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Trees

Fern

Fern

Messages
537
Country
canada
Hi, All

[FS2004/Vista/XP]

Trees seem to be a challenge. Many will disagree with me, but two-plane trees with gmax is out of the question. Rotating trees are OK but used near autogen trees they stand out too much.

So... back to APIs for a minute.

EOD creates good trees and, using the proper "no-shading" and "no-shadows", the trees appear almost perfect, proper coloration even using FS's own tree textures, show seasons reasonably in synch with the rest of the scenery, blend in with the autogen trees, etc.

Their major drawback is that, in slower systems, they will appear with no texture for a few seconds, showing like two rectangles with a "substitute" colour.

My scenery buddy managed to find a tweak for gmax trees that keeps them from appearing at all until the texture is "loaded". The problem with gmax trees is the coloration, but also the fact that they appear "lit" at dusk, night and dawn in Vista/DirectX 10. A night texture will partially cure the problem, but dusk and dawn is still a problem.

So... We are trying to find a tweak for the API that would keep the tree from appearing until the texture is "loaded".

The first step was to change the substitute colour. I got the trees to appear dark green before the texture is loaded. This blends better with the background than white or black, but it is still two rectangles that stick out.

The section of the API that controls that is like so:

LoadBitmap( 0 6 EF 82 105 66 "trees.bmp" )

where

82-105-66 is the R-G-B for the substitute green colour until "trees.bmp" gets loaded.

Now, what I am looking for is an API tweak that will make the substitute colour totally transparent/invisible until trees.bmp gets loaded.

Any hints?

Thanks!!!

Fern
 
Hi Fern,

Change the EF into 00, that should do what you are looking for.
 
Trees - more than a headache

Hi, Arno

Thanks for the clue, but it didn't work. I placed one modified (00) and one normal (EF) side by side in the most congested area I know (Seattle-Tacoma International, with all the sliders to the right). If the 00 would make the tree invisible, I should see only the "EF" tree until the textures got "loaded", but they both appeared as dark rectangles.


Any ideas?

Thanks!

Fern
 
I am afraid I ran out of ideas in that case. Maybe the LoadBitmap command is not fully working anymore. I guess you could try with more modern commands, like the ones GMax makes.
 
No problem, Arno. I resolved the issue by using the rotating trees, which are very acceptable.

My partner-in-scenery doesn't like them, but we'll be OK.

It is interesting how Vista versus XP can cause such a weird FS9 reaction.

Thanks

Fern
 
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