Bananimal

Well, it appears I've hit a huge stumbling block. The BMP compression utility I found cannot deal with a 1GB file. A 32 km tile at 2mpp weighs in at 1GB. Basically that's about a 20 x 20 square mile tile. I can work with that. For a 500km area that would be equal to 225 tiles to be placed. That would have been doable. Even then the compression wouldn't be enough. If I were to be able to compress a file of that size it would probably result in a compressed file of 290MB per 20 X 20 squire miles or each 32 KM tile. That's 79GB. That would be equivilent to each 2 km tile being at 1.27mb. That's as small as I can get an image. That would be good except that there are so many 2km tiles in a 500 x 500 km grid it would crash. In fact, There are 62,500 2km tiles to be exact. This sim probably wouldn't even load. That sucks. Unless this sim loads only visible tiles. Does anyone know about that? And if it does how many KM are we looking at? If it is a 50K horizon or whatever It just might be doable. Still, the download would be huge. Awesome but huge! I guess then that the advantages of FSX are that the tiles are drawn on the fly. The disadvantage here is BMP files. They are huge and there is not much you can do about it. If this sim was setup for JPG or GIF then we'd have something to work with. I could compress those into oblivion. BMPs are too hard to work with when trying to develop an area this big. Oh well, sorry guys. Maybe one day we can hope for a combat sim that can utilize a satellite tile set as does FSX.

Ok, have been doing a lot of tinkering with this the last two days. The first issue was finding a suitable area. Sorry to say but anything in the middle east is out of the question. There are no decent areas of 1mpp that I can use. More like 8mpp. that's not going to cut it. I have run into some software limitations. I had planned on downloading 4 16km tiles at a time and pasting them together in photoshop to make a 64 x 64 km tiles before placing it into the sim. That requires a new palette of 38400 x 38400. Photoshop will only do 30000 x 30000. That means the largest area I can download at a time would be 16km. That doubles the work and means I will have to place 900 tiles manually for a 500 x 500km map. Roughly 300 nm square. So, I turned my attention to the Southern California and Nevada areas. I can get a 300 x 300 nm area that encompasses Edwards Air Force base all the way past Nellis, AFB. Red Flag anyone? I also did some experimintation with reducing the file size of the tiles. I can take a 1mpp 256 MB tile and reduce it to 17 MB using software. Still trying to find a better tool as the one I was messing with doesn't do batching. 17MB x 900 tiles = a 15.3GB download. I also experimented with 2mpp tiles and that knocks them down to about 2MB a piece. That would be a much more doable 1.8GB download. Now, I have a question. I followed the tutorial on how to setup a new Terrain area. I am not going to be using any tiles from the GermanyCE terrain though. I will be replacing them with new individual tiles. Can I get rid of all the entries and name the tiles what I want to name them? Like Redflag 1 - 900? I guess I will be building a custom texturelist.ini right? The good news is I can get the tiles. I can reduce the size of the complete download and I know the sim can run the tiles. Especially if they are only 2MB a piece for a 16 km tile. That's not bad at all. I'm not too sure about how to import the DEm data and how to get it lined up correctly. I guess a little experimintation is in order. Would anyone be willing to help sort this? Write the ini file? Or at least get the inin started? I have my work cut out acquiring, touching up and placing the 900 tiles.

To answer your question I can say that in FSX even using a 50 meter mesh resolution (which is very low) the satellite scenery makes up the difference. It makes the low res mesh look busier than it really is so it's a benefit. The resolution or clarity of the tile is determined by the resolution setting in FS Earthtiles. Once I get the tiles FSearth builds a BMP out of them. Even better I could potentially build one tile per 128 x128 km in FSEarth tiles itself. The 0.25mpp tiles weighed in at a hefty 256MB a piece for a 2km square. The sim loaded hundreds of them too. It took about 3 minutes for the sim to load but after that there were no visible effects. I'm thinking along the lines of 1mpp. That seems to give a good balance of visual quality with low overhead. That should be doable. I'm going to poke around the middle east and see if I can get a large enough area at 1mpp. Maybe Afganistan or something. You have to see this. It looks very good and I personally think that this engine is better than what MS has been using although I think it would benefit the community immensly if TK would spend a little time refining the terrain editor. The clarity is there out to the horizon at 600+ kts and it never goes away as in FSX. With 3d elements added to the ground, proper tree and building placement I think it would be great. I just need to find an area big enough with enough tiles. That, I think is going to be the challenge.

