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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby SurferTim » Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:28 am

surpii wrote in Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:25 am:I don't think it's the fault of the creator because this scenery worked in earlier Flightgear versions. I normally put the scenery into Terrasync

I put custom scenery in my personal scenery folder.
~/.fgfs/Scenery
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby surpii » Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:35 am

I had another look and it seems that Flightgear 2019.1 and onwards is not picking up .xml objects.


But I've solved the problem by changing .xml to .ac in the .stg file. Thanks for your help!
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby SurferTim » Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:39 am

surpii wrote in Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:35 am:I had another look and it seems that Flightgear 2019.1 and onwards is not picking up .xml objects.


But I've solved the problem by changing .xml to .ac

It picks up xml files just fine. Tested and approved. The rotating beacons work fine. If you renamed the xml files to ac files, and they worked, there is something wrong there.
Have you examined the contents of those file types, and seen how different they are?

Edit: Or did you just use the ac files in your object file?
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby surpii » Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:42 am

I can look into it, do you have an example of a .xml file that works?

I used the .ac files that are already in my Objects folder.

Here is one of the .xml files for this scenery that did not work until I changed the .stg lines to .ac



<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

-<PropertyList>

<path>LFPG_aerogare2-ba.ac</path>


-<animation>

<type>range</type>

<min-m>0</min-m>

<max-property>sim/rendering/static-lod/bare</max-property>

</animation>


-<animation>

<type>textranslate</type>

<object-name>jour</object-name>

<property>/sim/time/sun-angle-rad</property>

<step> 1.57 </step>

<factor>0.318471338</factor>


-<center>

<x-m> 0 </x-m>

<y-m> 0 </y-m>

<z-m> 0 </z-m>

</center>


-<axis>

<x> -1 </x>

<y> 0 </y>

<z> 0 </z>

</axis>

</animation>


-<animation>

<type>material</type>

<object-name>jour</object-name>


-<condition>


-<greater-than>

<property>/sim/time/sun-angle-rad</property>

<value>1.57</value>

</greater-than>

</condition>


-<emission>

<red> 1.0 </red>

<green> 1.0 </green>

<blue> 1.0 </blue>

</emission>

</animation>


-<animation>

<type>material</type>

<object-name>jour</object-name>


-<condition>


-<less-than-equals>

<property>/sim/time/sun-angle-rad</property>

<value>1.57</value>

</less-than-equals>

</condition>


-<emission>

<red> 0.0 </red>

<green> 0.0 </green>

<blue> 0.0 </blue>

</emission>

</animation>

</PropertyList>
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby SurferTim » Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:45 am

I'm booting my FG machine now. I'll give it a try with a rotating beacon at an airport I know doesn't have one.
I could be wrong about this, but I'll know either way in a bit.

Edit: I don't even need to do that. I have custom buildings that use an xml file to light the interior when it is dark.
My new terminal at TDCF uses an xml file to "light up" the interior, as does the tower.
Both work fine.

If you are talking about this, it should have always been .ac
Code: Select all
<path>LFPG_aerogare2-ba.ac</path>


My new tower at Nevis has a turning radar using an xml file.
Last edited by SurferTim on Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby Richard » Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:55 am

surpii wrote in Fri Jan 24, 2020 8:53 am:Does anybody know why the objects fail to appear in 2019.1.2?


It's because a lot of the scenery uses range animations based on the LOD settings in an attempt to improve performance.

Unfortunately this is a casualty of the LOD changes that I made in 2019.1 - which changes the ranges from absolute to relative - and uses different properties.

The scenery should never include range animations to manage detail because it slows down frame rate[1] these create unnecessary CPU load and mostly it's faster to just draw everything.

The fix is obviously to update all of the scenery XML files to remove the range animations - but this is something that is still a WIP.

I am currently testing a build that removes almost all range animations - but this is a bit of a drastic step and may make things worse.

The last possible solution is that I could make the current builds compatible with these incorrect scenery range animations - but I really don't want to do this as it's supporting something that is wrong.

-------------------
[1] I know that managing detail seems like it should improve frame rate - but it doesn't. In my tests I can get an extra 7 FPS over Paris by completely removing all range animations.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby SurferTim » Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:00 pm

Richard wrote in Fri Jan 24, 2020 11:55 am:It's because a lot of the scenery uses range animations based on the LOD settings in an attempt to improve performance.

What is the alternative to the range animation? Just nothing moves or changes? No radar? No lighting?

Edit: Or do I just remove the "range" part from the xml file?

The more I think about it, eliminating animations is a big step backwards. While other flight simulator programs are improving performance, FG just eliminates features.

