Aloha from Maui,

I have been designing scenery for the Island of Lanai and Kahoolawe and am about ready to upload the finished product to AVSIM. I have have not been happy with the way FSX renders Kahoolawe. The entire island seems to be an autogen object unlike the other islands. From all of the Islands Kahoolawe is clearly visible with its mountain peak but due to the autogen it looks as flat as a pancake even from Maui which is only 8 miles away from Kahoolawe. Question: Is there a way to eliminate the autogen so that the island remains like the rest of the non autogen islands.Any help would be very much appreciated.Chip

Aloha,You're using terms that don't go together, such as "autogen island". Might you have a screen shot to illustrate what you're referring to?If you're talking about autogen (trees and buildings) being placed on Kaho, then there are ways to reassign the texture sets to better illustrate it's "barren" nature. But you're making it sound like the island is flat, like a pancake. And that's an entirely different issue.Curious to see what you've done for Lana'i, as I wanted to go in and do a realistic layout of the city, but just haven't gotten to that yet... :(

I use FSDreamscapes mesh for Hawaii and it does a good job with Kahoolawe. Landclass could use some work.scott s..

Aloha from Maui,

I have been designing scenery for the Island of Lanai and Kahoolawe and am about ready to upload the finished product to AVSIM. I have have not been happy with the way FSX renders Kahoolawe. The entire island seems to be an autogen object unlike the other islands. From all of the Islands Kahoolawe is clearly visible with its mountain peak but due to the autogen it looks as flat as a pancake even from Maui which is only 8 miles away from Kahoolawe. Question: Is there a way to eliminate the autogen so that the island remains like the rest of the non autogen islands.Any help would be very much appreciated.Chip

Aloha,You're using terms that don't go together, such as "autogen island". Might you have a screen shot to illustrate what you're referring to?If you're talking about autogen (trees and buildings) being placed on Kaho, then there are ways to reassign the texture sets to better illustrate it's "barren" nature. But you're making it sound like the island is flat, like a pancake. And that's an entirely different issue.Curious to see what you've done for Lana'i, as I wanted to go in and do a realistic layout of the city, but just haven't gotten to that yet... :(

Hello,I've attached some photos of what I see as I approach Kahoolawe. It may not be autogen at all. Possibly the terrain mesh? I'm using FSGenesis for both FS9 and FSX. As the island is approached you can see change take place. From only a couple of miles away there is basically no island other than a sea level terrain and as the island gets closer the terrain is rendered correctly. I have not seen this effect anywhere before at such a short range. Kahoolawe on FS9 remains a fixed island at all times.On the landclass for Lanai I have been totally changing the island to the way it looks to me. I'm there often. I've changed Lanai City to the correct location and shape and added all of the trails and roads that were missing. It's not photo scenery but at least it looks closer to the real island from my subjective view! It no longer looks like New York City around the airport. I used Google Earth and other aids to get close to reality in areas that I have not visited. I have included all the necessary files so you can change things around to your own liking if you have SBuilderX, EZ-Landclass and Airport Design EditorX. I'm going to upload it to AVSIM in a day or so.If you have some idea about the Kahoolawe scenery after seeing the photos I'm very interested. I hope it is not the terrain mesh. Mahalo,Chip

Aloha,You're using terms that don't go together, such as "autogen island". Might you have a screen shot to illustrate what you're referring to?If you're talking about autogen (trees and buildings) being placed on Kaho, then there are ways to reassign the texture sets to better illustrate it's "barren" nature. But you're making it sound like the island is flat, like a pancake. And that's an entirely different issue.Curious to see what you've done for Lana'i, as I wanted to go in and do a realistic layout of the city, but just haven't gotten to that yet... :(

Hello Again,I just tried a download of free terrain mesh for the Hawaiian Islands and activated Maui and Kahoolawe, the problem went away and the island is fully rendered at any distance. It must be something that FSGenesis is doing. I may download FSDreamscapes mesh for Hawaii if there is no other way to solve this minor annoyance. It is only nine bucks.

Altitude terrain mesh, like so many other elements in FS, uses a LOD (Level of Detail) system. This means that different resolutions are displayed depending on distance from the object or terrain. When close, the higher resolutions are displayed and as the viewer moves away lower resolutions are displayed. This method helps in maintaining performance.FS 9 mesh only included one resolution level in each bgl file. So, if installing a high resolution mesh, it is displayed when close, but when moving away the next highest resolution, which can be very low if it is the default, will be shown. Generally, in FS 9, the solution is to provide all intermediary resolutions between the highest and the default mesh as separate bgl files. Perhaps this is not the case here, and the third-party mesh only includes the highest, which would be very strange since few people know as much about mesh as Justin and he most certainly would not make that sort of mistake.Autogen (auto-generated objects) are something completely different, they are the automatically-populated buildings and vegetation that appear over ground textures. The sparse autogen displayed on your images appears in the close-up views and disappears as distance increases, again for performance reasons. To get a greater quantity of autogen, simply change the land class to a different ground texture, one that is not a desert or arid type.Best regards.Luis

