User's Guide

Virtualwind   →   Virtualwind Entities   →   Terrain

Terrain

Definition

In Virtualwind, the geometric model of Terrain is intended to be a triangular mesh representing an open surface (a sheet) in 3D space whose boundary curve does not self-intersect when projected to the ground.

If you use Google SketchUp as the modeling tool to create the geometric models, you need to ensure that faces of the Terrain mesh are grouped as a top-level Group or Component. Consult the Virtualwind Modeling Guidelines page in the help document of Virtualwind SketchUp Plugin or the Google SketchUp Tools manual for details on how to prepare Terrain for Virtualwind.

Creation and Deletion

Terrain cannot be created or deleted within Virtualwind. It can only be imported. But you can choose to ignore a terrain or a terrain part (same effect as deleting it from the simulation) by checking off its Model Status as explained below.

Settings

In the Entities & Monitors tree, the Terrain entity is under the Terrain Manager and Terrain has only one Part. This also forms the three-level hierarchy of Terrain Manager  → Terrain  → Terrain Part similar to Buildings and Canopies (See the figure below). At each level, there is both a Model item and an Actor item associated with each instance. Since the geometric model of the Terrain is usually imported from a modeling software, such as Google SketchUp, there is not much you can do to manipulate its Model aside from choosing it to be present or ignored in the simulation. To do this, check on or off, respectively, the Model Status check box of its Model item. Once checked off, certain Actor settings are then applied so that you can easily tell it in the Viewport. By default, the Model Status is set to on.


The Actor items, however, provide a variety of means for you to control the appearance of the Terrain. The following figure shows a typical Actor item from which you can do the following:



*To make sure it works correctly when the X-Ray Intensity is set in the range between 0 and 0.5, your graphics system has to support at least OpenGL 2.0.