# FST Hints and Comments

If you have any of your own FST observations to add, just e-mail them to me, and I will be more than happy to add them!

- Uploading FST stuff
- The World Editor Fractalizing Bug
- New Utilities
- Zoom in FLY.EXE
- Terrain Colours
  - Comment on Lakes
- Day/Night and Time
- Flight Models
  - Level Flight
  - Canards
- Lights!
- Bleading Polygons
- Cockpit Editing
  - Crashes caused by Cockpits.
- Jorg's Cool .BAT Menus
- Terrain Data
- The Crossing Terrain Squares Rule
- Number of Polygons
- Number of Engines
- ADF and Waypoints
- Intro PCX in SVGA

Of course, we can start with the FST FAQ from Arthur Sankey and you can check out the newsgroups alt.games.fst and comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim

### Uploading FST stuff

If you are going to upload some of your FST creations to ftp.iup.edu, which seems to be the default FST FTP site, then make sure you carefully follow the instructions from the maintainer:

    1)  Don't forget to do a TYPE BINARY before PUTting .zip and other
        binary files.

    2)  Please send an e-mail to owner-flight-sim@grove.iup.edu announcing
        your upload(s).

    3)  Permission to redistribute must be obtained from file authors if
        not explicitly granted in the accompanying documentation.  This
        may delay cataloging.

If you don't do this, your wonderful creation will never make it into the FST directory - which will be a real shame!

### The World Editor Fractalizing Bug

You may have noticed that when using the Fractilize tool in FST's World editor that sometimes the fractilization seems to "overflow" the area marked for fractilizing. The terrain gets raised in long streaks of uniform height of to one side of the area to be fractilized, destroying all the nice terrain that used to lie there :-(
This must be a bug! I tried the newest version of World editor (from the new FST beta release) and this bug was still there.

Yet there is hope! I found there is a couple of ways around this. Firstly, if you fractilize the whole 50 X 50km block this bug won't occur - obviously. But, if you are fractilizing a smaller area, I realized two things:

1. If you fractilize a rectangular area, the streaks of raised land always seem to extend off of one of the long edges of the rectangle, but for how long, I don't know.
2. The bug does not seem to occur if you fractalize a square area. I found that as long as I select an area that is square, or pretty close to (seems to be tolerant,) then the bug does not raise its ugly head!

### New Utilities

Have you tried the new Colour Editor for FST? This tool rocks, 'cause you can modify all the colour in the palatte. I always thought the blue and brown artificial horizon always looked silly, but now you can change that! Even down to the explosion colours! This is a definite recomended download.

One trick I used, is to set the distant sea colour (#39) to the second from furthest sky colour (#41) - this creates a narrower horizon stip, and looks much better IMHO. Also, see my comments on terrain colours.

I figured out the uses of a few extra colours that where maked "unknown" in the README file:

- 16 - Red Lights - sets the red colour of the cockpit lights and the red text on screen.
- 17 - Green Lights - sets the green colour of the cockpit lights and the green text on screen. That techno-green always looks so silly, you probably want to change it!
- 19 - White - this will change to colour of the instrument hands on your cockpit.
- 20 - Sun
- 21 - Early Morning Sun - the colour of the sun at 6:00 and 18:00
- 22 - Morning Sun - the colour of the sun between 6:10 - 6:30 and 17:30 - 17:50
- 24 - Artifical Horizon Top
- 25 - Artifical Horizon Bottom
- 26 - Radar Background Colour

Also, the DOS Shape viewer, HVIEW.EXE is really nice for quickly browsing through you shapes. Though I recomend renaming (REN) HVIEW.EXE to H.EXE - less typing.

Furthermore, you can zoom in and out by holding down one of the mouse buttons - this is great for checking out how your parent/child levels look at a distance (to see if they don't jump too much.)

### Zoom in FLY.EXE

Any time while flying in FST you can zoom in and out, even while in the cockpit - which helps for seeing enemies and targets. At first, I couldn't get this to work - I found that to zoom in and out you must use the PG_UP and PG_DN keys on the keypad, not the PG_UP/PG_DN keys above the arrow keys. Then it works great.

### Terrain Colours

This is where I spend the most time it seems, getting realistic terrain colours. I had a little discussion with David Lonardo, who has had some graphic design training, on this subject. Here are a few pointers he gave me:

> Hmmm, there's lots of stuff that can be said about color... hell I spent a whole semester on the subject once. Aside from going to an art supply store and picking up a book on color theory, here's a couple of things to remember. Look closely at some aerial photos, block out all parts of the image except the color your interested in (ie; if you're looking for a good color for water, block out the land, etc., it affects the way you see the color). When looking at the photos, you'll see how wrong most sims can get simple ground and water colors.

