I have used SBX to create what i thought would be photo scenery for Jersey (channel islands)My method so far,1. Open SBX and show background,2.Zoom to 12 to capture the whole island and add map from background.3.Draw a box to capture the island and select zoom of 15, giving 1410 tiles at 47 x 30 grid.4.Save5.Right click, click backgroun and compile - this gives 266 cells being compiled and a compressed bitmap of lesser quality than i was hoping for.Having originally created a bitmap from step 3, (approx 300mb but higher resolution) i modified the INF file to reflect the larger bmp file, in addition i used GIMP to produce both water and land masks by blacking/whiting out areas as necessary.Dragged the INF over resample.exe to produce the required BGL and compied this to my active jersey scenery folder.Load fsx and observe the problem higlighted by the attached images, firstly there is land where there should be water and also there appears to be two jersey islands both faint, but one considerably larger than the other (depicted by the blue line on the second image).I tried adding hydro poly's using default perennial option, this made no difference. Somebody on FSdeveloper suggest 4 hydros because the QMID grid has 4 tiles over jersey, but as stated above in step 3 i had a zoom setting of 15.Im totally consfused having tried what seems like everything, can somebody point me in the right direction :sThanksTom

Im totally consfused having tried what seems like everything, can somebody point me in the right direction :s

You're getting good advice in the thread at FS Developer, even if you don't understand all of it. And you're trying to run, before learning all the proper steps to take.Want an example? By what you've listed above as the steps you are taking, there is NO REASON for the square landmass that's showing. Oh, you forgot to mention that you are modifying the airport and using that tool to modify the terrain. When you modified the terrain in your airport tool to delete/replace the Airport Background Flatten what TAG did you use? Because if you use the wrong one, like say Exclude EVERYTHING, it will take out coastlines and all water in a large QMID area.You also are confusing the LOD resolution for your photo work with the QMID/LOD boundaries that the terrain work is affected by. These are two different animals. Each is sufficently detailed in the SDKs. If you go back and correct your airport work to properly exclude what needs to be excluded, in the proper manner, then you won't see all that land surrounding your photo work. Still doesn't mean that you won't need to do some corrective measures in SBX, but it will be one less headache for you to be wondering where the aspirin is.So get the airport fixed, then add the photo work in. If you're seeing two different imagery files you need to find them and remove the lower resolution file.

You're getting good advice in the thread at FS Developer, even if you don't understand all of it. And you're trying to run, before learning all the proper steps to take.Want an example? By what you've listed above as the steps you are taking, there is NO REASON for the square landmass that's showing. Oh, you forgot to mention that you are modifying the airport and using that tool to modify the terrain. When you modified the terrain in your airport tool to delete/replace the Airport Background Flatten what TAG did you use? Because if you use the wrong one, like say Exclude EVERYTHING, it will take out coastlines and all water in a large QMID area.You also are confusing the LOD resolution for your photo work with the QMID/LOD boundaries that the terrain work is affected by. These are two different animals. Each is sufficently detailed in the SDKs. If you go back and correct your airport work to properly exclude what needs to be excluded, in the proper manner, then you won't see all that land surrounding your photo work. Still doesn't mean that you won't need to do some corrective measures in SBX, but it will be one less headache for you to be wondering where the aspirin is.So get the airport fixed, then add the photo work in. If you're seeing two different imagery files you need to find them and remove the lower resolution file.

Ok thanks. I have to admit I haven't used the sdk I've jumped straight to ade and sbx. Does the sdk have tutorials? I started creating an airport for jersey and them jumped to creating photoscenery as I thought this would be more logical (sort the background then the airport).What and where should I exclude on my airport? Around the boundary fence? I think now of I sort the airport I can then as you say look at the photo scenery.ThanksTom

