Sandy edging on ponds and waterways

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

After some searching, it appears that no one has asked why ALL waterways, farm ponds --- anywhere there is water --- is surrounded by sandy beaches.  Does anyone know if there is a way to lessen this or do away with it entirely except on coastal areas?  Maybe I am asking too much, but it appears that with the great scenery otherwise, this could be accomplished as well.  

Overall, I am very happy with the X-Plane scenery, but this has been a question I have asked myself many times, but never lasted long enough to get to the forum.  Getting too old to remember that long!

 

John

[alpilotx 505]

Because we never found the time to improve this (from Lamianrs side) ... indeed we already looked it at a few times, but it usually got pushed down by other, more important topics (which happens quite often in life) ... The whole beach tech is already quite "old", and never really got an overhaul. It would at least need to be made a bit more water-type (lakes, ponds, rives, sea coast could be distinguished most of the time on the data side of things) and climate dependent ... Well, I hope we can address this one day 8because you are not the only one who notice) ...

 

But at the moment, you have very little "handles" to address it yourself (especially when you want to differentiate).

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

 

 

at the moment, you have very little "handles" to address it yourself

 

Thanks Andras - I assumed as much, but now I know for sure.

 

John

[strider1 575]

Because we never found the time to improve this (from Lamianrs side) ... indeed we already looked it at a few times, but it usually got pushed down by other, more important topics (which happens quite often in life) ... The whole beach tech is already quite "old", and never really got an overhaul. It would at least need to be made a bit more water-type (lakes, ponds, rives, sea coast could be distinguished most of the time on the data side of things) and climate dependent ... Well, I hope we can address this one day 8because you are not the only one who notice) ...

 

But at the moment, you have very little "handles" to address it yourself (especially when you want to differentiate).

 

The sandy beaches don't really bother me, what bothers me is the 90 degree angles you see in the scenery. I wish ben could come up with an algorithm to smooth out the sharp edges !

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

 

 

90 degree angles

 

Oh yeah... That too!

[alpilotx 505]

The sandy beaches don't really bother me, what bothers me is the 90 degree angles you see in the scenery. I wish ben could come up with an algorithm to smooth out the sharp edges !

You mean along the coastline? Well, of course that doesn't looks so perfect in some places ... but the problem is twofold:

• first, quite often the raw data itself is not as good as one would like ... Coastline data comes from OpenStreetmap (OSM), which is - in places - still quite inaccurate (though, improving - and everybody can help to improve)
• second, even if the OSM based coastline is precise (which it often is), X-Plane can't depict it with "unlimited" detail because water is part of the base triangle mesh! Now, the finer the details along the coast get (induced by OSM coastline vector data), the more triangles this induces along this line in the mesh .... and believe me, thic can really go out of control in regions,where there is lots of water detail in OSM (oooh, I can show you lots of such places!!) ... So, we need to do at least a bit of simplification (which again can induce inaccuracies and sharp corners) to halfway keep this issue (of exploding triangle counts) under control ... Thats life (at least in the X-Plane way of things).

[marty2756 65]

The sandy beaches don't really bother me, what bothers me is the 90 degree angles you see in the scenery. I wish ben could come up with an algorithm to smooth out the sharp edges !

wasn't this going to be adressed with some technology called tessellation ? I remember Ben someday mentioned  something about it on dev blog. (never said when obviously)

[w9nwrwi 26]

I also imagine that those of us that added the numerous lakes within Wisconsin and Minnesota, to name a couple of areas, are guilty in some way.

 

After clicking in the hundreds (thousands?) of nodes required to outline a lake we probably got sloppy. I will admit to going back and cleaning up some of those corners. I already wore out one mouse, the left click button.

 

Of course one is free to go into it (OSM) and do an edit, but then ya still gotta wait for the next recut I guess eh?

 

Chuck

[Paraffin 2,197]

This is a constant botheration for those of us who fly in places like the Pacific Northwest coast from Washington up through BC to Alaska. Thousands of small islands, all outlined in an ugly tan color. Looks nothing like that in reality.

