CFS1 nostalgia

[SdC Redux]

Is anyone interested in having part of the CFS2 world painted with CFS1 terrain textures?
My cfs2autocoast tool can now create simple VTP1 poly's, and Rhumbaflappy sent me the attached screenshot of the first result (TEASER...still need to do some minor debugging) for which I converted CFS2 landclasses to CFS1 seed mappings...

[Shessi]

Hi Sander,
Funny, I was just looking over an old HDD and came across CFS1. Fired it up and saw that the land texs look as good if not better in places than CFS2.

So short answer, yes! would be good to see what a 'real' world looks like with these texs.

Cheers Shessi

[The B24 Guy]

Hi Sander,

I think it would be great for the Euro installs.

Regards,
B24Guy

[dvslats]

Hi SdC Redux, if the neon glow is replaced :rolleyes: I'm all for it.

Dave

[SdC Redux]

Hi SdC Redux, if the neon glow is replaced :rolleyes: I'm all for it.

Dave

I can't make the neon glow "in the distance" (around the patch of textured ground) go away I'm afraid. Still have to set the visibility range to low value.

[PSULLYKEYS]

I use the converted CFS1 textures for my Europe now, so, great move for Europe, if that's the "part of the world" to which you refer. Will the autocoast be used for Rhumba's new coastlines?

[PSULLYKEYS]

and, will you be able to insert different coastline textures at various places? Twice the coastline width would also be nice if possible.

Figured I might as well ask for the moon!:icon_lol:

[SdC Redux]

Where I want to go with this specific side-project is this:
With this method of placing ground textures, we have complete control over which texture goes exactly where, unlike the default landclass textures. The cfs1 texture set is really limited and large area's look extremely repetitive. But they are a nice variation to add in a "blended" way to some well chosen spots around airfields in Northern Europe; and everyone is free to make specific sets for Winter or Desert or whatever. With a matching set of "autogen" templates to add some buildings and trees in those area's, it would improve VFR flying big time, and not cost too much in framerates (long loading time though!)

[Devildog73]

I'm for it!

[Jean Bomber]

Hi Sander
"...a matching set of "autogen" templates to add some buildings and trees.."
Really ..??? It could be possible to hope have a "autogen" in Cfs2 !
Thanks a lot for your efforts :ernae:
JP

[SdC Redux]

Hi Sander
"...a matching set of "autogen" templates to add some buildings and trees.."
Really ..??? It could be possible to hope have a "autogen" in Cfs2 !
Thanks a lot for your efforts :ernae:
JP

A little bit. I did make "templates" as GSL layouts for the cities some years ago, but these needed to be placed manually in CFS2 in Mission Builder, because there is no way to automatically detect which texture variation is placed where, plus the it is very difficult to work with the blended edges of the terrain textures. With this method, we can just place a bunch of objects (scasm) on the same place as the cfs1 texture.

[SdC Redux]

It's starting to come together. It turned out to be a bit more complex than anticipated; the cfs1 texture combinations are a pain. But I'm nearly getting the bit over the Pas de Calais up to London compiled without missing textures.
This is also a warning. This will be the most demanding VTP scenery ever made. I'm using my laptop, dual core 2.3, ati mobility HD 4570 graphics, 4GB, Win7 to develop this and in my fresh install of cfs2 (absolutely nothing else added), it takes abut 2-3 minutes to load up the sim, then another up-to-5 minutes for the blurries to go away! If you fly fast or slew you have to wait again for the scenery to render! It's very much an artistic exercise, more than anything else. A zen thing as well... And pushing the limits of the cfs2 engine. VTP has low priority You have to throw raw GHz processing power into it; it's all done by the CPU. In FSX there's a setting in the cfg where you can increase the CPU quotum for the rendering....
Anyway, in order to make it practically usable, it's best to combine it with default terrain, just add blobs of cfs1 terrain on top for variation. Just some teaser shots for now, cunningly not showing any of the bugs.

[Shessi]

Looking very good! I like it....

Can you say why this base scenery takes more pc power than CFS2 scenery and yet it's from an older less demanding sim?

And if just adding odd areas is the best balance of looks v performance then so be it.

Thanks for the efforts

Cheers Shessi

[SdC Redux]

Looking very good! I like it....

Can you say why this base scenery takes more pc power than CFS2 scenery and yet it's from an older less demanding sim?

And if just adding odd areas is the best balance of looks v performance then so be it.

Thanks for the efforts

Cheers Shessi
Short explanation: I'm laying those textures on top of the cfs2 default, it is NOT base scenery, compare it to laying road or river textures. cfs2 has to calculate which pixel to show; default or the layer on top, for each pixel you see. that is millions. cfs2 doesn't know I'm showing cfs1 textures; it could also be photo textures or naked ladies.

[Shessi]

Ahhh! I see..

Would it not be more effective/efficient to just replace CFS2 with CFS1 scenery, or am I missing the point? (probably!:d)

What's the performance hit like with just have the odd 'blob' of CFS1?

Cheers Shessi

[SdC Redux]

The cfs1 terrain engine is very different from cfs2. The "altitude" and "seed" configuration is contained in the same file, and it is not elevated mesh. I seem to recall from long ago it IS possible to install it in CFS2, but it looks very strange with artifacts, and no mesh but pyramid-like spikes, and you need to remove the stock CFS2 mesh otherwise it shows through at places with flickering textures as result. Using stock cfs1 terrain would also break compatibility with CFS2 airfields.
And don't get me wrong; it is not a performance hit in Framerate; as soon as cfs2 is loaded (which also takes longer), you will get normal framerates, but what we call "blurries"; the terrain takes a long time to show up sharp and crisp.

[Shessi]

Ok, I see. Yes, CFS1 is a flat-world, so with a straight tex swap and a CFS2 mesh, it would 'stretch' the texs on peaks and valleys, which they were not designed for, and that's why there is break-through.

Do the blurries look bad when there are only patches of CFS1 tex?

Great work, anyway, Sander! :applause:

Cheers Shessi

[SdC Redux]

.....
Do the blurries look bad when there are only patches of CFS1 tex?

....
I'm gonna leave that opinion to the end user:monkies:

[SdC Redux]

By the way, this article describes the problem and how they fixed it for FSX:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555738