Can These Lakes Be Fixed?

[martinlest2 58]

Hi,Flying near CYZF all the lakes are raised in the most silly fashion. I know this is a well-known problem in FS9, but I haven't seen it this bad before, there are dozens and dozens of them. Does everyone have the same effect? If I remove HP917090.bgl from NAMW the lakes disappear - looks better without them, but is there any way of fixing the bgl and getting the lakes back? I dissembled it, but it results in an .asm file: I don't know how to edit these terrain data files.Thank you,Martin

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Hi,Flying near CYZF all the lakes are raised in the most silly fashion. I know this is a well-known problem in FS9, but I haven't seen it this bad before, there are dozens and dozens of them.

One catch-all option is inserting a flatten in your scenery.cfg for the area in question (below the scenery entry which covers the region). Since I see an airport in the foreground, you could use that as your elevation entry (the first number in the flatten), then you just slew around until you find the four corners of the area you want to flatten. You might have to play with the numbers a bit to get them just right, but once done the flatten is very good at fixing such issues. Below is an example of a flatten I added so an ultralight field I added would look correct in respect to the surrounding terrain:Regards,John[Area.010]Title=Western North AmericaLocal=Scenery\NAMWLayer=10Active=TRUERequired=FALSEFlatten.0=4474,N45 47.84,W111 11.10,N45 47.84,W111 7.51,N45 45.66,W111 7.51,N45 45.66,W111 11.10

[out 769]

Martin,you can also get an advanced mesh fro this area and try then.Plus you might want to check your FS9.cfg following entry:TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=It may have a value of 19, 20 or 21.Try changing it.Best regards,Rafal

[martinlest2 58]

HI. Thanks for the replies.I have FSGenesis mesh installed in fact. I did think of making a flatten bgl file for the whole area (creating one flatten bgl for each lake is possible - but hardly worth the time and effort I would think, given the few times I fly up in that region!), but when I investigated further I found that the terrain around all the lakes is not at all level, so flattening the lot to one height will create some strange walls somewhere. Still, that would be a far better option than either of the two in my screenshots, so may well do just that.I'll have a look at my terrain vertex level too - I think it's at 21, but I'll see if changing it alters anything. I know I have seen some other really weird effects of this setting in other parts of the world, though I think I need the value at 21 for LOD11 mesh to show up? (Or does FS9 ever really show LOD11 mesh? I seem to recall reading somewhere that it doesn't, even though I have LOD11 FSG mesh installed).Martin

[martinlest2 58]

No, changing the TMVL values to 20 or 19 didn't change anything. I will try a flatten file and see what the result looks like,M.

[martinlest2 58]

Well now I look more closely, creating a flatten for this would take hours! The coastline is quite complex and the problem goes on for mile after mile. I'd need to set vectors for hundreds of points if I was to avoid walls of water, so I have just removed the offending bgl file. The area looks more boring, with few or no lakes, but at least it looks 'normal' now.If I have have 48 hours to kill in the future, I can make a flatten file..Martin

[scott967 62]

I suppose that's why they sell UT Canada! I took a look at the DEM from Geobase, and it looks like the default mesh isn't that bad. I played around some in sbuilder, but it is pretty tedious. I did fix a few though, see attached.scott s..

[martinlest2 58]

Hi. I have UT Canada, but it makes no difference whether I have it active or not, these little lakes show up the same - UT doesn't seem to alter the default bgl file.Will investigate your zip file! Thanks.Martin(I assume your bgl is supposed to replace the default one?)..

[martinlest2 58]

Scott,That looks good. I'd really very much like to know how you did this: I can edit and recompile scenery/scasm files but I don't know what to do with asm water/land mask files like these once they are decompiled. I've compared the original with your file and I can see the changes, but I don't understand what the data means in this kind of file. Did you change the data by hand in Notepad or whatever? And what do you use to recompile the asm file? TDFHeader/TDF Macros? Is it complicated? If not too much so, a little 'tutorial', your time permitting, would be great.Thanks,Martin

[scott967 62]

It is very easy with SBuilder. SBuilders has an "append" function -- you can load a default (or addon) LWM or VTP (terrain) bgl file. The main shortfall, is that SBuilder will split a polygon along LOD lines, so there are typically several polygons created for a single feature. SBuilder has a feature of "polygon autojoin" which in my experience can be used to collapse many of the polygons, though some just won't join, probably due to some math errors.Anyway, once you have the problem files appended into a new project, you can use something like TCalc2004 in fs9 to get ground elevation values alongside the lakes. You can lock SBuilder to fs9 aircraft position to identify the polygon(s) with bad elevation and open the properties for it and change the elevation to maybe 1 or 2 meters lower. Note that if you want to change the shape of a water feature, you will need to also append the matching shoreline VTP file. SBuilder has a polygon -to-line feature that you can use to create a modified shoreline. Also you will have to do a terrain exclusion of the default features (not really required if you just change the elevation but use the same shape, though at times you might get spikes at certain vertices if the new and default polygons don't perfectly match after compiling (math errors again).A default terrain file is pretty big. I delete most of the polygons or lines out of area to reduce project file size. Also when compiling in SBuilder, you can "select all" for compiling or select just some. Attached is a shot of my project window in SBuilder (yellow are polygons I adjsuted) scott s..

[martinlest2 58]

Scott,Not sure if I will have the time in the near future to learn this for myself. If you ever do any more of the lakes please do upload your bgl file here!! What you did so far looks pretty good and I've copied it into my NAMW folder..Regards,Martin

[martinlest2 58]

Scott,Thought I'd at least have a look at SBuilder. Is there a general 'beginners' tutorial out there somewhere? I have a number of pdf tutorials from AVSIM, but all are for specific tasks. I can't even get started (or, only jst before problems begin):I start a new project and have a 24-bit BMP map. I need to calibrate it apparently, so I set the co-ordinates in the box (following the SBuilder.chm file here) and click OK. The map just disappears and I get the pointer back on the blank SBuilder window with 'map' underneath it.atTo get the same window as in the help file, I find I need to choose 'Calibrate Photo Maps', though that's not mentioned, so I try this - same result: when I've changed the co-ordinates and click 'calibrate' the map just disappears off the screen and I'm back with the Map cursor asking for a new map. Nothing in the instructions about this so I am scuppered before I even start. Not very conducive to perseverance when you can't even get off first base..Any advice??Martin