There are some good tutorials available here in the library, done by Luis Feliz-Tirado. Highly recommended!The SDKs come with some help files, that at first glance are all gibberish. Just stare at them for about three hours and let it start to absorb... :( Was I correct, in that when you did your airport work you used the Exclude Everything or what ever it's called? Since FSX came out and I started working with the tools I have never used the Exclude Everything TAG. I've always gone with many polys that contain the individual exclusionary action.The area in green around the airport is referred to as the Airport Boundary. Confusing as the SDKs may be, this TAG of Airport Boundary can also apply to non-airport areas. But this action flattens the area in a poly, can exclude autogen from the poly area and other things. So your first step (IMO) is go back into the airport editing tool and change your exclusion poly to remove the Airport Boundary, then introduce your new poly which will draw the flatten to the shape you want. One thing to realize, since you want to do photo scenery for the area, the old Airport Boundary shape isn't going to show. Nor will your new shape show in all it's green, default color. Photo scenery takes priority, in 99% of the cases. That should clear up your water/land problems, for now.You are in the process of learning something new. It can be confusing the first time around. You'll make mistakes, as shown above. But as you work through it and start to understand the process, it does become easier. Terrain/airport work is pretty standard in most cases; exclude what's there, put in the new stuff. Soon it will all come together and you'll marvel at your newly developed skills and the fruits of your labor! :(

There are some good tutorials available here in the library, done by Luis Feliz-Tirado. Highly recommended!The SDKs come with some help files, that at first glance are all gibberish. Just stare at them for about three hours and let it start to absorb... :( Was I correct, in that when you did your airport work you used the Exclude Everything or what ever it's called? Since FSX came out and I started working with the tools I have never used the Exclude Everything TAG. I've always gone with many polys that contain the individual exclusionary action.The area in green around the airport is referred to as the Airport Boundary. Confusing as the SDKs may be, this TAG of Airport Boundary can also apply to non-airport areas. But this action flattens the area in a poly, can exclude autogen from the poly area and other things. So your first step (IMO) is go back into the airport editing tool and change your exclusion poly to remove the Airport Boundary, then introduce your new poly which will draw the flatten to the shape you want. One thing to realize, since you want to do photo scenery for the area, the old Airport Boundary shape isn't going to show. Nor will your new shape show in all it's green, default color. Photo scenery takes priority, in 99% of the cases. That should clear up your water/land problems, for now.You are in the process of learning something new. It can be confusing the first time around. You'll make mistakes, as shown above. But as you work through it and start to understand the process, it does become easier. Terrain/airport work is pretty standard in most cases; exclude what's there, put in the new stuff. Soon it will all come together and you'll marvel at your newly developed skills and the fruits of your labor! :(

Hey thanks for the reply.My airport editing has at the moment no excludes, (as im not overly sure what they do). i have however sort of figured out the problem with my photo scenery and have got it partially working see attached image, so i now just need to tweak other bits and get some other advice from my other thread here - http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?p=149671#post149671But the fact i have the photo scenery almost working is great as this will allow me to get on with the airport. I am thinking of drawing an exclude polygon to follow the airport boundary i am creating so that it allows for a blank canvas for me to edit, but you mentioned above about the original airport boundary, will my exclude overwrite this or work along side. I really dont want the default exclude to exist so removing that and using my own would be far better, particularly as i would eventually like to create some sort of terrain mesh too.ThanksTom

Some how, some way you have introduced an exclusion that is removing the surrounding water. That's why you are seeing the giant land mass that the photo scenery is sitting on. When you removed the airport fence what TAG did you use in the airport tool?All of FSX is land, every where you look. The water is added in. Do something to remove the water and BINGO!, you see the land mass shown in your pictures. All of your work should be in it's own folder structure, then activated through the Scenery Library of FSX. Go there are look for a file that starts or contains "cvx", that should be the file that is taking out the water. If that was the result of taking out the airport fence, then you used a terrain exclusion for a scenery object. You would use a BGLComp XML-based exclusion to take the fence out. Or in the airport tool you would just highlight the fence and press the Delete key and it handles the rest.

Believe or not but I think Tom is on the right track.When creating an island you do need to exclude the original or default FSX water polygons which created the island. The reason for this is simple: The water polygons flatten the terrain.Tom needs to use SBuilderX to draw in water polygons to cover the land mass he is seeing as well as (and this is the slow hard painful bit) run it up to the shorelines of his photoreal imagery. If you don't do this then the old water polygons will still be in effect and may flatten parts of the island that shouldn't be flat. Or you may have parts of the water that have elevation (which is not a natural look).The best thing that Tom should do is exclude everything in the island and rebuild it from scratch which means putting in those water polygons.Attached is a pic of Lady Elliot Island. The photoreal area is the green square and you can see how large the water polygons (Hydro Generic Ocean Perenial is the type I used) are surrounding it which I had to add in to flatten the water and cover the landmass below.

you can see how large the water polygons (Hydro Generic Ocean Perenial is the type I used) are surrounding it which I had to add in to flatten the water and cover the landmass below.

