FSX vs FS9 Scasm differences

[Guest jimjones]

FSX vs FS9/Scasm differences.After loading some scenery designed for FS9 into FSX I noticed some objects, walls or roofs of buildings missing. Incredibly, I had to reverse the numbering from clockwise to counter clockwise to correct the problem. And it is not consistent, since some buildings, roofs, and walls appear fine with the clockwise numbering. Am I imagining this or is this a major MS FSX screwup?Its hard to imagine why MS would have lines and areas using colored specifications, not textured, to flash different colors at different distances from the object. Could be this is their way of warning us to move on to other design programs. I was very disappointed to find that photoscenery made with SBuilder by Luis Sa is not working in FSX. In the place of the photoscenery I get what appears to be a default texture stretched and repeated many times. Jim Jones

[arno 1]

Hi Jim,What kind of SCASM objects are you talking about? Are they created with FSDS2, EOD, VOD, ...?I have indeed also seen that some objects don't display correctly, but most of these were objects that I designed 5 years ago or so. Since then MS has been warning us in the SDKs to stop using that old code, so I am not really surprised if the backwards compatibility is broken on them for some parts.The orientation of the polygon is new for me. When they are in the wrong order, do you then see the backside of the polygons? I think in that case the direction of the normal also has to do with it.About the photo scenery, using the new resample tool to generate them is of course the solution for the future. Although it would be nice if old stuff still worked while we are transfering to the new tools. I haven't used VTP polygons to place photo scenery myself lately, so I have not tested that.

[Guest jimjones]

Arno,SCASM 2.60 was used with self coding of the models that failed. Those models have run successfully through many versions of SCASM and FS.In the case of a cylindrical shape with a top, the sides of the failed model did not show the sides either from the outside or from the inside. It was not until using counterclockwise numbering that the sides showed correctly.In another case of a NE corner of a building the sides did not show from the outside or inside. This corner was composed of several faces to simulate a rounded corner. One of the faces used an "i" parameter to get the face to show in FS9 and earlier FS versions. Again, using the counterclockwise numbering allowed all those faces to show correctly in FSX. Curiously, the SE corner had the same symmetrical dimensions and clockwise coding and showed correctly in FSX.Using the FSX SDK may be too difficult for me to lay photoscenery. SBuilder was such a nice and easy program to accomplish the task in FS9. I'll install the FSX SDK and see if I can comprehend its use. Perhaps someday a tutorial for its use will be written.Jim

[arno 1]

Hi Jim,>SCASM 2.60 was used with self coding of the models that>failed. Those models have run successfully through many>versions of SCASM and FS.Which version of SCASM you use does not really matter, it is about the scenery commands themself (I mean even with the most recent SCASM I can make a BGL file according to the Fs5 SDK).Giving that they were made with this old version of SCASM, it looks like they are not using the floating point commands yet. So basically it is pre-Fs2002 style code. Although most of this code still seems to work, I guess it would be best to try to use the SDK techniques where possible.>In the case of a cylindrical shape with a top, the sides of>the failed model did not show the sides either from the>outside or from the inside. It was not until using>counterclockwise numbering that the sides showed correctly.That is interesting. In the more recent techniques the direction (counterclockwise or clockwise) is used to determine which side of the polygon to draw. So it looks like we have something similar here. I will have to check this out, as it can be quite important for backwards compatibility of old stuff.>Using the FSX SDK may be too difficult for me to lay>photoscenery. SBuilder was such a nice and easy program to>accomplish the task in FS9. I'll install the FSX SDK and see>if I can comprehend its use. Perhaps someday a tutorial for>its use will be written.I am sure that in a while we will see tools that also support these latest techniques. At the moment they are just to new for tools already to take use of them.

[Guest jimjones]

Arno,Fortunately the GeoTiff files I used to feed into SBuilder were usable by the FSX SDK. A successful photoscenery has been created. Need now to figure out how to clean up those black borders and to create adjacent BGLs that match up.The original phototextures were 4m/pixel, and the final result is more blurry in FSX than the same phototextures in FS9. The SDK mentioned that 4m/pixel will appear blurry since 1.9m/pixel is now the standard. Since my PC and graphics card are rather old, these FSX phototextures don't show well in the distance and are slow to use the sharpest of the multiple resolutions, such that the plane flying at a slow 70 knots, has usually flown past the sharp resolutions when they appear. It is very interesting that the textures are now incorporated in the BGL. Jim

[arno 1]

Hi Jim,With the NullValue parameter you can define which color should not be shown in FS. So the line below will remove those black lines around your image.NullValue = 0, 0, 0To get photos placed next to each other align correctly, I placed them all in one INF file. I then let FS split the generated scenery into different BGL files according to the LOD grid with the SplitFileLOD parameter. This was needed as my total scenery size was about 2 GB.You can read more about my testing in this thread:http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3194I don't think your textures should look more blurry than in Fs2004, but in FsX you can set the maximum resolution that is displayed in your preferences (going from 7 cm to something like 20 m). So you might want to make sure that this setting allows the display of your photo resolution.

[Guest jimjones]

Arno,Your suggestion of using the Destination command of SplitFileLOD was just what was needed and it worked very well. I had also come up with the NullValue = 0,0,0 just before getting your suggestion for eliminating the black borders. Thanks for the tips.The use of the TmfViewer was very helpful in selecting the LOD value needed for the SplitFileLOD command.The Resample program is much easier to use than I first thought. I find it better than SBuilder now, especially since Resample will produce output when an LOD is only partially filled, which is not the case with SBuilder.The blurry views I was getting was mainly because of going too fast and having my FPS set too high. Also I was comparing this to FS9 where I had sharpened excessively the images. Actually, I believe the views look better now, much smoother.Jim

[Guest jimjones]

Anyone having diffulty with Gerrish Gray's trees. For me, some work and some do not. The pines are ok, most others not.Jim

[arno 1]

Hi Jim,I have not yet tried Gerrish trees, but we also have some trouble with certain older objects. Still looking at why this is, but the backwards compatibility for older objects (pre-Fs2002) seems not always perfect.