Section 15 Dynamic Scenery "Pop-up"

[davidglaister]

Hi,

Over the last couple of weeks I have been trying to design a section 15 dynamic chain ferry, simply moving back and forth across the mouth of a river.

This was designed in gmax and exported with the fs2002 gamepack.

I have everything working fairly well , apart from visibility.

When approaching the object it appears at a very short distance, anywhere between 50 - 750 metres, but once in range it will stay visible for around 5000 metres, does this seem correct?

Thanks, David

[davidglaister]

Hi,

After a bit more experimenting, I now have the visibility reasonable (if anything, too far).

The way I made the "path" for the dynamic object was to use FsAction to make a basic path.bgl, disassemble it, edit out the multitude of moves, and replace with simple MoveToPosN commands etc.

In the prefernces for FsAction is a section for "Area15 Header Offsets", these were set to:

Area1: 0.0 , Area2: 0.05 , Header: 0.1

I changed these values to:

Area1: 0.05 , Area2: 0.1 , Header: 0.2

I have read through the scasm documentation, but I'm not sure what the part of the headers these values refer to, or what reasonable values should be. From what I have read, the smallest area possible would be best because of the limit of one dynamic file per area.

Could anybody let me know what these values are actually changing?

Also, although my model is quite simple, are LOD's and Mips still use in section 15 models?

Thanks, David

[Peter]

Hallo David !

I'm not familiar with FsAction so I don't know what these preferences mean.
Maybe you could post the code or the header part of it on the forum.
The visibility range of the objects is of course connected to the areasize of the dynamic scenery.

Cheers, Peter

[davidglaister]

Hi,

This is the header section from my dynamic path. After reading the scasm doc's and experimenting, I think that the "Area15" coords are setting the area that the scenery is shown and released, but I'm not sure why the coords in the "Header" and "LatRange" sections are set as they are.

David

Header( 1 N50:51:28.00 N50:39:25.57 W001:11:26.24 W001:23:32.25 )
LatRange( N50:39:25.57 N50:51:28.00 )

; LatRange( N50:39:21.94 N50:51:15.14 )
; ----------------------------------------
; ----------------------------------------
; Object # 0, offset: 0x000A size: 275 bytes (0x0113)
; ----------------------------------------
Area15( N50:48:12.69 N50:42:24.39 W001:14:29.24 W001:20:45.00
N50:49:02.45 N50:41:34.63 W001:14:09.46 W001:21:24.52 )
LatRef( N50:45:25.86 )
CallDLibObj( :L000055 3 0 0417A5ED 0447122D 04FF6746 00000001 )
Exit

[Peter]

Hallo !

So far I can see there is nothing strange with this header. Have you tried with other objects ?
For example the default Cessna:
ObjID( 00C2CDA9 A9E100AA 596711D0 B1A18300 )
from dynlib.bgl in Scenery/Base/Scenery.

Cheers, Peter

[davidglaister]

Hi,

Sorry for the misunderstanding, things are working well with the header set the way it is. I now understand the coords in the area15 section, what I am not sure about, is why the "Header & LatRange" areas are set the way they are.

They cover a larger area than that specified in the area15 section, but are there any hard rules & fast rules for how much bigger?

David