I just tried a download of free terrain mesh for the Hawaiian Islands and activated Maui and Kahoolawe,

Hey! Wonder who made that mesh?? :( As Luis mentions, mesh in 9 is different than in X. So it helps to include all the LODs to get the full benefit in FS9, which I did for the islands. FSX just doesn't display as well as FS9 IMO, due to the rendering parameters implemented for performance reasons. But there should still be a noted difference from default when using an add on mesh, as the settings used during the compiling process do make a difference.If the hardware is up to it, going better than 10m for mesh can be seen in terrain clarity. But mesh rendering sits with texture rendering in the whole process and if the system doesn't have the ability to complete it's rendering cycle prior to starting over, than add on mesh just gets wasted. I'd L-O-V-E to see some of the source levels that are out there be of similar nature for the islands, as it would make placing waterfalls a whole lot easier! :(

Altitude terrain mesh, like so many other elements in FS, uses a LOD (Level of Detail) system. This means that different resolutions are displayed depending on distance from the object or terrain. When close, the higher resolutions are displayed and as the viewer moves away lower resolutions are displayed. This method helps in maintaining performance.FS 9 mesh only included one resolution level in each bgl file. So, if installing a high resolution mesh, it is displayed when close, but when moving away the next highest resolution, which can be very low if it is the default, will be shown. Generally, in FS 9, the solution is to provide all intermediary resolutions between the highest and the default mesh as separate bgl files. Perhaps this is not the case here, and the third-party mesh only includes the highest, which would be very strange since few people know as much about mesh as Justin and he most certainly would not make that sort of mistake.Autogen (auto-generated objects) are something completely different, they are the automatically-populated buildings and vegetation that appear over ground textures. The sparse autogen displayed on your images appears in the close-up views and disappears as distance increases, again for performance reasons. To get a greater quantity of autogen, simply change the land class to a different ground texture, one that is not a desert or arid type.Best regards.Luis

Hello Luis,At last I understand what everyone is saying. I got the Microsoft books out on terrain mesh and now at least understand what to expect. I have tried another 10 meter terrain mesh for Kahoolawe and the island remains the same as FS9's version. I have also tried another 5m mesh and it also works. Only the FSGenesis mesh seems to do this. Yes, Justin has been a friend for years and he thinks some low resolution mesh might be near Kahoolawe causing the problem. So far I have not found anything wrong. All of the other Hawaiian Islands show nothing like this one island. I will use alternative 10 meter mesh for Kahoolawe if necessary. No big problem. Chip

Hey! Wonder who made that mesh?? :( As Luis mentions, mesh in 9 is different than in X. So it helps to include all the LODs to get the full benefit in FS9, which I did for the islands. FSX just doesn't display as well as FS9 IMO, due to the rendering parameters implemented for performance reasons. But there should still be a noted difference from default when using an add on mesh, as the settings used during the compiling process do make a difference.If the hardware is up to it, going better than 10m for mesh can be seen in terrain clarity. But mesh rendering sits with texture rendering in the whole process and if the system doesn't have the ability to complete it's rendering cycle prior to starting over, than add on mesh just gets wasted. I'd L-O-V-E to see some of the source levels that are out there be of similar nature for the islands, as it would make placing waterfalls a whole lot easier! :(

Hello from the terrain mesh novice! Learning slowly. The FSX mesh is for all of the Hawaiian Islands and the download is located on Simviation. I found it by accident. Here is the location:http://www.simviatio...terrainmesh.htm I see two people on that page who have created Hawaiian Islands Mesh one is by Raimondo Taburet. 63MB and the other is by Lance Tucker. 34.8MB. I tried out the one made by Lance Tucker and it looks excellent. Both are 10 meter mesh. It fixes my "problem" with Kahoolawe. I also gave FSDreamscapes mesh for Hawaii a tryout. I used the mesh that they created for Kahoolawe and kept FSGenesis for the rest of the islands. This seems to work perfectly and again Kahoolawe is now rendered exactly like the rest of the islands. No more complaints. Thanks to all for lessons on terrain mesh. I have been designing scenery for a year or so for FS9 and I now have the design finished for a FSX version of Lanai and Kahoolawe. It is ready to upload to AVSIM FSX Scenery. Like I say I've never had need to add my own terrain mesh but the day may come. It's only when I run into roadblocks with scenery design that I start reading the technical articles by Microsoft. I am finally doing that now on the design of mesh. Chip