Does addon mesh ruin coastlines?

[barryward12345 0]

I have installed the FSGenesis freeware British Isles mesh. It certainly improves the look of the country -- but wherever I have coastlines, I now get a "Jig-saw" effect when the water meets the land. I think I read somewhere that this is a result of the mesh -- but not sure . If so, it is a great shame -- any fixes??Thanks Barry

[Guest racartron]

I recommend ya visit the FSGenesis forum. There are tons of stuff relating to how all enhanced mesh files interact with coast lines. See the FAQ's section as well as the actual forums. In fact one of the great moves afoot over there is a project to create much more realistic coastlines.-------------------Racartronit means something, but I just can't remember what

[barryward12345 0]

Hmmm-- I must be going blind :) Can't find anything about the general effect of mesh on coastlines - can only find some stuff relating to Hawaii. Also the FAQ only seems to deal with problems regarding access to the forum.Barry

[Guest Fsfreeware]

Hi Barry;that is a problem you get with every mesh - no matter who design the mesh.it is related to the default water poligons lwm - wich are set on a flatten switch therefore - flattening the area wich they cover - they are little square - one after another - like little cells - and that is why you do notice that zig zag effect on coastline.racartron - must direct people - on a better direction - really! with some more and better technical explanation - rather than commercial advertisment!!they only way to fix those problem is a complete re-design of coastlines - and deletion of default lwm water polygons around coasts - and repositioning of coastines - landclass to fill any voids left if any -there is no quick fix - and adjustments requires lots of work - by expertise scenery designers.ray

[michal 44]

That is why I don't get excited when people talk about 19 m mesh, etc. You make one aspect of scenery very good and all of a sudden other parts begin to suffer. Good example is USA Roads. I am afraid we still have decades to go to get uniformly good scenery.Michael J.WinXP-Home SP2,AMD64 3500+,Abit AV8,Radeon X800Pro,36GB Raptor,1GB PC3200,Audigy 2, Omega 2.7.90 (4xAA 16xAF)

[Guest Turnbull2000]

Hi Michael,Hope you don't mind me chipping in here :-) There is a terrain mesh called VFR Terrain designed to compliment the VFR Photographic scenery that accurately portrays every coastline, waterline and cliff face around England & Wales. I believe it

[Guest Fsfreeware]

Do not misunderstand;it is true that additional mesh - will increase the zig zag coastlines - features but . ..you have those anomalies - or - call it as you like - on default terrain also - only difference is as default terrain is less detailed - you do not see - as default terrain raise from the see level or lakes level - at much lower altitude than an addon terrain.really the addition to mesh terrain do not waste anything from default - terrain mesh - in this case - but infact will gain those elevation around coastline wich default terrain can not display.also - it is easy to fix those problems - especially if you have a photorealistic terrain coverage covering the area - you only have to eliminate those lwn polygons - by exclude switch you can exclude default coastlines - and voila - you are done - mesh is now full raised - and the photomesh will do the rest !it is a really different cup of tea - when you do not have a photorealistic scenery coverage - as you have to bother to many more apsects of the project - as for instance new land class fillings - new re-draw of coastlines - and this requires much more time - than doing the same work - under a photomesh - where you avoid the re-draw of coastlines and land class filling.ray

[JimmiG 244]

I have to agree, the VFR Terrain is one of the most advanced sceneries available at this time - 19m (from 5m source data), and accurate coasts, lakes etc. on a national scale. There are a few sceneries for the US that contain this, but they only cover tiny areas.

[scott967 62]

The main problem with improved mesh is with steep coastal areas. If the default coastline is not in the correct place, one of two things will be apparant:If the coastline is too far seaward, there will be a flat, sea-level portion of ground showing between the default coast and where the mesh starts.If the coastline is too far inland, the mesh will be forced to sea-level on the water side of the coast, causing a cliff effect. I've noticed sometimes the coastline is not perfectly placed over the water/land edge as well at these cliffs (one pixel off can cause the shore to seem like it is up the cliff).The fix is to exclude the default coastline in the default HL*.bgl and supply a new one, and remove offending water LWM flattens from the default HP*.bgl and supply new ones that match the revised coastline.Note: in some cases where an airport is right on the coast, it may be necessary to fix this as well (if MS put it in the wrong position or made the flatten under it too large). Also, default bridges may no longer match up. Default objects may also be misplaced (in the project I am working I ended up with many sail boats on land after fixing the coast).There are two approaches to fixing this.1. Obtain higher quality vector data and use this as a basis for creating new terrain vectors.2. Obtain higher quality map (raster image) data and trace the vector elements, or if lucky use a tool which can generate vector data based on color differences in the source image. One possibility is to load the mesh into the LWMViewer tool which can take a BMP screen shot of your mesh. This could be used as the source image for defining your coast (works better when the coast is steeper).A recent tutorial/FAQ was posted in the scenery design forum written by the author of the sbuilder tool which can help if you are interested in trying this yourself.scott s..

