rivnut
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Posts posted by rivnut
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Good Idea, Ian. I'd gladly ante up for a new version sometime next year, or even a substantial update. I suspect something is in the pipeline now. Maybe it's the prolonged silence. That can speak volumes, sometimes.
Kevin
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there's nothing quite as satisfying as MF/VS in the Linux universe, --jeff
Jeff, Are you running Ilan's sims on Linux? Tell us about it. I'm interested.
Kev
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Hi Tyler, These files are not self extracting like the ones at the main MF website. Step 1: extract files to their own folder. Step 2: Read the "install.txt"
Step 3: Follow the directions in the text file.
The files at Avsim don't install automatically. You have to take the various folders and put them in the proper MF folders.
Kevin
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Go to the library. Click on "view category". Bring up Micro Flight and hit "change category". This will bring up all 57 files in alphabetic order.
Kevin
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http://library.avsim.net/login.php?Location=%2F
Try this. You have to register and login. It only takes a couple of minutes.
After you login go to the Micro Flight section. It's about halfway down the page. There is a lot of good add on there, that you can't get at the MF website.
Kevin
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It looks like minimal damage.
Kevin
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Hi Ed, I suppose you've tried all the simple things, recalibrating etc? Does your controler come with it's own software?
Kevin
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Marcel, Those pics are beautiful. We'll need many more classic aircraft. This is inspiring. I have a list for this winter. Planes like the Armstrong Whitworth Argosy, the Potez 62, Beech 18, Monospar, Bloch 220, Wibault-Penhoet 28, Savoia-Marchetti SM 75 and the Dewoitine 338. These are all on the short list. :lol:
I hope that work slows down so I can really spend some time modeling.
I'm really looking forward to seeing your latest scenery.
Kevin
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Hi Gee, I didn't mean that anyone had criticized the scenery. Far from it. The few comments made at the time were all awe and appreciation. The scenery deserves that. My point in the earlier post was that the comments were all but negligible. Only a small handful of people even bothered to say anything.
The scenery is remarkable for any sim. For MF it is astounding considering how little scenery there is.
Kevin
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With VS7 there is no need to think about land_size and k_alt and what have you anymore, I find.
Isn't that pretty neat that you can place the objects by using the clipboard, Ilan's brilliance!
I built St Croix this afternoon, using the nasa 3 arc sec srtm. The more I worked with it this weekend I realized that Ilan does in fact have a lot of this work taken care of by the software. The map.bmp etc as you mentioned, Ron. Without touching anything in the cfg, the distances are all right on the money.
We've had the clipboard thing happening in MF for quite a while. It's very handy. I should point out to all who appreciate this feature that it was originally suggested to Ilan by Ian Hay of Buckinghamshire,UK. He may not get credit for pushing for this feature anywhere else, but He's getting it here. Thanks Ian. This is one of a number of very significant improvements to the general scenery making in both sims, arrived at during several brainstorming sessions between Ian and Ilan back over a year ago. It is finally making it's way to Virtual Sailor.
Kevin
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I might also add that Ron's mention of VS looking after the distance pixel problem at higher latitudes is quite right. At Lat 60 N a pixel is near 60 feet across. Quite a diff from down south. I just flew over Tustumena Lake on the Kenai peninsula, Alaska, and the distance across the south end of the lake is just about the five miles that it was supposed to be. Fancy that. I made that scenery using 1 arc sec srtm and cropped the area I wanted to 1024. It's dead on. Of course, you don't have to crop anything, these days, anyway. Just leave the map at 3600 x 3600 and it works fine. You don't really even have to fiddle the land size. In my Alaska scenery, Cook Inlet is the expected 30 odd miles across at the mouth. Basically the book on scenery needs to be written all over now that the new system is emerging. Few enough people had any kind of a handle on the old system as it was.
There used to be so much hocus pocus going on in both Ilan's sims. There never was adequate documentation and people can't be blamed for floundering in a situation like that. All those bloody tiles,def files and pallettes. It took a real right brainer to grasp all that.
Now if only we could actually reach the pole in some real way. Right now you just scrap across the top either way depending on your heading. The VS world is a cylinder as far as I can see.
Kevin
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Well, ya. Hits to sink or toughness ratio. You could call it anything but it would be based on, as jt-3d said, a count of incidents. TLAM is right in mentioning that this isn't just an issue of whether VS is a war game or not. The ability of the ships to sink is there in the program. Ilan built it in. There should be some effort to realistically define the cause of a vessels' sinking. Not just a bump or a single hit from a weapon. Otherwise it might just as well be taken out and room made in the architecture for something more worthwhile.