> Using pure black is a real no-no (the only exception I can think of is a shadow from direct over-head intense sunlight). Try to be extrememly subtle in the palette colors, the main problem with computers is that you can ramp up the colors to 255 or down to 0, in real life, the colors are never this saturated--very small changes in palette hue, saturation and value are much more realistic. So that means no pure greens, reds, yellows, etc. That said, you can also go for some real contrast for sunny weather colors, try over doing the contrast a bit and see how it looks... again, keep the saturation subtle but values can be radical.

> When I said "optimize it for visibility.", I meant for seeing the planes and on-screen icon information clearly, ie; a 20% difference in value assures that the item can be seen over a backround. Red hues will stand out excellently over green backrounds, etc. (so in this example, I would make the icon range information on CK's glowing green landscape a slightly darker red, it would stand out great--of course I would want to change the landscape though;). Using color complements like this, and their values can really help viewing things quickly. Also, to reduce eyestrain, I would make sure no pure whites were used for cockpit instruments and the like.

> As you can see, there's a lot to think about when doing a good palette. The best bet is to go with what you think looks nice though :)

> Dave

What really bothers me is the limited visibility in FST, it always seems as though you are flying in a fog! Here are a few things I found that help "cheat" the visibilty distance. First, choose if you are going to have a sim set over the ocean, land, or desert. Don't mix ocean and land, as these tricks won't work. Although, having islands in the ocean, or lakes on the land is okay. In desert we assume there is no water.

- Land -- choose your basic land colour. For example in DI's Tornado it was that funky pool table green. I like kahki colours since they look more realistic. Then, set the lower horizon (#39) to this terrain basic colour. You can still have elevation variable colour, but now the land will appear to run on forever. Though, don't ramp you water colour to the land colour - it looks way better to ramp you water to one of the sky colours - I usually ramp it to (#41)
- Ocean -- again, choose a basic sea colour, then set the lower horizon (#39) for that colour. I set the closest sea colour (#32) for something a little different/darker, so I get some depth perception. I don't ramp the terrain to this sea colour (#39) though, but something closer to the land colour. The change from land green to sea blue is too extreme, IMO. The land changing abruptly from land colour to sea colour at a distace will look okay since you are only dealing with islands.
- Desert -- here I set the sea colour (#32) for the desert sand colour, and set the lower horizon (#39) for some shade of desert sand. Again, this will give the appearance of endless desert. Try it out, it works rather well!

#### Comment on Lakes

Arther suggest setting a certain elevation colour as a lake colour, and make all lakes that elevation, but you have to be careful if you do this. FST sets colours only for the current 50 x 50km block you are in. Therefore, if in one block, the elevation runs from 0 to 100m, and you set the colour corresponding to 10-15m as lake blue, then in the next 50 x 50 km block the elevations may range from 0 to 1500m, and then here, your blue elevation colour may correspond to elevations 110m 180m! Try it out for youself, create two terrain blocks, one with very low elevations, and one with extreme elevaions, and see how the elevation colours are ramped for different elevations between the two blocks.

### Day/Night and Time

You may have noticed that you can set the time of day for flying in FST, but, time does not flow in FST! So that means that if you take off at 6:10am, the sun will be half way over the horizon and it won't change! Pretty dumb, but it something to keep in mind. Perhaps they will fix it later....Also, I think the night colours look pretty bad, I recommend making a seperate night palette, and then flying during the "day". You could even set the sun to some shade of white/gray and have it be the moon! Actaully, you can go even further with this, creating custom colour palettes for different weather conditions, and different times of the day. When flying at night though, lights look really cool (remember flying those night missions in F117A?), so add lots!

### Flight Models

Flight modeling I find the most frustrating part of FST. I can never get planes to fly level! But here are some hints:

- From Arthur Sankey - use prop. engines even for jet aircraft as the plane seems to fly more level.
- Also, don't feel obliged to stick to the true shape of the aircraft. If you need to tweak it to make it fly right, by all means do so! For example, I was modeling a Twin Otter, a STOL (Short Take-Off and Landing) equiped bush plane. Anyway, it can take off incredibly short stips, so you need to have a really low stall speed. The solution was to make wings much longer than they truly were - now I can take off a couple of hundred metres!

