Vegetation Grouping ??

[nudata 10]

Covering a large area with indivudual trees/bushes causes a large processing load. However, if many objects are combined into one group the impact is significantly reduced. How do you combine individual objects, such as trees, into a grouping?Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[Gypsy Baron 10]

>Covering a large area with indivudual trees/bushes causes a>large processing load. However, if many objects are combined>into one group the impact is significantly reduced. How do you>combine individual objects, such as trees, into a grouping?>>Regards,>Dick Boley>>A PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yokeWhen I want alot of vegetation in an area I use SBuilderX to createa LandClass poly that covers that area and specify the type oflandclass that matches what I am looking for. Paul

[nudata 10]

I should have been more explicit. I want to add some forest elements to photo scenery. Microsoft has prohibited adding textured polygons to photo scenery in FSX. Therefore, the best way to add a forest element is by making it an object. So I need a process that allows perhaps taking something like an autogen tree to make an object with many trees. I have seen custom forest objects but, since I never messed with objects, I do not know anything about their creation.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[Gypsy Baron 10]

>I should have been more explicit. I want to add some forest>elements to photo scenery. Microsoft has prohibited adding>textured polygons to photo scenery in FSX. Therefore, the best>way to add a forest element is by making it an object. So I>need a process that allows perhaps taking something like an>autogen tree to make an object with many trees. I have seen>custom forest objects but, since I never messed with objects,>I do not know anything about their creation.>>Regards,>Dick Boley>>A PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke The polys I mentioned ARE autogen, not "textured polys". You create a poly in SBuilderX covering the area you want your forrest to cover and then tag that poly with the approriate landclass from the list available. The trees around and within the airport as well as across the Danube river in the attachment were added using this method. Paul

[nudata 10]

Unfortunately Microsoft restricts the display of a polygon that is textured with landclass and its autogen as well. The first photo shows the autogen present as a "forest and field" landclass polygon placed in a suburban area. The second shows the same area but with photo scenery turned on. The "conventional" approach seems to be a dead-end unless there is some setting you have that I do not. Given all the tweaks that is a real possibility.I need to try making a "hole" to see if that negates the photo scenery blocking a textured polygon that is placed in the "hole".Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yokehttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185459.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/185460.jpg

[GHD 21]

>Covering a large area with indivudual trees/bushes causes a>large processing load. However, if many objects are combined>into one group the impact is significantly reduced. How do you>combine individual objects, such as trees, into a grouping?>>Regards,>Dick Boley>>A PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yokeAre you talking about FS9 or FSX? If FSX, Annotator now has vegetation polygons.George

[nudata 10]

Hi George,The problem with Annotator is that Microsoft provided no linkage between FSX and Annotator. Nor do they provide any lat/lon info. I have several gigabytes of photo scenery covering part of the state of Utah. It is mostly high desert so there are very few outstanding and unique visual references. This makes it difficult to place autogen since I can't find my target in autogen without spending lots of time visually scanning in Annotator. The other thing I would like to do is to create my own forest groups so that they are one object. I think that, although Annotator provides groups, the content is treated as individual library objects so a large forested area drops FPS.Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[GaryGB 10]

Hi Dick:I wonder if autogen *.AGN files written in the FS9 file format would not also be displayable on top of FSX-format photorealistic scenery?One could try working on COPIES of one's original AGN tiles in a separate "work" folder location (...hi George! ;-) ) for the areas of interest using this interesting beta software "AUTOTREES":http://library.avsim.net/search.php?Search...=root&Go=SearchIt looks very capable, and was incredibly fast in my initial tests!Lets hope we will see an FSX-specific version too, as this perhaps further develops into shareware and commercial distribution packages!Hope this helps! :-) GaryGB

[nudata 10]

