looking for a landclass ID

[Guest Hugo]

Hi all. I'm working on a scenery and have the need to identify the landclass bmp file that covers the area I'm working this scenery in. I used R. Ludowise TCalc2004 v2.0 for this purpose and got the info showned in the attached image.Making a search in FS9 folder, using 001332212221101Su.bmp for keyword, I could not come with any file having this name. I made a search using only 1101Su.bmp as kw. This yielded the 7 files showned in the background of the same attached image, all linked to city sceneries.The scenery I'm working on is located in an area covered by a regional landclass (Quebec LC, that actualy covers about 1/3 of the whole province, based on rearranged FS original lcs, I presume!!). How can I determine the exact lanclass GRAPHIC file used to cover this SPECIFIC AREA and its folder location?Thanks for any help.Hugo

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Hugo,There are 2 different things here. The file name - 001332212221101Su.bmp - is not land class, but rather a custom (photo-real) ground texture.Land class is made of generic textures that do not precisely represent the ground at any particular place, whereas custom textures are real pictures of the ground.To get the land class value for your scenery, please use Microsoft's TMFViewer, available in the Terrain S.D.K.Then, just open the relevant land class file, place the pointer over the correct place, and read the land class value on the status bar:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/124285.jpgFor more information on this, please see "Simple Instructions for Modifying Land Class" - it can be found in the Avsim library.Best regards.Luis

[Guest Hugo]

Hi Luis. Thanks for the fast and informative reply. Sorry if I'm myself somewhat long to come backbut I've been jugling with them since I got them and they are pretty well what I was looking for. I can't tell for shure if,using them, I will be to acheive what I'm after but shurely they put me on the right track :-)>There are 2 different things here. The file name - 001332212221101Su.bmp - is not land class,>but rather a custom (photo-real) ground texture.Funny, cause I don't have any photoreal textures neither in this area nor anywhere else as on the earth far as I know. :-eek >Land class is made of generic textures that do not precisely>represent the ground at any particular place, whereas custom>textures are real pictures of the ground.Well I did make few land class installations with LC Assistant and EZ-Landclass so I have a good idea of the field.>To get the land class value for your scenery, please use>Microsoft's TMFViewer, available in the Terrain S.D.K.Indeed that's a very good tool I was not aware of, that is until now ;-) With the help of your 'Simple Instructions for Modifying Land Class' it turn out to be very helpfull in my quest.>>Then, just open the relevant land class file, place the>pointer over the correct place, and read the land class value>on the status bar:>I did just that and found the value to be 21 when looking into worldlc.bgl, the world original FS land class. But as this area is covered by Quebec LC. So peeking into it, the area lc value is now set to 61.With this and some infos I red into the sdk docs I'm pretty well on my way thought I still have to experiment to see if the end results will be as expected.Again, thanks a lot Luis, for your precious help.Hugo

[GHD 21]

>> Funny, cause I don't have any photoreal textures neither in this area nor anywhere else as on the earth far as I know. The texture filename is generated purely from the Lat/Long coordinates. It may or may not exist.George

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Salut Hugo,I am glad that this could be of help to you.As for TCalc, it is a tool for designers, and gives a lot of very useful information. For example, even if there is no custom texture installed, TCalc will indicate the file name for this so that a designer will not have to calculate it. Many thanks to Dick Ludowise for making this tool so comprehensive.Best regards.Luis

[Guest Hugo]

Hi! Me again ;-). Well the previous solution I sought to for my need, playing with LC, was not the right one though the informations I got were realy worthy but for other needs that are not my present one. I'm looking for a way to 'skin cover' the surface of a small area with seasonal grass textures.The place is a small park (more so a rest area) about 140 meters on the side which is totaly included in a lod 13 area.As shown in the attached image, there are 2 sections. The one to the north is almost flat and applyin polys there gives an acceptable result but the southern part is a lot more bumpy and has to remain this way. A 4 meter drop for an about 12 m width. It is very hard to get the polys to adjust to the ground surface there and dosen't look nice.Would there be a tool, I'm thinking about something like SBuilder or Ground2k, that would permit to acheive that, eg redoing the whole area, the north and south parts. Just applying the grass surfaces. I've red a bit about VTP poly, photo textures, but I am still not at ease with this stuff still. Yet I would like to complete the scenery for early september to share it with an online flying group for the beginning of the new flying season.If it can be done, then SBuider should be the tool as far as I can appreciate. Could someone hints me toward the knowledge elements I should focus on with this tool in order not to disperse myself taking into account the time constrain I have to live with.I have made myself nice looking seasonal grass textures but those are dxt 1024x1024 (naturaly the grass is kinda white during winter time around here ;-) ). Donno if those would be handy for this approach though.Again thanks for any help.HugoHum! Am I pointing someone in particular seeking this help? :-)Salut Luis

