NZFF

Hi all,
Just wondering this as I was flying around lately.
Is there anyway of defining how BIG trees are in the sim? Not how big in KB size, but how tall / general size they are to the eye?

I ask, and opinions welcome, as I think they are honestly out of scale with the rest of the planet (this is a world wide phenomenon not a specifically NZ thing) . I flew down to Lake Rotoiti recently, and the mountains don't look nearly as impressive as they do for real as I think the trees on the sides of them make them look tiny in comparison to the scale presented by the trees.

Ideally, is there something simple that I can change which will just scale trees worldwide? Something like a cfg file entry which has a number I could change from 1.00, to 0.50 for example?

I'd like to fly at 5000ft and have trees look like they are 5000ft below me
Cheers

This maybe be one for Timmo to answer when it comes to agn on default tiles though i know when you use the agn tool on photoreal you can choose tree height and shape etc from the menus ,it would take some one like Timmo or Robin to re autogen his vector land class or default texture tiles which he has done on the pine and bush ones that i know off ,the only cfg entry i know of is to reduced the amount shown per 1.5km tiles setting which is very similar to spare normal dense etc settings i think ..

Cheers for your answer Mike. I've been thinking that if it was possible, someone here would have done it by now But is it just me who thinks the trees are a bit big out and around the world? This is not a VLC problem, this as I say is a worldwide thing by my eye. You might all think they are fine. I just wouldn't mind dropping down their scale a bit. As you say, maybe Timmo will surprise me?

Each tree model (a simple arrangement of 2x2 sided planes in a cross shape) is simply determined by the dimensions of the modeler who creates them- The dimensions cannot be changed, AFAIK, without re-modelling the trees. The sizes Mike refers to are XML groupings of different tree models- Sometimes these just use the same basic set of textures placed on 'trees' of differing dimensions so a 10m tree is just a 20m tree scaled down 50% (but is still a completely different model as far as I'm aware)

In terms of VLC specifically, the native bush is simply a re-skin of a few of the existing models which are quite large (being used for rainforest in other parts of the world).

Tree size, IMO, is something that you tend to overestimate in the sim- quite often seeing a tree 5 times the height of a house looks incorrect but is the norm in the real world. Trees are big!

I guess you could resize the tree texture on the texture sheet as a cheap way around it. They are redicuously out of scale

Oversized autogen is a feature of FSX -- when autogen was introduced, rather than trying to model every tree, which was well-beyond the capabilities at the time, and still is, MS just made the trees larger. So instead of having one tiny tree to represent dozens, they have one huge tree. Plus, the initial set of trees were really meant to represent the very biggest of trees, it's only since then that people have wanted a lot more vegetation in their sim.

There is no way to change this in FSX, except as Mike said, to edit the autogen annotation for each affected landclass.

Timmo wrote:

QUOTE (Timmo @ Oct 31 2011,2:49 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In terms of VLC specifically, the native bush is simply a re-skin of a few of the existing models which are quite large (being used for rainforest in other parts of the world).

This is kind of a good example of the sort of autogen vegetation quirks that make things interesting. The default rainforest textures have a few tall canopy trees, which are just left as blank textures in the VLC set. But even the bottom undergrowth bits are huge, so VLC relies on a kind of visual illusion -- most native bush is on a fairly good slope, and what we see is a huge number of quite low bush up the side of the slope. So to make them appear denser, each single object represents the progression of small bushes up the slope. This doesn't work so well on the flat, but as I said there isn't much of that.

Thanks guys, I knew you'd have some expert advice available.
It's all starting to sound beyond my ability, so I guess I'll just leave it at that. If I could run "extremely dense" I believe the problem wouldn't be so bad. But without full coverage, "scale" becomes more noticeable as I am looking at individual trees rather than a forest canopy.
But never mind, I see it's a bit of a pipe dream now, and I can see the reasons behind them being so large.
Unfortunately Nick I don't have the ability to change texture sizes, or ability to go through and reallocate textures to landclass files etc. So if you say it can't be done, that's good enough for me.
Cheers

Hey got us all thinking anyway ,if you learn t the agn tool and found out a list of textures used with VLC it could be pretty simple but time consuming and painful which comes with designing for FSX ,if there is a update to VLC textures this agn on each tile use would have to be done anyway to match new imagery, so you may have just sown a seed of other things to look into later date which is food for thought ..

It also gos the other way in respect waist height bush and scrub , you simply cannot have one or two to define an area which is all you can do , Norfolk Island was an example were to try and get the affect off a very dense shrub opposite the terminal and surround caused a large drop in frames , so the limits work both ways .