Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!convex!kemp From: kemp@convex.com (Phil Kemp) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: more on M/S flight sim 4.0 Summary: responses so far Keywords: flight scenery coordinates Message-ID: Date: 19 Jun 91 23:16:13 GMT Sender: usenet@convex.com (news access account) Organization: CONVEX Computer Corporation, Richardson, Tx., USA Lines: 83 Nntp-Posting-Host: convex1.convex.com About a week or so ago I posted a request for coordinate conversion information for the Microsoft Fligth sim ver 4.0 as well as a request for scenery file archives. I received a few responses but most people were interested in the same data I was looking for. Thank you to Alex France for his note: I include portion of his response here for anyone who is interested. Alex writes: Yes, I couldn't agree more. I've recently been playing with the scenery editor adding my local field correctly and local visual reporting points. I started from SubLogic's Western Europe scenery disk which has the runways wrong for my local field (Cranfield) and doesn't have the VOR on the field, etc. Now, when I slew to the field the Latitude comes out OK (i.e the North bit), but the longitude is wrong by a few degrees. I put this down to the 'grid canted by -8 degrees to map onto Lambert Conformal Conic' comment. So, I stuck to putting in the scenery in MS co-ords relative to where it thought my local field was. As far as I can work out, 0.0001 MS Co-ord units ==> 1 inch (which gives 6.336 ==> 1 st mile, 7.2 ==> 1 nt mile) These seem to work out about right for objects within 5 to 10 miles from a known reference, but I could really do with the maths to convert Long/Lat direct into the co-ords for further afield stuff. Thanks for your input Alex. I called Microsoft directly and the support person while quite helpful could not provide me with an equation or an explanation of how to convert from one coordiante system to another. I suggested that they put a little 'convert coordinate' program into the software distribution in the future. It took a while but I finally have a static scenery file for the Banff-Calgary corridor. It seems that the conversion routines internal to the scenery editor cannot handle lat/longs when one is too far north. 'Too far' I can't quantify but when I slew from within the scenery editor, there are some rather large discreet jumps in the slew coordinates. Sometimes as much as a minute or so. So I took a guess and plopped Calgary International somewhere reasonable. From there I used VOR and DME readings combined with a map to place much of the scenery. I could have saved many hours if there was a program to accuratly convert from lat/long to internal coordinates. As an aside I would comment that the scenery editor cannot handle large mountains or long rivers. When plotting the Bow river from Calgary to Banff I was forced to split it in to three pieces. Large mountains and 'ridges' also cannot be built. The editor simply refuses to slew to larger/further coordinates... Now that I have the base mapped I would like to offer my scenery in trade for someone else's work.... I would be prepared to send you what I have in return for some interesting scenery from your part of the world... What I have now is modest at best but the start is there... A couple of downtown buildings, three airports, a few rocks by banff and some limited NAV aids.... I am not interested in breaking any laws here so I am only soliciting for personal efforts of scenery building. Please don't offer anything that would infringe on anyone's copyright laws... To those folks who mailed me with requests for archive sites, I received zero responses offerring any scenery files. The only suggestion was to subscribe to FSFORUM on COMPUSERVE. It seems that there is some trading of files there. Thanks to whoever sent me that tidbit. Well long enough for now. PK -- Phil Kemp CONVEX Computer of Canada Ltd. Voice:(403)-233-2815 UUCP:kemp@convex.com