Towns in FS2002

[Guest BobKK]

I recall reading some time ago that there was, essentially, a minimum population "threshold" for a town to appear in the sim. For example Elko, NV with a population of 45,000 appears but, outside of the airport and Interstate 80, the town of Winnemucca, NV is nowhere to be found. Population of Winnemucca is approx. 10,000.Does anyone have any info. on this? Thanks.Bob

[rhumbaflappy]

Hi Bob.99% of all the towns and cities in the sim are placed by landclass. Landclass is simply resampled raster data representing points of approximately every 1000 meters of the earth's surface. To make matters worse, the points of the source data are usually not spaced the same as the sim locates these points... MS uses a resample program to "adjust" the original data to the spacing of the sim. In the process, some points get relocated, some get changed to an average class type, and some just get dropped from the data.The sim then blends the terrain texture types at runtime, further readjusting locations, sizes, etc...The end result is pretty good considering all the readjustment of the original data. ( The original data was also a guess as to the average class type of the land! ).Scenery designer's can alter the landclass to add in towns and cities, or they can make VTP polys using landclass textures to shape towns with better accuracy. Justin Tyme has a very good freeware set of US landclass. There are some commercial sources as well. Or you could learn to make your own. Landclass will never be as accurate as VTP polys, or photoreal scenery.Dick