Fly!2-Update: Marc Störing, bitte melden!

[Enno]

Moin Marc,

und dankeschön für die Nachricht! Aber eine Frage werde ich mir doch noch erlauben. Da ich Dir nicht zumuten möchte, daß Du mit Fragen überschüttet wirst und ständig auf jede Kleinigkeit antworten mußt, halte ich sie allgemein:

Ist Fly!2 hinsichtlich der Zusammenarbeit mit diversen Grafikkarten optimiert worden?

Ein einfaches "Ja" oder "Nein" (natürlich lieber ersteres als letzteres! ) würde mir als Antwort vollauf genügen!
Gruß, und

Always happy landings,

-Enno

[Marc]

Original geschrieben von Enno
Ist Fly!2 hinsichtlich der Zusammenarbeit mit diversen Grafikkarten optimiert worden

Hmm, keine Ahnung, jedenfalls sind die ganzen DX DLLs neu.

Schöne Grüße
Marc

[Marc]

The first fruits of the Fly! Beta Team are very near. We are now ready to make a formal announcement of our first phase of fixes, changes, additions, and extensions to Fly! II. As many of you know, this volunteer team was formed a couple of months ago to attempt to tackle some of the most requested items & issues with the Fly! II series.
We intend to release our first update on Friday, December 21. This is tentative and could change, though currently things look good for this date. The update will be approximately 6.5MB in size compressed, and will require about 20MB of free disk space on the drive containing Fly! II. You must be running Fly! II version 210 or later to apply this update.

Before I get to specifics, I would first like to recognize the group of folks who have dedicated so much of their time and energy to test, gather info, provide ideas, debate, and contribute to this effort. Without them this would never have been possible, and it's a testament to the wonderful community we have built. These guys have probably installed, removed, formatted, re-installed, and tested more than they would ever care to admit!! Please give your thanks to:

Alejandro Amigorena
Allen Kriesman
Anthony Merton
Braun Tacon
Chris Wallace
Colin Sare-Soar
Dann Church
Dan Martin
Dean Karis
Dominique Klein
Elrond Elvish
Frank D'hont
Jak Fearon
Jeff Burke
Jim Kanold
Ken Salter
Lefteris Kalamaras
Marc Stoering
Nick Curcio
Paul Nielson
Randall Rocke
Richard Harvey
Robert Randazzo
Todd Klaus

The beta team would also like to extend our great thanks and appreciation to AVSIM for supporting the team during our test cycle. In particular, kudos go out to:

Scott Brazell
Tom Allensworth

Now, for specifics. I've included a list of changes below of the items that are addressed in the first update, which is officially 2.01.230 (updated from 2.00.210). If an item near and dear to you is not listed below, it does not necessarily mean it will not be addressed -- it simply means it was either too time intensive or a lower priority for our first update. I also want to re-iterate that this and any future work is being done on a strictly volunteer basis, so we make no guarantees that any particular item will be addressed, nor that there will even be any future updates. It all depends on the participation of the beta team, and time available for coding & testing.

The changes/fixes/additions are:

General Fixes:

- Runway lights would twinkle in & out when approaching from a distance; fixed.
- Runway lights would sometimes not turn on even when taxiway lights were on; fixed.
- Basic flightplan printing now available
> After creating flight plan, press Ctrl+P to print
- Support for Z-sorted model objects
> Only necessary for objects with opacity maps that "bleed through" other models
> In factory.mlf (or .mlf) file, new flag added for this effect: B=Z-sorted (back to front)
> Optionally, add a <sort> tag inside the <mobj> definition in your scenery file to activate this feature
- Support for non-Zbuffered model objects
> Objects should be flat, and placed on a perfectly flat surface (designed for markings/striping)
> In factory.mlf (or .mlf) file, two new flags added: X=no collisions, Z=no z-buffer
> Optionally, add a <no_Z> tag inside the <mobj> definition in your scenery file to activate this feature
- Maximum display list items (visible models) increased to 12000 per scene
- Environment "Overview" window now displays altimeter in both inches Mercury (Hg) and hectopascals (hPa)
- Fly! now validates the render.ini file to make sure minimum slot counts are met.
- Airport lights now properly fade into fog in low visibility conditions
- Runways would stop drawing reciprocal end markings after crossing runway centerpoint; fixed.
- Runway and taxiway lights now properly fog in low visibility conditions.
- Runway markings on reciprocal end would draw in dark gray in low visibility conditions; fixed.
- Fixed "rainbow" cloud discoloration problem due to RGB value overflow.
- Airport beacons, radio towers, and moon opacity maps fixed. (Contributed by Jim Kanold)
- Runway and taxiway light artwork replaced.
- Clouds are now visually "whiter" during daylight hours by default.
- METAR reported winds will now populate winds aloft to match by default.