Unfortunately one cannot see from that pic. The hydro-polys need to extend to the nearest surrounding QMid11 rectangles.George

here is a screenshot of SBX where i have created the hydro polys up to the coastline. They are also drawn up to the QMID 11 boundary.Could you also explain what TAG means?If you read on the FSdeveloper thread (link above) it will give more detail on my problem. It seems weird that when i recompiled the scenery without the blend and water mask tiffs the problem improved. My other concern is that in drawing larger hydro polys to remove the area of land i can see around jersey, this may affect neighbouring islands and the coastline of france???UPDATE - having increased the size of my hydro polys to a massive size, it seems that the problem remains unchanged, no more or less land/water is shown and so i am still confused as to what is going on.I mentioned before in another thread that there appears to be a large scale map of jersey displaying faintly in the back ground and it is more visible when i zoom out on the top down view. This concerns me as i cant think why there would be 2 maps of jersey??UPDATE 2 - Having deleted the scenery folder in fsx and reverted back to FSX default scenery it appears that the issue remains whereby land is appearing where it shouldnt, this is now leading me to think my version of FSX has messed up some how, the same also happens when selecting other islands in the same area??? i wonder if this is due to something i have done? or just a coincidence? Tom

Hello Tom,Perhaps you may want to take a look at the following tutorials:Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator Xavailable in the Avsim libraryhttp://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxsd&DLID=140539This covers all aspects of creating photo-real ground textures, and specifically includes a detailed and illustrated description of creating a new island and all the elements, including vector work (new Hydro Polygons), that must be carried out.Terrain Design for Flight Simulator Xin the Avsim libraryhttp://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?&DLID=141643A tutorial on vector terrain, including exclusions, Hydro Polygons, the difference between land and water, shore lines, roads, etc.As Anthony says, you must first exclude the default vector terrain (Hydro Polygons, shore lines, etc.) when creating a photo-real island. The above documents will illustrate and explain the process.If you see various renditions of your new scenery, then you most certainly have multiple copies of the bgl in your Scenery Library. You must search, probably the Add-on Scenery folder, and remove the extra copies. And this may very well mean that the extra copy is accompanied by a large terrain exclusion that removes all the Hydro Polygons, thus allowing a lot of land to display.Best regards.Luis

Hello Tom,Perhaps you may want to take a look at the following tutorials:Make photo-real ground textures in Flight Simulator Xavailable in the Avsim libraryhttp://library.avsim...xsd&DLID=140539This covers all aspects of creating photo-real ground textures, and specifically includes a detailed and illustrated description of creating a new island and all the elements, including vector work (new Hydro Polygons), that must be carried out.Terrain Design for Flight Simulator Xin the Avsim libraryhttp://library.avsim...hp?&DLID=141643A tutorial on vector terrain, including exclusions, Hydro Polygons, the difference between land and water, shore lines, roads, etc.As Anthony says, you must first exclude the default vector terrain (Hydro Polygons, shore lines, etc.) when creating a photo-real island. The above documents will illustrate and explain the process.If you see various renditions of your new scenery, then you most certainly have multiple copies of the bgl in your Scenery Library. You must search, probably the Add-on Scenery folder, and remove the extra copies. And this may very well mean that the extra copy is accompanied by a large terrain exclusion that removes all the Hydro Polygons, thus allowing a lot of land to display.Best regards.Luis

Luis thanks for those, i will take a look, i cant imagine that the scenery is all that difficult to produce, but as i mentioned above i think my FSX has messed up some how so im just running the installer to repair it.Hopefully i can proceed after that.Tom

I showed you exactly how to create photo textures for Jersey on the FSDeveloper site.

i know you did but i couldnt get it to work so i asked for additional help from others aswell, because somebody may have had the same thing happen to themBut it turns out that its my installation of FSX that seems to be the problem so i now have to reinstall of that.ThanksTom

i know you did but i couldnt get it to work so i asked for additional help from others aswell, because somebody may have had the same thing happen to themBut it turns out that its my installation of FSX that seems to be the problem so i now have to reinstall of that.ThanksTom

Seems i have a clash with another scenery (although not related to the area of the channel islands) the exclusions appear to cause this issue, anyway having removed them the situation has again improved, i just need to removed this faint secondary image - i may have to start again for that, but at least things are moving in the right direction.Tom

Hello Tom,Your faint image of the island could be the default shore lines (beaches) that must also be excluded.Best regards.Luis