#### Level Flying Aricraft

Have you noticed the distinct lack of trim controls in FST? This means that you have to model your aircraft very carefully in order for them to fly anywhere near level when you let go of the stick. I found that by tinkering with Wing Incidence - which effects the Angle of Attack - you can get the plane to fly near level. Here is what I do:

1. Design you aircraft so that is is reasonably aerodynamically stable, then take it out for a test spin. Make sure the Wing Incidence (which you have set in Model Editor) is somewhere around 1 or 3 degrees.
2. Since I think that the planes should be flown around 67% power (7 I think on the keyboard), I take note the cruising airspeed when flying level at this power setting.
3. I then go back to Model Editor and adjust the Wing Incidence setting util the plane flies level at this airspeed. This will take several jumps back and forth between FLY.EXE and Windoze. If the plane flies "nose up" (the nose pulls up when you let go of the stick), decrease the Wing Incidence, if flying "nose down", increase the Wing Incidence. Soon with tinkering, the damn thing will fly pretty near level!

Good Luck!

#### Canards

This is another thing I have been messing around with. The FST manual as usual is no help since it says:

> Careful manipulation of FST's modeling algorithms will replicate the effect of canard layouts.

Great eh?

When modeling the Swedish Viggen, I did a little reading on canards. Apperently what they do is not provide lift, but act as giant votex generators, causing turbulent air for the wings to fly through. This causes two things:

1. Higher AOA's before there is seperation of flow over the wing -- this means very steep AOA's are possible with canard equiped aircraft.
2. More efficient wings, giving greater lift and lower stall speeds.

So in modeling the Viggen, I basically designed a delta winged aircraft, (make the tailplane really small) FST seems to handle delta wings quite well, and then gave the plane the highest possible stall angle and wing efficiency. Also, I tweaked the wings a little, making them too big to simulate the increased lift an to reduce the stall speed. This is pretty important in the Viggen's case because it takes of and lands in less than 400 metres!

### Lights!

Remeber those cool night missions in F117A? Almost everything had lights on it - as do real objects in the world. So, I add lights to all my shapes (or I have night versions of the shape with the lights.) What I did is made a little pyramid, about 10cm high, deleted the bottom polygon ('cause you will never see it) and gave it one of the unchanging colours down at the bottom of the colour selector. Then I used the Copy To option from the Edit menu to save the light to a seperate file for each colour of light. I usually name them LIGHTR.GRP, LIGHTW.GRP, LIGHTG.GRP, etc. Then I can just use the Paste From function to add lights easily and quickly to all my shapes. And be generous with the lights - it is worth it. Also, add lights to the parent levels as you can see lights from a long way off.

I also add wing tip lights to my aircraft Gear Down shapes, so it looks like the aircraft turn their landing lights when they lower their gear!

### Bleading Polygons

#### Badly Formed Polygon

On Badly Formed Polygons from Jon Saloga:

    Forest Pearson (fsfkp@ludd.luth.se) wrote:

    : Yes, I am interested in this too - how much effect does the badly formed
    : polygons have on the shape?  I find that if you twist a polygon you get
    : this message.  Also, if you create a shape out of only triangles, your
    : polygon count goes way up- yet these are simpler polygons - any idea how
    : this effects frame rate?  I had been trying to use complex polygons (8
    : siders) to keep my polygon count low.  Ideas, comments?

    Well, there are basically two types of badly formed polygons. One is the
    kind you just described - twisting polygons (i.e. a square with corners
    on three different grid planes). If it's twisted, it will sometimes
    disappear from sight when viewed from certain angles. The likelihood of
    this depends on how big and complex the polygon is, as well as how badly
    it is twisted. If it's just a slight twist, it may not cause too much of
    a problem. Triangles are impossible to twist as far the software is
    concerned so you may do whatever you want with them.

    The other kind of badly formed polygon is one that is too complex or "busy".
    Here are some examples of some bad eight-sided polygons:
           ____            _______                       /\
         /  __ \         /        \               _____/    \_____
       /   /  \  \     /            \             \              /
     /___/      \__\   \          /\  \             \    /\    /
    		     \______/    \__\             \/    \/

    Basically, any polygon that has an abrupt extension (the two on the left)
    or comes back in on itself (all three of them) is a badly formed polygon.
    The more gradual and natural looking the polygon, the less likely it will
    turn out "bad". These kinds of bad polys will "leak" when you run the
    sim. It will show up as a thin streak of color that runs from the top to
    the bottom of the screen. They won't show up in the mini-viewer found
    in the shape editor, so you'll only see it when running FLY.EXE. If you
    have to create a shape like this, you should always piece them together
    with triangles and squares.

    Don't worry about having to use all triangles when making your shape. If
    you keep your polygons simple and get into the habit of -building- the
    more complex polygons out of simpler shapes, you can keep the polygon
    count down without sacrificing too much detail.

