keith@actrix.gen.nz (Keith Stewart) (02/21/91)
Organization: Actrix Information Exchange, Wellington, New Zealand Date: Thu, 21 Feb 91 04:51:04 GMT I have just received my upgrade from VISTA which makes pictures of landscapes form either US Geological Survey data i.e DEM or from imaginary factal landscapes., to VISTAPRO. This was at a very reasonable price from some very nice people at Virtual Reality Laboratories. The upgraded programme is much better than the original with heaps more features. However I have had problems loading in the supplied landscapes on disk 2. When loading them they change the scaling gadget to 0.000 and when I try to change it to 1.000 I get a guru. The orginal landscapes that came with VISTA load into VISTAPRO ok. I have faxed details of the problem to Virtual Reality but while waiting for a reply I wonder if anyone else has a solution. I have the PAL version of VISTAPRO Thanks PS This is a superb programme for making flyby annimations through reaL AND IMAGINARY landscapes. It needs for the PAL version 3.5 megs of RAM and for NTSC 3.0 It does 24bit IFF etc Any answers gratefully received. Keith
hrlaser@crash.cts.com (Harv Laser) (02/22/91)
In article <1991Feb21.045104.6509@actrix.gen.nz> keith@actrix.gen.nz (Keith Stewart) writes: > > >Organization: Actrix Information Exchange, Wellington, New Zealand >Date: Thu, 21 Feb 91 04:51:04 GMT >I have just received my upgrade from VISTA which makes pictures of >landscapes form either US Geological Survey data i.e DEM or from >imaginary factal landscapes., to VISTAPRO. This was at a very reasonable >price from some very nice people at Virtual Reality Laboratories. The >upgraded programme is much better than the original with heaps more >features. >However I have had problems loading in the supplied landscapes on disk >2. When loading them they change the scaling gadget to 0.000 and when I >try to change it to 1.000 I get a guru. The orginal landscapes that came >with VISTA load into VISTAPRO ok. >I have faxed details of the problem to Virtual Reality but while waiting >for a reply I wonder if anyone else has a solution. I have the PAL >version of VISTAPRO >Thanks >PS This is a superb programme for making flyby annimations through reaL >AND IMAGINARY landscapes. It needs for the PAL version 3.5 megs of RAM >and for NTSC 3.0 It does 24bit IFF etc >Any answers gratefully received. >Keith Hmm... well Keith I'm using the NTSC version of Vista Pro and have been for many months and have brought in literally dozens of .scape files provided on their disks and have scaled them up and down and have never seen a GURU upon messing with the scaling. So it could be some nasty bug buried in only the PAL version, but I gotta tell ya the Virtual Reality guys (Clint, Lance, etc.) as well as the guys who wrote the program (Brick and John at Hypercube Engineering) are terrific and if there's a problem and they can duplicate it, they'll fix it. You (and other Vista Pro owners reading this) might want to be made aware of a hidden keystroke in Vista Pro which isn't documented - they put it in at the last minute. It works like this: -load any .scape file and render it in any mode till the indicator goes past the "cliffs" phase. -abort the rendering and hit your '0' key (Zero on the top of your keyboard) What this will do is pull any part of the landscape's edge, all the way around its circumferance, that is above sea level, down to sea level. Now in order to see the results you'll have to pull your camera back far enough so that you can see one or more of the landscape's edges. Then render it again and depending on where you have your camera and target set, you should see the landscape appear as though it is a piece of cake sliced out with a knife and floating in space. For the niftiest effect, do this, and then set your sky to pure black in the palette screen and then turn stars on back in the main interface and render it in the highest resolution mode you can stand to wait for. This produces pretty stunning pictures! Since you're in New Zealand the news might not have reached you yet that Virtual REality has also released two additional 6-disk sets of .scape files, one set of places in Californa, and the other set covering the 4000 mile long Valles Marineris, Mars' "Grand Canyon." They have at least another thousand .scape files in production right now including ALL of Southern California and a good portion of the Earth's Moon in, I think 10-meter data format (the Vista .scapes that come with the program and the other 12 disks are in 30-meter data format). Hope you get your scaling problem straightened out. Regards... Harv Laser {anywhere}!crash!hrlaser "Park and lock it. Not responsible." People/Link: CBM*HARV