FS Facts homepage
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| What's new |
| About |
FS Facts is a freeware collection of text files describing the inner working of FS98, FS6 and FS5 and some low-level scenery design techniques. I wrote the first version as part of the documentation for Airphoto in order to explain to scenery designers some working principles of the scenery engine. Then, FS Facts evolved into a separate collection of documents focused on scenery design.
Most of FS Facts is written for scenery designers, but the general description of the scenery engine is understandable and useful to everyone using MSFS. You will find:
| Corrections |
This section lists corrections that are not yet incorporated into the documents.
It is possible to use delta coordinates in FSASM
In "Notes for FSASM users", I stated that FSASM does not allow explicit use of delta coordinates in BGL instructions. This is not correct. The .Delta directive can be used to switch FSASM into delta coordinate mode. It is described in detail in the FSASM Directive Reference, available from the FSASM homepage (as of this writing, as BETAsoftware).
256K in-range limit raised to 512K in the aircraft converter
The FSFS aircraft converter for FS98 replaces several DLLs of FS98, including those responsible for scenery file processing. This results in a two-fold increase in the scenery buffer, thus allowing 512K for section 9 scenery.
A scenery taking advantage of the 512K limit would not be completely compatible with earlier versions of MSFS and/or FS98 without the converter installed. It would not crash MSFS, but scenery objects not fitting within the old 256K limit would not appear. In order to maximize compatibility, I would suggest sorting/linking scenery files in an order that would ensure that least-important objects are coded last. Thus, the scenery would still be flyable with older versions of MSFS, although with reduced detail.
Also, the documentation of such a scenery must mention in a visible place that it works best with the converter installed. To most users, it is not obvious that the converter can be needed for something else than flying FSFS aircraft. I would even risk saying that many potential users have never heard about the converter or FSFS.
Despite the above mentioned problems, the increased limit will allow designing more complex sceneries, which is a great thing! In a few months, however, we will be very unhappy about the 512K limit causing lots of headache to scenery designers.
| CD-ROM redistribution permissions |
It is illegal to redistribute FS Facts on commercial CD-ROMs and other commercial media without an explicit permission from the author, and it is illegal to use copies of FS Facts obtained from such illegal sources.
Following permissions for redistribution have been granted:
| Download |
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