Ground Objects

Everything related to creation of new sceneries for Condor...

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GregHart1965
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by GregHart1965 » Mon Feb 06, 2017 10:37 am

Yes that is how its done, what is difficult is making those planes meet the pylons at all the different heights and distances they will be at.

RianMonnahan
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by RianMonnahan » Thu Feb 09, 2017 11:00 pm

Hi All,

Actually, I have succeeded in placing a single aerial cable between the Col du Pillon and the Diablerets. It's fairly primitive for now but I believe it can be refined. Here's what I did...

I took the following data from the West Swiss scenary:

1) Lat, Lon in Degrees, Decimal degrees for the Col du Pillon and the Diablerets
2) Alt in meters msl for the Col du Pillon and the Diablerets
3) Calculated the distance and bearing from the Col du Pillon and the Diaberets
4) Applied a little geometry and trigonometry to get the length of the cable and the angle

After all, in its simplest expression, any segment of an aerial cable is just a triangle. Here are the values and the formulas for a Open Office Spread Sheet:

B5 Lat/Lon 1 46.3536 C5 -7.2047
B5 Lat/Lon 2 46.34 C6 -7.2144
B7 Alt 1 1560
B8 Alt 2 2382
B10 height 822 => Alt 2 - Alt 1
B11 distance 1686 => =ACOS(COS(RADIANS(90-B5)) *COS(RADIANS(90-B6)) +SIN(RADIANS(90-B5)) *SIN(RADIANS(90-B6)) *COS(RADIANS(C5-C6))) *6371*1000
B12 cable length 1875.3480161953 =>(SQRT(B10^2+B11^2))

Angle 25.9966531491 => =(DEGREES(ACOS(B11/B12)))

Using these values I created my cable in Wings 3D

1) Add cylinder
2) Scale X and Z to 10%
3) Scale Y to cable length (cable length / 2 gives you the %... at least on my config) Here the value is 93750%
4) Check the length by examining an edge
5) Rotate the cylinder -90+25.99 degrees
4) Move cylinder to X = 0.0, Y=1/2 height, Z = -1/2 cable length then adjust by hand.
5) Export selected, make UV mapping etc. and textures etc.
6) Convert object to cx
7) Move cx and bmp to scenary/world/object and textures respectively
8) Open landscape editor and place object.
9) Fly...

Now, perhaps this was a coincidence and I just got lucky. I'll refine the model or add to it and let you know. If the model is OK, it should be apply the idea to any segment of cable between two points. Granted, it's a strait line. Making the cable sag is going to be a whole new adventure.

Right now, this serves my purpose... Namely, place cables in Condor so that I can show my students where the hidden dangers are along certain slopes in the vicinity of my home base, Challes-les-Eaux.

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dgtfer
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by dgtfer » Sat Feb 11, 2017 9:52 am

Hi Rian,a few observations on this topic:
- Instead of latitude and longitudes, you should use condor coordinates; PosX, PosY and PosZ (or Altitude).
these coordinates are in meters, and the origin is the South East corner of the scenery. So in Wings3D, you can build your object directly with
X(W3D)=PosX ; Z(W3D)=PosY and Y(W3D)=Alt (or PosZ) ( be careful there is an inversion: in W3D Y is altitude).
You can determine these coordinates by creating a flight plan with TPs located where you want to insert your object (for your example TP1 for the first Pylon, and TP2 for the second) and open your fpl with a text editor. And by that you'll also be able to see your object future location.
- When you create your object, for precise results always use digital input (Tab)
- you can use a simple scaling if your object is too big (1/10 for example) and then set the inverse scaling in Landscape Editor.
- try to use a very small number of polygons, complex objects can cause big problems, especially blue screens, and inflight distance viewing will not allow you to see small details.
Here is a simple example in AA:
Shot55.jpg
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Last edited by dgtfer on Sun Feb 12, 2017 12:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
Image

GregHart1965
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by GregHart1965 » Sat Feb 11, 2017 6:54 pm

That sounds much more workable than my idea of using sketch up. Im going to try this with the pylons in my first pic which are right next to the runway and should have cables on them for realism.

Putting a sag into the cable is easy simply draw a curved line for the texture. Your picture plane can also be a made with the ends raised and a flat midsection ( not too many kinks / polys). This will make the plane follow the curve avoiding creating too much invisible object above the midsection of the cable. Use a large format for tge cable to avoid pixelation of tge line whicb looks crap. At least 2048x2048. I use large format for all ariels and antennas which have have quite fine straight lines running at angles - looks much better and doesnt really hit playba k too hard as they are mostly up in the hills away from other objects.

working in a smaller scale is a must. Navigating huge objects in wings doesnt work too well. You can scale up prior to export or in LE.

GregHart1965
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by GregHart1965 » Sun Feb 12, 2017 1:01 pm

Some cables...
Shot369.jpg
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OXO
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by OXO » Sun Feb 12, 2017 9:40 pm

Nice pylon Greg. Is that done with transparency?
Chris Wedgwood,
Condor Team

GregHart1965
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by GregHart1965 » Tue Feb 14, 2017 12:01 am

.dds image with explicit trancparency.

Made a solid pillar then extracted two sides. Deleted pillar. Uv map sides - duplcate and flip.

Cable is a 10 vertice plane in a bow shape with transparent cable drawing. Bow shape coforms to cable shape (so you dont crash into an invisible something way above the cable).

FPS take a bit of a hit as expected but still flys.

....Now if I can just figure out why one sector of my new scenery has suddenly become unworkable with 3FPS and jeky controls....

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EDB
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by EDB » Tue Feb 14, 2017 12:47 pm

If you have 50000 objects in your viewing angle... Fps will drop to unflyable values...
And if those objects have many faces... Fps drops even more...

GregHart1965
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by GregHart1965 » Tue Feb 14, 2017 1:05 pm

Yes perhaps I did plant a ton of trees and some pylons recently - but another area, without any changes made to it in particular, has suffered the same fate of super slow FPS.

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OXO
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by OXO » Tue Feb 14, 2017 3:01 pm

V2 should be ok though. Lesce-bled airport has 80000 vertices, and doesn't affect fps ;)
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GregHart1965
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by GregHart1965 » Tue Feb 14, 2017 6:36 pm

Did a massive tree cull bringing objects in sector down from 38000 to 16000, Zero change in in FPS (or very slight - I hope). Stil just over 3FPS, Should be minimum of 30 for that scene.

Condor is not using the NVidia card as there is no activity on the card. Its the only application that wont accept the settings in NVidia control panel. How do I get them to 'talk to each other"? What is nvdxt.exe and where should it be placed?

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EDB
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by EDB » Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:54 am

nvDXT.exe is a command-line binary version of the nvDXT library...
You can create dds files with it...

GregHart1965
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Re: Ground Objects

Post by GregHart1965 » Wed Feb 15, 2017 2:33 pm

OK I remember getting ndxt now - never used it though. Hmmm must be something else.

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