VectorLandClass Readme

Version 1.02 Image Credit: Kelvin R

Thank you for purchasing the Vector Land Class addon for Microsoft Flight Simulator 10 (FSX)- Very soon you will be transported to the beautiful country of New Zealand, situated in the South Pacific and named by the native inhabitants 'Aotearoa' ('Land of the long white cloud'). New Zealand is a country of diverse land use and geography: from the bustling metropolis of Auckland city in the North Island to the small farming communities scattered around the Waikato region; from the rugged coastal environment to majestic inland mountains; from high country sheep stations in the South Island to massive commercial pine tree plantations in the North Island. It is a country that has inspired generations of tourists, explorers, poets and artists.....and now, with the addition of Vector Land Class, it will be a country that inspires the best virtual pilots from around the world.

What makes VLC special? In a word, accuracy. Our extensive use of vector polygons to define different land types means VLC can get around the 1.2km pixel limit of the FSX scenery engine and represent New Zealand as it was meant to be.

Introduction

Landclass- The raison d'etre for the VLC project was the Landclass....but this just isn't any old landclass! Where other landclass products are limited to an accuracy of over 1 kilometer, our innovative Vector Land Class system is accurate to within about 50m, or 20 times the accuracy of traditional methods! Beaches (Black or tan sand), Mud, Golf courses, mangroves, quarries and landfills, native bush, scattered scrub, thick scrub, Pine forest, Harvested pine forest, Other plantation forest (including major shelter-belts), Rock, Moraine and shingle, Horse tracks, Ice and Snow, Vineyards and Orchards as well as urban and suburban areas all meticulously displayed in FSX. Not only that but we separate productive land into different textures based on slope and type and include the thousands of small rural airstrips scattered around the country.

What does VLC Include?

Ground and autogen textures- To really bring out the best in the underlying VLC data, we replace key ground texture sets lovingly created from New Zealand sourced aerial ortho-photography including plantation pine, plantation pine cutover and New Zealand native bush. We further tweak these textures with updated autogen placement files and and autogen textures made from photos of good ol' New Zealand native bush. VLC ground textures also feature innovative LOD Blue-shift Post-processing so that the appearance of scattered blue light at large distances is accurately replicated in FSX.

Night Lighting effects- Using GIS technology, we have placed two classes of light effets along major roads- Very bright lights along major highways, and smaller lights along major urban roads. These lights will turn on at dusk and burn through the night until dawn. The number of lights is scalable in two ways: Using the VLC Scenery Configuration Tool to decide which lights you want to see (All, Freeway Only or none) and then using the FSX scenery density slider (Note: Lights are known to be heavy on frame rates)

Ocean, Lakes, Ponds, Rivers, Canals, Streams- The coastal environment is very important for New Zealanders (both the general public and pilots alike) and so a lot of time was spent upgrading this area- All water features have been upgraded (including nearly 3/4s of a million streams!) to ensure the utmost accuracy. The coastline has been correctly classified depending on the geomorphological environment: Surf beach's will appear sandy and have breaking waves whereas sheltered inlets will appear calm with narrow beaches.

Mesh- VLC is draped over a custom made mesh interpolated from 20m contour information, spot heights and other height information such as airport boundaries tagged with AIP elevation values. This 20m (0.00016 decimal degree) mesh, as well as being far more accurate than default 76m SRTM mesh, overcomes a lot of the problems of remotely sensed data such as errant height values in steep country or in areas covered by cloud.

Roads, Rails, Tracks and Freeways- We sourced the best replacement transport vectors such as roads, railways andfreeways...but then didn't stop there!. These have all been edited significantly to work within FSX as well as adding new roads/subdivisions and tracks (including tramping tracks). These have been correctly classed (so a dirt road will appear as a dirt road unlike default FSX data) and railways have been updated (for example, removing rail tunnels from the raw data). They have also been split into two separate groups in order to customise your FSX experience- Want to see more autogen buildings and vegetation in urban areas? Simply turn off urban roads within the VLC Scenery configuration tool. Want the best accuracy for VFR flying? Leave the urban roads turned on and follow them all the way to your front door!

Other Objects- As well as the Landclass data representing the natural environment, VLC provides placement of man made features including tramping huts and antenna with more to be added. We also include a type of building which are found in no other country in the world: Marae. Some of these objects are simply placed from the default library, some of them are custom built for VLC, but all are in their actual locations around New Zealand.

Free airports and object Libraries- Available separately from the VectorLandClass website for free, VectorLandClass includes a raft of updated airfields which make use of custom models of typical New Zealand hangers, buildings, vegetation and objects. What’s more, these objects are available to use in your own scenery projects

Population Density files- A new feature to FSX is the population density layer which controls the volume of traffic on freeways and boats on lakes. These have been tweaked for New Zealand so that the density of traffic on our Motorways is more realistic (i.e. lower but more consistent). This also has the beneficial side effect of improving frame rates with the road traffic sliders up high and works with the upgraded roads to add traffic to New Zealands main routes.

