Comments on: RFC: Dataref-Driven Library Regions

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 17:10:19 +0000

It sounds like a great idea. My reboot time is often a few minutes, which is enough to have put me off from even investigating winter textures. Anything that helps with that can only be a good thing.

I wonder what other uses for this innovation people will come up with?

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 18:34:01 +0000

In reply to myb. Correct. The current code I have has a bug: the datarefs are not re-polled regularly; I think that's just something I need to fix.

By: myb

myb — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 15:08:15 +0000

Witty method. In my mind it will be looks as hand loading the regional textures during flying say PANC-KMIA through a menu. In other words our flying began in the winter and finished in summer. Wouldn’t forget to load the correct textures. Great! I like it.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 21:09:19 +0000

In reply to Tom Knudsen. You can use this extension with FWL.

By: Tom Knudsen

Tom Knudsen — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 19:08:34 +0000

In reply to Ben Supnik. Thanks, been coding in FWL, so I am off to C/C++ next.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 15:49:24 +0000

In reply to Alex D.. The custom library pack specifies _regions_ that are data-ref controlled. So if you want "only north america AND only with this dataref" you simply apply both a region direction (REGION_RECT or REGION_BITMAP) _and_ a dataref.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 15:48:09 +0000

In reply to Tom Knudsen. The only -native- languages are C/C++/Pascal. Lua and Python are available via -adapter- plugins that convert Lua to C (e.g. that's what SASL, Gizmo, FWL, etc. are). The specifics of creating custom datarefs are, well, specific to the language or script being used.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 15:46:38 +0000

In reply to Rutger.

No. The effects can be customized _by_ region, but there’s no interpolation because the change is “use this art” or “use this art”. X-Plane can’t take two separate art files and “average” them. So an author who wants to create transitional zones would have to explicitly model this.

There are tricks in .ter files and .pol files that can be used to help this without making more textures – it’s the kind of thing that where a script could help construct the ‘final’ art from a few master files.

True interpolation is something I’d like to see, but it’s long term in that it requires -native- support for weather effects (think: snow and ice shader) built directly into X-PLane. That’s something I do want in the sim, but it’s not this proposal, it’s not coming soon, and it’s a much more significant change; this RFC is really “stupid library tricks” which are pretty tame and shippable in 1040.

By: Tom Knudsen

Tom Knudsen — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 15:26:27 +0000

This is excellent news… Is Lua the only language or are there other workable languages one can use to program scripts that interact with X-Plane. Lets say I wish to make a simple weather engine that fetches data from A and import into X-Plane? (can be anything) Do all scripts just have to include Data Refs or are there any library one can include/api to use?

By: Alex D.

Alex D. — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 15:20:47 +0000

Hi Ben, is a pleasure to read about this expected feature, and tell you that anyone of those proposed are good, but personaly prefer the second. Normaly i think the user do not change the season time in flight because want to fly in most realistic conditions. If i wrong

This will open a new horizont of seasons textures in sceneries, but i have a question about how will affect this news rules about the default artset textures? How will be limited the size of the are where these rules will be aplied? Will coincide with area definition of a custom library?

I wold like to try this code, the las time i sent email to you but withour answer, i dont know if not have the correct email or you do no recive it, but if you can please send us instruction to my mail, mobile[around]dai-media.com . Thank you a lot and looking for good news.
Good luck and fast coding, Cheers!