Question 1: Why are the rivers blue?

[Cruachan 705]

.......... to the FS design team AND a big thank-you to the developers of (freeware) add-on design utilities"I second that with the greatest enthusiasm and would like to mention briefly the wonderful flight just completed by me in Alberta from Banff to Jasper in Geoff Applegate's flawless Debonair. A few years ago my wife and I spent part of our 25th wedding anniversary touring the National Park at ground level in beautiful weather conditions, an experience we will both never forget. To be able to recreate that trip from altitude with Holger Sandmann's magnificent new terrain elevation mesh and scenery enhancements has left me speechless, well almost ;) Normally, when I try to show my wife some of the delights offered by this sim her attention span lasts barely five minutes. This flight had her glued to the screen for well over half an hour!!Some of us don't appreciate enough just how lucky we are when people like Geoff, Holger, Bill and Lynn, to mention but a few, provide such exquisite enhancements for the sim and by so doing make our hobby such an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. But let's not forget the creators of the simulator who also have demonstrated a great love and passion, yet often receive brickbats for all their trouble and dedicated effort instead of the praise which is so richly deserved.Mike :-wave

[Guest odog]

http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46763.jpgPull pin, point at the base of the fire and pull handleHey Holger, whatcha buildin? i love the mesh and scenery you just released.joe

[Guest FPSFREAK]

>http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46763.jpg>>>Pull pin, point at the base of the fire and pull handle>>>Hey Holger,>> whatcha buildin? i love the mesh and scenery you just>released.>>>joeGODDA* !! That's some funny Sh**. :) Thank you for making my night.BobbyP.S. Markyboy...about as subtle as a brick. I'm still trying to figure out what your post had to do with his question?? And Steve...Loosen the thong bud. ;) It' wound a little tight Lol.

[OMillerJr 0]

Just for a point of information, the Mississippi River was brown in FS 98. I don't know about any other rivers. It doesn't detract that much for me but I wonder why they went backwards.

[Geofa 108]

Thanks for the nice comments! Makes it all somehow worthwhile.The Banff/Jasper area is also one of my favorite places-though last time I visited was probably 25 years ago!http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

[Guest BC_KBOS]

Um, actually, there are no "dumb" post (questions), only dumb (stupid) answers. I thought it was a decent question.Rivers = generally fresh water. Oceans = generally (always) salt water.Hmmm. I think that somebody *could* have figured out the difference instead of just plain water texture. When designing the scenery, one could just designate the water texture "river-winter" or "ocean-carribean" or "river-east" (put unpleaseant thought here, although, the East River has been really cleaned up).You get the idea.It's not a land class thing, it's a basic scenery design thing. Somebody drew a line marking a river. Just define it appropriately.I feel better now that I kept my log-in from expiring.Thanks!BChttp://jdtllc.com/images/RCsupporter.jpg

[Holger 0]

Hey, all you sewage lovers, how about this quick fix:New Orleans in FS9 with default water textures (no water effects)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46787.jpgsame location, with quick fixhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46788.jpgThis is the Fraser River, east of Vancouver, with same quick fix (and the new Lyons' water effects)http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46789.jpgHow did I do this? Well, I fired up trusty old MS TMFViewer and checked out the default global waterclass file (worldwc.bgl, in FS9SceneryBASEScenery). It does look like most of the land areas are classified as either Class 1 (Shallow Inland Water-Blue) or Class 2 (Deep Inland Water-Blue), with the latter covering almost all rivers and large lakes. In addition, there are a few areas classified as 5 (Non Perennial Inland Water-Blue) and some of the mixed-water inlets, like the lower Fraser River, as Class 3 (Ocean Inlets-Blue). Here's how the Mississippi Delta area looks like (light blue = 1, dark blue = 2, orange = 5; the rest are ocean colors, actually many more than the pink and dark red suggests) http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46790.jpgPretty rough classification, indeed, given that there are 12 different lake/river/inlet textures and about 45 more ocean textures available (any water body can have any water class; I used some of the tropical ocean water classes for my glacial lakes because they most closely resemble the turquoise hues). The waterclass textures reside in FS9SceneryWorldtexture, e.g. 001b2wa1.bmp for Class 1, 002b2wa1.bmp for Class 2, etc. (None of this is new knowledge, as a quick search for 'waterclass' in the forums or a look at the MS FS2002 Terrain SDK docs would reveal). I knew from my design work that Class 7 (Shallow Inland Water?Brown) is the brownest color around. All I did was to rename 002b2wa1.bmp to 002b2wa1.bmp.org, make a copy of 007b2wa1.bmp and rename that to 002b2wa1.bmp (and the same with 001b2wa1.bmp, 003b2wa1.bmp, and/or 005b2wa1.bmp). That's all! Do this at your own risk and don't delete any original files!!!One more observation: different water classes don't blend well, it seems. Where brown and blue waters meet you'll see some strange rings that look like oil spills. Try it out and see for yourself.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46795.jpgObviously, this global fix will change inland water colors everywhere (depending on which of the four you change); it's up to you.Cheers, HolgerP.S. Mike, thank you very much for the kind words about my Canadian Rockies' file, and say hi to your wife for me; nice to get some female endorsement ;-)