[Marc]

- METAR input routines converted meters to feet with incorrect formula. Fixed.
- Cockpit camera head pitch is now saved to .INI file to remember last setting.
- Environment "Other..." window altimeter slider no longer snaps to ticks, allowing finer control of setting.
- Added new runway marking database code (9) for ICAO PIR markings as per UK CAP637 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented new type of bright 'strobe' light for REIL, PAPI and sequenced flashers (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Add sequenced flashing lights to codes 23, 24, 33 and 39 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented standalone REIL (Runway End Identification Lights) (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Added REIL to ALSF1 and ALSF2 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented new versions of ALSF1 and ALSF2 which use CLightLine class (coding by Chris Wallace)
- All default PAPI lights use a 4-light configuration instead of 2-light (coding by Chris Wallace)
- PAPI light spacing adjusted (coding by Chris Wallace)
- ODALS lighting should flash in sequence, not in unison. (coding by Chris Wallace)
- ALSF1 and ALSF2 length extended to more common 3000' (coding by Chris Wallace)
- ALSF1 and ALSF2 sequence light extended to 20 lights to encompass full 3000' length (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented REIL (Runway End Identification Lights) (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting AI (Centerline & Bar), database code 17 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting BG (Left Single Row), database code 20 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting BF (Center Row), database code 21 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting BO (Center Row), database code 23 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting BP (NATO Standard), database code 24 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting BS (Center Row), database code 27 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting E (Two Parallel Row), database code 30 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting J (Calvert CAT II), database code 33 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting S (Cross), database code 38 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting T (Calvert CAT I), database code 39 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting X (Centerline 2 Crossbars), database code 41 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting B (US Configuration), database code 18 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting Q (Alternate Centerline and Bar), database code 37 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting O (Centerline), database code 36 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting M (Single Row Centreline), database code 34 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting N (Narrow Multi Cross), database code 35 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Implemented Approach Lighting BN (Former NATO Standard), database code 22 (coding by Chris Wallace)
- At non-US airports, runway IDs < 10 should include leading zero. Fixed. (coding by Chris Wallace)
- Directional gyro gauge correction knob was broken in the Flyhawk (VFR and IFR panels). Fixed.
- Runways now honor the glideslope angle defined by glideslope ILS entry tied to the runway.
- Localizer/DME combinations were not shown in runway frequency list. Fixed.
- DME components are now tracked independent of the localizer location.
- Auto-tune would not work with ADF radio. Fixed.
- Scenery system could "leak" memory by not freeing scenery models when appropriate. Fixed.
- showDistantClouds is an obsolete .INI tag that is no longer used, but would cause visual problems if set. Fixed.
- Generic textures were missing opacity maps for water tiles. Fixed.
- Ground night lights would not appear for some tiles, even if textures were available. Fixed.
- Scenery models will now switch to night model versions in sync with airport lighting.
- Windsocks were broken. Fixed.
- Spurious "winrun.cpp" error on exit has been fixed.
- Pilatus EFIS NAV button would cause an exception when pressed. Fixed.
- Reciprocal runway ends did not draw approach light systems. Fixed.
- Changed artwork for taxiway lights (blue and green)
- Tweaked some UI artwork
- New pod "patch.pod" added to \SYSTEM directory
- Taxiway lights could overflow maximum vertice count in renderer. Fixed.
- Taxiway pavement had hard coded cutoff of 3nmi. or 5000' AGL. This has been changed to the new .ini settings viewableTaxiwayLightDistance and viewableTaxiwayHeight.
- Taxiway lights had hard coded cutoff of 3nmi. This has been changed to the new .ini setting viewableTaxiwayLightDistance.
- Tweaked blue taxiway lights to be more blue and less purple
- German language translations corrected (contributed by Marc Stoering)
- Tweaked flight plan printout to add a small amount of footer margin to prevent partial lines at bottom of the page.
- Clouds of the same type on different layers should no longer align themselves vertically.
- On debug tab screen, Navaid count was calculated incorrectly. Fixed.
- Replaced VOR model with higher detailed version (contributed by Biber Salsa)

