Plant Rendering Issues

[Allan Chesney]

I have noted a few problems rendering plants that should be addressed in a coming release.  Retested these items using build 662 and all still the same except as edited (Dec 09)

1.  The season change option for plants seems to be fixed to the Northern hemisphere. I have TFP set to Australia and the seasons are 6 Months out.  Deciduous trees lost their leaves in our Spring and Flowered in our Autumn.

2.  The seasonal change only seems to work on trees.  Flowers seem to flower all rear around,  as do flowering bulbs.  (EDIT (V14 - Dec 2009)  This is OK, flowers do change)

3.  When plants are inserted all at once they seem to render OK in Basic, but when one is added, later from any group, it will render with a black rectangle across it. (I know this has been reported before but I have only just established the fact that the if plants are inserted at one time they are OK. Sometimes the box will go if the plant is duplicated or the camera repositioned but this is not consistent.
It will also go if the program is closed and opened again.
The box is not present when using Advanced render (in my tests) but appeared again in Basic - the Advanced render did not clear the problem in the same way as restarting the program did.
After the program is restarted the Basic renders are OK but when another plant is inserted the box appears on that plant but not on the ones that has it before the restart.  EDIT (V14 - Dec 2009)  This seems erratic. Have experience black box and Yellow box many times but could not replicate in latest test.

4.  The plant years of age slider changes the sizes in the dialog box but seems to have no effect on the size of the tree. If the 'encyclopedia size' is set to 'no', the size changes but the tree is just a yellow rectangle even if a new copy is created.  EDIT (V14 - Dec 2009) Could not duplicate this.

5.   The plant encyclopedia is quite comprehensive but once again it is set to the northern hemisphere (unless there is some way to change it that I can't find).  It tell us to dig up bulbs and store them away at the time of the year when they are in full bloom here.  The Encyclopedia Calendar should not have the months identified but the seasons only, then it would apply to either hemisphere.

6.   The Plant Growth Over Time dialog only allows years to go from zero and up but a tree may be set to 12 years old in the encyclopedia and the Planting Age slider does not seem to have any effect on the plant (only in the dialog box) so I could not find a way to reduce the size of these trees. They are always the encyclopedia age or older.

Allan