David, The randomized objects are very cool, but I'm seeing one problem on longer flights. After flying maybe 100 miles or so (?) the tile loader locks up and the entire program hangs. I haven't had a chance to debug this, but you might try upping the acceleration factor and go for a quick, but longer flight and see if you can replicate this. It doesn't appear to be a problem with RAM, but appears as if the program goes into an infinite loop somewhere ...
This does not happen with the random objects turned off. 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