Ok so if I understand you correctly then I can have a 64 x 64 km tile right? Even better a 128 x 128 km mile tile? That would be a good thing. For a 1000 km map I would only need what 8 or 9 tiles across by 8 or 9 tiles down. That is doable. More good news. I downloaded some tiles tonight for more testing. I was able to get the scale just about right. FSEarth tiles uses nauticle miles as the standard format. I guess the data is stored on the servers using an imperial grid system. No biggie as a 2 km tile = 1.22 nm. Close enough for flying. So I setup FSEarth to a 1.21 grid and grabbed a couple of tiles. One was an International airport and the other was city tiles. The scale is just about right. Good enough I suppose. Even better, I downloaded them at a resolution of .25 meters per pixel. Super clear stuff at 500ft. Better yet the WOI engine can display hundreds of these tiles that weigh in at 256MB per 2 nm tile without any visible performance hit. I don't know how TK did it but it works. Not only that, there is no lag for the tiles to be drawn on the fly as in FSX. I swear the sim chugs along as if it were running the default tiles. Maybe this is related to the tile/performance thing Lex? What kind of performance hits were you seeing with large tiles? Just curious. Now, the bad news. If I were to grab a 1000 x 1000 km area at 0.25 meters per pixel the download would be 640GB. Run for the hills. Could you host that Dave? :-P Below is a table of resolutions and tile size and what those 2 km tiles would equal in download size for a 1000 km map. 0.25mpp = 256MB per tile = 640GB Download (Ultra Clear at 500 ft.) 0.50mpp = 68MB per tile = 170GB Download (Ultra clear at 800 ft.) 1.00mpp = 19mb per tile = 47.5GB Download (Clear at 1200 ft.) 2.00mpp = 5MB per tile = 12.5GB Download (Clear at 2000 ft. 3.00mpp = 2MB per tile = 5GB Download (Clear at 2500ft 4.00mpp = 1MB per tile = 2.5GB Download (Clear at 4000 ft.) These downloads are huge. Maybe I can find an app that will run a batch conversion on the images to significantly reduce their size. I used to use an app call LviewPro years ago for this. Anyone know of a utility that can do this without compromising the image quality? If so, that would be a huge plus. So, Here's what I might be able to do. I can use the 0.25 meters per pixel near airbases provided that the server has high resolution imagery for that area. That would give a nice clear image as you are coming in for approach. Further from the airport I could use 2.00 mpp tiles because you'll more than likely be above 2000 feet. For remote areas I could use 3.0 mpp or 4.0 mpp because you should be above 4000 feet. That's an idea and that would make the download somewhere around 10GB. Break it up in 500MB chunks and that's a 20 part download. If I can batch convert the images then I may be able to cut it down to 1.8GB or so. Maybe even less. Dunno! I'm not sure on the legal aspect though as I'm not planning on selling it. Hunch is that I would probably be told "Absolutely not!" Now, Let me tell you what this does for "sense of speed" discussed here. It's awesome. When I'm flying above these tiles at 350kts it feels like it now. It fixes the otherwise slow speed feeling when coming in for approach or flying low below 4000 feet. Can it be done? Absolutely if I can setup TE to use a 128 x128 grid for tiles. And it can be done pretty quickly. The problem is this. Most servers don't have 1.0mpp or less resolution tiles in 1000 x 1000 km blocks. Google has Isreal at 3.0 mpp. It's pretty lame down low. Looks great at altitude though. So, I'd have to find an area that has Hi-Res tiles in and near the cities and at least 2.0 mpp in remote areas. Anyone have any ideas? I see a new campaign being built by someone! Hehehhehe! I'd also need some volunteers to help add vegetation, buildings, targets etc. as I'm not going to have the time to do it. I don't know how. I can get the tiles and figure out how to convert them and get them in the sim if I can get permission? Any takers?

Yes, I've done all these things mentioned. If you accelerate x2 then the speed seems right but that messes every thing else up too. I know a lot of it has to do with lack of detail in the tiles. Even in FSX, going from the default tiles to .25m per pixel tiles enhances the illusion of flight and speed ten fold. Hopefully TK can come up with a better terrain system next go around. I still enjoy the sim though. Immensly.

