Lexx_Luthor

Backup any files you change! !!!

Stary:: I run a bizzare FlightEngine file. Some of my ramped up settings may be allowing me to run much higher DetailMeshSize beyond the default 6, but some of my FlightEngine settings have been known to cause failure in standard game use. Here is what I use now...one or more of these numbers may allow higher DetailMeshSize, but may also hurt other things that I don't use in my sim but most of TK's customers do. [HighDetailOption] HorizonDistance=150E+3 DetailMeshSize=10 DetailLevel=0 WaterEffect=0 NoiseTexture=0 MaxTextureRes=1024 [FarSceneClip] FarClipDistance=5E+6 NearClipDistance=3000 [NormalSceneClip] FarClipDistance=5E+6 NearClipDistance=250 [NearSceneClip] FarClipDistance=100.0 NearClipDistance=0.03 terrain DATA... TextureThreshold=0.40 LowDetailMeshThreshold=0.50 MedDetailMeshThreshold=0.30 That terrain data Tex Thres of 0.40 allows much higher horizon distance (running 150km now). My stuff is optimized for very high altitude use where I will not tolerate the industry standard Combat Flight Sim Earth Pancake (CFSEP), and for very long and very short range visibility distances well outside the sim's standard use. All these settings are needed for the exotic things I do with my game....sky flash at 1000km, on the other end of the scale is allowing grafix to be seen only a few centimeters from the player pilot's view position.

BigAl, those polygon faces. Anybody think of making very large 3D towering cumulus clouds? Skinned white, they would work with the game sun lighting. Attached to an invisible surface unit, they could be given 2 waypoints matching wind velocity.

*Idea* Stary, can you make a tga with 10 pine trees across the top of the tga/bmp files? The X pattern would have 10 trees. This would greatly reduce the number of X's and save performance. I resized your tgas to 256x256 and 128x128 but saw no performance increase. So, maybe making Pine tga 1024x1024 would not hurt performance? Not sure. Also, such a large pattern would mean less tree objects to place. EDIT -- don't make new tree designs. Just copy-paste existing tree shapes across larger size tga file...

Yikes I just saw this now. That looks amazing Brain. I tried some tiling but gave up in misery.

I gotem working. I place a bunch around a narrow strip. Thin and Tall. I used w=50 h=50. Gives about 40m height measured with external camera -- a bit too tall. This is what I need for Siberia. This takes the sim to a new level for me. Stary this is AwSim.

mmm, what was the default mesh size? I run a very radical FlightEngine file. Here's my DATA... [Texture024] Filename=Field.BMP HasWater=0 Color=0.638434,0.697640,0.630031 SolidObjectTexture= AlphaObjectTexture=TER_FORRESTS1.TGA ...what is the Color=x,y,z for? I'm looking for my error. Everything seems to be there ...TOD, TGA, BMP, x,y text file. Getting there slowly.

Ayyyyei that's it! TE creates the TOD file in the terrain folder, under the operation of SAVE the terrain and not SAVE the texturelist. This is very helpful from 2005 ~> http://forum.combatace.com/index.php?showt...amp;#entry42908 Still no trees showing up. But if placing trees has anything at all to do with TE, there's a missing step somewhere. There always is.

Stary -- I got the Terrain Editor to create x,y position text files, but they are not used. How do you get the TOD files? What are they? I'd like to make a simple 2km x 2km square terrain tile *packed* full of pine trees except for one very thin diagonal strip 2.5km long, strip centered at tile center, cutting diagonal across the tile. The strip will be an airfield. I'd like to make a "wartime" airfield, where you are walled in by trees on both sides and at the runway ends. I use the Terrain Editor to place trees okay, but they don't show up unless I put one of your Germany TOD files in there, and rename it to one of my tile names. ~thanks~ this is really neat stuff. =================================================== One more fellas/fellattes. I shot a nucular tipped missile while climbing, and it went up to about 30km before self destruct (SF moon to above left of flash).

Thanks AgBolt! Those are Stary pines transported to tree-less "forest" tiles I made for Siberia. I am trying to learn how to place trees, but for now, these are placed by Stary but position file copied over to my Lake Baikal terrain. Never bothered with trees until the pines. Stary, can you make a cluster of thinner pines? Not taller (well maybe a bit), but less wide at the bottom?