[Marc]

FLY.INI Additions:

- Added .INI variable to allow customizing of the distance runway lights "fade" into fog
> In section, set runwayLightFogPenetration=XXX, where XXX is the fade distance in feet (1000 is default)
- Added new .INI variable to allow Fly! to still operate when running in the background.
> In section, set suspendOnTaskSwitch=0 to allow background idle processing
- Cloud light scalars ("brightness") can be modified in the .INI file for dawn, day, dusk, and night:
> In section, set lightScalarDawn=XXX, where XXX is percentage of light scalar (0..100; 50 is default)
> In section, set lightScalarDay=XXX, where XXX is percentage of light scalar (0..100; 100 is default)
> In section, set lightScalarDusk=XXX, where XXX is percentage of light scalar (0..100; 50 is default)
> In section, set lightScalarNight=XXX, where XXX is percentage of light scalar (0..100; 25 is default)
- Added new .INI variables to extend visibility of taxiway pavement, markings, and lights.
> In section, set viewableTaxiwayPavementDistance=XXXXX, where XXXXX is slant distance in feet
> In section, set viewableTaxiwayLightDistance=XXXXX, where XXXXX is slant distance in feet
> In section, set viewableTaxiwayMarkingDistance=XXXXX, where XXXXX is slant distance in feet
> In section, set viewableTaxiwayHeight=XXXXX, where XXXXX is AGL distance in feet
- Some users felt airports were too "bright"/visible from a distance at night. This can now be adjusted by tweaking light fade-out intensity:
> In section of FLY.INI, set runwayLightDistanceFadeMinFeet to distance in feet where lights began to lose intensity
> In section of FLY.INI, set runwayLightDistanceFadeMaxFeet to distance in feet where lights are at lowest intensity
> In section of FLY.INI, set runwayLightDistanceFadeMaxRatio to set percentage of how much lights fade at max intensity (0..100)
- Overall light intensities for various airport lights can now be tuned in the FLY.INI file:
> In section, set INTENSITY_STANDARD to adjust standard airport lighting intensity
> In section, set INTENSITY_CENTERLINE to adjust centerline airport lighting intensity
> In section, set INTENSITY_TOUCHDOWN to adjust touchdown airport lighting intensity
> In section, set INTENSITY_ALSF to adjust ALSF airport lighting intensity
> In section, set INTENSITY_RAIL to adjust RAIL airport lighting intensity
> In section, set INTENSITY_VASI to adjust VASI airport lighting intensity
> In section, set INTENSITY_REIL to adjust REIL airport lighting intensity
> In section, set INTENSITY_TAXIWAY to adjust taxiway airport lighting intensity


Editor Fixes:

- Stand alone slicer (fly2slice.exe) now available to directly integrated with TerraScene 2.1 (or later)
- Slicer can be aborted by pressing the ESC key during slicing.
- Slicer will only remove slicelog.txt progress log at the beginning of each slice, not the end.
- Slicer would incorrectly add *.S?? files to pods created after slicing; fixed.
- Added reference crosshair to screen "center" point
- Terrain slicer now honors grayscale water images, so partial transparencies can be used.
- Rewrote pod file I/O routines to greatly increase speed of pod file creation.
- Slicer now saves user visibility settings, then sets visibility to maximum distance before slicing.
- Flatten airports incorrectly skipped airports that fall between elevation sample points. Fixed.
- Slicer would modify graphic options on exit, affecting the fly.ini file for the Fly2.exe. Fixed.
- Slicer progress dialogs message text reduced in length to prevent clipping of text.
- Slicer now shows build version at launch.
- Info panels now remove paths from the texture names so the entire name is visible.
- Pure water (non-generic) tiles would appear as pure black in far texture. Fixed.
- Slicer would sometimes generate mismatched tiles for 128x128 and 256x256 textures, causing squares to appear. Fixed.
- Far texture creation incorrectly treated generic pure water tiles as opaque. Fixed.
- Slicer now outputs a file "slicelog.txt" which logs the slice process for debugging purposes.
- Slicer would incorrectly parse filenames in quotes by dropping the last character. Fixed.
- Slicer no longer creates an "AutoSave.sit" file, which could crash Fly! II the next time it is run.
- Support for new TerraScene import file format.
- If you used "Goto Airport" from the editor with objects selected, Fly! would crash. Fixed.
- Scenery import routine incorrectly skipped water creation steps. Fixed.
- Editor Info window now shows texture name, elevations, and mouse cursor stats.
- Editor will now quantize tile artwork to a user defined bit depth:
> In section, set editorSliceBitsPerPixel=X, where X is bit depth (valid values 5..8)
- Flatten airports logic rewritten and integrated into single pass elevation import.
- Slicer would show graphic options or intro dialogs if set in .INI file. Fixed.
- Terrain data files are now deleted before attempting to slice a new area, solving some crash situations.