This addon sourced the highest fidelity New Zealand data available, enhanced it further with many man hours of GIS work and then compiled it maintaining as much accuracy as possible- The result is a package

which aims to be the most accurate and useful New Zealand wide scenery addon for FSX, providing a common base for addon airport development and showcasing the beauty and diversity of New Zealand.

We hope you enjoy it!

VLC also provides another set of files which work in the background to enhance the virtual environment: Water class files- These are separate to the actual water boundaries and ensure water bodies, such as lakes, rivers and ocean are accurately coloured. In terms of appearance, a shallow muddy lake is very different to a deep fjord. Season class files- Flight Simulator is fairly unique in its ability to depict all seasons.

These files control that and effect changes to the ground textures and autogen files. In VLC these have been expertly crafted in GIS software to accurately depict changes actual season as well as elevation depending on the time of year

Performance Questions & TipsQ: What are the minimum computer specifications for this addon?A: Although the minimum system requirements for a default Flight Simulator X install are a little optimistic for smooth gameplay, this addon should be able to run on any machine that can run default FSX smoothly. The listed minimum specification for Microsoft Flight Simulator X are: Processor 2Ghz Equivalent or Higher, RAM 1GB, Direct X 9+ video Card. The installation of Vector Land Class requires an additional 600MB free space of Hard drive space.

Q: What Hardware can I buy to ensure the best performance using VLC?A: Obtaining Optimum performance using VLC is the same for any other FSX addon: A fast multi-core CPU, fast RAM and Video card but with the addition of a fast hard drive to ensure data can be loaded quickly.

Q: How will this addon affect performance generally?A: There a few considerations here-Framerates- Overall frame rates should not be adversely affected by the landclass/vector/mesh part of this addon- at some locations performance may reduce, at others it may increase.Autogen objects, a real frame-rate hog in FSX may be more dense in areas due to the higher fidelity of the underlying landclass. For example, the default landclass data is dominated by a very bland ‘desert’ texture which has only very sparse autogen on it giving quite good performance (albeit incorrect). VLC replacement data may draw textures with denser autogen placement (depending on what is actually there in real life) such as forest or bush. The more autogen features in a scene, the more work your computer has to do and the less your performance may be.Night lighting along urban roads and highways will have an effect especially in larger urban areas. These lights have been compiled in a way that the number of lights can be controlled with the Scenery Complexity Slider so that performance should be acceptable on a wide range of systems. Furthermore, the user can choose which class of Lights to display, or disable them completely using the VLC Config tool.

Freeway traffic can be another hard hitter on frame rates- VLC freeway data covers a far greater number of roads which means traffic will be visible in more parts of the country. However, when combined with the replacement population density layer, which lowers the overall density of traffic, frame rates should be more consistent.As with any FSX configuration, it is up to the user to decide their own balance between 'eye candy' and computer performance by using the FSX sliders to control how objects are rendered.

Loading Times- Because this addon contains much much more detailed data, loading times may be slightly affected (both for the initial load and subsequent streaming of new data as the user flies around the scene). In house testing shows that load times are no worse than loading photoreal imagery. In general, for best performance in FSX, it should be installed on a high RPM or solid state SATA HDD.

Q: How will different combinations of options in the VLC Configuration tool effect performance when using VLC?A: See the table at the right of this page

'Balanced Performance' (The best of VLC for those that also value performance)Water: Minor Streams OnRoads: Major Roads OnlyNight Lights: Main Only

'High- Flier' (High Altitude, high ground speed flying such as large commercial aviation)Streams: Minor Streams OffRoads: Major Roads OnlyNight Lights: Off

'Slow and Low' (Low altitude, low ground speed flying such as helicopter or bush flying)Water: Minor Streams OnRoads: All Roads OnNight Lights: Main Only

'General Aviation' (Low-Med altitude, med ground speed flying such as cross country flight in a light aircraft)Water: Minor Streams OnRoads: Major Roads OnlyNight Lights: Main Only

'Max Detail' (Got a machine that can handle everything that FSX can throw at it? Use this setting)Water: Minor Streams OnRoads: All Roads OnNight Lights: All

Q: How will different combinations of options in the FSX Scenery options effect performance when using VLC?A: FSX allows fine tuning of performance and visuals using the sliders in the Settings > Customise menu. Like any addon, it is up to the end user to decide which features they consider important and set their sliders accordingly. In general terms, the further right the slider, the better the visual effect will be but with a corresponding drop in performance. VLC scenery objects have been compiled in a way that their density can be controlled using the default scenery sliders in FSX so if you are suffering from poor performance such as low frame rates or stuttering, try moving some sliders to the left.

Some settings that may be useful in obtaining optimum visual performance with VLC are:

● Set the Target Frame Rate slider to an acceptable value (~34) so that extra processing capacity can be assigned to loading the higher density terrain data that VLC provides.