Am I the only user who also has X-Plane 11? Have you seen their major airports? The have vehicles going everywhere.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby Ovazor » Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:28 pm

I had the same problem with e.g. Turku (EFTU) terminal building., and a number of other objects. I think that the problem was the following line in the .xml file:

<max-property>sim/rendering/static-lod/bare</max-property>

And this property was left empty. Try with the property browser if this is the case with you, too. If so, the missing objects should appear if you manually set the property to something, e.g. 30000. This happened without the need to reload the scenery. In other words, the objects are found but not rendered as the max lod is not set. I have since added this property to my launcher so that it is always set.

And I can confirm that these objects did appear correctly with all earlier versions I have played, so the reason for the property not being set has something to do with the newer FG version.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby SurferTim » Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:35 pm

Ovazor wrote in Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:28 pm:I had the same problem with e.g. Turku (EFTU) terminal building., and a number of other objects. I think that the problem was the following line in the .xml file:

<max-property>sim/rendering/static-lod/bare</max-property>

And this property was left empty. Try with the property browser if this is the case with you, too. If so, the missing objects should appear if you manually set the property to something, e.g. 30000. This happened without the need to reload the scenery. In other words, the objects are found but not rendered as the max lod is not set. I have since added this property to my launcher so that it is always set.

And I can confirm that these objects did appear correctly with all earlier versions I have played, so the reason for the property not being set has something to do with the newer FG version.

Just as some empirical evidence for you, none of my working xml animations access that property.
I have tried xml animations that didn't work, so I didn't use them.
Fly low. Fly slow. Land on a dime. Twin Otter. https://github.com/SurferTim/dhc6p
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby Thorsten » Fri Jan 24, 2020 1:07 pm

What is the alternative to the range animation?


'Doing nothing' has better performance than range animation, yes - that's been tested a few times by now.

While other flight simulator programs are improving performance, FG just eliminates features.


Feel free to improve performance however you like - it's OpenSource.

It's just a bit unrealistic to expect that a volunteer force with zero budget will provide you with a replica of X-Plane 11 - where there's people being paid to work full-time.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby SurferTim » Fri Jan 24, 2020 1:12 pm

Thorsten wrote in Fri Jan 24, 2020 1:07 pm:
What is the alternative to the range animation?


'Doing nothing' has better performance than range animation, yes - that's been tested a few times by now.

While other flight simulator programs are improving performance, FG just eliminates features.


Feel free to improve performance however you like - it's OpenSource.

It performs just fine for me, but thanks for asking! :)
Yes, the frame rate slows a bit when the scenery is complex, but it looks good.
Same with the weather. I'm still on real time and advanced weather. It slows the frame rate a bit, but it looks good!
And I haven't crashed since I learned about the sim injecting wind shear.

Edit: Wanna see wind shear and turbulence? Hurricane Dorian approaching St Barts. This is my favorite kinda flying. That's why I'm here.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Jan 24, 2020 7:56 pm

SurferTim wrote in Fri Jan 24, 2020 12:00 pm:What is the alternative to the range animation? Just nothing moves or changes? No radar? No lighting?

The point is not that they were being used to make animations work - which is a valid usecase - but they were being used to in effect duplicate existing functionality - which was totally unneeded, and costing fairly drastic performance costs.

The more I think about it, eliminating animations is a big step backwards. While other flight simulator programs are improving performance, FG just eliminates features.


I'm not sure if you are aware of the improved / fixed LOD subsystem as it was quite a while ago, but the entire reason behind this change of removing animations is:
a) to improve performance - it's cheaper to let LOD handle this by default than to calculate the distance to the object every frame, in effect
b) because of the enhanced LOD system (which is hardly a removed feature but in fact an added one!) :)
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby SurferTim » Fri Jan 24, 2020 8:12 pm

So if I understand this correctly if that property isn't referenced there, the LOD handles it.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Jan 24, 2020 9:57 pm

No - it handles it regardless - so basically, you are taking (a lot - its an inefficient animation) to do the same thing that already is being done.
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Re: LFPG New Terrain and Terminals

Postby wkitty42 » Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:25 pm

plus the thing is that i may have my (eg) LOD-detailed set for 5nm but you, with a weaker GPU, set a range animation of 2nm... so what happens is that when i'm within 5nm i should see the object but your range animation is not allowing me to do so... removing that range animation allows me to view the object at my selected distance... it puts control of the view back into my hands... if i have a really really strong GPU, i could set my LOD-detailed to 10nm and should still be able to see the object in question...
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