World-Maker Terrain 

Editing Terrain in World-Maker World-Maker has four editing modes: Terrain, Obstacle, Airport, and NAVAID. Select the modes in the "Edit" menu. Use Terrain editing mode to adjust coastlines, elevations, rivers, etc. Now suppose you want to adjust the scenery of ".env" file "+034-119". Simply press the "lat" and "lon" buttons to get to the right environment file after copying that region from the CD to the "Resources:Earth nav data" folder. Lat and lon can have either positive or negative values, so you can reach any region. NOTE: Check our website at www.X-Plane.com for regular updates of ".env" files and important links to various related issues. NOTE: The ".env" files on the X-Plane CD can only be changed when copied to the "Resources:Earth nav data" folder in the "X-System" folder on your hard drive. In Windows, you also need to set these files to NOT READ-ONLY, as they will initially be read-only since they came from a CD. X-Plane will look for files in the "Resources:Earth nav data" folder, and if it finds them, use them to over-ride the files on the CD. The displayed ".env" file shows the geographical properties of the map, like hills and lakes in various green or blue shades, yellow parallel lines showing runways and various obstacles. The geographical properties are modifiable with the "Terrain" option in the "Edit" menu. The obstacles (buildings, towers etc.) are modifiable with the "Obstacles" option in the "Edit" menu. Both information on geographical properties and obstacles are saved in the relevant ".env" file, while airports and NAVAIDs are saved in the "apt.dat" and "nav.dat" files. To modify the geographical properties you can move nodes and change their altitudes or toggle water on and off by clicking in a quadrilateral field with the mouse. A quadrilateral is a tiny building block within the ".env" file that you can see when zooming in on the map. You can also see the map with it's textures by pressing the Spacebar. Zoom in and out with the +/- keys. Move around with the arrow keys.		Textures in World-Maker X-Plane uses default, generic textures for water, grass, mountain, snow, city, and the borders between them. X-Plane automatically applies the borders between these textures. All of these default textures are found in the "bitmaps" folder inside your "X-System" folder. They are simply 256x256 pixel bitmaps in 24-bit color. In many cases, though, you may want to customize these textures to ones that are more appropriate for any given area. Perhaps you want city, desert, or harbor textures. These can easily be created and added. If required you can assign up to 500 different custom textures for each ".env" file. To do this, simply create a custom texture (for example desert) in PaintShop, PhotoShop, or any other program you like. Once you have created the custom texture that you want to see in the sim, save it as a 24-bit bitmap in the "resources:custom terrain textures" folder. Now launch World-Maker and drop it into terrain editing mode with the "Edit" menu and add the custom textures that you just created by using the toolbar on the left side of the screen. When creating custom objects and textures, remember that fine lines will cause "jitter" and resulting eye-fatigue! The same applies for high-contrast textures, or too many colors. Many simulators manifest such line-jitter and interference by having textures with too high a contrast. A smart combination of minimally varying greens and greys (steps of max. 3-5%) will do for a landscape, provided the pattern does not repeat itself. Houses can be simulated by rectangular dark grayish shapes with a black 2 pixel wide border (shadow) at one side. Seamless welding of any BMPs is achieved by carefully copying one 5 pixel wide border to all 3 remaining sides and turning it either vertically or horizontally. Without this you would see the border of the texture. Minimize disturbances of the border pattern while working under very high magnification.

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