Only with the Acceleration package did Microsoft add 2.38m mesh and that is only in a couple, three spots. Mount St Helens being the most familiar name. Even these small areas were compressed down more than what others may use when making mesh.

 

Hook, you're seeing rocks in the water because you are using the default Terrain.cfg file. Since water carries elevation and there is a certain slope % between data points FSX slaps a hillside texture onto those areas. Check out the Thames in London, you'll see a lot of rock areas with the default Terrain.cfg file. There is a modified Terrain.cfg file by Luis Feliz-Tirado and Dick Ludowise in the library here. Highly recommended for everyone to use the modified file, as it fixes a couple of problems within FSX and brings forward some stuff from FS9 terrain to work in FSX.

 

FWIW, there is a large % of the world in FSX that has 608m mesh. Yes, six hundred meters between data points. There are alternatives to this mesh meltdown, available in free and pay ware. Some good, some not so good. I don't recommend to users to set the mesh slider any greater than what they have installed on their computer. I've had instances where even with very high res mesh, going further right on the slider can introduce small mesh anomalies.

 

I see that the file is quite old. Do you risk ruining SP1, SP2 and/or Acceleration changes to the terrain.cfg if you install the one from Tirado & Ludowise?

works well, and thanks for the type error fix!

The mod Terrain.cfg took out the Hudson River and a major airport next to the airport. I tried both 200000 and 20000. Both cases resulted in no water (Swamps, Hudson River, Newark Bay, etc...) around the NYC area.

 

When just looking at the ground it seems as if it is doing something as my cityscape was expanded, but I kinda like water where it's supposed to be!

I see that the file is quite old. Do you risk ruining SP1, SP2 and/or Acceleration changes to the terrain.cfg if you install the one from Tirado & Ludowise?

The mod Terrain.cfg took out the Hudson River and a major airport next to the airport. I tried both 200000 and 20000. Both cases resulted in no water (Swamps, Hudson River, Newark Bay, etc...) around the NYC area.

 

When just looking at the ground it seems as if it is doing something as my cityscape was expanded, but I kinda like water where it's supposed to be!

 

From what I remember, no changes were introduced with subsequent releases of FSX. I've been running FSXA since it's release and have not seen anything abnormal using the modified Terrain.cfg file.

 

If the Terrain.cfg file has been modified by an add on, then replacing it with the modified file will lose those changes. You did make a backup, right? Depending upon the add on, all that is needed is to restart any Setup utility and it will verify the integrity of the entries that that add on requires and if they are not present, the Setup will add them back in.

 

 

 

From what I remember, no changes were introduced with subsequent releases of FSX. I've been running FSXA since it's release and have not seen anything abnormal using the modified Terrain.cfg file.

 

If the Terrain.cfg file has been modified by an add on, then replacing it with the modified file will lose those changes. You did make a backup, right? Depending upon the add on, all that is needed is to restart any Setup utility and it will verify the integrity of the entries that that add on requires and if they are not present, the Setup will add them back in.

 

Thanks again!

I see that the file is quite old. Do you risk ruining SP1, SP2 and/or Acceleration changes to the terrain.cfg if you install the one from Tirado & Ludowise?

 

Mostly what the mod terrian.cfg does is make it possible to use fs9 terrain textures in fsx sdk scenery projects. IIRC the only thing affected by sp, was the mod changed the water texture used on sloped rivers (think the problem was Thames River was sloped and showed rocks in the river. With the mod it showed water only. In the sp they changed terrain.cfg to match the mod version, so I don't think there is any downside from leaving in the mod terrain.cfg).

 

Switching topics, the way mesh is used is all laid out in Adam Szofran's paper at GDC 2006 available from here:

http://www.microsoft...balTerrain.aspx

 

Note that fsx uses "round earth" model which complicates the problem of triangulating mesh using restricted quadtree triangulation (seach on this for papers on using RQT).

 

If you have sdk installed it is easy enough to use the tmfviewer to see the resolutions available in any mesh bgl file. Note that some terrain vector elements (both linear and area) have flattening characteristics and your mesh resolution setting in-sim will affect how these vector flattens are applied and appear.

 

scott s.

.

1. Resolution of FSX default mesh:

USA - 38m, it is resampled resolution* (source: ?, source resolution: ?)

Western Europe, Mexico, Canada - 76m, it is resampled resolution* (source: SRTM, source resolution: 90m)

Rest of world - 304m or 608m

Very few small areas may have better resolution that mentioned above. There was the list of these places at FS Insider (if I remember correctly), but MS removed it as many other resources of FS Insider after closing ACES Studio. Maybe somebody have it and would like to remaind?

 

2. Resolution of freeware mesh for FSX (FSX Freeware Global Terrain Mesh Project):

USA - FSX resolution 10m (source: NED, source resolution: may vary but mainly 10m)

Canada (Quebec) - FSX resolution 38m, it is resampled resolution* (source: SRTM or CDED, source resolution: 20m or 90m)

Canada (West) - FSX resolution 19m (source: CDED, source resolution: ~20m or 90m depending source 1:50K CDED or 1:250K CDED)

Western Europe - FSX resolution 38m, it is resampled resolution* (source: SRTM, source resolution: 90m)

Australia - FSX resolution 76m, it is resampled resolution* (source: SRTM, source resolution: 90m)

New Zeland - FSX resolution 76m, it is resampled resolution* (source: SRTM, source resolution: 90m)

 

3. Resolution of commercial meshes for FSX:

FSGenesis:

USA - FSX resolution 10m, (source: NED, source resolution: may vary but mainly 10m)

Canada - FSX resolution 19m (source: CDED, source resolution: ~20m if 1:50K CDED was used)

Western Europe - FSX resolution 10m (source: NEXT Map, source resolution: 5m or better)

Northern Andes - FSX resolution 19m, it is resampled resolution* (source: NEXT Map 30, source resolution: 30m, compilation of SRTM 90m and ASTER 30m data)

Rest of world - possibly next areas with NEXT Map 30 from FSGenesis.

Notice - for now NEXT Map 30 is the best avaliable source with world wide coverage.

 

FS Global Ultimate:

The producer do not specify the grid resolution for some of geographical areas. Only given are: USA resolution (10m), part of Canada (19m) and Mexico (38m). We can suppose that if the publisher does not want to brag, the source material for the rest of areas was the SRTM 90m.

 

FranceVFR:

Western Europe - FSX resolution 5m (source: NEXT Map, source resolution: 5m or better)

 

Some European sceneries (Playsimspublishing - HorizonVFR, FranceVFR) come with included very high resolution mesh (5m or 10m).

 

* Important notice about resampling:

In most cases source resolutions: 90m (SRTM), 30m (ASTER, NEXT Map 30) doesn't match to FSX's mesh LOD steps (19m, 38m, 76m, 152m) and must be resampled to one of two adjacent mesh LOD levels. For example world wide SRTM data with resolution 90m is resampled to 76m mesh, sometimes called 76m SRTM mesh, but that doesn't improve level of detail (terrain relief) - it depends only on source resolution.

 

So, with numbers like those, I don't have to have my FSX sliders all the way right. While I want to take full advantage of these two add-ons, I don't need to put the sliders to MAX right. I can set them a little lower (to the left)? What settings should I set the sliders to max the use of the products but perhaps save a little on performance. Thanks!