Landclass - one for JohnCi?

[Dark Moment 0]

What happens if you have two different landclass files for the same area in your FS2002/SCENERY folder? Do they blend/merge/do the tango, or conflict in some way?Grateful for any advice on this one.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitak.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/reds.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitakv3.jpg

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Depending on which one FS "sees" first, the second landclass will "update" the first.The Carson City example I used in my tutorial serves as a case in point... Prior to my work, there were some rather large updates to California. I installed those in the FS2002scenery folder, but installed the Carson City update in it's own folder (minus a texture subfolder, of course). The Carson City update seamlessly blended with the California updates.There's a couple of things to consider...Most Landclass Assistant type updates liberally use the "254" byte value, which is what allows landclass higher in the priority chain to show through. Depending on the coverage of both landclass updates, you may see little or no blending of the two.In order to manage my landclass layers, I install them in their own folders. This is not as tricky as it sounds....I install them like any other bit of scenery, minus the texture subfolders. I've had good results at knowing which landclass updates will appear where, and blending my spot updates with larger scale updates.-John

[Dark Moment 0]

Thanks, John. As a nerd in these matters, it seems clear to me that they won't do each other any harm in the same folder, anyway. I'm not going to get into separate landclass scenery folders as I'm already up to the limit in my main SCENERY folder (and that, with considerable consolidation!) but your explanation is very clear. Thanks again.Mark "Dark Moment" BeaumontEDIT: I DO keep a list of all my installed landclass files, however, so that I can check on what I'm updating, etc.http://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitak.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/reds.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitakv3.jpg

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Funny you mention the scenery limit... In the beginning, I went a bit crazy with my landclass scheme, with several folders. Now I maintain two main landclass folders. One is called "regional landclass". In the regional landclass folder, all the regional updates like CA now reside. The other folder is called "local landclass", and it contains my localized updates like Mexico City, etc.... The local landclass is highest in the "food chain", and blends with the regional landclass updates quite nicely...

[michal 44]

well.. I have a similar question.What happens if you have two different installations of the same add-on airport ? The problem is that some commercial bundles (say German airports) will not allow you to pick&chose which airports you can install. Therefore you have no control of those airports in your scenery manager (you can only install/deinstall the whole package).My hope is that in a case like this 'some' airport will be picked rather than some strange clash erupting. Michael J.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

With add on airports, it's a bit different. It's up to the designer to build an exclude in the airport update, so that airports in the same location in layers before it aren't shown on top of the new airport. Most designers are pretty good about this, but airport design is something I stay away from. Plopping down a landclass here and there is about as accurate as I can get. Otherwise, I can't draw a straight line with a CAD application :)

[Dark Moment 0]

A pretty good reason why I greatly dislike autoinstall routines, particularly as a number of them are wrongly put together...You can usually identify the relevant .bgl file for a given airport in the bundle's SCENERY folder. So if you have a better individual version of, say, BONKSVILLE, you can go to the package folder that includes BONKSVILLE and look for relevant files: probably BONKSVILLE.BGL, BONKSVILLE_EXCL.BGL and BONKSVILLE_STATIC.BGL or something of that nature. Might also be under its ICAO code i.e. BONK.BGL. So back these files up somewhere and then install the new BONKSVILLE airport scenery that you would rather use.That's what I do, anyway, and it works most of the time. Packages vary. Trial and error will tell.Mark "Dark Moment" BeaumontEDIT: Beware of 'Exclude' and 'Flatten' lines that have to be put in the SCENERY.CFG file, rather than are taken care of automatically by the bgl files.http://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitak.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/reds.htmlhttp://www.swiremariners.com/cxkaitakv3.jpg

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all.Within the same 'scenery' folder, I think there is an alphanummeric priority to BGLs of the same area. So AAlc.BGL gets laid down before ZZlc.BGL... with ZZlc covering up AAlc. If there is transparency LandClass value, I believe the transparent ZZlc values will allow some of the AAlc to show through.Dick