● Set the Mesh Resolution slider to 10m or smaller● Set the Mesh Complexity slider to 99

Q: Will this product work with other ‘Environmental’ addons (such as Real Environment Extreme)?A: This addon shouldn’t change the way that other addons of this type function as they enhance parts of the sim which this addon doesn’t change- If anything, they will enhance your whole Flightsim experience even further when combined with VectorLandClass!

Q: Will VLC work with other ‘Texture’ replacement packages (such as FScene, REX)?A: Because VLC is a landclass package, it won't effect the operation of any textures replacement packages related to other parts of FSX such as weather and water. Generally, If you already have packages such as FScene or REX installed, they will enhance your experience even more when combined with VLC!

Q: Will VLC work with other Landclass replacement packages (such as Orbx, Ultimate Terrain)?The majority of textures included in this addon are installed in our own subfolder and will be used exclusively by our addon. However some textures, such as autogen vegetation, need to be installed into your FSX root texture folder and overwrite default files. The VLC installation process will make backups of relevant textures in the root texture folder before adding VLC replacements. This means that other landclass packages which replace default textures (such as Orbx) will need to be turned off before installing VLC to avoid making backups of non-standard textures.

Q: Will this addon negatively affect airport addons such as RealNZ or other releases?A: While we cannot guarantee that they will not be affected, most addon airports should fit in with VLC. Because all airports should sit on their own flatten and exclude which has a higher priority than our data, there should be no problems with autogen showing up on a runway.

Q: Does this addon work with default mesh (terrain) data?A: When you purchase the VLC package, we include our very own VLC 20m mesh at no extra cost which overrides the default STRM terrain. This is 4 times more accurate than the default mesh in terms of X,Y resolution and also removes erroneous heights resulting from anomalies in the SRTM data. The VLC terrain model enhances flying around New Zealand even more- Mountains will better defined with crisper peaks, small hills and gullies will appear....all at no 'cost' in terms of loading times.This mesh is tied to the FSX water polygons included in VLC so, if for any reason you want to disable it, you may find anomalies such as floating or sunken water relative to the default mesh (For that reason we recommend that users keep the VLC mesh enabled).

Q: Will this addon work with FS9/FS2004 or X-Plane?A: This addon is designed to make full use of the extra features of FS10/FSX and so is not compatible with FS9/FS2004. X-Plane uses a different method of compiling and displaying geographic data and so is not compatible.

Do you have a further question? See the support section at the end of this document.

Copyright Information and License Agreement

The Short:Please don't illegally download, distribute, copy or install this product unless you have bought it legitimately. At the least, Karma will get to you, at the worst, you

will get into serious trouble with the law.

We dont like Pirates!

The Long: End User License Agreement (EULA) for Vector Land Class (VLC) scenery addon for Microsoft® Flight Simulator 10 (FSX)©. This SOFTWARE PRODUCT consists of a

set of files installed from disc or Internet download including subsequent patches or fixes. 1. The License to use this software affords you (the USER) these rights:

a. The USER may install a SINGLE copy of this product for personal, non-profit, non commercial use. Commercial or multiple licenses can be purchased

separately by contacting the Vector Land Class team at VectorLandClass@gmail.comb. The USER may not rent, lease or lend this SOFTWARE PRODUCT (or any part thereof) nor charge a fee for its use in any way.c. This SOFTWARE PRODUCT is provided for personal entertainment purposes only. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, this SOFTWARE

PRODUCT has not been created for flight training purposes and is not endorsed or required by any flight training organisation or aviation authority in New Zealand or internationally.

d. The CREATOR accepts no liability for any damages, misrepresentations or errors in this product. The USER installs this product at their own risk.e. The CREATOR reserves the right to terminate this agreement at any time if the USER does not comply with the terms and conditions herein. All copies of

the SOFTWARE PRODUCT will need to be destroyed or returned. 2. The Copyright for this software covers the following things

a. Copyright exists for this SOFTWARE PRODUCT and includes (but is not limited to) images, sounds, videos, logos, text, files and documentation within or

accompanying the SOFTWARE PRODUCT and its promotional materials.b. Additional Copyright related to distribution of this SOFTWARE PRODUCT as an addon for Microsoft Flight Simulator may be covered by other agreements

and is the property of those respective owners. This EULA does not overwrite agreements associated with installation of Microsoft Flight Simulator.c. 'Vector Land Class', 'VLC' and the VLC logo are protected by New Zealand and International copyright law.d. Data on which this product is based have been sourced from NZTopo Database. Crown Copyright Reserved.

1. Liability

a. Limitation of Liability. The Vector Land Class team shall not be liable for any special, incidental, indirect or consequential damages whatsoever due to the

use, or non use of this SOFTWARE PRODUCT

Support

Support for this product can be obtained in three ways

Send an email to VectorLandClass@gmail.com

Make a post on VLC support area at the New Zealand Flightsim Forums

Visit www.VectorLandClass.co.nz

Please accompany any query with a detailed description of the problem. The

more detail you can provide, the better able we are investigate your problem.

Thank You.