Files

T

Zachary D. Rowitsch e7aa3c8330 Add manual features extraction

2026-05-17 01:29:28 -04:00

17 KiB

Raw Permalink Blame History

Manual Feature List

A point-by-point inventory of features described in the three PDF manuals in manuals/. This is a faithful extraction of what the legacy manuals document — not a reconciliation against the OpenVistaPro codebase. For that, see feature-inventory.md.

Source documents:

VistaPro2UserManual.pdf — Vista Pro 2 User Manual (Commodore Amiga edition).
VPWGUIDE.PDF — Vistapro 3.0 / 3.1 for Windows, User Manual.
MPWGUIDE.PDF — MakePath Flight Director for Windows, User Guide.

1. Vistapro (core program)

Vistapro is a 3-D landscape simulation/rendering program. It renders real landscapes from USGS Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data and synthetic fractal landscapes from a seed number. The two manuals describe the same program on two platforms (Amiga = v2, Windows = v3); features below are merged, with platform-specific items marked.

1.1 Terrain data sources

Render real-world terrain from USGS DEM (Digital Elevation Model) files at ~30 m resolution.
Generate fractal landscapes from a seed number — over 4 billion distinct landscapes addressable.
Landscape sizes: Small (258×258, ~65k points / 130k polygons), Large (514×514), Huge (1026×1026, ~1M points / 2M+ polygons), Mega (2050×2050, Windows v3 only).
Automatic landscape size — sizes the topographic map to match the next DEM loaded.
Load multiple contiguous "X-series" DEM tiles into one Large/Huge/Mega region (Load Region / DEM Region, with Manual or Auto placement).
Load Binary — import raw signed 16-bit integer elevation grids (any 2-D integer array up to 1024×1024 can be visualized).
Edit/store landscape name and comments in the DEM file header; fractal settings are saved in the header for regeneration.

1.2 Camera and target

Camera and Target placement by clicking the topographic map or by typing X/Y/Z coordinates directly.
Camera Z auto-set 30 m above terrain when placed by mouse.
X / Y / Z locks — constrain camera/target movement on individual axes.
dR / dX / dY / dZ — camera-to-target distance and per-axis offsets, directly editable.
Bank / Head / Pitch — camera orientation (roll, heading, pitch) angles.
Range — clip rendering beyond (positive value) or closer than (negative value) a distance from the camera.
P (wire-frame perspective view) — preview what the camera sees as a wire frame; click to re-aim, arrow keys to zoom.

1.3 Camera lens

Wide lens (90° field of view, focal length 16) and Zoom lens (~45°, focal length 32).
FclLn — arbitrary focal length value (1–30000); lower = wider, higher = more magnification.
Port / Starboard / Forward lens modes — render three 90° panorama segments designed for a three-monitor setup.
Left / Right lens offsets, CamSep (camera separation) and ImgSep (image separation) — stereoscopic image-pair rendering.

1.4 Terrain feature controls

SeaLvl — set sea level; floods/sinks terrain, optionally adds ocean waves.
TreeLn — timber line: elevation above which trees do not grow ("fuzzy", AI-adjusted for cliffs, ridges, valleys).
SnowLn — snow line: lowest elevation covered with snow (AI-adjusted).
HazeDn — atmospheric haze density; auto-computed from camera/target distance or set manually.
Lake — fill a basin with water from a clicked elevation point.
River — generate a river that flows downhill, fills depressions into ponds/lakes, widens when overlapped, and stops at sea level or map edge.
Stars — render a randomly generated star field in the night sky (optional double-width / double-height stars).
Sky — toggle sky rendering.
Horizn — toggle the distant horizon disk.
Tree — open the Tree Control Panel and enable rendered trees.
Valley (Windows v3) — control how far trees climb valley bottoms and snow reaches into valleys; used by Stretch.
Cliffs (Windows v3) — slope threshold above which terrain uses cliff colors.
Clouds (Windows v3) — open the Cloud Control Panel and enable clouds.

