LWMViewer2

[Guest Horst]

Hello Jim,Do not worry be happy!Something like this:http://www.barry.fireflyinternet.co.uk/fun...es/be_happy.swfDo you ever stopped by on Adrian Woods blog? :)(Oct. 19,2005)http://blogs.technet.com/torgo3000/Kind regardsHorst

[Guest Dasher7]

Wow, this is truly great! Looking forward to firing up..Thanks Jim!-Dasher7

[Guest jimkeir]

Hi,Now there's an interesting blog article! Remember guys, LWMViewer is free for all uses including commercial so go right ahead! Of course, if you use it with FS10 I'm sure it would be handy if it could read any new file formats you've come up with :-smooch Always open to suggestions from anywhere...Cheers,Jim

[Guest Bell206freak]

I've downloaded and installed it with hardly any problems (I had to locate the required DLL's, but that's it)...I read the ATI users readme (I have an ATI All-in-Wonder with a Radeon chipset), and I read about two *.fx files that I need to edit. Only thing is, I cannot find the aforementioned *.fx files, and the names of them aren't given out.What *.fx files do I need to edit, and were they missed in the upload?Another question.. Is there a way to set it up to where it'll acess an installation of FS that is NOT on the C: drive? I have FS installed on my E: drive and it contains all of my modified FS stuff, and it's the main installation of FS I use. I rarely resort to default, (I still do, but only once in a blue moon) but I would like to be able to see the adjusted stuff in LWMViewer.Is there a way to set it to access it to the E: drive?Thanks_Steve

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

By now, everyone has figured out how LWMViewer 2 works. Just a few things:I get bad frame rates if Lightsource, Blend, or the textures are turned on. No surprise. It is an FX5200 card, Jim, so you can add that to the list of what seems to work. However, antialias does seem to have a bigger impact on frame rates than any of the other things.Generally, I turn Shadows off for better performance. And it doesn

[Guest jimkeir]

Hi,Mildly confused here :)First I'd suggest you download it again - that readme file was taken out because it's not relevant. The version I uploaded a couple of days ago has some importrant fixes, not least is that it starts up much faster.Don't worry about editing any files.The path to FS isn't built in, it fetches it from the registry so there's no tie to the C: drive anywhere. I'd guess your registry still points to an old location - nothing I can do about that I'm afraid :) You'll need to tweak the registry to point to your active installation.Cheers,Jim

[Guest jimkeir]

Hi,Thanks for the info - always useful. I'll add the 5200 to the 'known' list. I think the biggest hit is likely to be graphics memory - how much memory does it have? I'm surprised that lightsourcing has any impact though. Blending and textures both need quite a bit more horsepower although you should be able to uses landclass textures if you switch on 'Use 1st only'.Try playing with the Min, Max and Radius settings at the bottom of the control panel. These affect the mesh detail and cutoff radius, you should be able to get a smoother display at the cost of range.I'll need to check the load order. It should use the priority in the scenery library but it sounds as though it's not. If so, I'll fix it but in the meantime just drag them around in the file list, as you said.Some files have surprisingly large boundaries, particularly the ones you mentioned (nav, objects etc.) . Now you'll get a dialog appearing instead of just loading everything and it's been suggested that I put in a way of multi-selecting files to load - should make things easier.Switch on the 'visual file display' thingie in the file dialog and it'll show you where the limits of the files are.The problem with the masks is down to the way they're read. Previously I took the points and passed them over to Windows for display, nice and simple. Now, because I'm passing them over to DirectX, I need to split all the polygons into triangles first. That code doesn't handle the case where a polygon intersects itself and when it gets it wrong, the result is that part of the polygon is inside-out as in your screenshot.As for creating airports etc... I think I'll concentrate on getting the stuff that's already there working properly first :)Cheers,Jim

[Guest Hans Palsson]

