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Command Reference

SynthWizard Step 2

Geographical extents of the scenery

This step tells SynthWizard where will the scenery be located, and how large in geographical terms the scenery will be. You can enter geographical coordinates into the edit fields in both Decimal and DMS format:

  • Decimal format describes the geographical location in decimal degrees: 34.5 degrees is 34 degrees and 30 minutes.
  • DMS format describes the geographical location in Degrees, Minutes and Seconds format delimited by ":": 34:30:00 means 34 degrees, 30 minutes and 0 seconds.

TerraBuilder recognizes both formats, and the display mode is determined by DMS/Decimal switch at the TerraBuilder's bottom status bar.

When the geographical coordinates are entered into edit fields, the opposing coordinate value (Maximum or Minimum) will be automatically calculated and updated, based on the resolution values given in the resolution edit fields, unless the resolution field is unlocked. See below for more information on this.

Coordinate lock buttons

These buttons determine from what location geographical extents calculation will automatically propagate when the resolution is not fixed (resolution buttons not locked). See below for more information.

Resolution

TerraBuilder's SynthWizard utilizes Combat Flight Simulator's synthetic textures in order to build the scenery terrain mesh. These textures are all 256 X 256 pixels in size. Since each texture represents an area of terrain, they have a certain size. This size has been selected to be 512 X 512 meters by default. This size also corresponds to exactly 2 meters per pixel in horizontal and vertical direction. This number is called resolution of the texture, and it has been arrived at simply by looking at the features in the bitmap and judging at their size in real life. Even though SynthWizard pre-sets this number at 2 meters/pixel in vertical and horizontal directions, you are free to un-lock these fields and change the values. If, however, you want to build a standardized SynthWizard scenery, it is recommended that the resolution be locked at the default setting of 2 meters/pixel

Resolution lock buttons

If you have the resolution buttons locked, the Latitude and Longitude values entered into the Max and Min fields will be automatically updated. For instance, if you have a horizontal resolution locked at 2m/pix, and enter a value for minimum Longitude, maximum longitude will be automatically updated based on the calculations involving minimum longitude and resolution.

If, however, you have resolution buttons un-locked, you can:

  • enter the maximum and minimum longitude, and the resolution will be automatically calculated and updated
  • enter the resolution, and the minimum or maximum longitude will be updated. If you have both longitude values entered, the coordinate lock button will determine which coordinate will be locked and which will propagate. If, for instance, you have SW coordinate lock button selected, then, as you enter resolution, the Maximum Latitude and Maximum longitude values will change, while Minimum Latitude and Minimum Longitude values will stay locked

The above applies equally to the minimum and maximum latitude values and vertical resolutions.