1.5 Terrain editing / transformation

VScale — vertical re-scaling; values >1 exaggerate, 0–1 flatten, negative flips the terrain (special effects: calderas, stepped peaks).
Enlarg — blow up a sub-region to fill the whole topographic map, with Interpolate (averaged) or Duplicate (stepped) infill.
Shrink (Windows v3) — reduce Large/Huge landscapes to the next size down.
Smooth — erode/smooth jagged terrain (repeatable); useful for fractal terrain and snow-capped peaks.
Frctlz / Fractalize — add fractal detail/roughness to existing terrain.
Strtch / Stretch — vertically exaggerate existing features (peaks taller, valleys deeper) at a scale set by the fractal divisor.
Random fractal generation, with Island vs Floating edge modes, FrDim (fractal dimension/roughness), Fractal Divisor (1/2/4/8 feature scale), and the Fractal Landscape Number seed gadget.
SetAltitude script command — directly modify the elevation of a single terrain point.

1.6 Rendering controls

Render — generate the image; ReDraw — redraw last image; View — redisplay last image.
Poly size 1 / 2 / 4 / 8 — polygon coarseness vs. render speed tradeoff.
Dither — fuzziness of the boundaries between elevation color bands.
Texture — Off / Low / Medium / High artificial detail, in two modes: Shading texture (split polys, shaded separately) and Altitude texture (fractalized polys for photo-realistic detail).
PixDth / PDithr — pixel-level dithering (Ordered or Random) to simulate more colors.
Bound — restrict rendering to a marked rectangular sub-region.
BFCull — back-face culling toggle.
Blend — average each polygon's color with its neighbors to reduce distant aliasing.
GShade — Gouraud shading for smooth, painterly surfaces.
Range-based culling for fast script test renders (see 1.2).

1.7 Lighting

N / S / E / W quick light directions (sun 45° above horizon).
Custom light direction/angle set by clicking the topographic map.
Azimuth and Declin (declination) numeric light controls.
Exager — exaggerated shading to bring out small terrain irregularities.
Rough — adds random per-polygon shading variation for surface roughness.
Shadow — cast terrain shadows from the sun direction (terrain only; trees cast no shadows).

1.8 Trees (Tree Control Panel)

Four tree types: Pine, Oak, Palm, Cactus; assignable per elevation zone (Tree1–Tree4) or to All zones.
Per-zone Size and Density (out of 256); Mean Size / Mean Density to set all zones at once.
3-D detail levels: Low / Medium / High / Ultra (controls branch/leaf levels); no detail level = 2-D trees.
Leaves toggle (leafless trees for autumn/winter).
Texture — fractal texturing on branches and leaves.
When no tree type is selected, "under-tree" colors (–Tree1–4) color the ground instead.

1.9 Clouds (Cloud Control Panel, Windows v3)

Fractal Detail — add fractal detail for realistic clouds.
Density (0–100), Hardness (fluffiness), Altitude, and Cloud Size (S / M / L / X).
Generate Clouds — random fractal cloud map (seedable via CloudNumber).
DEM → Clouds — turn the current landscape into a cloud pattern (peaks become clouds); enables "sky writing" from a text PCX-derived DEM.
Save/load cloud maps (.CLD).

1.10 Colors (Color Control Panel)

RGB and HSV (Hue/Saturation/Value) sliders for mixing colors.
Editable color families: Sky, Snow 1–4, Bare 1–4, –Tree 1–4, Horizon, Cliff 1–4, Water 1–5, Beach, Tree 1–4, Bark 1–4, SkyHaze, Haze, House 1–4, –House 1–4.
Exposure and Contrast controls.
Copy, Swap, and Spread (smooth gradient between two colors) palette operations.
Save / load ColorMap files independently of the terrain.
Sound option (Amiga v2 color panel).

1.11 Palette controls

NumClr — limit Vistapro to fewer than 256 colors, reserving the rest.
RGBPal — compute a palette from the colors actually in a 24-bit image.
LckPal / LockPalette — lock the palette so it is reused across frames (needed for VANIM animations).
Load Palette — render using the palette from an external PCX file.