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Salut Hugo,En fait, presque tous ici savent plus que moi et sont en mesure de r

[Guest Hugo]

Thanks a lot Luis. "You need to draw a VTP polygon and then either assign a grass land class value to it, or assign your grass textures, including all seasonal variants. It is very easy to do with either program." That's what I wanted to hear (or to read for the matter!) ;-)I guess I'll opt for SBuilder and focus on VTP polys at this time. When I'm over with this project I will look at it on a broader level. You say I could either use grass LC or self define textures. That would be cool :-) Merci et A+ comme disent les fran

[Guest Hugo]

Well, I finaly got what I was looking for. Well almost!. Compare image #1 (top left) here with the one done with polys attached to a previous message. It's a little more fuzzy, as it blends with the surronding but thats ok. I had to redimension texture files to 512x512 dxt1 as 1024x1024 would crash FS when going from summer to other seasons!! I used Ground2k4 to acheived it instead of Sbuilder I couldn't get to work properly, thought I'm shure it's a very good tool as well.There are 2 questions I'm left with though.1- When I choose Polygons/Line in G2K4 and choose Poly without shore, I do not have access to VTP1 Polys function. So I went for VTP2 Polys to produce this part of the scenery. See attached image#2. I'm not complaining because it works ok ;-) But I wonder if I'm the only one that have this restriction? Only VTP2 polys are usable with the latest G2K4 version. I have V5.4 dated 12/21/20042- My second question is about seasonal change synchronism between FS world and seasonal textures. For example image #1 (center) shows how the terrain looks like on may 5th. Still very much under snow while the surronding is almost dryed out! For the area, FS goes from winter aspect to spring's on april 18. But it's not until may 19 that the terrain changes its face!! A similar discrepancy exist going from fall to winter. Beginning and end of summer are in total synchronism though, on june 19 and sept 20. Note: G. Gray's trees follows the same schedule as this terrain but for trees this quite correct for this area.Now, I remember having red an exchange on this matter, modification of seasonal texture changing date, on this forum. I made a search but could not find the thread back. Anyone has a clue on this?BTW seasonal textures applied to 'regular' polys, the ones made with EOD or FSDS2, don't have their seasonal changes until much later in autumn. Actualy on dec 22 as showned in image #1, bottom L/R. FS winter date for the area is november 21!! Hum! All textures are not created equal ;-) I just wonder about Sbuilder's ones. I shall investigate! (if I can find how to put it to work... someday :-) )So, if someone could indicate how one can modify seasonal texture change date on those applied through Ground2k and, if possible, on those made with 'regular' polys, it would be very much appreciated (at least by... me) :-) :-)Hugo

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Salut Hugo,Glad that you could get it to work. It looks very good so far.VTP1 only worked with FS 2002. Christian Fumey left that possibility in Ground2K4 in case the FS Team ever decides to make it operable again, but you cannot access VTP1 for now. You were right to use VTP2, and it is easier anyway.As for modifying season dates for your polygon, you might get some clues at Arno's site, as I believe he has indicated the method:http://www.scenerydesign.org/forum/You will have to register and log-in in order to read the threads.Beat regards.Luis

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Hugo.VTP1 was created for CFS2, and allowed in FS2002 for compatibility ( LWMPoly1 is also allowed in FS2002 ). Christian bought a copy of CFS2 because I nagged him to add the VTP1 and LWMPoly1 option to Ground2K. This probably explains why there has been no further development for Ground2K4... he's too busy shooting down planes in CFS2. ;)Dick