Well, mainly what I'm looking at is this. The only thing that really bugs me about this sim is the terrain and the lack of speed it conveys when doing NOE flying. It just seems scaled wrong to me. 350kts looks more like 100kts when flying. In playing around with the satellite tiles from Isreal that issue is resolved. Although the resolution is quite poor by today's standards it still looks better than the default. Especially when you get about 3000 ft up in altitude. I would like to import the entire WOI map area with google earth tiles. I can get the tiles and place them one by one if necessary. I think the secret will be to figure out a way to use FS earthtiles to keep the tiles I want organized so that I don't get them mixed up in the transition. That way I can place the correct tiles next to each other for a seamless result. I have downloaded many areas using FSEarthtiles for FSX. The quality is great in some areas. .5 meters per pixel. FSX on my system can keep up with drawing the tiles but barely. For WOI I believe a resolution of what, 4.5 meters per pixel is the max resolution? So in theory using satellite tiles should not place that great of a strain on the WOI engine. No more than the current high-res terrains. Is manually placing tiles hard in the TE? Or, is it a grid system? I apologize for not knowing but I have no clue how to use it just yet and would rather know what I'm walking into before I get started. I can get the tiles quickly. If the theater is 1000km x1000km then that means I will be placing 500,000 tiles if they are 2x2 kilometers each. Ouch! It would be nice if newer versions of this sim would place tiles by LAT and LON coordinates similar to FSX. Then we could run a batch file to place the tiles. Seems like a lot of work to get decent scenery into this game. If we could find a way to increase the size of the tiles to say, 100x100nm then that would make all the difference in being able to do large areas. Then we'd only be looking at 1000 tiles to do a complete area. FSEarthtiles has the ability to scale the area you want to grab. I could grab 100 x 100 chunks quite easily. I know some of the areas would not match color wise but I can mess with that in photoshop to at least make it better. Isreal doesn't have four seasons really so it would be the perfect place to try this out. Especially since WOI is the latest iteration of this sim.

Does anyone know where to get Thirdwire's A-7A and A-7B templates? I searched the templates section as well as Google and Thirdwire's site and came up empty. Thanks!

Well, I guess I'll have to make do with what I have then. Thanks for the reply.

You can get it from the link on this thread. http://www.simhq.com/simhq3/sims/boards/bb...c;f=37;t=006410

Apology accepted. Actually I had food poisoning last night so I wasn't in the best of moods. I tried the F-15 and it does look better in cockpit. But....there are no air-to-ground capabilities on the F-15 nor can it land on a carrier. So I decided to use the SU-33. Believe me, I'll be the first in line to purchase an F-18 or F-14 add-on for this sim if they ever develope one. Until then this is the best we can do.

Well, I suggewst you get busy on rebuilding the SU-33 Cockpit to look like an F-18. While you're at it, see if you can write a program to extract the cmd file for this model, export it into 3DS MAX and then correct the opposite rudder issue. Oh, and don't forget to adjust the height of the landing gear so that the wheels touch the ground. Then when you are done, upload it somewhere where I can download it for free and complain that it isn't perfect. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother.

I'd sent these mods over to David Slavens way back when, when everyone (except David) was running SF Patch 1. Dave told me it gave him CTD's so he never used it. Hmmmm... So I crossed my fingers after installing SF patch 2 and edited the "VIEWLIST.INI" with my old settings in SF Patch 1. Results? Excelletn. The Flyby view now allows you to zoom in and out and it takes about 15 seconds before it resets. It's really cool to watch your plane from afar heading toward you. Very realistc. The "External" view has been modified to allow you to zoom WAY out! Just paste these two entries over the same entries your "VIEWLIST.INI" file and you're good to go. You can adjust the distance setting a time settings to your liking. [ViewClass004] ViewClassName=ExternalViewClass ViewType=TRACKING_VIEW ViewGroupID=0 DefaultView=FreeView AllowFromDiffGroup=TRUE SnapView=FALSE InsideView=FALSE FOV=45.0 ObjectDistance=80 PitchControl=CAMERA_PITCH_AXIS YawControl=CAMERA_YAW_AXIS RollControl= ZoomControl=CAMERA_ZOOM_CONTROL JumpToViewSameGroup=FALSE JumpToViewDiffGroup=FALSE SmoothAngleTransition=TRUE SmoothPositionTransition=TRUE SmoothFOVTransition=TRUE RememberAngle=TRUE RememberPosition=TRUE RememberFOV=TRUE TrackObjectPitch=FALSE TrackObjectYaw=FALSE TrackObjectRoll=FALSE LimitPitch=TRUE LimitYaw=FALSE ZoomFOV=FALSE ZoomScale=0.02 PanScale=0.00140 MinSpeed=1000.0 MaxSpeed=900000.0 Acceleration=1000000.0 AngleRates=720.0,600.0,600.0 FOVRate=60.0 MinAngles=0.0,-100.0,0.0 MaxAngles=0.0,100.0,0.0 MinObjectDistance=10.0 MaxObjectDistance=4000.0 OffsetDistance=0.0 ResetTime=2.5 [ViewClass005] ViewClassName=FlybyViewClass ViewType=Flyby_VIEW ViewGroupID=0 DefaultView=freeview AllowFromDiffGroup=TRUE SnapView=FALSE InsideView=FALSE FocusObjectOnly=FALSE FOV=45.0 ObjectDistance=100.0 PitchControl=CAMERA_PITCH_AXIS YawControl=CAMERA_YAW_AXIS RollControl= ZoomControl=CAMERA_ZOOM_CONTROL JumpToViewSameGroup=TRUE JumpToViewDiffGroup=TRUE SmoothFOVTransition=TRUE RememberAngle=FALSE RememberPosition=FALSE RememberFOV=FALSE LimitPitch=FALSE LimitYaw=FALSE LimitRoll=FALSE ZoomFOV=TRUE RememberAngle=TRUE RememberPosition=TRUE RememberFOV=TRUE TrackObjectPitch=FALSE TrackObjectYaw=FALSE TrackObjectRoll=FALSE LimitPitch=False LimitYaw=FALSE PanScale=0.00140 MinSpeed=100.0 MaxSpeed=300000.0 Acceleration=10000.0 AngleRates=720.0,600.0,600.0 StepZoom=FALSE ZoomScale=0.01 FOVRate=60.0 MinObjectDistance=100.0 MaxObjectDistance=4000.0 OffsetDistance=40.0 MinFOV=4.80 MaxFOV=23.0 ResetTime=120