Running the external camera roundabout during B-29 strike (contrail above the distant fireball). I always wondered when pine trees would get into The Sims. Even FB Eastern Front had the industry standard combat flight sim trees. Is the SF series the first? AWSIM PINES STARY

(before colour matching attempts) Nice spot I found in the terrain. Nice pines.

more 7 please

Something else that helps -- at least for FOREST type terrain packed full of trees -- is carefully making the terrain tiles and trees the *same- colour and brightness. I just experimented with this, and with work it can be made so you don't really notice the more distant tiles full of trees until you get closer to them and can see the individual trees (this should be realistic)...which is one reason the DetailMeshSize could work well (if it works for others....Stary????)

Awsim pines Stary. In FLIGHTENGINE.ini file -- a quick head~up...DetailMeshSize= For those with older video cards, reduce this number to reduce performance hit from trees. I forgot the default, but I'm now running this at 10 with 15fps (ATI-9800) but must reduce it for the trees. As far as I've learned, this mesh size controls the visibility distance (km?) to the trees (alpha objects?) and controls the distance to where the extra detail made by terrain tile height maps blocks more distant grafix (I think this is, if km, double the number of the mesh size value...mesh size of 10 means terrain bumps beyond 20km allow farther grafix through).

FastCargo:: It never was, even at the start. AIM-4 Falcon <--> Lite Sim .... contradiction

Jedi:: pffft. Best used in waves of penetration fighter to keep strike corridors clean of hostile interceptors like MiG-25s or Tu-128s (WIP). If an F-12 misses a target or two, it should keep going like Durcacell Bunny as more F-12s come up behind fully armed. You can't slow down and dogfight in something like this, its one shot per PVO pony and then onto other ponies. But then any PVO interceptors if they are turned from their target, will then never catch their target -- F-12 mission success. I plan to have SAC use a modified B-58 (FB-58? ) for this purpose until F-12 becomes available in numbers.

In the original DOS Su-27 Flaker sim from 1995, one of the most fun and challenging missions I made was a deep strike into heavily defended Ukraine territory, far beyond the map edge. The mission editor let you scroll beyond the map, although it was blank terrain it was usable for all aircraft and surface units for long distance missions. I setup maybe 50+ total of long range S-300, medium range and short range SAM sites. You could fly either high or lo, the different SAM types presenting a different challenge to your use of the RWR. Up high, you had to find a path between the longer range SAM sites, taking your time to navigate with the RWR. This took much longer to accomplish the mission since so many SAM sites could see you, and left you vulnerable at low altitude if enemy interceptors appeared. Down lo, you had to fly at 50 meters or so, and most of the time the RWR (and IR missile warning) was silent, but if you did fly into a SAM site, you had to turn HARD to get away -- and you could not gain much altitude in the sudden evasion or alot of long/medium range sites would see you. But evasive manuevers at 100 meters is not easy (although not so bad with the 100% flat featurless sea-level terrain off the map edge). An additonal challenge was randomly appearing enemy intercepts, either with or without randomly appearing GCI radar sites that in the Flaker sim alerted AI fighters to enemy aircraft out to about 60km (for AI set to "intercept" or "GCI"). The hardest part was learning the value of minimum afterburner use, since the mission was designed also to challenge fuel management. The neatest thing was taking off into the setting sun at that base in the northern Crimea and arriving in enemy territory as it started to get dark. The best part was surviving with enough fuel to get home, hopefully with enough fuel to allow an afterburning retreat if enemy interceptors followed you home, and an out-going friendly intercept that would cover your return near the Crimea. The high level mission could be similar to what SR-71 and hand crafted missions could allow over the SF series. F-111 or (upcoming) Su-24, or B-52 or B-57, would allow low level stuff. We have the RWR ability in the sim, but as far as I know it does not tell you if the threat is SAM or airborne.

With well crafted hand made missions, you could look from 80,000 feet and see the larger air warfare unfolding@home far below... Flying with FoxMonter's F3H Demon cockpit instrument panel inside Pasko's U-2 external model's pilot compartment, looking down on cirrus clouds and B-52 contrails in the weeds at 40,000 feet. :yes: