Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
Alex Perry writes: You're thinking of the US. In most of Canada (outside of the big urban areas), they're the only big buildings around, and, once you get out of the southern agricultural areas, the only large clearing in the woods. Really ?! I've been wanting to spend a few days with a plane up there ... Warning: there's a lot of up there up there. Most of us have never seen much of it. All the best, David -- David Megginson [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
VS Renganathan writes: You can see the carrier in FlightGear by giving the lat,lon,alt in ~scenery.objects.txt. Or use the 3dexplorer (windows only) shareware viewer. If you are interested I could send you the wavefront .obj file format specs. The carrier model is a simple low polygon one which I edit manually!!. It uses object coordinates with its (0,0,0) at waterline (or metacenter, there is no hull below waterline in this model). You can use 3dexplorer to convert it some format that PPE supports and then use PPE to edit. But I havent tried that. I'll be glad to help anyone who is interested in using it. Hi Ranga The .obj file is in the FlightGear / Models directory but I have never seen see the associated .mtl file or any of the materials :-( Are these available ? FYI - PPE can load .obj files As a general rule any file that FlightGear can load PPE can load as they both use the SSG file loaders :-) Cheers Norman ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
I could put that on my web page, no problem. Jeff I also have built some 3ds models. It would be nice if the web page had a 3D model repository with a little screenshoot for each. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
David wrote: Aside from eye candy, we need buildings at airports for two practical reasons: 1. they make the airports easier to spot from a distance, and 2. they give the user a visual cue for distance and altitude during an approach. Hm, You know I was kinda thinking planes but yah got a good point here! Think I'll push for buildings and pick away a little with the planes. Love to read all the good ideas! Jeff ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
Curtis wrote: 2. Don't forget this is a 'real time' sim. We are on a polygon budget, and hey, it would be great to see your 15,000 polygon beautifully detailed model in all it's full glory, but something like that will ***kill*** frame rates ... especially if you want to duplicate buildings or aircraft or trees or whatever the object is. I'm with you on this one. Learned that making a lot of static models for Fly! This is one of the real 'tricks' to 3d modeling and is what separates the masters from the wannabes ... building nice looking models out of minimal polygons. It is hard to do, It is hard to do. The wire frame was easy for me but my texturing needed work. I did learn a few things along the way and hope to learn more. Jeff ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
David wrote: Aside from eye candy, we need buildings at airports for two practical reasons: 1. they make the airports easier to spot from a distance, and 2. they give the user a visual cue for distance and altitude during an approach. Hm, You know I was kinda thinking planes but yah got a good point here! Think I'll push for buildings and pick away a little with the planes. Love to read all the good ideas! to add to that thought, it is the relative angular motion of near and distance objects that a pilot learns to recognize during an approach/landing to help judge the aircraft's motion and vertical structures and buildings really make a difference. JW ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
1. they make the airports easier to spot from a distance, and Yeah, but unless we put buildings everywhere, the airports will be too easy to find. It is already easier to spot airports on the simulator than they are in real life; let's not make it too trivial. 2. they give the user a visual cue for distance and altitude during an approach. Maybe; not for me. I was taught to use perspective off the runway itself and ignore the terrain underneath/around (other than for clearance of course). to add to that thought, it is the relative angular motion of near and distance objects that a pilot learns to recognize during an approach/landing Yes, compressing the view into a flat perspective on the monitor makes the whole estimation thing a lot easier on the simulator than in real life, where some people can spend hours of training learning to 'see' perspective. It's a shame we have to disable antialias for rendering performance. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
On Thursday 06 December 2001 8:47 pm, you wrote: Jeff wrote: So my question is: What is more important to FlightGear buildings or planes? For me? Neither: Aircraft carrier! Pretty sure Objects/Geometry/saratoga.obj is a carrier Adding a tail hook and catapult mechanism would be really, really simple, and a meatball (and VASI/PAPI) renderer wouldn't be too hard. A cockpit AoA indexer would be trivial (well, for someone with a knack for making pretty gauges -- I could make an ugly one). But there's got to be something to land on... That said, I'm sure other people have much more practical priorities. I'd guess that buildings and other ground stuff would probably top the list. In particular, bridges and radio towers are important landmarks (obstacles) for VFR (IFR) navigation. Having the Golden Gate, Bay Bridge and San Mateo bridge in the default scenery would be awfully cool. All of these are really obvious during approaches into SFO and OAK. Some of the SFO approaches go over the San Mateo bridge at something like 400 feet. Andy ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
On Fri, 7 Dec 2001 11:58, you wrote: That said, I'm sure other people have much more practical priorities. I'd guess that buildings and other ground stuff would probably top the list. In particular, bridges and radio towers are important landmarks (obstacles) for VFR (IFR) navigation. Having the Golden Gate, Bay Bridge and San Mateo bridge in the default scenery would be awfully cool. All of these are really obvious during approaches into SFO and OAK. Some of the SFO approaches go over the San Mateo bridge at something like 400 feet. We need to think about how we are going to format these though. My personal preference would be the ability to create a FlightGear-Extended format that allows you to call the models, but have modifiers that allow time dependant scenery, and other procedural scenery stuff. I'd also like the abitlity to embedd all the models and textures and model config files, etc in a gzip file, because i don't like messy directories with millions of models in it. Thanks, David ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
