Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Discussion about custom hills.
sneze2r
Posts: 58
Joined: 17 Feb 2020, 12:56

Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by sneze2r »

Hi,
For all the hillmakers last months was quite a fruitfull time, and since we have a good know-how on building custom constructions and more advanced stuff, I think it's time to discuss what upgrades would be benefitial for creating even more beautifull hills. I've created some list of features that would bring hill making to the next level. Share your thoughts and ideas here:
  1. Custom terrain adjustment
    Current <terrain> directive is very generalized and for custom constructions it requires tweaking a lot of variables to get the expected result. For advanced constructions like tribunes, custom judgetowers etc. it's hard(sometimes impossible) to find a seed with correct parameters so the terrain is adjusted well.

    It would be good to adjust terrain on certain places manually. From what I've seen, generating terrain under inrun and dhill is probably hardcoded, but I think if it would be generalized it would be enough. It's up to Jussi how it would be implemented, but I imagine doing it with profiles(lz, rz and refy) with some smooth factor which would define how smooth the fallof of terrain would be on the profile borders.

    I'm aware proof of concept needs to be defined well at first and it would be hardest thing to implement, but it would open up a lot of possibilites.
  2. type="blend" and type="glass" in 3dmodel (Done)

    Currently in 3dmodels there is an alphatest parameter that works differently than type="blend" and gives poor result. It is impossible now to create glass with 3dmodel, or net/grid type of texture. It would be perfect if that would be implemented, since if 3dmodel contains some elements that we want to have glass, we have to add it manually with <pillar or different method.
  3. Implementing refx0 and refy0 in <arc> directive (Done, define r instead)
    For now, x0 and y0 parameters are reffering to the 'center' origin of the map, which makes finding proper x0 and y0 very hard. Using variables like refx0 and refy0 would make this much easier
  4. Implement different Materials
    I don't know really what is the engine behind dsj4(glsl shaders??), but I believe it would be possible maybe to define more advanced materials, for example to make metal more glossy and shiny. That would be nice to have.
  5. possibility to remove judgetower building (Done)
    so only judges would be rendered. That would open possibility to make custom judgetowers. Now, most of the custom judgetowers are separated from the default one because of the rendered construction of the default one
  6. possibility to remove dhill-fence (Done)
  7. possibility to make more custom lines (Done)
    so on the retro and some more unusual hills it would be possible to generate them at custom x coordinates
  8. Custom lights
    For now inrun lights are clipped to inrun-top, inrun-left and inrun-right profiles, so the objects outside these boundaries are not receiveing any light. For now there's workaround to use dhill lights with some x0 and big step, so only one custom lamp is generated. It would be good to define led lights working also outside inrun profiles, and maybe even to have something like <custom-light> directive in which we would define type of light(led, lamp), coordinates, references and profiles so we could define exactly where we want to put a lights. Right now when I use dhill light, h parameter is refering to the terrain, and d parameter is refering to dhill-[left,right] so I need to find out specific coordinates manually.
Jussi Koskela
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Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by Jussi Koskela »

Thanks for the feedback. I welcome also other hill designers to share their ideas.

Short comments:
  1. This requires further thinking as the terrain has to blend nicely to downhill profile. Maybe some kind of height map that is blended automatically if desired.
  2. Edit: Actually this is perfectly doable.
  3. I'll investigate this. Arc primitive was not used in any original DSJ4 hills, so it's not so well designed. :)
  4. GLSL shaders are not supported at the moment. The materials are defined as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... /materials which gives somewhat limited results. I could at least add support for defining such materials in the hill xml file.
  5. Doable. Then we just need a way to define the positions of the judges.
  6. The fence hides small gaps between the dhill surface and terrain surface (their triangulation does not blend together), so this would mean that either the hill designer or I have to come up with some solution for that.
  7. Very doable. May require some performance optimization.
KulickiB
Posts: 85
Joined: 17 Oct 2020, 18:00

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by KulickiB »

Maybe differerent types of windflags? :)
Garrean
Posts: 2
Joined: 10 Dec 2020, 21:30

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by Garrean »

More ways od arranging twigs on inrun - maybe different distances between them, possibility to make custom lines of twigs, good idea to improve the appearance of the table.
Patryk Szajer
Posts: 41
Joined: 22 Jan 2021, 01:50

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by Patryk Szajer »

Mayby if it is thats posible bigger variety of tree types to chose from?
sneze2r
Posts: 58
Joined: 17 Feb 2020, 12:56

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by sneze2r »

