A Terrascene Question

[Guest chezz]

How does FLY2 load a certain terracened area by a quarter of a globe (as shown in the attached picture in a red square) tile or the whole globe tile (yellow broken line in the picture) at once or it only loads a scenery when a certain parameters is met? I tried rending a scenery by a 1/4 of a globe tile so that it would be easier to edit however I noticed that sometimes the terrascened area is there but sometimes it not there when fly2 loads. Example I terrascened KSNA, KONT, KPSP separately but when I start FLY2 1 of the 3 terrascened areas doesnt show up but when I hit Ctrl+E to scan the area they are all there. So I decided to terrascened KONT, KSNA, KRIV, KRAL together and KPSP separately and the scenery loads perfectly but I wonder if terrascening a wide area putting so much stress in CPU, memory, video card perfomance which consequently causes the dreaded band of rays showing and make FLY2 perform inefficiently? Any explanation on this topic will be much appreciated.chrisrpll

[Guest]

Hi chezz,I dont have an answer for you, but I just wanted to let you know, I've been working on scenery for this globe tile. So far I've got:Taxiways for : AJO, BNG, CCB, EMT, FUL, L12, L35, L67, RIR and SBD.TerraModels for: CCB, L12, L35, L67, RIR, and SBD.And CCB is getting the royal treatment, with special custom models!Hope to do the same for POC, and ONT eventually too... but thats in the distant future.You from around here? Im live a few miles from CCB. If you have photos of any of the airports around here you could share, I could use them for models.

[Guest chezz]

Hi Brad,Yup. I'm currently residing here in CA. My cousin just bought a house in Palm Spring and been there once so I terrascend the area and just fly from KLAX to KPSP (virtually lol) its much faster than driving. I tried to set the "elevation subdensity from 4 to 8" in the render advance option but I don't see any diference so I just use the default USGS dem data. I'm also looking for some airport models and pictures for this globe tile so I can populate the area if I get photos I will share it with you. I hope somebody can give some insight on my previous posting.chrisrpll

[RandallR 446]

Chris,I'm not 100% sure about how Fly! loads the scenery - someone (maybe Todd Klaus?) went though this a long time ago. I believe that Fly! mounts the pod in its entirety into RAM and video memory and probably writes the rest to the swap file. Therefore, the more RAM you have (regular and video) the better it works.Personally, I believe that Fly! works best when TS scenery is loaded in Global Tile amounts - it just seems to do the best job of loading scenery as compared to 1/4 tiles where many times, the scenery just doesn't appear. I know that a global tile is considered the most that should be put in a pod. There have been cases where people rendered and sliced a scenery area that included as much as 5 global tiles. It worked, but Fly! could barely run! Obviously, the size of the scenery does have some impact, but unless you have an older, less capable machine, global tiles do well.Even a global tile is not immune to failing to appear in some cases. When that happens, I increase the load parameters for the tile by 1 degree in the SCF file. There is a buffer of 1 degree built-in to TS - on rare occassions, it is necessary to increase the buffer to 2 degrees. You might try that with your 1/4 tiles and see what happens.As far as the "dreaded band of rays" effect you speak of, it has no relationship with TS. I have only seen it two times and that was in generic scenery areas: once in the Oakland area when there was an overcast and I looked to the east - the other on one airport in the Greek Isles with an overcast and looking to the east. The effect has appeared in no other location and I haven't seen it for nearly a year - it may have something to do with video card brand/driver combination, etc. - I'm not sure.

[Guest chezz]

Hi Randall,Thanks for the insights. I hope Todd have the chance to read this question too so that we we all have a clearer idea on how to use Terrascene efficiently with less impact on FLY2 performance. The reason also I'm bent on terrasceneing by a quarter of a tile so that it would take less time to pod and slice with fly2.chris salviejoSOYO KT400 Ultra Platinum EditionCorsair XMS PC2700 DDR 256 mbGforce MMX400 64mb (to be upgraded soon to ATI radeon 9600 )100 G WD HDD20 G Seagate HDDAMD Athlon XP 1800+Windows 2000 ProFLY2 patched 240Nvdia 43.25

[Guest]

Just a theory:I'm a hobby programmer. So I have a 'little' insight, but am no pro.For each file you want to use you have to : 1) check for its existance2) get a file handle for the file3) check the files size4) prepare a spot of memory the size of that file5) open the file for reading6) read the file into said memory7) close the file8) free the handle9) have some way to keep track of that file while you have it loaded10) clear the memory when no longer neededSo... it becomes inconceivable, and very slow to do this for every single file. But, if you group them as one file (pod), you can do 'most' of these steps, in one operation. So, im fairly certain that the entire pod, whatever size you make it, is read all at once, and that this is the 'real' reason for pods. (not just the organizational aspect of it). This doesnt mean the whole file is loaded into video memory. That is probably only done on a per image basis, as needed.Again, im guessing.

[Guest]

BTW Chezz,I also did quite a bit of custom elevation repairs for this area, if you'ld like me to share them with you.Also, I too could not get consistent 8x8 tile elevations for this area. There is a thread in the developers forum about it, but in the end, someone created them on their machine, and shared them with me. I can share those with you as well.

[Guest chezz]

Hi Brad that would be great. BTW were you able to repair the Bigbear lake? If it is a huge file I can mail you a blank CD so you can burn it for me (I'm using a dial-up internet connection). Please e-mail me your address.ThanksChris