[Guest Hugo]

Thanks Luis and Dick for the confirmation about the unavailability of VTP1 in G2K4. I feel a lot less lonely now :-)Luis, I went to the link U suggest. There were some discussions on seasonal textures and seasonal date changes there but they were related to gmax coding using makemdl and the bglcomp compiler I'm not at all familiar with (for the moment! I just retired and will have time this fall and winter to give it a closer look along with SBuilder and G2K4). I could not find back the thread I have refered to in my previous message. But I found the following one: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchwhere, in the next to last message, Arno gives a lot of infos on various variables used by scasm to gather FS time and seasonal states. He also propose coding to retreive from an act on FS behavior, using the IfVarRange conditional command. This combined with Scasm documentation on the usage of this command brought me to find myself a solution for synchronising seasonal textures changes with FS's ones for what I refer as 'regular polys' in my previous message, that is, those textures applied to object surfaces in programs like EOD and FSDS2. It can be used with both tools with little coding differences depending which one uses. The coding change is made in the initial api files and reprocess through airport, FSSC or whatever program that accepts api files. But I'm not totaly satisfied with my solution. It forces me to find, by trial and error, the dates (the day of the year) seasons change of each an any site I'd be working on and apply these values to IfVarRange command. It is un-universal, tedious and un-elegant! Broadly speaking, FS seasonal changes occurs at those dates we all know; 21 march, june, september and december (or about). But the actual seasonal change at a given lattitude (and altitude too, I think) may be delayed or advanced on FS 'generic' seasonal dates.For example in the area I'm presently concerned, between Montreal and Quebec on St-Laurence north shore, the change from winter to spring texture occurs on april 14 (about 3 weeks after the global FS) and the passage from fall to winter happens on november 21, a month earlier than FS's. So peaking FS var 6F8 for seasonal change is not appropriate point of decision.Hence, there ought to be a variable address or an other mean, FS uses to determine what seasonal texture is applied for a specific area at any given time. Would you or someone that reads this thread know that address (or the mean used by FS) so one (including me!) could refer to it to synchronise the changes?For ground polys produced with Gound2k I face the same dilemna. I haven't look to it a great deal at this time. Does it use scasm as compiler? I would think so. I used SCDis2.3 to dissamble the bgl I made. It does it for a litte part but gives this message along the way; -- ;;; sorry, scdis can't decode section 8 --Anyone is aware of any dissasembler that could do the job?As for the above, there will shurely be a need for some code tweekings!!Hugo

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Hugo.There isn't any variable to tap into that I'm aware of.The seasons.bgl contains a map of the seasonal limits. It's a great deal like worldlc.bgl... the world's landclass file. You can view it in TMFViewer. TMFViewer has a menu item to allow you to view each month, and you can read the latitude/longitude, as well as the seasonal value, at the bottom of TMFViewer.Dick

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Salut Hugo,I feared that you would not be able to find a solution to this. I have never tried modifying the seasonal changes for ground polygons (seasons? what seasons? It is always hot here!). If anyone could tell you a way to do this, it would be Dick, and you see that he indicates it cannot be done.You could try modifying the seasons assignments (seasons.bgl) in your area, although I am not sure if this will solve your problem. Christian Stock wrote up the procedure for this in his Terrain Model File Manual, that you can find in the Avsim library.I have attempted to modify the seasons in my region numerous times with this method, but have never had any success. So, if someone has been able to do it, perhaps they could indicate the procedure and if there is any change from what Christian advises.Best regards.Luis

[edgarone 0]

>For ground polys produced with Gound2k I face the same>dilemna. I haven't look to it a great deal at this time. Does>it use scasm as compiler? I would think so. I used SCDis2.3 to>dissamble the bgl I made. It does it for a litte part but>gives this message along the way; -- ;;; sorry, scdis can't>decode section 8 -->>Anyone is aware of any dissasembler that could do the job?>Hello Hugo,to get the soucecode for the bgl's produced by Ground2K you need no disassembler: The bglc sources (no scasm) are stored in the Ground2k program folder (named something like "$....asm").Otherwise you can disassemble VTP-bgl's with LWMViewer from Jim Keir.Regards, Edgar