Instructions - Coast-Line-Maker V1.1 (1st release)

© Iain Murray, 2003


About Coast-Line-Maker V1.1

Coast-Line-Maker is a utility designed to allow manipulation of the coastlines in Microsoft's Flight Simulator 2002 - existing coastal segments can be deleted or edited, and new ones added. Coast-Line-Maker also allows manipulation of other line segments, such as rivers and roads. The main features of Coast-Line-Maker were conceived as follows:

FS2002 coastlines are created in a different way from earlier versions of Flight Simulator. The world is divided in to a 768 x 512 grid of cells (called LOD8 cells) - initially water, but main land areas are set up by block filling certain cells with land. The actual land/water margin detail is then set up using a finer cell grid (32 x 32 LOD13 cells within each larger LOD8 cell) using Land & Water Masks (LWMs). These are essentially a series of polygons which are either land or water, and are used to mask out the underlying land/water to achieve the correct coast shape.

Oddly, any coastlines (i.e. beaches, waves etc.) are not defined as part of this process, but are created separately using Vectored Terrain Polygons (VTPs) - this is the same technique used to create roads etc. in the FS2002 world. Coastlines can be created either with or without breaking waves (the waves are generated automatically by FS2002 if the VTP coastline is set up correctly).

LWMs and VTPs are normally defined within scenery assembler source files, and compiled using the MS scenery compiler BGLC (part of the MS SDK for FS2002) to produce scenery BGL files for FS2002.

Coast-Line-Maker was designed to allow coastlines to be drawn graphically on the screen, and then generate the corresponding LWM and VTP assembler source files automatically - the program will even compile these assembler files and copy the resulting scenery BGL files directly to your FS2002 scenery folder.


Getting Started: Coast-Line-Maker first time setup 

This is the folder within which you should also store any background map images and your CoastLineMaker data files (which have a .CLM extension).

You will also require the following tools to complete a CoastLineMaker project, which should be copied into the same folder as above:

For basic troubleshooting information for Coast-Line-Maker, please see README.TXT.


Getting Started: The Coast-Line-Maker Design Process 

A worked example of reworking a simple coast with Coast-Line-Maker is given in the accompanying Tutorial.

The best way to use Coast-Line-Maker is as follows:

It is recommended that you save your Coast-Line-Maker project after each of the above stages.

The data flow of the Coast-Line-Maker design process is as follows:


Getting Started: Making a background map 

Coast-Line-Maker needs a background map upon which to draw the coastline. The best map to use is a map captured from the map view of FS2002 itself, over which is laid the LOD13 cell pattern and/or a map of the real coastline which you wish to follow. The accuracy of placement of your new coastline etc. within FS2002 will depend on the accurate drawing of the background map!

To produce this map, follow these steps:


Using Coast-Line-Maker 


Testing out your new coastline / Troubleshooting


Hand editing the Coast-Line-Maker output - advanced users only

The assembler files created by Coast-Line-Maker include some parameters which are always set to the most commonly used values. However, you may wish to hand edit the assembler files using Notepad in order to create some specific features in your scenery:

After editing, drag any modified assembler files onto BGLC.EXE to assemble the file, then manually copy the newly-generated BGL file to your FS2002 scenery folder.


Coast-Line-Maker - Caveats and Limitations

Please note the following usage idiosyncracies of Coast-Line-Maker and its output:


Acknowledgements and Legal Notice

Thanks to many subscribers to the AVSIM scenery design forum (especially Richard Ludowise) for helpful comments made in the forum, or to me directly. Without these comments, writing Coast-Line-Maker would not have been possible. Thanks also to Richard Ludowise for permission to use his include files (which are in the public domain) within the Coast-Line-Maker package.

The Coast-Line-Maker program is distributed as Freeware but remains © Iain Murray, 2003, all rights reserved; it may not be distributed commercially by any means without the express written permission of the author. Any sceneries created using Coast-Line-Maker are the copyright and property of the scenery author, but where such scenery is published (either commercially or as Shareware or as Freeware), the scenery author should acknowledge the use of Coast-Line-Maker in its creation; as a courtesy, the scenery author should also inform the Coast-Line-Maker author of publication.

Coast-Line-Maker should not harm your computer or any data stored on it but, if you imagine that it has, the author accepts no liability.


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