Pictown 1.0 documentation

Index:

General:
  Welcome to Pictown
  Installation & Performance
  Tips and frequently asked question

Credit,license, links:
  Links
  Thanks, credit and license

Welcome to Pictown

Pictown is a fictionnal city created for Orbiter 2010. It is located south of cap Canaveral (but not too close for performance concern)
and includes an airport to get quickly to the spaceport.

To get the best of Pictown you should download Universal Cars and Cargo for Orbiter so you can uses cars to explore and drive into the
town and the DX9 or DX11 graphic clients for Orbiter.

I hope you will enjoy this work !

"Your journey to Mars starts at Home"

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Installation & Performance

Open the archive, choose the package that fit your computer hardware and unzip in your orbiter folder.

Once done try one of the scenario:

Warning:

For performances and good rendering using the DX9 or DX11 Orbiter's graphic client is the better choice (and the future of Orbiter anyway): Click here to download DX9 or DX11 clients

for scenarios tagged with "UCGO" you MUST HAVE UCGO (Universal car and Cargo) installed else Orbiter with crash to desktop !!! You can download UCGO from here: Download UCGO

Performance and Pictown version:

You have four version of Pictown available in the archive:

PicTown - low graphic.zip: For low end computer, very low texture size (128x128)

PicTown - medium graphic.zip:For medium computer, medium texture size (512x512)

PicTown - high graphic.zip:For high computer, high texture size (1024x1024)

PicTown - ultra graphic.zip:For high end computer, high texture size (1024x1024) and additional mesh detail.

The Pictown is highly optimised using the best modelisation technic to minimize the impact on the system, how it will run depend
of your hardware, the best you can do to choose the correct version is to try them all. (files are overwritten so unusued version
doesn't polluate your orbiter installation)

Here are screens that will show you the four res given in this pack.

PicTown - ultra graphic.zip

PicTown - high graphic.zip

PicTown - med graphic.zip

PicTown - low graphic.zip

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Tips and frequently asked question

Can I move Pictown elsewhere on earth ?
Absolutely, simply open the config file and change the longitude latitude number:

Location = -80.2151610 25.8022750

Can I have multi copy of Pictown on earth ?
Absolutely, simply open the config folder copy the Pictown.cfg file, rename this copy, open the file with notepad and change the longitude latitude number and the name of this new town:

Name = Pictown
Location = -80.2151610 25.8022750

Can I move Pictown on other planet ?
If the planet have about the same size of earth probably yes, else you might get ground height errors with vessels and cars. The reason is that the Pictown's mesh follow the earth's curvature.

How can I improve the FPS and the quality of Pictown display ?
Pictown is highly optimised and give very good FPS on middle range computer but you should also use the DX9 or DX11 graphic client for orbiter. Orbiter run very poorly on vista and above machine and those clients can give you an extra FPS and quality boost.

What other addons are required to get the most of Pictown ?
At least Universal cars and Cargos (UCGO) and OrbiterSound 4.0, both are not mandatory but cars are a must to enjoy your journey to town and Pictown have also a OrbiterSound 4.0 ambiance sound.

Can I use Pictown without UCGO ?
Absolutely but if you use any of the included scenario with the UCGO tag you will have crash to desktop as the refered cars are missing in your Orbiter installation.

Can I use default's IA cars motion in other scenarios ?
In some default scenario you can see IA cars moving, UCGO provide utility in each cars to create you own IA but you can also copy the one you see in default scenario to other scenarios. Open the default scenario with notepad and copy the whole car's vessel section to your new scenario. Example:

FUELAI:UCGO\Cars\CarTruckFuel
   STATUS Landed Earth
   POS -80.6750506 28.5189261
   HEADING 23.61
   NAVFREQ 0 0
   AIInFonction 1
   CurrentWpt 2
   EngineStarted 1.0000000000
   SAVEVAR00  0§-80.6755960000,1§28.5187640000,2§0,3§-80.6750975422,4§28.5188716634,5§0,6§-80.6749368305,7§28.5198883531,
   8§0,9§-80.6746694229,10§28.5202436020,11§16,12§-80.6746076607,13§28.5206502300,14§0,15§-80.6749871309,
   SAVEVAR01 16§28.5207979551,17§0,18§-80.6750930238,19§28.5196617794,
   20§0,23§0,26§0,29§0,32§0,35§0,38§0,41§0,44§0,47§0,50§0,53§0,56§0,59§0,
   200§7,301§0,400§1,401§1,403§1,405§1,407§1,
END

Warning: this will not work if you moved Pictown elsewhere as IA cars use fixed longitude and latitude waypoint.

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Links

My Addons on OrbitHangars: Picto's addon
My profile on Orbiter-forum:Picto on Orbiter-Forum
My profile on dansteph-forum:Picto on dansteph forum
OrbiterSound 4.0 download page:OrbiterSound 4.0
UCGO 2.5 download page:UCGO 2.5
DX9 graphic client:DX9 download thread
DX11 graphic client:DX11 download thread

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Thanks, credit and license

Thanks

Thanks, of course, to Martin for his wonderful simulator and thanks to the whole Orbiter community for the support and friendliness.

Also, thanks to:

'Dansteph' for all is great help, works and advices during the making of Pictown. Also for the doc writting (And he's sorry for all the typo :-) )

License

Pictown 1.0 is freeware, like Orbiter. It is forbidden to make any money from it in any manner, cd distribution etc. It is forbidden to distribute Pictown. I prefer to keep it on a central download point.

Standard disclaimers also apply.

Happy driving!

Picto 2012

Doc created with HtmlDocCreator by DanSteph