Hi!Thanks, a tool that will ease the workload a lot. Being a fan of the last version - actually my current project would not be possible without it - I have so far only been impressed! But as you guess there is a "bug" (might not be) in this reply... I watch my SBuilder-created LC, which is wonderful, the visibility is far better than in FS, if I use the top-down view. But the screen goes black if I zoom higher up than 16000 meters ASL. Since I need to view really large areas, this is not very handy. I

[Guest jimkeir]

Hi,There is a limit on the viewing distance which I had to use just to keep the amount of data down. Most games will do exactly the same thing, having the world fade off into fog after a while in outdoor areas.Terrain mesh is relatively expensive to display (lots of polygons). 16 Kilometers may not sound much if you're thinking about how far you can see in a straight line but if you think of the *area* you can see from 16Km up, it's fairly big :)I'll see if I can put something in, even if it's just in top-down mode, that allows larger areas of ground to be displayed. Doing it without killing the display rate may be interesting :-hmmm Just out of interest, why do you need to see such a large area at once? Can't you scroll around a little to do the same job?Cheers,Jim

[Guest Hans Palsson]

>Just out of interest, why do you need to see such a large area>at once? Can't you scroll around a little to do the same job?>Hi!Well, yes and no, I can use the scroll of course, but it would be more handy to be able to zoom out more, since each area that I produce is larger than the one visible from 16000 meters. Whoa, you might think, but then consider that I have then already divided Sweden into something like 25-30 "squares". I use this function to find holes in the LC.This is just a wish, not a demand, please remember that! :-)/hans

[Guest hefy_jefy]

Hello Luis,Your mention of the lines of static aircraft at Oshkosh caught my attention. I would dearly like to be able to place these as standard objects using RWY12 (or similar). There are simply not enough parked aircraft around in FS, Google Earth shows hundreds of them parked at all GA airports in the US. The Oshkosh ones are perfect, very low polygon count.I had thought that it would simply be a case of finding the GUID for them and creating an XML file, since they are already in FS9. I am getting to grips with LWMviewer2 (I use the earlier version already) but I am not understanding the object viewer very well. The static aircraft are in OB9NAMC0.bgl according to LWMviewer but I can't get this to load in object viewer (it seems to crash) I can get what looks like a guid by hitting F2 after selecting a model in the main window but I am not sure if this is correct?I have feeling that I am not understanding this properly!BestGeoff

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Geoff,It can be confusing. There are 2 different things: the object library containing the models of the objects, and the bgl with the placement information (coordinates, altitude, etc.)The OB files only contain the coordinates where objects are placed. In order to get the models, you must find the object library. In this case, it is simply "Oshkosh.bgl" found in the NAMC (North America Central) directory. It has all the models of static airplanes, mobile homes, lovely forum buildings, and so on.I use BGLXML by Alessandro Antonini to extract the models. Just watch out for the version that you use: version 1.2 extracts the models with their names (much easier to use) while the latest version 1.8 assigns the GUID as the name, making things just a bit more difficult. Once you have the models, pick the ones you want. You can view them in LWMViewer 2 by loading the Oshkosh.bgl. Create your XML file for making your personal library and drag that file over BGLComp. That is it.I would have attached the library here for you, but it exceeds forum limits. Sorry.Any questions, don't hesitate to ask.Best regards.Luis

[scott967 62]

I believe BGLXML 1.8 will work, at least I use the BGLXMLShell , as long as the file objfile.txt is in the destination directory. I haven't used BGLXML from the command line for a long time, so not sure how that one works. If objfile.txt is not in the destination directory, I get the GUID as the model name.scott s..

[Guest hefy_jefy]

Guys,Many thanks - I knew it was something basic, lets see if I can get this figured now..Thanks again,Geoff

[Guest hefy_jefy]

OK got it!Cool, at last GA airfields with planes...I could have put AI stuff there but to get anything that looks real it would have needed heaps of them. I think this is a better solution make an area of the field that has these (as long as you don't get too close) then a "working' area with a few AI planes.Thanks again and thanks to Jim for another great addition..Geoff