?).Actually, I think some of the LC's 129/131-3/136-8 and the new 97/98/99 could be VERY useful if they do work because most of them are not widely used in the default scenery and they have no variation with slope - which would be handy for those who have been wanting to model mountain villages etc.Kind RegardsGerrish

[Guest GerrishGray]

Some further thoughts:Many of the candidate classes for adding .agn files use texture sets without 'blend masks', which perhaps limits their utility for realistic modelling a bit. But, I wonder if we might be able to add blend masks to some of these texture sets, just as we can add .agn's to some of them ...?CheersGerrish

[Guest arnaud.clere]

Hi,Thanks for the update, Gerrish.Being able to add blend masks definitely improves the "reality" of all human-activity-related classes (crops, towns). Also, my current tests suggest that the classes that do not display rocks on steep slopes are not the best ones for mountain. The ideal ones are those displaying rocks on steep slopes and another same thing on gentle slopes and flat areas.

[Guest christian]

I had a quick look at the lclookup table using this new document. I couldn't find anything useful though. It seems like slope textures are actually land class remappings, not texture remappings, but I can't confirm 100%. The end of the table (and that accounts for 80% of the whole file) looks like a big map that is mainly -1 and has a few addressed / numbers. Anyone any idea what this could be? Cheers, Christian