Kevin
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Hi Jeff, Don't keep digging into this too deep. :lol: We might find that the Emperor has no clothes. A scary thought.
The srtm is done up in 1 degree blocks. Basically in 1 arc sec res or 3 arc sec res. You get the same piece of turf but in different scale. Take a good easy landmark like Cape Mendocino and Punta Gorda in California. N40W125. Get it in both 1 and 3 arc sec. Look at the map. They are identical visually, but! The 1 arc sec is a 24.75 MB bundle while the 3 arc sec is a 2.75 mb bundle. Save the dtms with Ilans tools and look at the dtm or map bmps.
See the diff. the 1 arc sec is 3600 x 3600 pixels square and the 3 arc sec is 1200 x 1200 pixels. Ones 12.3 mb the other 1.37 mb. Quite a diff in the data represented for the same are, exactly. The distance from Cape Mendocino to punta Gorda down the coast is about 20 miles. 105600 ft. In the 1 arc bitmap, they are 634 pixels apart. In the 3 arc sec, they are 220 pixels apart. At N40, the pixels in the 1 arc sec are approximately 166' across. In the 3 arc sec, they are 480' apart. Funny that they would represent a 3 to 1 ratio when the res is at 3 to 1.:lol:
Therein lies the difference in detail possible. Pretty well three times, as we would expect. The trick is, when modifying the original dtm, to trim one side or another, or possibly all sides would be better. You don't resize the bitmap or you throw away all the detail that you just took the trouble to get. You can't take the 3600 square 1 arc sec bitmap and resize it and still get the res. You'll be getting 3 arc sec all over again.
One other note on all format types. Both are equally guilty. You have to work with a good set of maps if you want get it anywhere near right. SRTM is a joke along the coastlines or in the mountains. You might as well use gotopo30 if you don't keep an eye on it. It will show huge lowlying areas as water and the shorelines will be no where near accurate.
It's a tricky business and none of us have umpteen hours a day to work on it. But, it is fun and you learn a lot.
Now, if a train leaves Baltimore a 3:57AM and.....you know the drill.
Kevin :D
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It is an interesting subject. I set the land size in the Hampton Roads scenery in order to get an accurate distance between various sides of the river. It also fits reasonably with the map overlay in the location screen. There are various reasons for picking a setting. If the whole world were mapped as I've done several times in MF, then a standard would be very desireable and perhaps it's getting that way. MF was set up to give you a perfect match to the world map if you used 10 degree gotopo30 squares. In VS if you use 1 degree srtm squares, they stack up pretty good on the map. The upshot is that everyone doing individual scenes using srtm, has to make a decision or accept the number given when the dtm is saved.
I should add that the land area in the hr scenery should be closer to 100 than 120. It's best to just check the map anyway. Whatever the resolution may be, there will be a fixed number of pixels on the map bitmap. Like most things in VS there are any number of ways to get from point A to point B. If a known channel is 4 miles and you have 70 pixels on the map then you know very well what has to be done.
This is a big subject and I'm not trying to sound like I know everything about it by any means. :lol:
Kevin
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It could be kept very simple at first. Ilan wouldn't have to do much more than have a basic "toughness" coefficient in the cfg. That way ships could still be set to sink when striking objects or terrain or weapons, it would just take longer. Which is actually quite realistic as even a bad leak will sink a ship. Many ships have their pumps going all the time. In the case of old fighting ships (and even today to some extent), ships can receive a lot of damage and still be repaired. In the old days, they could wrap the hull in canvas or have the carpenter make a repair. I WWII they developed the method of fireing on sheets of plate with a modified gun. The beginnings of todays powder actuated construction tools like the Hilti. There is no need for the ship to just head for the bottom the minute it hits. Even a scaled timer would be better. Anything but the way it works now. I don't even use the feature as it's so unrealistic. If I feel like diving I'll take a sub. :lol:
Kevin
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Good point, Jeff. The canons would be great as boats although placing them could be tricky. Perhaps individual gun emplacements would be the way to go, each with it's own earthworks. You'd be a sitting duck out on the water in the Virginia, once they were aggravated and started to return fire. :D
Ya, that one shot sinks the boat thing has got to go. Also, the speed at which they sink is too fast. They should list and go down with some dignity.
