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BeechPapa

MK KSNA Remove Autogen Exclude

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Since there are no payware versions, MK KSNA is my only decent option for John Wayne. It's wonderful scenery, almost payware quality, but the autogen exclude is gigantic and turns orange county into a baron wasteland. I have tried loading the AFX_KSNA file into ADEX, but the only autogen excludes I see are right over the airport. I cannot find a way to remove the autogen excludes that go on for miles around the airport. Anyone have success getting the surrounding autogen back for this beautiful freeware airport?

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I have gone through the same pains. No solution available.

Disappointing news. Just curious, but did you decide to keep using the scenery anyway?

 

I think the lack of autogen might be less problematic for departures because of the steep climb and noise abatement - I usually don't have much chance to look out the window till I'm near the coast. Approaches would be sadly desolate though. It's hard to go back to default KSNA now, but the lack of autogen is a major drawback.

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Does it have a large photoscenery that simply doesn't have autogen annotations? If so you could try disabling that and then you'd just see landclass textures (which would have autogen).

 

Also it could be a ground poly excluding autogen, is this a fairly old scenery, like before ModelConverterX and the ground poly wizard? The GP wizard has provisions to prevent autogen supression but FS2002 GPs done the old fashioned way (by tweaking the .asm files) had a horrible problem with knocking out autogen for sometimes miles around in FSX. If that's the case you could also disable the GP but the result may be worse than the autogen supression, lol. Might look OK with a good afcad though?

 

Jim

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Thanks for the suggestions, Jim. I have to admit I am a total green horn when it comes to scenery modification. My limited experience with ADEX came when I tried to modernize old Malta FS9 scenery for FSX with custom autogen. That didn't go too well, lol  - my sparse and sporadically placed autogen somehow caused massive stutters. So please bear with my lack of knowledge. 

 

MK KSNA does indeed have photoscenery coverage without autogen, but the photoscenery background does not present itself in the Scenery folder as a BGL of any sort. That's the part that is so frustrating. I have been able to turn off aerial backgrounds before for other airports, but I simply don't see where it's hidden this time. I have turned off all sorts of BGL files without any luck. Using ADEX, I can open up the AFX_KSNA file inside the Scenery folder for the airport, but when I go to the List->Excludes menu in ADEX I only see a few minor excludes for "Taxisigns Trigger Windsocks" - no autogen or ground polys. This airport seems to have been constructed using some baffling techniques. It is not old scenery though, it was made in 2011. http://mk-studios.com.pl/index.html

 

I live somewhat close to John Wayne and have taken off/landed from there, so for sentimental reasons I keep struggling to get this working. It's my second time installing it now (after giving up on it a year ago) and my second time going through these fits. I actually just sent a request through their website offering money to solve the problem. It's a little desperate, but I really do think the airport is payware quality, and it's certainly one of the few if not the best KSNA out there.

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Yes I kept it. It is a core airport for my sim operations - flying Air California routes with B-737-200 and BAe 146-200. I have Aerosoft´s US Cities L.A. and it is indeed a blasted area around the airport, but it is of payware quality and cannot be abandoned. As I said, disableling and removing different bgls and varying scenery order did not bring any results.

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The issue is that FSX tends to wipe out autogen if a photoreal background is laid out. The way to overcome this is complex and requires literally planting trees and placing houses by hand. In the case of this SNA scenery one would need to do the 'annotating technique' as mentioned or overwrite it with a new ADE file which would place trees and houses.

 

Shez


Shez Ansari

Windows 11; CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K; GPU: EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1080Ti 11GB; MB: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5; RAM: 16GB; HD: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD, Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD; Display: ASUS 4K 28", Asus UHD 26"

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The problem is that the photo gound texture has been created using FS8 models, files gndbase.bgl and gndbase_LM.bgl.

 

Unfortunately they have placed the model without using NoAutogenSuppression so it removes a huge swathe of autogen.

 

One solution is to place model trees and buildings, another is to create your own photo textures using Resample from the FSX SDK.

 

George

 

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FS2002 GPs are not "placed" George, the coords are specified when you export from the FS2002 gamepack or in the MCX GP wizard so NoAutogenSuppression doesn't work, otherwise you could just decompile the placement, add it, and recompile.

 

This airport doesn't have a resampled photoreal, it has a large GP textured with aerial imagery (which is suppressing a heck of a lot of autogen). Making a photoreal and adding autogen wouldn't help, the GP would suppress any autogen you added on the photoreal just the same as it does on the LC textures. If you disable the GP (13 files in total) you can stop the autogen suppression, but then you'll find a massive "coral" apron that's specified in the APX which basically covers the whole airport. I'd call it "unfixable" without the source files. You'd need to re-export the GP model and run it through the MCX GP wizard. Aside from that, the only thing you could do is place trees and buildings with ADE or Instant Scenery and to fill the massive suppressed area with placed objects would completely devastate performance (not to mention requiring a month's work).

 

It's pretty nice just the way it is though, the MSEv2 guys would never even know the difference :smile:

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I agree Jim.

 

If one were to create photo ground textures, the only things recoverable would be the buildings since the GPs are misplaced with respect to their real world position.

 

I think you were being conservative with your estimate of a month's work ;-)

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LOL, yeah, probably conservative indeed, and at my pace 5 yrs :smile:

That seems like an accurate estimate for me as well. People would be using quantum computers as I continued to hand place houses and offices around sim-world Santa Ana. lol. The performance,as you mention, would also take a major hit. 

 

I thought maybe this might be as simple as cropping a photoreal once I found it, but based on everyone's input (and much thanks to all of you for explaining the design methods used) I guess an afcad is the only choice.

 

You're right though Jim, the MSE guys would never know the difference and probably think I'm crazy. Sometime I wish I was just a photoreal kind of guy, FSX life would be simpler that way and probably a heck of a lot more accurate. Ah well. It's still a beautiful airport and as Nurmblitz said, "it is of payware quality and cannot be abandoned". 

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For me autogen is more important than photoreal + featureless flat ground. With the new packages like FTX Global and previously GEX etc. the ground from high up is pretty decent anyway.

 

Shez


Shez Ansari

Windows 11; CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K; GPU: EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1080Ti 11GB; MB: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5; RAM: 16GB; HD: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD, Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD; Display: ASUS 4K 28", Asus UHD 26"

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I agree with both of you on the barren photoreal, although I admit to making a few and then using the sim like google earth at times when I've been particularly interested in some part of the world, most recently Aspen/Leadville CO, and before that I had a thing going on with Bonneville Salt Flats (found the speedway. lol). The salt flats didn't look bad at all without autogen - Aspen, well...

 

Any thoughts about updating your FS9 KSNA for FSX/P3D Shez? I mean it's gotta be passing through your mind with this thread and all, right? :smile:

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I could update it but it is in a queue. I am finishing KLGB FSX (which is taking longer because it has suddenly sprouted a new terminal :rolleyes: ), and I have a side project going to finish the Fedex ramp at KMEM, along with KRIC. And of course the big KDTW for SSJ!

 

Maybe if the developer agrees we could decompile the BGLs and update it?

 

Shez


Shez Ansari

Windows 11; CPU: Intel Core i7-8700K; GPU: EVGA GEFORCE GTX 1080Ti 11GB; MB: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 5; RAM: 16GB; HD: Samsung 960 Pro 512GB SSD, Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD; Display: ASUS 4K 28", Asus UHD 26"

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