[Guest wathomas777]

Let's all try to remember one thing.Microsoft scenery was designed to work together, inaccuracies in shorelines, building placement, everything.On a default install, everything, while not being entirely accurate does work "together".If we "enhance" a certain aspect of the scenery, whether it be mesh, road placement, or anything else, we tend to expose the inaccuracies in other areas more clearly. This is especially true in mesh and road placement.The British Isles VFR package is unique in that it ehances EVERYTHING for a given area, so with the exception of hand drawn buildings, the whole scenery has a much more unified feel.As "simmers" we must always compare the anomolies to the overall feel of the package.Case in point. There are several high quality 72m renderings of New Zealand available. (FSGenesis, Raimundo's mesh, and a freeware mesh). All of them have better fidelity, but especially in the area around Christchurch, they show a river being MUCH higher than the surrounding ground, making the river appear to be like an elevated aquaduct.Now, a decision should be made. Do we keep the enhancements and live with the "flaws" or do we settle for the Microsoft default, and live with less fidelity.The choice is down to the individual simmer. The great thing about ALL these enhancements, is it shows what CAN be done, and inevitably, the Microsoft product continues to improve as the work of third party developers raises the expectations that Microsoft must meet to make the discriminating flight simulator happy.Microsoft may not be as "quick" about it as we would like, but I think that the improvements made since FS98 are a direct result of third party developers input and presence in the market.

[JimmiG 244]

Will - some good points. The new FSGenesis addon which is supposed to improve rivers *and* roads should work much better than FSRoads. Now if they also would release something to improve all coasts and lakes in the US it would be really amazing. They are also continuously improving their landclass addon, though it has a long way to go before it works perfectly with the road addons.This is why I prefer "regional" sceneries in FS rather than huge global or national sceneries. I don't care that much *where* I fly, the important thing is that the scenery must be good. For this reason some of my favorite sceneries are the photographic sceneries for Germany, Switzerland, England, Wales, parts of US (Megascenery) etc. as well as some regional generic sceneries with accurate coastlines, lakes, roads, rivers and landclass such as the freeware sceneries by Holger Sandman and others. This way I still have more than enough terrain to keep me busy for years, and it's all very detailed and all "elements" work together - coasts, lakes, roads etc.

[Guest wathomas777]

I agree.I purchased USA roads when it first came out, and although for the most part I am happy, the roads tend to create artifical lines in the water due to MS's notorious inaccuracies in shoreline data.In the past, this is something I have had to "live" with.I recently downloaded the American Data road set beta for Hawaii, and while the shape and placement of the "roads" is not nearly as accurate as the USA roads set, Markus has done a wonderful thing in allowing the user a great bit of flexibility on how his set is applied.One of the nicest features, in my opinion is to turn off any roads that cross water. This effectively eliminates "double bridges" across lakes and rivers, and more importantly, stops the roads from going in the water.Now granted, I now see roads dead end into the beach and then appear later coming out of the water, but in this case, I feel I have the best of both worlds.The roads don't "glaringly" highlight the shoreline inaccuracies, yet I get pretty nice roads inland. We all know that working with Flight Simulator is a compromise of sorts. The nice thing about the "best" packages out there is that you can configure them so that they give adequate fidelity in areas that they do NOT conflict, yet also can be turned off in areas where conflict occurs.A road dead heading into a beach, is much less distracting to me at altitude, than a double bridge that is drawn, or a road that meanders 1 mile off shore.

[Guest racartron]

There ya go again Ray, getting your knickers in a twist. All I did was to suggest Barry visit a forum that dealt specifically with mesh questions. Didn't say anything about buying something.BTW, he is already using FSGenesis so it only seems a logical next step to go to the "horses mouth" to get some info.Also, the re-design of coastlines is in fact being looked into -- guess where ;)-------------------Racartronit means something, but I just can't remember what