 

It's almost as bad in the tropics, places like the Caribbean and South Pacific, but at least the sand color isn't completely out of place. 

 

I understand (I think) the problems involved. And ideally, one day,we'd also get some bathymetric data in the sim, so shallow clear water in the tropics could have a turquoise hue instead of the entire world looking the same.

 

But if nothing else can be done in the short term, it would be great if there was just an automatic palette color shift for areas like the PNW, so we'd still have the ugly outlines but they wouldn't look so bad in a dark gray color. Probably the UK and northern Europe would benefit from that too. 

 

 

 

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

Hey, I didn't mean cause a problem.  I just thought it was unusual to fly along over beautiful scenery to suddenly see a three sided farm pond with a beach all the way around it or a long river with beach all down both sides as far as the eye can see. I realize that cutting the beach in one type of scenery probably would cut beaches everywhere. This is, considering the totality of it, a very minor thing. Maybe I should fly down there and see what is sunbathing on those beaches!  I am very happy with XP10.30sr1!

 

John

[Janov 2,383]

And if there is a special place where it keeps bothering you very much, just create a dummy airport in WED, use an invisible helicopter pad (so WED accepts the airport) and make one HUGE exclusion zone, excluding only "beaches". Now you have a sharp, straight edge between the land and the water. Doesn´t really look very natural, either, but at least no sand.

 

I have also used the above technique when placing airports that are near rivers, canals or lakefronts. Just make one exclusion zone for beaches to encompass a lot of the troubled area.

 

Just don´t upload this "bandaid" fix to Laminar, it goes against the line of "curing the problem, not the symptoms".

 

Jan

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

 

 

create a dummy airport in WED

 

Interesting... wonder if the exclusion zone could cover most of the interior of the U.S.?  :huh:

[alpilotx 505]

wasn't this going to be adressed with some technology called tessellation ? I remember Ben someday mentioned  something about it on dev blog. (never said when obviously)

Tessellation would not refine costline detaile .... at least that was definitely not its primary goal, and I don't think it will help with coastlines (as it can't really "invent" refinements between water / land triangles)

[tonywob 4,770]

I've been experimenting with actually adding beaches and tidal mud flats into the scenery as shown below:





I do this by first excluding the X-Plane beaches from along the coast and then adding in some transparent textures into the water for beaches and mud flats from data in OSM (It would be great if they were actually tidal). 

 

 

 

Interesting... wonder if the exclusion zone could cover most of the interior of the U.S.? 

 

I agree that the default beaches placed along rivers/streams are too big, e.g. if you have a small stream running through a residential area, some of the houses will end up either on the stream edge beach or actually in the water as it's too wide. In my own experiments, I remove all the beaches as I don't particularly like them, but I think/hope the problem will eventually be addressed by LR and exclusions won't be necessary.

 

 

 

First, quite often the raw data itself is not as good as one would like ... Coastline data comes from OpenStreetmap (OSM), which is - in places - still quite inaccurate (though, improving - and everybody can help to improve)

 

Indeed, I've seen some cases of very crudely mapped coastal areas and rivers. In some places, I've seen streams/rivers over 1km away from where they should be, cutting through houses, roads. Unfortunately, these are now inside X-Plane and HD Mesh v2 as well. I've done my share and fixed a few, so at least in my case, the areas will be fixed next time the scenery is recut. Another problem is these "crudely-mapped' streams are mapped as quite long straight lines instead of following the true more curved path. There are also many other problems in OSM as well, such as people mapping drains and ditches as streams. If you see any of these, please do fix them, it only takes a few minutes  ^_^

 

 

 

 

 

[Old_As_Dirt 160]

 

 

I think/hope the problem will eventually be addressed by LR and exclusions won't be necessary.

 

Is there a way to exclude all "beaches" temporarily so that I could see what it would look like without any?   I really think things would look better without this "feature".  

 

John