1.12 Image / display

Image sizes from tiny (16×10 / 80×50) up to 4096×4096, plus a Custom size.
Enable 24 bit internal buffer for true-color (16M color) output.
Render Viewing Options (Windows v3): view rendering in real time, every N seconds, or only on completion (progress bar).
Amiga display modes (v2): Low Res (32 colors), HalfBrite (64 colors), Hi Res (16 colors), HAM (4096 colors), DCTV, HAM-E, Interlace, Overscan (704/736/768), Firecracker24 display board (1- or 2-monitor).
Background image — load a 24-bit image drawn behind the landscape (e.g. a sky); Foreground image — overlay (black pixels treated as transparent, e.g. a cockpit/dashboard).

1.13 File formats

Landscapes: Vistapro DEM, binary, ASCII-Z (MathCAD-style text export, Windows v3), Extended/Session DEM (saves DEM + every program setting for resuming aborted animations).
Images: PCX, Targa24 (TGA), BMP24 (Windows); IFF, IFF24, RGB (Sculpt-Animate/Mimetics framebuffer triplets, Amiga).
3-D export: DXF polyface mesh and Targa24 texture maps for 3D Studio integration (Windows v3); Turbo Silver object export (Amiga v2).
Stereo: Load Stereo merges a left/right Targa24 pair into a red/blue anaglyph image.
ColorMap and cloud-map (.CLD) files.

DEM ↔ PCX — save the topographic map as a PCX contour image and reload it; enables painting elevations between digitized contour lines.
Col ↔ PCX — export/import Vistapro's internal polygon color (terrain type) table; lets you hand-place trees, rivers, cliffs, houses, etc. in a paint program.
View → DEM / Alt — convert the rendered image into elevation data (Intensity or Color mode).
View → Col — convert the rendered image into the internal color table.
View → RGB — convert the rendered image into the 24-bit buffer (used to build background/foreground images).
Map a satellite image or arbitrary picture onto the terrain via PCX → Col in color mode.

1.15 Scripting and animation

Scripts are landscape-independent lists of camera/target positions, used mainly for animations and reusable across landscapes.
Generate — quick straight-line camera→target path of N frames.
Create / Open / Add — build a script by appending current camera/target positions.
Preview — show the script path on the topographic map in 2-D dots or 3-D wire frame.
Run / Execute — render every frame; output as Run Targa24 / Run BMP24 / Run PCX / Run VAN (Windows) or IFF / IFF24 / RGB / VANIM (Amiga).
Aborting and continuing (appending to) a partially rendered animation.
Batch files — run a DOS batch file after each rendered frame.
VANIM (.VAN) proprietary animation format — disk-streamed playback, per-frame palette, forward/reverse/step playback; played by the bundled Animation Viewer.
Full Vistapro Script Language (Windows v3): ~100+ text commands covering camera/target, colors (SetColor*), trees, clouds, lighting, sea/tree/snow lines, fractal generation, texture/shading, image size, GrMode, default directories, Render, RewriteImage, Spawn (run external programs), Smooth, Stretch, Enlarge, MakeLake, MakeRiver, SetAltitude, etc.
ARexx interface for all script functions (Amiga v2).
Quality menu (Windows v3) — Low / Medium / High / Ultra / User presets implemented as editable scripts in the IQ directory.

1.16 3D Studio integration (Windows v3)

Method 1 — export terrain as DXF + Vistapro-generated texture map; 3DS renders everything.
Method 2 — export DEM as a DXF "matte" object; Vistapro renders the landscape background and 3DS renders objects composited over it.
VUE2SCR utility — convert 3D Studio camera VUE files into Vistapro scripts.

1.17 Bundled utilities

Animation Viewer — plays VANIM (.VAN) files.
AVI Builder (Windows v3) — assembles PCX/TGA/BMP frame sequences into AVI.
Image print utility (Windows v3 prints PCX/TGA/BMP24; Amiga v2 prints the View screen directly).

