IMHO anyone with a serious interest in scenery design MUST read this.

After a bit of help from falko over on the other forum I've now got a fuel truck driving round my apron in quite a complex pattern. I need to do a bit more experimenting but this seems a very easy method to put dynamic objects like fuel trucks, follow me vehicles, food and service vehicles, stair trucks etc etc in your scenery.

We know from the ZSHC scenery and other things that are going on that adding dynamics is where it's gonna be at in the near future and this seems to be the easiest way as far as I can see for 'hick' designers (like us ) to do it.

Yes, we know that you will need PC cpu power to make em work effectively, but sorry, this is the way it's going and you can't stop progress. If you're trying to work with a less than 1 GHz machine I'm afraid that you're gonna have trouble in any case. And very soon with all the latest bells and whistles 2 GHz is probably gonna be needed to get the full benefit.

If people are interested I'll post more information on the method but in the meantime I've got more work ot do!



Roger

Doug, as one of the old school like me I'm sure you will love this.

I've not had access to GMax since I changed to XP Pro (I've downloaded the latest version, tutes etc on someone else's PC with Broadband but haven't had a chance yet to put the files onto CD) so I haven't done anything with GMax scenery design at all. That's why I'm doing all my custom objects in EOD.

When I thought about dynamics I therefore had to look at the 'old' ways which ruled out straight GMax and new ways like BusyObjects which is GMax based.

So I read up on DOD v3 and Dynakit which I've had but never used since FS98 and as I'm not interested in dynamic aircraft, which of course these were originally for, I thought that the principles for the 'static' dynamics haven't changed, so why not give em a try.

I found that in the DODlibs (eg DODL06) there are quite a few excellent little objects apparently all ready for use so I thought I'd follw the instructions and give em a try.

Unfortunately, as others before have found in FS2000, the objects work but float above the ground. So you have to find 2 files on flightsim.com (as far as I know this is the only place at present) called DIDL01.ZIP and DIDL02.ZIP in which a number of selected objects have been adjusted for altitude. There are also some accompanying pic zip files if you would like to see pics of the objects, but these are not essential.

When you unzip them you get DIDL01.bgl, DIDL01.dki (an essential Dynkit file) and some texture files. We'll work with DIDL01.

Step 1
Put DIDL01.bgl and DIDL01.dki in your main FS2002\Scenery folder - my advice as always  is make a copy of your original 'clean' folder in case you want to back out - and put the DIDL01 textures in your main Texture folder - make a backup copy again beforehand).

Step 2
Install DOD v3 in a suitable folder. I have it in ..FS2002\utils\DOD, but location isn't critical.

Step 3
It's a DOS program so there are no install complications. Click on DOD.exe (make a shortcut on your desktop if you like) to run.

Step 4
Click on 'Program Setup' in the DOD main menu bar and key in your paths. These MUST be accurate. Save them.

Step 5
Clcik on the 'Object Type' button. If you have provided the prog with the correct path to your DIDL01.bgl/dki files, you get a list of the objects you can select from the library, including among others the fuel truck.

Step 6
Select it and click on 'back' in the menu at the top of the panel.

Step 7
Now's the time to put in your scenery coordinates - lat and long - don't be too precise as you have +/- 10 km to play with!

Step 8
Click on the 'Pattern Type' button - make sure 'Standard Pattern' is selected and click on OK

Step 9
I'm afraid that now you DO need a bit of knowledge about scenery design - so you will probably only be able to proceed from here if you know how to use FSSC or Airport with a background image.

In FSSC (I'll say FSSC but if you use Airport, that's OK) place the cursor where you want the object to start. Take a note of the EXACT lat and long coords and the heading you want to start moving in.

Step 10
Click on the Coordinates button in DOD and key the info in. Your alt (in feet or metres) will be 0 as it's a ground vehicle but you can try playing around later). Choose 'scenery density' in the usual way and you can decide whether the object should appear immediately or some time after the scenery has opened. Click on OK

Step 11
Now 'trace' your objects track around the background image in FSSC to find how far it travels in each leg of the movement to the chosen turning points and the heading it turns onto at each point. Make a note of the info for each leg. Easy. No complicated maths or geometry!

Step 12
Click on the 'Pattern Commands' button and key in the commands.

This is easy - it's a ground vehicle so it can only go forwards, backwards and turn.

Make sure that in Leg 01 you put the starting heading - when I didn't, even though you've already put  it in 'Coordinates', the prog didn't work.

Moving and turning commands are self explanatory. At the end, unless you want the object only to run once OR disappear at the end of the sequence and reappear to repeat the loop, make sure it ends up where it started.

Then click on the 'Stop' button and choose whether to make the object stop and sleep or repeat the sequence - like I said, this is sooooo easy.

Now click on the 'Back' button.

Step 13
Ignore all the other stuff in DOD - save the file (put it in the DOD\scenery folder).

Step 14
Put a copy of SCASM.exe in the DOD\scenery folder (see, method in my madness....). If you saved your file as 'myfile', look in the DOD\scenery folder and you will see (as well as SCASM!!) myfile.dod and myfile.src which were created when you saved.

In the usual way, drag myfile.src OVER SCASM and it will autocompile and create myfile.bgl for you.

DONE!!!!!

Shift the bgl into your scenery folder, fire up FS2002, watch and be amazed.

I always put addon scenery in

..FS2002\ADDON Scenery\MYSCENERY

with scenery and texture subfolders and add/activate MYSCENERY through the scenery library. The prog will have no trouble finding your dynamic if you've followed the instructions exactly.

Now the REAL fun starts.....

Enjoy

Roger