Scenery questions from a beginner

[Jimmy RFR 406]

My apologies if this is common, or if this addressed somewhere.  My searches through the various sources that I'm aware of at this point didn't turn up anything!

 

1) When using the W2XP osm+ag packages from Simheaven, I get trees growing though my osm buildings.  This is more and more noticeable the higher I turn up the rendering settings for trees.  Is this normal?  Do I issue the residents of XP sim-land free chainsaws?  Have I installed something wrong?

 

My scenery_packs.ini file (with all the custom airports I've installed above snipped out) looks like so:

....
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/Global Airports/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KLAL - Lakeland (airshow version)/
SCENERY_PACK_DISABLED Custom Scenery/w2xp_Canada/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/w2xp_US-Midwest/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/w2xp_US-Northeast/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/w2xp_US-Pacific/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/w2xp_US-South/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/w2xp_US-West/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/w2xp_Canada_osm-ag/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/ff_library/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/R2_Library/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/world-models/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/OpenSceneryX/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzz_Treelines_Farms_North_America_v2/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/zzz_hd_global_scenery3/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KSEA Demo Area/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/KSEA Demo Terrain/
SCENERY_PACK Custom Scenery/LOWI Demo Area/

2)  This is a more generic question.  Last night I flew from CYPA to CYEG.  I'm very familiar with the route, having traveled it via auto at least 5 - 6 times a year for the last decade and a half.  Although there are areas where the land is pristine bush / grassland, there is a ton of farmland as well.  However, none of that shows in the sim.  It was all grassland and trees, pretty much the whole way.  So that said, I've spent a lot of time in FSX creating landclass from various data sources, some of it by hand, some of it through playing with various automation methods. Buuuuut, in XP, is there anyway to improve the landclass / land use data?  Is there an important add-on I'm missing here?  Is there a method to create your own?

[tonywob 4,769]

Hi Jimmy, see answers below:

 

1) It can happen yes, but it's not normal and shouldn't be so frequent. Exclusions (areas for including default scenery) can only be rectangular and aren't very precise. The more precise you make them, the more rectangles needed, and the more memory and loading time required. Trees did used to seep through occasionally. I think there is more likely to actually be a bug in World2XPlane 0.7.2 or the config simheaven used, as your scenery order is fine. What is happening is the default scenery below is seeping through and conflicting with the buildings. I've indicated in the other post that World2XPlane has a growing list of issues to look at for the next version. The issue shouldn't occur when not using the +AG sceneries, but outside of Europe, the scenery can then look a little bare.

 

2) The landclass is defined in the mesh and not something controlled by World2XPlane. It's not easy to change or modify the mesh/landclass (unless you really know what you're doing). If you want to look into it, then there is a tool from LR called Meshtool, but it's not a very user friendly application. If you know of any decent data for the area you'd like to change, then it might be worth letting AlpilotX know (www.alpilotx.net), and maybe he'll use it in his next mesh update.

[Jimmy RFR 406]

1) It can happen yes, but (snip)

 

Thanks for the response Tony.  I suspect it's could have something to do with Simheaven's config, since the autogen in question that has trees through it in this version isn't even there in the current download.  I just wanted to eliminate the possibility that I'm doing something wrong!

 

 

 

If you want to look into it, then there is a tool from LR called Meshtool, but it's not a very user friendly application. If you know of any decent data for the area you'd like to change, then it might be worth letting AlpilotX know (www.alpilotx.net), and maybe he'll use it in his next mesh update.

 

I read part of the manual for Meshtool... looks like a very complex tool to learn. I once worked on a project where I took a bunch of detailed land class data for a very large region in Saskatchewan, converted to vector, and then processed for display in FSX.  I ended up dropping the idea; it looked great for forests, but for farmland/grassland, the data was detailed enough that it was heavily fragmented and didn't look great with FSX's sharp edges.  Although it did look cool in how it showed the road allowances through farmland, much more realistic.  I still have all of my QGIS project files, I'll perhaps take a look at it again.

 

However, for general use, it'd obviously be much better to have built into the HD mesh.  Do you know what sort of format AIpilotX needs for his land use data?