SDK Fixes:

- Added APIGetFilePath to return selected file path from an Open or Save dialog box.
- Added GetFilePath to Python system to return selected file path from an Open or Save dialog box.
- APIGetTunedType incorrectly returned TUNED_NAVAID when tuned to a localizer. Now returns TUNED_ILS.
- APISetWeatherInfo now sets winds aloft to match wind settings passed in SWeatherInfo struct.
- Added APIGetWindsAloft and APISetWindsAloft to modify winds aloft at users present location.
- Added APIGetLightScalars and APISetLightScalars to set cloud lighting scalars for dawn, day, dusk, and night.
- Added GetLightScalars and SetLightScalars to Python system.
- Python GetJoystickAxis incorrectly returned an integer instead of a float. Fixed.

[Marc]

- DLLGetPopupHelp no longer requires a <help> tag to be defined for the gauge for popup help to work.
- Setting cursor to CURSOR_TURN_LEFT or CURSOR_TURN_RIGHT would crash Fly!. Fixed.
- Added SetWeather to Python system; pass in a WeatherInfo dictionary (defined in fly.py) and weather is set at users present position.
- Added DLLKeyIntercept routine to allow DLL's to capture Fly! keystrokes and prevent further processing.
- APIDefineKey did not handle the modifier value correctly. Fixed.
- APIBlitPanelToSurface and APIDrawBitmap no longer leave a 1-pixel black border.
- Key handler changes not always activated properly when added or removed. Fixed.
- Keyboard callback routines had a bug causing DLL's not to get notification. Fixed.
- DLLBeginFrame was not being called. Fixed.
- APIDefineKey did not handle the modifier value correctly. Fixed.
- Key handler changes not always activated properly when added or removed. Fixed.
- The maximum number of active fonts has been increased from 20 to 40.
- APIFreeFont has been added to the SDK to allow freeing an unused font.
- APIGetFlyVersion has been added to report the current revision and build number of the Fly! executable.
- DLLFilterMetar has been added to allow DLL's to pre-filter METAR files before they are processed by Fly!.
- Keyboard callback routines had a bug causing DLL's not to get notification. Fixed.
- APIObjectInAirport incorrectly searched airport database, causing inconsistent results. Fixed.
- APIGetScreenDirect added to allow direct manipulation of the Fly! frame buffer (valid during DLLDraw* callbacks only)
- APIGainFocus/APILoseFocus added to forcibly change the focus of a UI component or window

This constitutes the feature set for 2.01.230.

Richard Harvey
Terminal Reality
Fly! Beta Team

[Cocoleo]

hi,

anzumerken wäre noch, daß auch terrascene überarbeitet wurde und eine neue version 2.1 kommt.

der beitrag von todd klaus aus dem avsim-forum:

One of the nice things about using TerraScene 2.0 with Fly!2k was that the process was fully automated; you could select the area you wanted, click ‘Render Now!’ and return later to find your scenery ready to fly! Thanks to Rich Harvey’s new headless slicer (also my Halloween costume for next year), this functionality is now here for Fly!2. The upcoming Fly!2 update will include this slicer amongst the many other updated features. TerraScene 2.1 offers several new features to take advantage of the capabilities in Fly!2, including automatic launching of this slicer, making the scenery creation process for Fly!2 automated like it was in Fly!2k and will be available on Friday, December 21st.