Jussi Koskela wrote: 16 Apr 2021, 08:19 GLSL shaders are not supported at the moment. The materials are defined as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/window ... /materials which gives somewhat limited results. I could at least add support for defining such materials in the hill xml file.
That would be great if it's doable.
Jussi Koskela wrote: 16 Apr 2021, 08:19 Doable. Then we just need a way to define the positions of the judges.
I thought that just removing the building would be enough... but actually, I think refy would be sufficient so we could define judgetowers that have different shapes than default one which is profiled by dhill-top( or terrain). All judges being in the same 'floor' would be nice.
Jussi Koskela wrote: 16 Apr 2021, 08:19 The fence hides small gaps between the dhill surface and terrain surface (their triangulation does not blend together), so this would mean that either the hill designer or I have to come up with some solution for that.
Actually, solution for us would probably be just to manually insert dhill bands as railings. And if refx="dhill-end" would be easy to implement, that would be nice to have(but not necessary) so we don't manually search for proper x2 value.
Austrian_Skijumpfan_94
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Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by Austrian_Skijumpfan_94 »

Beams with type="glass" and "blend" would be nice as well :)
baaeschiller23
Posts: 132
Joined: 18 Feb 2012, 12:34

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by baaeschiller23 »

Hi,

Nice thread.

Adding to sneze2r’s points:
sneze2r wrote: 13 Apr 2021, 14:20 1. Custom terrain adjustment
It would be great if we could use greyscale pictures as terrain maps, using available online tools such as: https://cs.heightmap.skydark.pl/?debug=1 and possibly manually improving them in paint/gimp/photoshop would be awesome!
sneze2r wrote: 13 Apr 2021, 14:20 5. possibility to remove judgetower building
It would be nice to have judgetower related built-in profiles, such as judgetower-x, y and z.
sneze2r wrote: 13 Apr 2021, 14:20 6. possibility to remove dhill-fence
With the appearance of the script for generating meter distance markers, custom bands appear more and more often instead of the usual so-called "mediamond" ones. This causes, however, that these custom bands must be either brought to an end, or they end at some point and a void is left.

Therefore, we came up with the idea to add two values to these bands. Namely, the ability to move them in the x-axis in such a way that they appear at any point on the hill, and possibly the ability to turn them off completely so that a "wild ski jump" is created.
sneze2r wrote: 13 Apr 2021, 14:20 7. possibility to make more custom lines
We would like the ability to completely remove both inrun and dhill twigs and lines, along with the possibility of making them with various different shapes and colors (i.e. like on this year’s WC) and the ability to define where blue, red and green sheets on the side of the dhill appear (x coordinates), whether they appear and also their size and color.

Some example how would it work:

Code: Select all

<lines>
    <!-- red line at distance 80m, thickness 0.2m, starting at z=3m and ending z=6m; displayed only in summer mode -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xff0000" d="80" z1="3" z2="6" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- this line is white and a bit shorter -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xffffff" d="85" z1="4" z2="6" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- this line displayed on the opposite side -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xffffff" d="85" z1="-6" z2="-4" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- another white line but diagonal (usage of d1 and d2 instead of d) -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xffffff" d1="80" d2="85" z1="-3" z2="3" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- this line is made with spray and will be displayed only during winter -->
    <line type="spray" c="0xff0000" d="90" z1="-4" z2="4"/>
    <!-- this line is made with twigs and will be displayed only during winter, the 's' parameter is a distance between each twig -->
    <line type="twigs" d="90" z1="-4" z2="4" s="0.5"/>
    <!-- twigs lines can also be diagonal -->
    <line type="twigs" d="90" z1="-4" z2="0" s="0.5"/>
</lines>

<mats>
    <!-- each mat can be configured with color, starting and ending distance, width and side -->
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="105" d2="120" w="0.5" side="left">
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="105" d2="120" w="0.5" side="right">
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="120" d2="134" w="0.5" side="left">
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="120" d2="134" w="0.5" side="right">
</mats>
We also have lots of ideas that would improve hill making process and hills appearance:

9. Downhill lights height adjustment (Done)

Currently downhill lights towers have fixed height which is not desired sometimes, especially when lights are part of a different structure. The best solution would be to make downhill lights height adjustable (similar to wind flags)

10. Rotate and scale model-instances (Done)

model-instances can be moved along x, y and z axes. It would be really useful to make rotating and scaling possible as well. This feature should decrease XML files size and make 3d models more flexible.

