Alice in wonderland.

[Guest glidernut]

Apart from the bad parking, notest the shadow of the glider !Its not alined with wings ?!?!?glidernut.:-wave

[Christopher Low 5,352]

John,What on Earth are those "things" in the background ?Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest jonpoint]

John,I like the 'FBO Glider'. An interesting concept - go gliding and take the whole club with you - must be a strain on the wings. And I think the gear arrangemnts look clumsy... ;) Must need a huge winch :-eekSeriously, have you noticed how the shadow appears underneath crashed aircraft? I ploughed through some trees in the Dash-8, tore both wings AND the tail off it. Just as the remains of the fuselage slid back onto the taxiway (after bouncing off the trees), this perfect shadow appeared underneath it. Rather ghostly I thought :-scatterIs this like that problem amputees have where they can sometimes feel their (severed) body parts?And yeah... Are those prickly pears growing in the UK? :-lol:-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Christopher Low 5,352]

Jon,Are you sure that you should be treating the prototype Dash 8 quite so roughly ?Chris Low,ENGLAND.

[Guest jonpoint]

Chris,"Are you sure that you should be treating the prototype Dash 8 quite so roughly ?"Well... I like the classic 'Dirty Harry' quote:"A man's gotta know his limitations..." :-bangThis means 'testing' the crash models, deliberately clipping wings on trees, crunchy landings, AI altercations - you name it!It's not really THAT much fun - it's quite sad when you do it deliberately. I never do 'normal' flights afterwards 'coz I need a stiff drink to cope with the shock of seeing my beautiful plane wrecked over and over ;(On the other hand, crashing when you don't want to can be either infuriating or just plain funny - depending on how many times you cartwheel :-lolJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Guest R_Driscoll]

For Jon its planes, for me its scenery! I've forgotten how many times I've been "killed" while trying to get a closer look at some new scenery object! Its very embarassing getting flattened by your own hedge.RobD.

[Guest jonpoint]

"Its very embarassing getting flattened by your own hedge."Or, even worse when you can't even fly your own plane around Steffen's challenge without crashing it! My times are terrible! When I DO make some good laps, I crash on touchdown...Seriously Rob, have we a way of making our models 'soft'yet? I have a few things I'd like to do but they require that you can hit them without the aircraft exploding :-eekMy 'flying' birds are OK because moving models don't have the same problem. OOOPS! That's supposed to be a secret...I'm also interested in figuring out some 'animation' e.g. make the windsock a bit less erratic, have models that 'move' by themselves etc. All this playing around with aircraft has made me wish for some model features. I know that challenges can be made to perform these tasks but then they are 'locked' into the location. Oh, to have access to the system scripts, definitions and codes...:-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Guest R_Driscoll]

These things are possible - the model prefixes (eg t_, ws_, tw_) all seem to be linked to calls in some way that I can't work out and isn't documented that I can find. So if we knew the calls, we could make a new windsock ws_fred0.bin that could be a flag, or tw_heathrow0.bin that had a green/white flashing light on top. Any clues?By the way, transparency was probably not finished when they released the product - it doesn't work at night, a transparent object interferes with ground textures (eg putting a grass circle onto the ground causes interference patterns - or transparaent edges on runways causes the whole runway to flash in and out of view), and the famous chinook effect.I would love to borrow Peter James (or maybe the engine designer - what was his name, not Doug Church ?) to learn more about these things. Anyway, we can do most things. In the same way, it would be nice to learn how to fix the implementation of the challenge script in FLED that probably wasn't finished either - there goal was clear but they shipped too early ...Doesn't matter - what we have is amazing enough! I still love flying the old sim even with all its problems. RobD.

[Guest jonpoint]

tw_?? What's that? Tower?I will look into this, after the Dash-8 (logbook works fine now - I had to alter the CofG* to the same as the Baron's(!), then shift the entire model back 'up' to work OK). This meant moving the 3D model 'down' 815mm (easy), then altering the entire flight model and contact points before it would work (2 nights work) :-(*The 'zero' origin in 3D models is generally given as their 'center of gravity'. This isn't really true because, with aircraft, the 'zero' point is simply arbitary. It is the positions and masses of the aircraft components within the flight model that determine the true CofG. For models, the CofG simply represents the height of the model above the scenery (and the 'handle' position).I wish models had 'flight models' so we could give them weights and CofGs. I'd love to hit a tree and have it fall over! At the moment, all fixed models are infinitely heavy and 'glued' in position. By contrast, all moving models are massless and 'glued' to their track.You say that transparency doesn't work at night but do you really mean that it isn't compatible with night textures? My trees are still transparent (in any amount of light that I can see them). I do agree you cannot have both though. Remember my 'new' FBO with transparent windows (that don't work after nightfall) where I tried to place lights inside for effect? Doesn't work at all with night textures but it's OK otherwise. I have a nice 'Christmas tree' (large conifer with coloured lights!) which looks a treat at night. Unfortunately, when I created a night texture (with a large star on top), it turned into a box - with lights :-(I had limited success with the texture command 'brightness'. It stops textures from fading with the light. It can also give a 'glow' to objects in daylight too, a bit like 'shininess' (not implemented in the FU3 engine but available to developers of other LGS stuff).A good example is the red GeeBee. If you compare the last release with the pre-beta you'll notice what looks like reflections (a bit) in the paintwork. This was achieved by adding 'brightness 10' to the efile. The images posted by Steven Glanville on the Anim8or site show the effect quite well :-)Jon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[Guest R_Driscoll]

Yes I mean with night textures.Where do you put the line brightness 10 - is this between commas in the material declaration or as a stand-alone line?

[Guest jonpoint]

Between the commas e.g....PHONG,TMAP "sample.bmp",BRIGHTNESS 10,100....The brighter the basic colour, the better the effect. Dark colours remain dark, however they keep their colour better as the natural(!?) light fades. Worked well on the red GeeBee aircraft. Applying the same effect on the models looked terrible because the textures were dithered a lot - which just become more obvious :-( Again, simple, bright colours work best.Have a play and see what you get! I tried using it on the cellphone tower to make it more visible in dark conditions but I can't say it made much difference. Maybe it doesn't really work with RGBs, only BMPs/MIPs?:-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************