Changes since 2.0
Welcome Wizard -- The first time you run 2.1, you will see a welcome wizard. This wizard will ask you for the location of your fly! executable (fly.exe or fly2.exe). The wizard will then automatically extract and rebuild the generic textures from your fly!2 installation for use with TerraScene. No need to download a huge texture pack, you already have them! There are over 100 textures, so this will take a few minutes. This process also tweaks the color saturation of the textures, making up for the reduction to 6-bit color and making them more vibrant. The base render options pack that comes with 2.1 references these textures. With 2.1, there is no need to download additional texture packs, although you can still use the old ones if you still have them.

Improved Image Resolution -- You can now specify the image resolution as 7.5 m/p on the project options dialog.

Configurable URL's & Directories -- You can now individually configure the URL for each of the USGS data types as well as the directories where they will be stored. This info is in the config.props file in your TS2 installation directory, or you can edit the values using the new Project->Advanced Options dialog which shows a tree-view of all of the TS2 configuration parameters. You can also specify an HTTP proxy here along with your proxy username & password. You can also customize the location of your output directory here.

7.5 Minute USGS DEM's – By default, the URL for the 7.5 minute DEM's used for shading and snow now points to the http://www.wingswithwires.com web site since this data is no longer available from the USGS. Send email to sean@wingswithwires.com if you'd like to thank him for his generous offer to host this data. By default, TS2.1 will download the 7.5 min DEM's from wingswithwires and all other data from the USGS server. Although it should not be necessary, 2.1 can now read the DEM files from GeoCommunity (http://www.gisdatadepot.com/), but it cannot auto-download them. This allows you to use the 10-meter DEM’s for shading and snow if you like.

Water Mask – Automatic creation of the water mask image. This gives you the animated, reflective water that Fly!2 is known for in every body of water in the TerraScene image, down to the duck pond in your backyard. There are now two new menu options; Options->Land Types (water mask) and Options->Lines (water mask) where you can customize the render options for the water mask just like you can for day and night images. The defaults should be fine for most cases, but feel free to experiment.

New Render Options Dialog -- You can now specify whether you want a water mask image. Also, if you only select elevations, no DLG or LULC data will be downloaded. You can also specify which slicer you want to use (fly1/2k or fly2). For fly2, there are some additional slicer options you can set using the 'advanced options' button. These include the subdivide tolerance, mesh density, color depth, and others.

Other changes & Bug Fixes

- Fixed a shading alignment problem in some areas
- added new textures for roads
- added new base render options pack using generic textures
- added sanity check for main window position persistence
- fixed validation routine for saving render options packs
- fixed bug that caused some lakes to not get filled in or included in water mask
- fixed bug that caused some LULC files to get re-downloaded every time
- added abort check during download retries
- changed render status to be less confusing (it just flashes instead of looking like a progress bar since it's not really showing progress)
- reduced memory usage in Targa merger
- fixed map redraw when clicking on map to select project bounds
- Optimized the shading routine for direct access to the RGB pixel values (shading is a bit faster)
- Added a configuration dialog for the config.props file (Project->Advanced Options)
- SCF file uses .epd for fly!1 and .pod for fly!2
- Fixed a bug in the mouse event handler for the coverage map that might have been causing the redraw problems that some people were experiencing.
- Fixed the DEM 7.5min SDTS parser. It should now work with the new GeoCommunity DEM's as well as the old DEM's that used to be on the USGS server (and are available on my server for testing)

Many thanks to the beta testers who made this all possible for their debugging help and excellent suggestions:

Alejandro Amigorena
Allen Kriesman
Anthony Merton
Braun Tacon
Bruce Motyka
Chris Wallace
Colin Sare-Soar
Dan Martin
Dann Church
Danny Vickers
David Taylor
Dean Karis
Dick Boley
Dominique Klein
Ed Van Knapp
Elrond Elvish
Frank D'hont
Gordon Herring
Jak Fearon
Jeff Burke
Jim Kanold
Ken Salter
Krister Linden
Lefteris Kalamaras
Marc Stoering
Nick Curcio
Paul Nielson
Randall Rocke
Richard Harvey
Robert Randazzo
Robert Shiplett
Steve Chan