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FSXA Ground Wizard coordinate types

Horst18519

Horst18519

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It's been some time since my last question, Arno, but I'm stuck on something I never had trouble with before: coordinate types.

Now the 2002 mdlmaker uses degrees + minutes (3 decimals), like this:
N13° 45.950. I also think it does not allow decimals for rotations, not sure on this though.
Now, the ground wizard allows at least 2 decimals for rotation and uses the usual decimal degrees.
Now let's use some example:

13.765830° - in the mdlmaker format, that's 13° 45.950'. But if I convert this value back into decimal degrees, I get 13.765833°. The relative unprecise coordinates used by mdlmaker gives a small offset compared to where I actually wanted to place my ground.
Not sure with the rotation, but I expect this is the same: even though I assign a rotation of 37.47°, I think mdlmaker rotates it with 37.5 or even 37.4°, is that correct?

How can one get around this? Do we have to make sure to use single-decimal rotations and only coordinates where both formats give the identical world position? (like 13.765833° and 13° 45.950')
 
Hi Thorsten,

Decimals for the rotation are completely ignored by makemdl indeed. I never tested the accuracy of the coordinates, but I am quite sure makemdl also accepts decimal coordinates.

Maybe the biggest question is why you want to use the fs2002 makemdl? With the ground polygon wizard you can just export as fsx mdl and then process that with the wizard. No need to use the fs2002 gamepack anymore.
 
Thanks for the quick reply, Arno. I guess that's my bad, I expected that the ground wizard uses the old mdlmaker, does it not?
I import x files from 3ds max in the ground wizard, so I don't actually use mdlmaker, I just remembered that I had trouble with rotations and the 3 decimals back in the days when I still compiled manually.

So, if I use the ground wizard, are there any limitations like non-decimal rotations?
 
Hi,

No, the wizard uses SCASM to create code similar to the FS2002 gamepack. This allows me to work around such limitations and also means that people don't need to have the old FS2002 SDK stuff anymore. There should not be any limitations on the precision of the rotation or coordinates in the wizard (if you find any, it's a bug :)).
 
Ok, thanks, I wasn't aware of that - well, I think I used to know that, but forgot it. :o
Thanks for the clarification, I'll have to search if I have any error in my files, maybe a wrong ref point or something. My 3D models don't align with the ground at the moment, there seems to be some rotation offset.
 
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