This is what I've found. When using "Heat Blur" and "Full Shadow" on an Nvidia based cards you cannot increase the resolution above 1024X768. Otherwise, the frame rate will drop to 1FPS when the heat blur comes on. It usually comes on right around just below 500KPH. Hope this helps.

Dude...I want that template. Give me Give me! heh heh!

I've been working on an A-10 from the 926th Cajuns and have it finished but I stumped. I can't seem to find the tailcode TGA file in the CDDS catalouges within the game so I can remove the numbers that keep showing up over my numbers on the tail. Anyone know what the name of this particular file is? I found the Tactical US Black and turned them off but the numbers keep showing up. Arrgg!!! Why did Eagle Dynamics do this? Seems to have ruined the fun!

I figured it out. It's a done deal!

Hey peeps, Hadn't been around in a while. Been busy with life. Had the time to do this skin for the A-7 when it was in development. Just finished redoing the tanks and Column5 will be uploading it tonight on his site. All of the weathering and colors are from scratch. Hope you enjoy it. Oh ya....that cute little diamond on the shoulder behind the canopy is 5 different pieces. took me 3.5 hours just to get it straight and line up. Enjoy!

Not sure if it's just a small thing but the SF section of this site is offline!

No prob. Wasn't sure if you knew about it or not!

Same here...I've got no sound. Don't quite know why!

I've got alot of work to do on these A-4s. There's just so many cool paint schemes on these thing that I'll be busy forever. I've been averaging about 1.5 skins per day now that I've started the Aggressors. Here's my latest creation! Another VF-45 Blackbird. I chose this one because of the neat tail art. This is one dirty bird. Let me know what you guys think! Next one will be a surprise!

Working on getting them posted over at Column's Website under the "Guest Artist" section. Will be soon.

I was a pretty good model builder as a teenager myself. Isn't it just great that now we can fly them on the computer? Got to go...Starting another one. This one will be a Marine variant and that's all I can say for now!

Hi peeps! I posted this over at SimHQ so I figured I'd do the same over here. There's still some work to do on the tanks as I'm not happy how the textures look on the ones included in the sim. Crab_02 is working on a fix for his aircraft and we'll see how things go once those are released. To wet your appetite here's some screenshots of the new birds! Here's two more for you. VA-86 Sidewinders and the VA-112 Bombing Broncos. I redid the Bombing Bronco Squadron by accident because for some reason I thought the one in the game didn't have the yellow stripe so you'll have two of them. I think this one looks better than the default one. I hope to have 5 more done this evening. And here's two more I just finished. Both are of VA-106. Not sure if they were both Gladiator squadron AC or not. The one with the green striping is circa 1958. I'm going to get two or three more done tonight and I'll post some pics.

Well, I thought that I'd be able to knock this one out in about two hours. Turns out it's taken me a total of 16 hours and I still have to paint the belly and underwings. Once that's done I'll be weathering it. But that's going to be the fun part. This model is stunning clean! I can't wait to give her that dirty old working gal look! Once this one is completed I've got more to do! Hope you guys like'em when I release them. I'm going to do several more E models and I will be releasing them. shortly there after. I'll release them in packs of model number. B, C, E. I need somewhere to host these. Column5 would you be interested? Check out the air intake ducts. I modified the texture to give it that deep funnel look.