    Also, to keep the frame rate managable, make sure to give your shape
    file the appropriate parent/child shapes. I usually give my shapes two
    parents and make the child (the most detailed) visible at about 200-300
    meters, depending on the size of the shape. I've seen a lot of user
    created shapes out there that have no parent shapes whatsoever. Too many
    of these on the screen will really clog up the frame rate.

    							Jon

### Cockpit .PCX Editing

Wow, I have found this to be just about the hardest thing to do in FST - even though the manual says it is quite simple to edit the .PCX with your favorite graphics editor. Ya, right.

The problem I always found was that you are limited to 15 colours. You may have beautiful cockpit pictures, but reducing them down to 16 colours is very hard. Also, the first colour has to be black, and anything that is the first colour will show up transparent so you will see the world beyond the cockpit. Actually, the first colour does not need to be black, but if you use another colour, there is a boarder around the whole screen of that colour - which, perhaps, could be used creatively.

But before I go into colour reduction...let me start with the beginning of the process.

1. I usually use cockpit pictures which I have "acquired" for other sims. I use a shareware program called Screen Thief - or you can do an archie search for scthf157.zip for a copy closer to you - remember these programs are shareware, not freeware, so don't forget to register!

   Anyway, start Screen Thief with the /O:PCX switch (to save as a .PCX) before you start the program you want to capture from. And when you are ready, just hit CONTROL + ALT + T to capture the screen with your!

   The other way would be to scan a photo of a real cockpit, but real cockpits are pretty hard to work with - yet if you are ambitious - go for it!

2. Now fire up a graphics editor and load your cockpit - I usaually use Neopaint (again you can do an archie search for neopnt30.zip) Don't use Windoze Paint - it is totally useless and a waste of your time. I sometimes use Photo Styler (a commerical program) for fancy effects, but it really is not too good for much else - it is especially bad at colour reduction!

   Then clear out everything that you want to be transparent - the window. I usually use the Fill tool, and fill in all the visible terrain with black. Also, I remove all the instrument readings, since you will overlay your own instruments later. Now, the should be ready for colour reduction.

3. The best program I find for doing colour reduction is Paint Shop Pro (again, you can do an archie search for psp30.zip) So, I start this program, and load the cockpit. Then find "Reduce Palette to 16-colours" or something like that. Here you usually have the choice of dithering or not. Usually, I don't like the look of dithered cockpits, but try it, see what you like best.

   When I have reduced the palette to 16-colours, I then go and save the palette (usually to a .PAL file.) Edit the palette so the first colour is pure black (this first colour will be the "transparent" colour) Also, sometimes a critical colour that you may want (a red or yellow or green) on you cockpit may not be chosen in the colour reduction (because it only appears in a few selected spots) - so change a insignificant colour in the 16-colour palette to this colour that you want. Again, save your palette.

4. Reload the full colour cockpit (the one after you removed the scenery in step 2) and apply your saved colour palette from step 3. You should now have a better 16-colour version than in the previous step. Try editing the palette again and re-applying it several times until you have a good looking 16-colour cockpit. Also, don't forget David's advice about colours.

5. Now we need to separate the first colour (to be transparent) from the other blacks in the cockpit. I recomend changing the first colour to neon green, or anything that stands out. Save the cockpit and start the graphics editor used in step 2.

6. Now in Neopaint the neon green should now be the first colour (note, this was not true in previous versions of Neopaint!) So, now fill the areas you don't want to be transparent with your near-black colour, leaving the transparent "viewing" areas alone. Now you can change the first colour (the neon green) back to a pure black. The cockpit should look normal now and you should be ready to fly!

   NOTE: if you have a lot of "transparency" leaks, FST will crash upon trying to start.
   Furthermore, you cannot have any any pixels of the first colour (the transparent colour) in the bottom most row of the image - if you do, FST with crash and burn.
   Also, if you make you Artifical Horizon instrument large, it will act very wierd, or even crash - so try to keep this instrument small.

Also, check out Domark's advice regarding Cockpit PCX layout in the Manual - section 3.2.6 (pg 41)

Hope that helps, (hope you understood me! - if not, email me.)
Good Luck!

I have a some examples of Cockpit PCX's that I have made using the above process on the FST Cockpit PCX's page.

### Jorg's Cool .BAT Menus

### Terrain Data

What I always want to do is somehow import XYZ data into FST - specifically from DTM (Digital Terrain Models) - I even have access to some AutoCAD extensions that can convert the DTM's to 500m scale, but alas, Domark has never given us such an import utility. Perhaps some hacker can figure out the format of the terrain files (while on the issue of hacking, has anyone changed the font in FST - you know the two font files - FONT57 and FONT58....)

