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AutoTrees

F

Flamer584

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unitedkingdom
Hi Folks.

I have recently found an older programme called AutoTrees. It places trees into VFR photoscenery. I have the beta version. I cannot find the updated regular release that the author speaks about.

However, does anyone know how to make this work in FS9? The readme file and the user interface do not seem to correspond. I have installed FSConecct but the prog. does not seem to find it and use it as per the readme. The prog. jpegs look pretty neat and I thought I would try it, but no canndo.

Any and all help much appreciated. Any pointers to something similar would be good also.

Regards...Kenny
 
I've used it semi-successfully, I think the author dropped it after the beta release and never released a final version. It's buggy as hell, but it's still a lot quicker than trying to add autogen by hand. Anyway, I can't see any need for a connection to the sim, all I did is show it where the photoscenery's texture folder was and let it go to work. The sim wasn't even running.

I'm not at my FS machine at the moment, but from memory I think this is basically what I did to make it work:

On the front tab select your two vegatation types and set the height parameters, I think I also set planting density (or something like that) to 1000. Then on the batch tab set number of tiles to unlimited and no preview (fastest). I think there's a "Batch" button, click it and navigate to your photoscenery's texture folder, click on a .bmp (it doesn't matter which one) and let it go. It'll run for a few minutes, longer if you have a huge texture folder. When it finishes, if the autogen gods are smiling down on you, you'll find a buttload of .agn files in the texture folder along with the .bmps. Go fly and you should see trees. You can later open the key photoscenery tiles with the annotator and add buildings or remove trees that got placed where they shouldn't have been if necessary.

One thing I noticed was that Autotrees seemed to have issues with large photosceneries. Can't remember what the problem was, I think it hung at a certain point. It seemed to do quite well on smaller sceneries of maybe a couple hundred tiles or less, but I tried a large one with 5000 tiles or so and it never successfully finished.

Good luck,
Jim
 
Hi Jim.

Thanks for the detailed reply, I appreciate it. I will try it later today. One thing though. I am just newly getting into the scenery side of things, could you explain what the annotator is, what it does and how I use it.

I have seen it mentioned before in threads and there was a link to it but it took me to the site for MS FSX and the new FLIGHT. I am still using FS9 although I have FSX installed. My buddies are flying with FS9 and I have a lot of addons for it.

Regards...Kenny

Ohh...what do you mean by the 'key' scenery files? are those the ones that I have pointed Autotrees to?
 
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Hi Kenny,

The annotator is just an app that lets you place autogen on your phototiles manually, a lot like placing objects in any other scenery placement app. The difference is you won't place any specific buildings, you just choose the type of building you want and the sim will come up with something on it's own to place there. The annotator is included in the FS9 Autogen SDK which you can download here:

autogen_sdk_setup.exe

The annotator can open a specific .bmp from your photoscenery's texture folder and allow you to edit or create autogen for that specific tile only (You must then save it and open the next .bmp, etc, etc...). The trick to figuring out which .bmp you want to work on is to slew over it in the sim and then use Dick Ludowise's TCalc2004 to tell you the filename of the .bmp.

TCalc2004 Version2.0

By 'key' photo tiles I just meant the ones close by the airport you're working on, i.e. the ones that represent the city/town you'll probably want to add some buildings to or maybe move some trees that Autotrees placed incorrectly. You can annotate them all manually if you want, but in my case Autotrees did really well with the outlying areas which is undeveloped, mountainous land without buildings so I just left them as they were.

Jim

EDIT: In my first post I made a reference to setting "planting density (or something like that) to 1000" which was incorrect. This field is actually labeled "Maximum tree count". Here are some screenshots of the settings I used. Ignore the "Houses" and "Areas" tabs, they were apparently reserved for further development of the Autotrees app.


The "Trees" tab:

Autotrees_trees_tab.gif


The "Batch" tab:

Autotrees_batch_tab.gif


Just click the "Run batch process" and select a .bmp from your texture folder. When Autotrees finishes you should have autogen in the sim.
 
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