EXAMPLE 8

Signs are a common object in scenery design. You may need one to put an airport name in your scenery, make runway numbers, or for many other uses. If you sign is only a plane polygon then you would use the Sign tool to make it.

As in all objects, the first thing is to setup the size of the object.

Because signs are normally small objects you will most probably get better results using a scale other than 1.0 to make them.

For this example I will enter values based on a scale of 0.50.

 

 

You can choose any sign position since the sign will be normally rotated to a particular angle when entering the macro in the scenery.

 

From the file list select the texture for the sign, in this example, the word AIRPORT.
Click and drag over the 4 delimiter boxes until you get them in the right position. A fine tune of positions can be made using the tune points spinners on the right.
If the sign is visible from both sides then you must also draw side 2, or copy it from side 1 using the copy button in the picture.
Because I also wish the sign to be transparent I will check on the transparency buttons and use a 100% transparency.
To use transparencies the back color of the bmp or picture must be black or RGB(0,0,0).
I will save the macro, create a scenery with the macro in it, then save the scenery file and see the final work in FS2K.
Every thing looks nice, its a great sign but when I look at the back of my sign I realize the sign is inverted...

This is something that will happen to you quite often and in many other tools.

If your image is inverted along the X axis, as in the example, all you need to do is to invert the positions of the textured points on that particular side. The same thing if the inversion is made along the Y axis.

This shows the inverted points positions - see the picture above for original positions.
View of the final sign