• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Visual Range of FSX Objects

mendiola_loyola

mendiola_loyola

Resource contributor
Messages
520
Country
peru
Dear All:

Is there a way to set the visual range of a scenery object in FSX?

In SCASM i could set the V1 and V2 values to control the object visual range.

Thanks.
Alfredo Mendiola Loyola
Lima Perú
 
I would be interested in knowing this as well. I can find nothing in the SDK about this. The only thing I could think to do (although haven't tried it) was to create an LOD10 (or something very low) and "delete" any remaining part of the model. In other words, nothing left at all.
 
You indeed need to use LODs for this. In the XML format there is no v1 or v2 parameter anymore. The v2 functionality is in the bounding box of the MDL object (this is not a parameter that you want to vary anyway). For the v1 you would have to create LODs. An empty LOD in the end can limit the visibility.
 
Dear Arno:

Could you explain me the process to create an empty LOD?

Thanks.
Alfredo Mendiola Loyola
Lima Perú
 
Simply said it is a dummy object with the name of the LOD level you want, but with no other objects attached to it. That way you can reduce the distance at which the object first appears.
 
Dear Arno:

If i don't use empty LODs, my complex objects will be processed even though the object isn't visible?

Will the empty LOD technique help me to improve a lot the performance? (Frame Rate)

How many LODs does a model have?

Do i have to create an empty LOD for each LOD except my main LOD?

Thanks.
Alfredo Mendiola Loyola
Lima Perú
 
Hi,

Every object placed with the XML code has a maximum range that you can not influence. That is around 64 km (40 nm) if I remember correctly. So futher than that it will not show. But if you are not using LODs then it will show up from that distance.

Therefore it is a very good idea to add LODs to your models. A common practise is to use 3 level, a LOD100, LOD040 and LOD010. If you add many more this will increase the memory usage of your object. So three levels seems the best balance between memory usage and performance.

How many frames you can gain is hard to say, as that depends on a lot of factors. For example the complexity of your model. But especially with a empty LOD at the end if should help quite a bit.
 
Robin Corn's website has some really good tutorials which explain LODs to control framerates. See here: http://www.windowlight.co.nz/lods01.html

I think, and Robin should be able to confirm, that FSX is a little different from FS9. Ive found you need to group the objects in order to name them as a LOD (The object name text will go bold in Gmax)??
 
Timmo said:
I think, and Robin should be able to confirm, that FSX is a little different from FS9. Ive found you need to group the objects in order to name them as a LOD (The object name text will go bold in Gmax)??
Click to expand...

I would have to check, but I doubt that is needed. In general using groups in GMax with FS gives more trouble than it solves. So I try to stay away from them :).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top