I think that program. and others like it, rely on the FS9 texture files themselves to make a determination of where a tree is to be placed. The actual numerical BMP values would be used to find a good range of green shading. Thus you need old fashioned FS9 bitmap texture files. This is probably why FSX needs them for using AGN in the new format the old FSX format. Makes it easy to locate either FSX or FS9 texture files. The darn problem is that say you are using 30 centimeter Oahu photo scenery (looks great). That is divided into 10 FSX style BGL files. Now you decide to do Wheeler Air Force Base in the center of Oahu. Which file has Wheeler in it? An even greater challenge is to now move that issue to a large desert area, perhaps in SW Utah. You want to add some Autogen elements to a small village in the desert. This is many times more difficult to locate in Annotator than the big Wheeler AFB.Without a geographic indication of where Annotator is "looking" I do not see any way to easily locate a target for Autogen if you have a large photo coverage area. Thus you are left with placing various sized FSX forest objects instead of Autogen. Unfortunately these only work on flat areas and do not adapt to slopes as Autogen does. And secondly, I do not have any idea how to make them from existing trees available as Autogen elements in FSX. I can get the MDL files and textures for a tree but how do you put many of them into an object BGL?Regards,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke

[GHD 21]

>>I wonder if autogen *.AGN files written in the FS9 file format>would not also be displayable on top of FSX-format>photorealistic scenery?>Of course they are, however if you modify them with FSX Annotator they will be saved in FSX (RIFF) format.George

[GaryGB 10]

Hi George:Thanks again for the heads up on the need to work initially on copies of one's default and/or original files with any such autogen utility until one's beta versions have been adequately tested, and to make extra backups of one's *.AGN files for legacy compatibility purposes.Hi Dick:I found that at least one could open FSX-format imagery BGLs in the FSX TMFViewer utility to get a georeferenced coordinate readout on the bottom status bar.The vegetation grouping possibilities apparently achievable in the new FSX Autogen SDK seem interesting; but, as is often the case with the FS SDK, it would take some further study to fully comprehend...It would be interesting to see if future versions of SBuilder might be able to Create, Append or Import *.AGN files (with auto-flipping) so that in addition to manual and a BMP color-value-based autogen object auto-placement algorithm, one could also utilize scanning for existing vector line or poly features to assist the semi-automated creation or editing of autogen files with less "clean up" being needed afterwards.Further interesting and somewhat related features I'd like to see in SBuilder would be the ability to read/save/export data related to autogen (and other 3D object placement?) in appropriately structured KML, XML and/or Polish MP files for use in not only FS, but in Google Earth, MS Virtual Earth (VE), NASA WorldWind etc..Who knows, we might eventually have to gear up for compatibility with "Microsoft WorldSim" running on a core platform hybrid of FS/TS2 and VE! :-lol ..The ability to work with autogen in SBuilder might facilitate better "customized autogen content realism".This might also allow for better performance in a given FS version by less use of autogen exclude layers otherwise needed to edit/clean up underlying autogen around vector line and poly objects throughout one's custom (or default?) scenery, perhaps then reducing the burden on the FS rendering engine at runtime.For example, Ultimate Terrain for FS9 introduced the ability to display some new texture and autogen features based on road (vector) density. It might be interesting to see if that extent of autogen customization could be pre-rendered into one's scenery rather than requiring even that "addition" feature to be processed as a computing burden on the FS rendering engine at runtime, while also using less "subtraction"/exclude autogen layers...A mixed blessing I suppose, that there is so much to learn, and so many fascinating possibilities to be explored in scenery development... even with the tools we already have available! ;) Hope this might be of further interest! :-)GaryGB

[nudata 10]

Well, I believe that there is no solution to locating a specific area in Annotator. It is completely divorced from the "world". Instead it decodes the original BMP from the Opened BGL and it is up to you to find the place of interest. SBuilder would indeed be a nice place to have some of the Autogen automatic creation capabilities. Lars Hoyer (AgenT) had an excellent FS9 program but he seemed to not be inclined to try to crack FSX BGLs.Regards & thanks to all,Dick BoleyA PC, an LCD, speakers, CH yoke