However, as a scenery project this wouldn't have to be a problem. It's not necessary for the guns to fire. Building up the area with some historic components is the most interesting part. I'm not into shooter sims anyway.
Kevin
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Well, the good news is that it's a lot of fun and it's also a lot easier to make scenery than it used to be.
Kevin
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NO, that's OK. It makes perfect sense. I thought the objects might move with it. Are the objects in an objects.txt or are the done the old way using the objects bitmap and def files?
Kevin
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Hi guys! I know you are just looking around for models and are not complaining and I don't want this post to sound like I'm complaining either.
I just thought I'd throw in some background on the general situation.
As we all know, MF is a very small piece of the Flight sim world. In spite of all that it has to offer. There is no glory in building either scenery or aircraft models for MF, and often enough little thanks or even recognition that the projects are even uploaded. I for one, run a fairly busy construction company, and still have been able to provide quite a number of projects this year and last. For both VS and MF. There just aren't many of us around who can or will contribute. This isn't MSFS where literally thousands wait with bated breath for the latest repaint of some pedestrian commercial machine.
Here at MF you either build for your own satisfaction or you don't build at all. There are no perks, no fame and no pecking order. It's anyones' game.
Unfortunately few people are interested in operating in such a rarified atmosphere. So far, MF has only attracted the serious hobbyist. People who are busy building for their own use and really couldn't care less about uploading and showing off their wares. Many of us who have uploaded models and scenery, have only done it in an effort to promote the sim.
I built models and scenery in MSFS and X-Plane for four years and never uploaded a thing. I really like MF and VS. Ilan is a talented binary artist.
I've been happy to be able to contribute to the cause.
Unfortunately, some builders show up, upload a piece and dissappear. You never hear from them again. Perhaps it's only natural as the effort often goes entirely unnoticed. Most people simply aren't willing to contribute in a situation where there is so little feedback. They want to be patted on the back and told how wonderful it is.:lol:
Me? I couldn't care less, as my record shows. I have uploaded a number of substantial projects with no or almost no comment on the forum whatsoever. I don't build what people want. I build what I want. That's the whole point. Look at Marcels' Hi Res Italian Scenery.
The comments that followed it's release were a disgrace, considering the quality of the work. He might very well have balled it up and chucked it in the virtual waste paper basket if he was looking for praise. But, no. He built that scenery because he wanted to fly in it.
Capisci?:D
Kevin
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Hi, If all you want to do is shift the scenery west 1.5 miles, you can adjust the [east_coord] in the scenery cfg.
You don't need any 3D software to build the scenery mesh. That can be done using the 3DEM software and whatever data you care to use. You will have to use a 3D builder to create any new objects that you want in the scenery.
Kevin
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One thing that I discovered while creating some animals was that animals are referenced from the F1 or F2 point of view -- go to the F2 and they will follow that view wherever you move.
I know what you mean. It can be a bit scary having a half dozen sea gulls headed straight for you every time you turn around. I ran into that on my island object. I felt like ducking everytime I saw them coming. After a while I started to feel a little harrassed. I had to get rid of them. :lol:
Kevin
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Ya, It's just a matter of time before the flying fish show up. I've been collecting pics and info on them. There are a lot of different types. I believe I'd start out as a low flying bird, breaking and skimming the surface. They aren't very big. Done realistically they wouldn't be easy to see. The scale of the seagulls for example is absolutely preposterous. :lol:
Kevin
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OK, Jeff. I'll upload it to Avsim. There are no objects, forts, landings etc, but it is srtm and quite clean. I hand edited it so the rivers are all accessible.
We could slowly build it up with objects. I've had an idea about building a fort as a boat.x that could be planted with no motor and would stay put. The single active canon could be a fair obstacle after it had been fired upon. That return fire can be pretty deadly.
Kevin
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It's looking better all the time. One interesting thing. I was playing with the weather sliders and the ship was no longer visible above water. You could see the hull below the water line and that's it. I couldn't get the incident to repeat itself. It happened the one time only.
Kevin
Designing Objects for MF&VS
in (Former Micro-Flight Support Forum)
Posted
Hi CaptEd, It has been a while. Things haven't changed much around here. It's still pretty slow. It can never hurt to do up a tutorial. You never know who is looking for direction. There seems to be a lot more interest in hands on work over at VS. It's rare to even see an aircraft uploaded in MF. There is work going on behind the scenes, I'm sure of that.
Kevin