Anyway, here is an article by Ivan from rec.aviation.simulators

    While dabbling in writing my own flight simulator, one big
    problem has been getting some elevation data to fly over.

    The standard place to get this stuff is from USGS, but if you
    call them, all they can send you is 9-track tape (and it's
    not exactly free). There are some outfits which can get you the
    data on floppy or CD-ROM, but I never really followed up on that.

    But, I finally found an online repository of all of this stuff:
    	http://sun1.cr.usgs.gov/doc/edchome/ndcdb/ndcdb.html
    You can get USGS 1-degree DEM datasets for all of the U.S. from there,
    with minimum of hassle. The Web site also houses good docs explaining these
    datasets, as well as record formats and all that stuff.

    Happy terrain building ...

### The Crossing Terrain Squares Rule

DON'T

Never lay you objects in World Editor across the lines between terrain squares. The objects get cut off if you do this, they look really wierd and funky when you are flying around - so just don't cross the lines! I had a look at Confirmed Kill, and it seems that they can get away with this, but we can't so we have to live with this rule.

### Number of Polygons

FST is famous for it's smooth flight due to high FPS (Frames Per Scecond) - but this can easily be eaten up by objects. If you make many objects with high polygon counts and litter the land with them, the computer will choak on calculating all the polygons, and soon your beautiful sim slows to a crawl.

So, to keep the game running soothly, remember to always use parent/child levels - and to keep things simple. I usually use the three levels that FST defaults to: 5000m, 1000m and 200m. For a building, I usually use 5-10, 10-20 and 20-30 polygons for each level respectively, and I think that is still a little high. If you look at the screen shots from Confirmed Kill, an upcomming on-line flight sim based on the FST engine, you will see that their ground objects are quite simple, thereby ensuring high frame rates. Specifically, if you look at the houses you will notice that they are only made of 11 polygons!

I believe that many of the shapes that come with FST are actually too complicated - I always trim them down before I use them. Many people when starting to use FST make wonderful shapes - but they are far too complicated. For example I have seen some in excess of 200 polygons - a Pentium choaker I call this! Usually, for the nearest shape of the aircraft, I try to stay around 100 polygons.

Also, when making shapes, make sure you look them over them closely, and search for polygons that won't be seen. These just take up CPU time and screw up you shapes. Just use the Select Polygon tool in Shape Editor and select the polygon, then hit Del key! Again, I have found some of Domark's shapes guilty of this!

### Number of Engines

The manual is wrong. The number of engines you enter does not effect the total amount of thrust. So in the Engine Thrust box, enter the total amount of thrust the engines produce. For example, if you have two engines, each producing 1000lbs of thrust, then enter 2000 into the Engine Thrust box, and 2 into the # of Engines box.

Also, the fuel consumption does not change depending on how many engines you have. For example, if you can fly 10 min with a given amount of fuel and one engine, you can still fly 10 min with that amount of fuel and four engines.

### ADF and Waypoints

You have probably noticed that you can't set waypoints and have carot heading indicators in FST like you have in other flight sims. BUT, by using Non-Directional Beacons (NDB's) you can still set waypoints.

First, add some NDB objects to your world at the points where you want to have a waypoint (set the Object's Class as NDB) Set a frequency for the beacon and note what it is. Now you have established your waypoint. Since each beacon has a unique frequency, you can have lots of waypoints for many different missions. Just make sure you note what frequency corresponds to which waypoint beacon.

Then, in Cockpit Editor, add a gauge with the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) attribute.

Now, when you are flying, tune your ADF for the given frequency of the the waypoint you want to fly to (with the / and ? keys.) The ADF will display the bearing of the beacon relative to the nose of the aircraft. If the beacon is straight ahead, the needle in the ADF will point straight up, if the beacon is 90 degrees to the left, the needle will point straight left. For more explanation, see section 4.1.3 (pg 60) in the FST manual.

This system works pretty much the same as the carot system used in most flight sims, but I think it is a little more realistic and fun since you manually have to tune the ADF!

### Intro PCX in SVGA

Here is the answer (from Bryan Walker of Domark) to my long time question!

        Displaying a SVGA intro picture as you're loading an FST scenario is
    easy.  Simply select the 640x480x256 color PCX of your choice, and name it
    SFST.PCX.  Put this file into your scenario's directory and VIOLA!  ;)

         Bryan Walker
         Simulations Producer
         Domark Software

Though, this does not seem to work with the original, un-upgraded version of FST.

If you have any ideas, suggestions, comments, or input, please don't hesitate to contact me:
Forest Pearson, fsfkp@aurora.alaska.edu

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Last modified: Oct. 7, 1995