[Cocoleo]

hi,

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Here is a basic How-To for the Fly! II scenery editor. To enter (and exit) the editor, simply press Ctrl+E at any time during flight. You will be put into "edit" mode on the ground directly under your present location. (A quick bug note: if you enter the editor while the mouse cursor was hidden, it will not be visible in the editor. To correct, simply Ctrl+E to exit the editor, move your mouse to make the cursor visible, then press Ctrl+E to re-enter the editor. This bug has already been fixed for the upcoming first patch).
You will initially see two windows opened on the right side of the screen. The top right window is the "tools" window, and is used to place, edit, delete, and save changes to your scenery. The bottom right window is the "location" window, and it shows your present lat/lon location, globe tile location, and the number of visible objects in the scene.

Some quick motion/camera controls. To move around in the editor, use the slew keys. Press Numpad-8 to move forward, Numpad-2 to move backward, Numpad-4 to move left, and Numpad-6 to move right. The longer you hold down the key, the faster you will move in that direction. To cancel all movement, press Numpad-5. For the camera, press Ctrl+LeftArrow to rotate left, Ctrl+RightArrow to rotate right, Ctrl+UpArrow to rotate up, and Ctrl+DownArrow to rotate down. Press Ctrl+Equal to zoom in, and Ctrl-Minus to zoom out (you can also use Shift+Equal and Shift-Minus to zoom faster).

The mouse is used to select and move objects in the environment. To select an object, click it once and it will begin blinking. You can now modify the object properties or delete the object. To move a selected object, click and hold the mouse button over the object and drag the mouse to move the object to a new location. Click anywhere on the ground to deselect the current selection. Remember, you can't click and drag an unselected object -- the first click will "select" it, the second click/drag will move it. We did this to prevent unintended model movement when you are simply trying to select it.

The first row of icons on the tools window are the available actions. They are (from left to right): Place Model (house icon), Place Vehicle (car icon), Place Windsock (windsock icon), Place Beacon (beacon icon), and Place Tower (tower icon).

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Placing a Model
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To place a model, move to the location where you want the model located. Press the Place Model icon (house icon) and a window will appear in the upper left corner. This window has a list of models on the left side, and a spinning 3D view of the model on the right side. You can scroll through the list to find the model you want to place. You can filter the list by object type by using the Filter popup menu at the bottom of the window. Once you identify the model you want, click it's name in the list to select it, then press the 'Place' button. The model will appear in the world, and should be blinking since it is now the "selected" model. You can now click and drag the model with your mouse to fine-tune placement, or use the slew keys to move the model.

The second row of icons on the tools window is used to modify an object. The icons (from left to right) are: Properties (question mark icon), Rotate Left (Left arrow icon), Rotate Right (right arrow icon), and Delete object (trash can icon). These icons are only enabled when you have a selected object.

Click the Properties icon to modify traits such as the name of the object ("Transamerica Building"), and various other properties such as whether the object casts a shadow, auto-snaps to the ground, etc. There is one particular property that you might want to consider named "Distance Hiding". If this is selected for the object, the object will automatically hide itself when the user is more than about 2 miles away. This is very useful for models such as trees, fences, or other fine detail models that are essentially useless from a distance. Fly! will automatically set these flags as appropriate for factory models.

Click the Rotate Left icon to rotate the model to the left, or Rotate Right to rotate the model to the right. You can also use the End and Page Down keys for the same effect.

Click the Trash Can icon to delete the selected model from the scene.

To place a model ABOVE ground level, select the model and use the Properties window to turn off "Auto-Snap to Ground", then use the "Q" and "A" slew keys to move the object up and down vertically.

One note: you cannot edit or delete the factory scenery unless you unpod the factory scenery files from the "cities.pod" file. You can, however, add and extend the scenery anywhere you wish, including in factory scenery areas.

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Placing a Vehicle
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Click the Place Vehicle icon (car icon) to place a vehicle. For now, the two choices are Fuel Truck and Fire Truck. You can move and place the vehicles as normal objects, or you can create a moving path for the vehicle.

To create a path, use one of two menu functions. The first is "Path Plotter" from the Windows menu. With the Path Plotter, you can use the mouse to click and define a path on the ground. Each segment can be assigned it's own speed. You can also choose whether the path loops, reverses, or simply stops when completed. Once the path is defined, you can save the Path to a path file (.pth). This is done through the File menu on the Path Plotter window. YOU MUST SAVE ALL PATHS TO A FOLDER NAMED "PATHS" IN THE FLY! FOLDER. Once a path is defined, use the Path Recorder window to assign it to an object.

The Path Recorder window essentially gives you control over the "black box" recorder for a vehicle. Any actions you perform (i.e. driving) will be recorded and stored as a path. Optionally, you can import a path file saved with the Path Plotter from this window (using Import Path...) to auto-define the recording. If you have imported a path file, simply press the Play icon (>) to begin playback and watch your vehicle driving on the path. If you want to "drive" and record the path, press the Record button (o) and use the throttle and steering keys (or joystick) to drive the path and record it.

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Placing a Windsock
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To place a windsock, simply click the Windsock icon and one will be placed as your present location.

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Placing a Beacon
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To place a beacon, simply click the Beacon icon and one will be placed at your present location. The beacon will automatically assign itself the color sequence of the airport it is nearest to. You can also use the Properties icon to change the beacon color.

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Placing a Tower
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To place a tower, simply click the Tower icon and choose a Pole or Tower style tower, light colors, light count, and speed.

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Saving your scenery
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To save your scenery, you MUST click the "Save Changes" button on the tools window. You must do this in one of two situations: before you move to a new airport or location (outside of about 30 miles from your present location), or before you exit the editor.

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Sharing your scenery
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Scenery changes are saved to small scenery files located in the DATA folder. Which folder they are saved to is dependent on your location on the Earth. Before leaving the editor, look at the Location window and note the Globe (X,Z) location shown. For example, if the (X,Z) shown is 168,156, then the scenery file was saved to the \DATA\D168156 folder.

Inside the appropriate data folder, you will see a file named "SCENERY?.S??", usually something like "SCENERYA.S01". Fly! will first try to save to a file named "SCENERYA.*", and will then move to "SCENERYB.*", "SCENERYC.*", if files already exist. An important point to know is that it is only the extension name that matters; Fly! does not care what the file is named otherwise. For this reason, I would suggest after creating a scenery area you name it uniquely in case you share it with a user who already has a "SCENERYA" file defined for the same location. So, if your file was named "SCENERYA.S01", you might want to name it "TRIRICH.S01" for example.

To "install" scenery from another user, you simply need to have their scenery file and the name of the appropriate folder to put it in. If the folder came from D168156, then the user you give the scenery to simply needs to create a DATA\D168156 folder and drop your file into it. Viola! The scenery changes are installed (the user could even further edit the scenery from there.)

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Adding new models
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The "Place Model" window builds a list of models by looking at a file named "factory.mlf" inside the DATA folder. Actually, it parses any and ALL files ending with *.mlf. So, if you create new models for Fly! that you want to share with users and have them become "built in" selections in the editor, simply create a new *.mlf file in the same layout as factory.mlf, and provide the file and models to users. You can view the factory.mlf file with Notepad/Wordpad, and the beginning of the file is self documenting.


Well, that's my first shot at a basic how-to. Hopefully this will be enough to get everyone started with the editor.

Richard Harvey
Terminal Reality

grüße
alois
(cocoleo)