Is this possible at all ??, Ive made a few buildings and landscape features that i would like to impliment into FSX, mainly for personal use but if i can improve on them i might take the plunge and share them, ive imported the objects into game but im struggling at matching them up, like a waterfall and dam feature thats stood too far off the DEM at the bottom and at slightly the wrong angle, going back and remodeling is a tedious job and takes the best part of a 5 hours, and all that to go in and find out its too much or not enough is a bit demoralising, so, my plan is to navigate to my desired location, somehow make a 3D copy of the area, which is only about a thousand meters squared in total, and import this into a 3D program (3D studio max 9) so i can create the model perfectly the first time and then just delete the terrain leaving me with my model for importing, im not an expert when it comes to these things, and i could be well of the mark with this one, but it would make my hobby so much easyer lol, so please, if anyone knows of a way to do this, or knows if its impossible could they let me know, that way i can stop worrying about it lol Many many thanks for taking the time to read this guys and many thanks in advance for any info Srimera

Topic is very old, however maybe someone will jump into this into the future looking for the same answer.

 

Here is everything I've found on topic so far:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Format_of_the_Cvx_BGL_Files

IMHO, it is best to make new terrain mesh from available GIS data. :wink:

 

 

However, to explore this concept:

FS has an internal variable which always knows the ground elevation beneath one's user aircraft position in FS at run time,

 

SimConnect and/or FSUIPC can read that value.

 

Thus, one could use ex: a free 'programmers FSUIPC client DLL' with a separate specially coded application which 'jumps / pauses / logs' the user aircraft between known and calculable vertices of Area Points in the FS Quad Matrix Terrain Grid at specified levels of detail (aka "LOD"s) ...to log the ground surface elevation in a pre-determined flight path which is unique to each quad containing Area Points to be logged.

 

 

BTW: The number of Area Point vertices to be logged in ex: LOD-12 quads (corresponding to approx. 10 Meter ground elevation data posting intervals) ...is massive.

 

Such a logging process requires complex programming, but it can be done (there are proprietary applications which have been in existence for years < and not yet released to the public as stand-alone utilities >, created as a "Proof-of-Concept" ...which already can do this).

 

 

One can modify terrain mesh display in FS as needed with flattens (either 'flat' or "sloped", using LWM-2 or LWM-3 vector type BGL types for pre-FSX 'discrete LOD' BGL files, and CVX vector type BGL types for FSX or Prepar3d 'multi-LOD' BGL files.

 

Thus, one must note that terrain surface elevations logged by such a process would only be as interpreted and rendered by FS at run time, and subject to interactions of multiple terrain mesh, water, or land surface flatten files etc., and should not be construed as capable of precisely reproducing original source data used to create terrain mesh files.

 

GaryGB