John Check wrote: Andy Ross wrote: For me? Neither: Aircraft carrier! Pretty sure Objects/Geometry/saratoga.obj is a carrier You're kidding, really? OK, I feel dumb. I've never touched the geometry side of fgfs, so any pointers would be appreciated. What can I use to look at this thing? I don't recognize wavefront .obj format (although it's ASCII at least -- big plus). I'm not a big modelling guy, so be gentle. I just need to figure out the coordinate system and where the deck plane and arrestor wires are. If plib supports it, then is Pretty Poly the best editor to use? Does ssg support API-side inspection of the geometry once it's loaded? (dumb question, I could just look it up...) Andy -- Andrew J. RossNextBus Information Systems Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one. - Sting (misquoted) ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
So my question is: What is more important to FlightGear buildings or planes? I never made a 3D model of a plane before but AC3D looks so nice I think I could come up with something. Buildings. I can't see how any sane person could say Planes (I could be wrong, though ;-) I like to be PIC when I fly a simulator. I don't want to sit outside my plane and watch me fly it. The cockpit panels we have now are fine. The ground looks so barren. Adding buildings, IMHO, would increase the realism FAR more than adding aircraft models - which under normal circumstances you won't even see, anyhow, I would think. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
A man after my own heart. How about creating a small airport and jack it up 30 meters from the surrounding terrain? You'll get the same effect without getting seasick.. :-) Charlie H. Andy Ross wrote: Jeff wrote: So my question is: What is more important to FlightGear buildings or planes? For me? Neither: Aircraft carrier! ... -- There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. - J. Anderson ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
Jeff writes: Well, I am finally ready to start to make some 3D models for FlightGear. Went all out and purchased AC3D, I like it and it's a good fit for me! So my question is: What is more important to FlightGear buildings or planes? I never made a 3D model of a plane before but AC3D looks so nice I think I could come up with something. Don't have much time so I'll be vary slow to crank something out... You'll find that your first 3d models will take a lot of time just learning about 3d modeling, but as you get better, things will go a lot faster. From my limited 3d modeling experience, here's a couple tips. 1. Avoid T intersections ... they lead to cracks in the model. They are so tempting to put in, either for convenience or mistake, but if you ever let one slip though, you'll wish you hadn't, because the resulting cracking at the seam when the model is drawn in the sim will make it look bad. 2. Don't forget this is a 'real time' sim. We are on a polygon budget, and hey, it would be great to see your 15,000 polygon beautifully detailed model in all it's full glory, but something like that will ***kill*** frame rates ... especially if you want to duplicate buildings or aircraft or trees or whatever the object is. This is one of the real 'tricks' to 3d modeling and is what separates the masters from the wannabes ... building nice looking models out of minimal polygons. It is hard to do, but it's what we need for FlightGear. Low polygon count, but nice looking. I know that's like saying I want it fast, cheap, and reliable, but high polygon count models will kill us. And it really sucks having to reject something that someone's put a ton of work into becuase it is *too* detailed, especially when it's beautiful. 3. We also have a texture budget, so the fewer textures the better as well. If it's an object that will typically be viewed from a distance, you might be able to get away with a 32x32 texture rather than a 256x256 texture ... that sort of things saves a ton of texture ram. Again, that's where the 'art' part comes in and is another thing that sets the really good modelers and artists apart. (Note that I'm a really sucky 3d modeler myself and I don't even use my name and any derivation of the word 'art' in the same sentence.) Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson Intelligent Vehicles Lab 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
RE: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
Both of them. It is ugly too see an empty airport. An airport filled not only with buildings but also with planes on ground would bring an airport to life. Next time you fly around look out the window. What do you see more of by far? In fact, for great distances you may not see any aircraft. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
Next time you fly around look out the window. What do you see more of by far? In fact, for great distances you may not see any aircraft. You see aircraft three ways ... Yes, of course. You are kind of biased, though - given what you want to do with the sim. The scene - no matter which direction you look, is still almost entirely dominated by buildings. Aircraft even blend in with buildings. It's almost pointless to stick aircraft in there when we don't even have a tower, yet. Jon ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
Martin Olveyra writes: It would be nice if the web page had a 3D model repository with a little screenshoot for each. see http://home.t-online.de/home/Wolfram.Kuss/ Cheers Norman ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
You see aircraft three ways ... Yes, of course. You are kind of biased, though Yeah, but think of it this way ... do you really think many people want to dogfight with C172s ? I mean, it's one thing to do a highres dogfight model of a fighter, or an aerobatic biplane ... ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
When did we get bullets, or collision detection? First things first. Collision detection (with bullets) is relatively easy. And anyway, I thought someone was implementing secondary aero bodies 8-) ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
RE: [Flightgear-devel] buildings or planes?
Hi everyone, I have been following this thread. Pretty sure Objects/Geometry/saratoga.obj is a carrier Yes, this would be cool.Definitely. Jon Jon, as pointed out by John, we already have an aircraft carrier. It is one with a ski-jump and 3 arrestor wires. We use it in our design work. Andy, You can see the carrier in FlightGear by giving the lat,lon,alt in ~scenery.objects.txt. Or use the 3dexplorer (windows only) shareware viewer. If you are interested I could send you the wavefront .obj file format specs. The carrier model is a simple low polygon one which I edit manually!!. It uses object coordinates with its (0,0,0) at waterline (or metacenter, there is no hull below waterline in this model). You can use 3dexplorer to convert it some format that PPE supports and then use PPE to edit. But I havent tried that. I'll be glad to help anyone who is interested in using it. Regards Ranga I've never touched the geometry side of fgfs, so any pointers would be appreciated. What can I use to look at this thing? I don't recognize wavefront .obj format (although it's ASCII at least -- big plus). I'm not a big modelling guy, so be gentle. I just need to figure out the coordinate system and where the deck plane and arrestor wires are. If plib supports it, then is Pretty Poly the best editor to use? Does ssg support API-side inspection of the geometry once it's loaded? (dumb question, I could just look it up...) _ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