1.18 Status / workflow aids

Live topographic map colored by elevation (green low → brown mid → gray-white high).
Status window showing pointer X/Y/Z and the current render phase (Generate, Color, Cliffs, Shade, Tree, Sky, Horizon, Render).
About Vistapro / About DEM / About Image info panels (image polygon count and render time).
Abort any long operation with Esc or the right mouse button.

2. MakePath Flight Director

MakePath is a companion animation-path tool for Vistapro. It turns a few control points into a smooth flight path and exports it as a Vistapro script.

2.1 Path creation

Load any Vistapro DEM into a topographic map (same map style as Vistapro).
Place spline nodes by clicking the map; the path is a smooth spline curve through them (minimum four nodes).
MakePath button — generate the smooth spline path from the current nodes and motion settings.
Spline curve type: Bezier (passes through nodes) or BSpline (smoother, does not pass through nodes) via the Use BSpline option.
New Path — clear nodes and path.

2.2 Node editing

Add Node — insert a node between the nearest two, or append to an end.
Delete Node — remove a node.
Move a node by grabbing it with the mouse (lines rubber-band; right-click aborts).
Edit Node — numerically edit a node's X/Y/Z coordinates and its target; step between nodes with Next/Previous.
Set Target / Unset Target — attach (or remove) a look-at target point to a node so the camera watches it while passing.
Adjust node altitude in the Altitude Profile view.

2.3 Motion controls

Fly vs Drive — air vehicle (ignores ground contour) vs land vehicle (follows the ground).
Frames vs Speed — generate a fixed number of frames, or as many as needed to hold a given speed (km/h at 30 fps).
Smooth — reduce how closely the path follows rugged terrain.
Loop — close the path back to the first node for continuous looping.
Bank — bank into turns (positive, plane-like) or out of turns (negative, car-like).
Accel — speed up on descents, slow on climbs.
Pitch — pitch up on climbs / down on descents, plus a constant pitch offset (e.g. –90° for a straight-down "glass bottom boat" view).
Height — altitude of each node above the ground beneath it.
MinHgt — minimum ground clearance for the path / ride height for ground vehicles.
Avoid Collisions — keep flying vehicles above the terrain (can be disabled to fly through obstacles).

2.4 Vehicle motion models

Predefined parameter sets selectable from the Models menu:

Glider, Jet, Cruise Missile, Helicopter, Dune Buggy, Motorcycle — and any custom combination of the controls above.

2.5 Special path options

Add Barrel Roll — add a roll over a chosen number of frames, clockwise or counter-clockwise.
Make Spin Path — circular path orbiting the landscape with the camera fixed on its center (diameter set as a percentage of landscape size).

2.6 Preview

ViewPath — wire-frame animation preview of the whole path.
ViewFrame — wire-frame preview of a single frame.
Animation controls (numeric keypad): step ±1 / ±10 frames, first/last frame, freeze, play forward/backward.
View Options / Preview Controls — preview Area Size (Tiny→Huge, trading detail for constant speed), Lens (Wide/Medium/Zoom), and Frame Speed (Fast 18 fps / Medium 9 fps / Slow 6 fps).
Show Crosshairs — toggle the on-map position crosshairs.

2.7 Altitude Profile

Side-profile view of node and camera altitudes (red) against the terrain beneath the path (brown).
Adjustable vertical scale (+ / = / –); horizontal slider to scroll long paths.
Edit node altitude directly in the profile; small "wings" indicator shows bank.

2.8 Files

Save Script — export the path as a Vistapro script for rendering.
Save Session / Load Session — save/restore the full MakePath editing state (nodes, settings, and the associated landscape reference).
Load DEM — load a landscape.

3. Cross-cutting notes

Vistapro v2 (Amiga) and v3 (Windows) share the same core feature set; v3 adds Mega landscapes, Valley/Cliffs/Clouds controls, the Quality menu, the full scripting language, 3D Studio integration, stereoscopic anaglyph output, and Windows image formats. v2 adds Amiga display hardware modes and Turbo Silver export.
Both Vistapro and MakePath emphasize the same workflow: rough fast preview (large polygons, low detail) → tune camera, lighting, and feature lines → full-detail final render.

17 KiB Raw Permalink Blame History Unescape Escape