David, Very cool ... it would be nice if we could hide the fade in of the objects a bit better, but I'm not sure if there is an easy way to do that. Vega/performer supports something called "fade level of detail" which uses alpha to fade in the object (or fade between levels of detail.) But even so, very cool.
We need a farmer and a tractor for the farm fields here in MN. If the farmer's name was "Nic" then we could have a "Scenic overlook, he's outstanding in his field." Ok, sorry about that, it was painful to say, even for me. :-) Regards, Curt. David Megginson writes: > Over the weekend, I finished my first take on dynamically-placed > scenery objects. I'm attaching two screenshots: > > 1. Approaching a city over some woods, with a pasture in-between. > > http://www.megginson.com/flightsim/dynamic-01.png > > 2. Sitting on a lake, pretending to be a floatplane. > > http://www.megginson.com/flightsim/dynamic-02.png > > This is not, primarily, designed to be eye candy (well, only a bit of > it is). Dynamic objects like buildings and trees serve several very > important purposes during VFR flight: > > a. They give some indication of altitude AGL and groundspeed. Even at > low altitude Trees get very small very fast; if they're big and > there's not a runway in your windshield, add power and pull up. > > b. They provide aiming points for turns and straight flight (i.e. to > turn 90 degrees, look off your wing, pick and object, and then fly > towards it). For example, it is much easier to hold a compass > heading if you turn to the heading, pick an object off the nose, > then keep that object off the nose than if you constantly chase the > compass around. > > c. (not so nice) They cause very confusing illusions because of drift > when flying near the ground. It is easy for a pilot to get into a > spin or spiral by banking too steeply because the plane doesn't > seem to be turning much. > > Right now, I've added only a few dynamic object types, so it's a bit > monotonous. Over the next week or two, I'll try to introduce a > greater variety of buildings and trees, at least, and maybe a few pure > eye-candy things like boats out in lakes. All non-billboarded dynamic > objects also currently face the same way; I plan to fix that in the > next day or two. > > I've made very aggressive use of LOD to keep the framerates up; for > example, trees are visible only from a range of 2000m and large > buildings from 10000m; I also slap a range on all the objects on each > triangle or fan, so that plib won't have to do hundreds or thousands > of LOD calculations for objects that are far out of range. Even then, > trees cannot be too dense. > > NOTE: Dynamic objects are off by default. After you update the > FlightGear and base-package CVS, you will have to set the property > /sim/rendering/dynamic-objects to true to see anything (if you change > it during the program run, you'll have to reload the scenery). > Depending on the terrain, visibility, and altitude AGL, you may > experience slow framerates for a few seconds while FlightGear places > dynamic objects on all the tiles; just wait, and everything will speed > up again shortly. > > Special thanks to Curt, whose ground-lighting code I > stole^H^H^H^H^Hused as inspiration to calculate object placement. > > > All the best, > > > David > > -- > David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/ > > _______________________________________________ > Flightgear-devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
