Instant Scenery V2

[DaveB]

I'm finding it a hard slog working through old libraries with no thumbnails and I thought that was bad enough. Thank goodness I'm not aiming this high

I've populated my locale with a few houses to define the area (the wrong houses but they'll do.. not a white one amongst em yet either ) and am wondering how far I can take it before the pc grinds to a halt. So far, my FR's aren't dropping but I could change that easily enough

ATB
DaveB

[GHD]

Dave,

Have you tried Thumbnail Maker in IS?

If you follow the instructions in the manual is is very easy (but not quick )

[DaveB]

Hello Mate

I've seen that when I first read through the manual (still not printed it off which is something I really have to do) and it didn't look like a 'quick' operation. I'm sure you're au fait with the UKVFR Library and how many objects it contains. It'll be a lifes work simply making thumbnails for them all and while I've no intention of turning up my toes just yet, I'd rather spend what time I have left a little more constructively Of course, the entire library doesn't have to be thumbnailed I know but it'd be nice

To be honest, I'm sure I've not made my local.bgl correctly.. I just followed my nose but it works thus far. Very similar in operation to EZ Scenery (what I remember of it anyway) and capable I'm sure of many hours of fun and frustration

ATB
DaveB

[GHD]

If you want a quick way to add buildings, try Autogen Annotator, however you may end up with a few white houses

[DaveB]

I don't mind having a few white houses to break up the monotony.. I just don't want em all white The house next to me is white.. well, cream coloured as it happens as is another one in the crescent but for the sake of purity.. I've made them red brick

There's a great deal I need to learn about ISv2 and I'm not sure I have the staying power to learn it all but so far, it's fun

ATB
DaveB

[TSR2]

Hi George,

I think I may have spotted my error, I didn't set the compression on the two tiffs. I'll try it again later on, I might even do it again from scratch. I did download at resolution 1 but don't think I changed any other settings. I'm using VE for the source

[GHD]

You still need to set NumOfCellsPerLine to the correct value.

The compression of the tiffs will have no effect on their position.

I don't know about the new version, but on V1, you can set the Working folder and the scenery folders. After download, a bgl will be created in the scenery folder and a bmp and inf will be created in the work folder.

Initially, check the bgl in TmfViewer to see that it is ok. Next, create the tiffs and edit the inf in the work folder to add multi-source. Duplicate (triplcate) the [Source] block as Source1, Source2 and Source3 then add a new [source] containing Type=MultiSource and Numberof Sources=3. Add Channel_BlendMask and Channel_LandWaterMask to [Source1] Set Type=TIFF and Layer=None to Sources 2 and 3.

[GHD]

I don't mind having a few white houses to break up the monotony.. I just don't want em all white

Give me the lat/long of your house and I'll see whether I can add a few autogen houses. They will have a much smaller fps hit than placed models.

[DaveB]

Yo George

I'm at 52 38 03.83N 1 58 35.79W. If you plonk that into Google Earth, you'll see what I'm up against as far as autogen might be concerned. It's not quite the back of beyond but you can see it from my house

This area is classed as Pelsall North or 'up the Wood Common' in local parlance. I had a master plan to represent the entire village with a smattering of placed objects (including houses).. splitting the area into perhaps 3 bgls.. Pelsall North (as I have now), Pelsall Middle (the village) and Pelsall South (Heath End). If I'd have done this years ago, it would have been much easier because the village was nowhere near as big. Only problem is, there were no home pc's in those days and certainly no Instant Scenery v2

I know that if I tried to do it with placed objects, I'd end up grinding to a halt well before the same thing happened with autogen so any 'detail' would diminish the further away from my house I got. It's keeping me off the streets though which can't be a bad thing I need to build up a bank of houses and buildings I really like and I'm only just scratching the surface with it at the moment.

One thing I noticed when looking at Google Earth.. it's a shame the res in GenX isn't to the same degree but I guess it'd take a much beefier pc than I could ever afford. At least I can find where I live reasonably easy now. It's the only place for miles with buildings

ATB
DaveB

[GHD]

Here is a view in Annotator after I added a few houses (red rectangles):



And this is what it looks like in FSX (not a white house in sight ):



In that shot I was getting about 40fps on a 3GHz Phenom II running XP.

Another tool for you to play with