[Jimmy Angel 19]

Neat trick, Holger.You know, the "strange" stuff where the river meets the ocean actually looks really realistic to me. It looks like sediment outflow.

[Holger 0]

Hi BC:"I feel better now that I kept my log-in from expiring." LMAO - just love that dry humor :-xxrotflmao "Somebody drew a line marking a river." That's just the point - no one (at MS, at least) drew a line to make a river, with some (very few) exceptions in those more detailed/photoreal metropolitan areas. All the basic linework, default terrain mesh, and landclass/waterclass data are derived from existing GIS databases; all the FS designers did (and, believe, me that "all" means a huge amount of headaches) is to translate these data into the FS world by means of automated utilities. I'm sure there was some level of quality check *before* the final run of these utilities but once they were done, most if not all problems that were found would have had to be fixed manually. You can imagine that task to be quite difficult given a playground the size of our blue (hah!) planet.So, the issue IS a waterclass problem (or, rather, the lack of existing global data of water colors), not a scenery design problem.Cheers, Holger

[Holger 0]

Jimmy, I might agree (though the effect is stronger than the screenshot suggests), except that in this particular image the water body to the right is Harrison Lake and the Harrison River leaves the lake to join the Fraser River. Obviously then, the blending could be taken care of by applying the same quick fix to the lake's water texture class.Another point: while this fix works globally, the waterclass can be easily overridden by any separate waterclass file installed with a higher priority in the scenery library.Cheers, Holger

[SteveLewis 0]

Holger, Thank you very much for these ideas. It answers the question I was attempting to ask. (Can we change the water texture colors?). Now, if we could come up with brown and greenish brown textures we could assign the inland waters to those colors. Correct? At least that's what I'm reading into your reply. Do you know of any easy way to create new color water textures? Steve KCLE

[Holger 0]

Hi Steve:I'm not a texture painter or graphic artist but I'd use the existing .bmp files to change the hue and/or saturation to your liking. The waterclass textures are in DXT format, so you'll need a tool like DXTBMP (http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/) to convert them before editing. Let us know what you come up with.Cheers, Holger

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Holger.I'll address this to you, as not many others will grasp what I'm saying.A waterclass BGL can be made that uses a transparent value ( #254 ) as a base, then any number ( say #1 ) as a value to change the color of the rivers.... then draw the class over the river areas.This BGL can be placed into a project folder with a "scenery" sub-folder, and a "texture" sub-folder. Normally, this would cause a memory leak in FS2004, but if the texture named for #1 ( 001b2wa1.bmp ) is included in the texture folder, then you can have a localized texture for that BGL. If you need 4 localized textures, then all four must be in the "texture" sub-folder.The actual color of the localized "001b2wa1.bmp" can be any color you want. Thge name only IDs it as #1. And that's the best way to change a river brown, or any other color, with waterclass as it will only affect the water you cover in the BGL.Dick

[E 0]

>I am sick of people posting about bugs and improvements they>reckon could be made. Why not offer your services to MS and>>markyboy.*PLONK*

[Holger 0]

Hi Dick:let's see if I grasp what you're saying... ;-)To summarize our options:1. people that don't like the inland lake/river colors at all BUT find one of the existing waterclass .bmp suitable can apply the quick global fix above to any or all of the 4 (?) classes that cover inland water.2. people that don't like the water color of certain areas but don't want to change them globally AND find one of the existing waterclass .bmp suitable can use one of the land-/waterclass utilities to make a local waterclass replacement file.3. people that don't like the water colors (either locally or globally) AND don't like any of the existing alternatives either can generate their own water color texture and should apply this with Dick's method. The advantage of this approach is that you don't lose the default waterclass colors and, in fact, extend on the number of existing classes - very clever!Hope I've got that right...Cheers, Holger