11. Defining zbias for other elements

Stairs, startgate, gatenumbers, frame, lights, inrun-top, dhill top, judgetower, skis and jumper - we would like to define zbiases for these elements. It would help very much in creating flicker-free constructions without making awkward workarounds.

12. Different textures for pillar walls

Pillars don’t support different textures for their walls. There’s already a workaround for this - using more pillar instances and defining walls visibility. But this is quite difficult and annoying to handle. Having textures for pillar defined in a similar way as for railings would be a nice addition.

13. Fix disappering trees behind far behind grids with type="blend" (Done)

There is a bug with type="blend" elements which can be best seen on windbreaks in Żywiec or Złotoryja. The windbreaks make faraway trees disappear.

14. Put snow cover on top of pillars or railings

For more winter and realistic feeling we'd like to make roofs of the buildings and other similar constructions covered with snow. It could be implemented in similar way as summer/winter tree models which switch at ~75% snowiness.

15. Define top of a pillar/railing as a 'terrain' texture

It would come very handy in hills like Kraliky K90 or on the 'green' designs with grass on top.

16. Add more <flag> instances

Pretty self-explanatory, real hills have multiple flags on the inrun or near the outrun, it would be nice to have this in DSJ.

17. More <label> instances (Done)

Similar to the point above, more label instances would allow us to create i.e. text with varying font sizes or have it so on multiple-line labels first few labels don’t float above the dhill or have an extra label on the outrun.

18. Special lettersin <label> (Alignment fixed)

Currently letters ÄÖÜÅ are bugged, they are raised above others when typed as a label on the startgate or on the dhill. We would like this to be fixed and also for all special letters that can be put in the name of a hill or jumper to be available to be displayed as a label

19. <label> colors (Done)

It would also be great to have an ability to choose label color, preferably separately in summer and in winter.

20. Define custom tree area

Now, even in the thickest forest, every hill is placed on a very wide and shapely clearing. We would like to create more realistic and diverse environments by defining width of clearing area between inrun-left/right, dhill left/right and start/end of the hill.

21. More tree types

Now that the custom hills are placed all over the world, having only one tree type on all hills is not enough. We suggest adding more various tree types, such one or two more species of conifer, a few species of leafy trees, maybe even a palm tree and a cactus.

22. Define visibility of elements based on snowiness

Add parameters that define if the element is visible only above or below certain percent snowiness would allow for creation of fun and creative seasonal constructions.

23. Make snow inrun/downhill appear in summer

We can define the summer tracks as ceramic or default and snow true/false. We would like to set snow inrun tracks for the whole year, which would be useful in making i.e. retro hills.

24. Setting different texture/material of summer plastic

As a continuation of the point above, we would like to have the ability to make the plastic appear as snow, grating, wood, grass or any other type of texture

25. Custom audience

We would like to define a plane with boundaries on which the audience appears to be able to fit them to custom constructions, maybe even the ability for the audience to have automatically generated flags in definialbe country proportions (something like in Wisła 2001 but more fleshed out) and if possible, more audience models, maybe even a female one?

26. Fix dhill lights color bug

Currently there is a bug when you have multiple instances of dhill lights with different colors, all their light-emitting parts have the same colors as one of them (i.e. A or Niigata).

27. Texture dimension scaling

It would be great to have parameters that defines texture proportion scaling similar to pf parameter in <flag>. It would be very useful ie. in creating flag-textured objects without using awkward workarounds like on the Squaw Valley K108 takeoff.

28. Gatenumbers appearing on other elements

We would like gatenumbers to appear not only on stairs, but also on other elements, for example pillars.

29. Step-Y and Step-Z for pillars

Pillars can be repeated using attributes step and count, but it only applies to X axis. Sometimes we want to copy same pillars in Y or Z axes.


Looking forwards to seeing your comments
BR
W.A., wojtekschiller3, Xinitiao
BartiSkiJumper
Posts: 856
Joined: 22 Dec 2011, 00:24
Location: Wrocław, Poland

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by BartiSkiJumper »

sneze2r wrote: 13 Apr 2021, 14:20 7. possibility to make more custom lines
We would like the ability to completely remove both inrun and dhill twigs and lines, along with the possibility of making them with various different shapes and colors (i.e. like on this year’s WC) and the ability to define where blue, red and green sheets on the side of the dhill appear (x coordinates), whether they appear and also their size and color.

