Roads

[Guest]

eyup!I was just reminded of a post a while ago regarding the limited use of road textures in fs2002. It only seems to use the white/grey gravel roads. Have any of you scenery guys had any thoughts on this. There seem to be plenty of road textures available.Atleast, if someone knows the filenames of the road files fs2002 uses we could maybe rename some of the other files to replace the gravel roads....Any thoughts?:-)Pete

[cat 2]

Seems to have 'em beaten Pete.Here's hoping for FS2004 for nice roads like thecurrent rivers.Peter SydneyyAustralia

[Guest]

Hey Peter"Seems to have 'em beaten Pete."I hope not..... give it time... someone must have an answer:-)Pete

[Guest GerrishGray]

Theoretically, the road textures used are dirtroad##.bmp, hiway##.bmp and roads##.bmp - see the file terraintextures.cfg in the main folder. As you will see, the configuration file actually allows a much wider range of textures to be used, but presently maps all available styles to just these three texture sets.But it seems that the mapping of the roads in the default terrain mesh decal files probably only uses one or two of the available styles anyway - this needs to be confirmed by some systematic testing.This seems to be an area that nobody has explored very much yet. I did do a few very simple tests with replacement textures myself, but the results were so miserable that I didn't bother pursuing it! Perhaps someone more determined will get better success ;-)RegardsGerrish

[Guest emergency_pants]

I might take a look at the files you referenced, Gerrish, later this evening... I'll let you know how I get on.Simon.

[Guest GerrishGray]

The textures used for the 'decal' scenery for roads etc. is specified by the file terraintextures.cfg in the main folder. As you will see, there is scope for a great deal of variety in these textures, although this scope is not greatly exploited by the default scenery.Hope this helpsGerrish

[Guest emergency_pants]

Gerrish, Pete, all, I took a look at the roads and it looks like this could have a lot of potential.I need to find an image processing package that will allow me to make some changes... I tried photoshop, but the files don't seem to be standard index bmp files. Any idea what I should be using?I took a look in my textures folder and found three hiway files.. then I found three more, the same names, but with a "v" at the start of the name (i.e. vhiwaysu.bmp) I'm not sure whether these are included with a standard FS install, or whether they come from an add-on which I installed myself. they made a small improvement to the look of the roads, but they became quite 'jagged'. That's probably why MS made the existing roads have that 'soft' appearance.The problem is that the texture files are stretched so much! It makes it harder to create a detailed road texture at that resolution. If I can increase the resolution of the texture file, it might be possible to put some nice edges and maybe some traffic on the roads, without taking a Framerate hit.If you know of a graphics program I can use to manipulate these files, if there is one. Then, if I can find some time, I'll create some new road/hiway textures.Cheers,Si.

[Guest]

I was playing with roads a bit ago and had managed to get a program where you can animate the bmp files and managed to get moving car shapes diferant colours to work in the image but did not work how to get these in the Flight sim to dispaly in the place of the ones there already.Could not understand why the strange dusty roads are always showing also if you change the file names to the ones in the program.Alpha xxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Guest]

AHA...... good news, I'm very pleased at the response, I hope someone can work this out, I'm sure it will be worth it.Keep us posted with any developements. I'll be happy to help out if there's any donkey work to do.Be excellent to each other!:-)pete

[Guest PaulL01]

Hi Garish,What we really need is for MS to give us the details in an SDK so we can add better road and river data, then I would be more than happy to make texture changes etc...Heres to hoping! :-beerchug Regards,

[Guest]

If it will help anyone figure out the roads there are about 38 files in Scenerydbworldtexture that are labeled 260b2hw1 through 278b2su1 and appear to be various road surfaces and RR tracks. I haven't seen them when running FS. Maybe we just need to find out how to turn them on or figure out why they aren't utilised. Any ideas, anyone?

[Guest]

You will need DXTBmp by Martin Wright. http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/index.htmAnd/or the MS SDK Imagetool.(I've already done some road replacement textures with a certain variety in asphalt/concrete, but hesitated to upload them until now...)ckfly

[Guest]

well I'm confused....... I looked through this terrain texure config and the scenedb world texture folder and there seem to be many things in there that I have never seen in fs. There are around 50 road textures aswell as rivers, beaches and many other interesting things.It seems to me that for some reason these textures are not used at all. Maybe they didn't get round to it and decided to use just one road, one river and one beach texture..... what a shame... I would love to see these textures used. There all there.... but I can't find anything that resembles the roads we see in fs.... where are they?:-)Pete

[Guest]

Hiya Pete,I found all the roads that are not used and added traffic to them but " but I can't find anything that resembles the roads we see in fs.... where are they?" This was my problem also ,I can only imagine they are not textures on the terrain but coded somehow?Anniette xxxxx

[Guest]

Hi AnnietteThat is also my thought.. if it is true then I think we could be in big trouble... The only one I could find anything like our nice white gravel stuff is a texture called detail.... I'll rename it and see if fs screams at me!Ok... I got em!... (I renamed these textures and I got no roads)... they are roadsu/hw and lm and highwaysu /hw and lm 3 textures each summer winter and night.... Gerrish says there is a dirt road one but I don't think I ever saw anything but the gravel ones.... ok.. now time to replace them and see what happens... (eek):-)Pete