GeoControl Beta Build 21

[cajomi]

We are entering the beta status (of the pre-release!).

This build has many improvements and bug fixes.

Improved:

River and lake tool
The basic algorithm is deeply reworked. It is faster and delivers smoother results. The lake recognition is much faster now, so that great lakes and even a surrounding ocean are no more problem.
Attention: Due to a bug in all versions before Build 21 terrain settings with the river and lake tool will not load, but GeoControl 2 will hang!!! If you have an important setting with the river and lakes, please contact me!!

added:

added "river widness"
This slider now allows to set a river wideness. The wideness correspondents to the amount of water. So with a single spring, the river will be over all wider, but with many springs, the wideness will grow, when flows meet.
added "Limiter"
The limiter allows to control, whether a flow is shown, depending on the amount of water. For good results you need a lot of flows. With a single flow, this control will have no effect.
added: Ocean height
The algrotihm is so fast now, that surrounding water can also be created. That is very important to avoid visible borders, when a "ocean" plane is used in the render software.
added: selection "bank", so that the river banks can now be shaded seperatly.improved

The lake reduction now is set in meters.
The flows into and out of the lakes are much wider and look much nicer now.
water height can now be set much better. A value of 100 equals a flood.
You can now also use the dry river, to simulate a water filled river. The improved algortihm creates a flat river bed, when a higher value for river smoothing is used.Vector tool:


added "forced slope/river" typ
This allows to create "manual" rivers or to prepare a terrain for the river and lake tool.
Improved start and ends
The start and ending of a road is smoothed now. This makes crossings possible.
Insert
Works now as it should.
GeoControl hanged, when two points where exact about each other. Is fixed
Added a "border" selectionMany bug fixes (2. slider isolines, deleting a pwfilter,.......)
Gui for "Filter" has changed. The level control and the settings are on two panels now. This now also fits into a screen with a resolution of 1024*768.
Some memory bugs were fixed. I have tried 8192 terrains, but with the river and lake tool the needed memory is to high.

Please have a look at bugs and report them all!! After the bug fixing this will be the pre-realese version.

Have fun
Johannes Rosenberg

Download: www.cajomi.de/Up/GeoControlBeta_Build21_Setup.exe

You will have to enter the licence key of GC1. This version is time limited. Avoid to change the date of the windows clock else the build will not start any longer!

[Criss]

All of the additions to the river/lake tool sound spectacular. :)

[mauronen]

Hi Johannes.
I've tried to install this build, but i haven't found any entry in Start > Programs menu.
It isn't a really bug; maybe it's an issue of packing process.

I've starting to test this new fantastic build.

Stay tuned!

[cajomi]

You are right, that link is missing. I will add that for the final pre-release.

[james]

Thanks Johannes!!!

Great work!

James

[digitalis]

Thanks,
Finally the Beta-version,
a giant leap for mankind?
Ready to unpack!

[mauronen]

Hi Johannes.
In Filter tab, when i try to delete a pw-group (click on Remove button) it doesn't works.

[cajomi]

Yes, at time you can not delete a pw-filtergroup.
You have to delte the pwfilter themselfes.

[mauronen]

Hi Johannes.
Following this process GC2 eats all disk space:

Go to Postwork tab
Add > Special Tool > Vector tool
Add > Special Tool > River and lakes
Click on Remove button to delete 1024-Springs
Click on Remove button to delete 1024-Vector tool

Guilty file seems to be Terrain_1.gts into NewProject_(x) folder

[cajomi]

Thank you!
And I thought I had fixed that. If you do it the other way round, first r&v and then vector it is allright.

Fixed for next build.

[mauronen]

Hi Johannes.
This isn't a bug (almost for me...) but an explanation request.
When i use Vector tool and play with span controls, postwork result doesn't takes care about height set in Generation > General tab.
Besides, i've noticed that is possible to dig very deep rivers. Infact, heightfield affected has negative values (i've dragged mouse under river and i've read negative values). So i thought: "Maybe, Johannes has found the manner to manage undersea heigthfields". It's my erratic thought or it's true?

[cajomi]

There is at all no really a problem with negative values. you only have to convert them before export. And some functions may crash, if the terrain values are negative.
So, I have to fix that.
That also would mean, that in true, GC will always work with values between 0 and 1, but how they are displayed can be changed, so that negative values are shown.

The vector tool profile uses real world units, so if you make the profile higher than the terrain, well, it is not so good........

[monks]

This is great- I tried things out the other day, and even though I've fallen behind a bit on testing (I feel), it's still easy to pick things up intuitively- so I say that's a good design of the UI.

monks