Some example how would it work:

Code: Select all

<lines>
    <!-- red line at distance 80m, thickness 0.2m, starting at z=3m and ending z=6m; displayed only in summer mode -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xff0000" d="80" z1="3" z2="6" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- this line is white and a bit shorter -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xffffff" d="85" z1="4" z2="6" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- this line displayed on the opposite side -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xffffff" d="85" z1="-6" z2="-4" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- another white line but diagonal (usage of d1 and d2 instead of d) -->
    <line type="summer" c="0xffffff" d1="80" d2="85" z1="-3" z2="3" t="0.2"/>
    <!-- this line is made with spray and will be displayed only during winter -->
    <line type="spray" c="0xff0000" d="90" z1="-4" z2="4"/>
    <!-- this line is made with twigs and will be displayed only during winter, the 's' parameter is a distance between each twig -->
    <line type="twigs" d="90" z1="-4" z2="4" s="0.5"/>
    <!-- twigs lines can also be diagonal -->
    <line type="twigs" d="90" z1="-4" z2="0" s="0.5"/>
</lines>

<mats>
    <!-- each mat can be configured with color, starting and ending distance, width and side -->
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="105" d2="120" w="0.5" side="left">
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="105" d2="120" w="0.5" side="right">
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="120" d2="134" w="0.5" side="left">
    <mat c="0xff0000" d1="120" d2="134" w="0.5" side="right">
</mats>
This is all I need
Bartek Winczaszek:
DSJ3 TL - 7850.57m #1
DSJ4 TL - 3543.26m #6
DSJ4 Online Peak: 1959 #1
TDD 2013-2020: #2 - #3 - #2 - #2 - #1 - #2 - #1 - #1

My YT and Twitch channels: youtube.com/user/BartiSkiJumper - twitch.tv/BartiDSJ
sneze2r
Posts: 58
Joined: 17 Feb 2020, 12:56

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by sneze2r »

baaeschiller23 wrote: 17 Apr 2021, 00:09 10. Rotate and scale model-instances

model-instances can be moved along x, y and z axes. It would be really useful to make rotating and scaling possible as well. This feature should decrease XML files size and make 3d models more flexible.
Very good point. That would require extra optional arguments for defining origin point of the model, like origin_x, origin_y and origin_z.
AAAAAntek
Posts: 1
Joined: 26 Nov 2020, 15:25

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by AAAAAntek »

I remember having problems with linking y and z values with profiles quite some time ago, I think I was trying to make a pillar with one of its edges y value changing depending on the z values (or other way around), as one can when x and y or x and z values are involved. Is it even possible in the current state of the game, or is it feasible to implement an option to do this in the future?
sneze2r
Posts: 58
Joined: 17 Feb 2020, 12:56

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by sneze2r »

If custom lights are possible to implement, it would be nice to define clip boundaries for each light so some lights could work in similar matter like inrun lights. So for example, if I want to define a strong lights at the specific part( for example- interior of some building) i would define lz, rz, top and bottom clip profiles for this light so it would stay in these boundaries.
sneze2r
Posts: 58
Joined: 17 Feb 2020, 12:56

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by sneze2r »

Also with regards to retro hills I have another point

30. Possibility to define custom points/meter parameter

For now points/meter factor is based on HS parameter only. Some of the retro hills (like Harrachov 1996 K180) are classified with wrong size (harrachov is large hill instead of flying hill). So something like this:

Code: Select all

<meter-value>1.2</meter-value>
would be enough. I think it would not influence record lists.
Xinitiao
Posts: 371
Joined: 05 Nov 2020, 22:49

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by Xinitiao »

31. Y(Z) profiles

Pretty self-explanatory.

32. Adding option to define x of every vertex of a pillar

It would make the pillars much more flexible if we could control their vertices independently in all three dimensions.

33. Higher terrain resolution

Currently, changing inrun- and dhill-terrain is very tedious, which isn't helped by the fact that we can only change the terrain in 1m increments. Making the terrain resolution higher would help immensely with creating the exact terrain we want.

34. Lights refy/refz (Done)

Currently the dhill lights have always terrain refy, and inrun LEDs have inrun-top. It would be great to have the ability to make the lights go exactly where we want using profiles instead of many lights instances with i.e. step 1500.
Lurker since 2001
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LikeTacos
Posts: 29
Joined: 21 Apr 2021, 20:18

Re: Ideas & suggestions for the next update

Post by LikeTacos »

35. Realistic Glass Effects.

What I've been missing while creating ski jump hill is the realistic effects on glass. Not gonna lie, current glass isn't the best and it limits the potential that ski jump hills could have. It would be great to see some improvements on it. Definitely would help the hills (especially these with constructions that have a lot of glass on it) look more realistic and therefore just overall better.
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