Stange scenery display

[Guest johng]

My scenery for South America has gone haywire. The airports and lakes are all on strange elevations above the surrounding area and mountains are displaying in a peculiar manner. I have (hopefully) attached a screenshot showing a typical scene. Any suggestions?

[Holger 0]

Hi John,looks like a faulty add-on mesh to me. I know of a couple that create this effect in North America but, obviously, you "found" one that does this further south.Mesh files created with the SRTM2BGL utility may end up with large areas of sea-level sections outside of the intended coverage area if the mesh maker isn't careful (and doesn't check his work with one the mesh viewing tools). In those places, only airfields and lakes will remain at their fixed altitude. The odd moving walls in the distance are the transition from the add-on mesh to the low-res default mesh to which FS switches automatically beyond a certain distance from the user aircraft.To find the faulty file I'd suggest disabling all installed add-on mesh files and then re-enabling them individually or in small groups until you find the problem file (saving a flight situation above the problem area helps with this task). Keep in mind that the mesh file you're looking for does not necessarily have to be a South America mesh file; e.g., there was an Alaska mesh by Rob Gainer that flattened everything south to Mexico. Please let us know who the culprit is so that other users don't have to repeat the tedious searching.Good luck!Cheers, Holger

[Guest johng]

Thanks Holger. I'll start on the disabling process now. Its going to be a long proceedure since I have so much stuff added that FS9 takes forever to load. By the way, when FS9 loads each time it goes through the "completing set up" etc dialogue as though I have made a change to the scenery. This adds to the startup time and I wonder if you have come across this before?

[Holger 0]

Hi John,check out the utility I mentioned in this thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=274859&page=It'll help with finding faulty or duplicate scenery.cfg entries.Cheers, Holger

[ahinterl 1]

Many parts in "my" FS world look similar (New Zealand, for instance).It's the water bodies that are at misplaced elevations, either too high, or below ground in a valley.But that's rather normal I think: you replace the (faulty) default mesh with a better one. Mesh elevation data changes this way, but the water bodies' doesn't, so what should make the waters synchronize to the new mesh elevations?Airports, water bodies, mesh etc. all are completely separate objects, independent from each other, with their own metadata such as elevation etc. If you change one, the others remain unaffected, giving strange views sometimes.From time to time I try to do something in this area to make parts of my scenery better, but then I let go because of the sheer complexity of everything scenery related...Andreas

[Holger 0]

Hi Andreas,good point about the general issues that arise from adding a more accurate add-on mesh to the coarse and often inaccuarte default landscape with fixed lake and airfield elevations.However, John's problem is clearly different and only occurs with those faulty mesh files. It's characterized by a completely flat landscape (usually at sea level), with only lakes and airfields sticking out, and those massive walls in the distance that recede when one moves toward them.A similar issue can occur with flatten files that extend beyond their intended coverage but in those cases the lakes and airfield aprons would be at the same level as the surrounding landscape (with only the airfield runway(s) and buildings floating in the air)Cheers, Holger

[Guest johng]

Hi Holger and AndreasI have found the problem file (fortunately a recently installed one!)I can't recall where it came from having deleted the "readme" but deleting the file nz-islands-ngsrtm.bgl has rectified the situation. Do you have any solution to my other query,ie FS9 wanting to go through the process of installing new scenery every time I open it?

[Holger 0]

Hi John,glad you got that solved; thanks for letting us know the file in question.Have you tried the scenery.cfg checker that I link to in my post above?Cheers, Holger

[Guest CapHavoc]

Howdy Andreas,The "problem" with regards to New Zealand has been rectified with the recent release of Christan Stock's new vector elevation data (as opposed to SRTM) mesh (two versions: the 150m and 75m are freeware and the 40m and 20m are payware) AND NZ Topo (payware). For more information, see: http://www.redbarent.com/ If you spend anytime flying in NZ airspace, these two items are a must have.

[Guest CapHavoc]

Howdy JohnG,Could be either a duplicate scenery entry ... or ... a misnumbered scenery area. Seen this happen sometimes with automatic scenery installers; instead of a three digit scenery area number (eg: 041) it writes a two digit entry instead (41). Just a thought.

[Guest johng]

Thanks all,I haven't been here for a couple of days but I will try out all the suggestions.I have Flightsim Manager and checked the scenery for faults. Perhaps it doesn't do what Holgers suggested link does?. I do have the Red Baron Mesh installed and it looks good. I wish that there could now be a similar replacement for the current SRTM mesh I have for Australia.

[Guest johng]

Hi Holger,I put the fsscenery.cfg file in with the scenery.cfg file in FS9 and ran it. I assume that it ran OK even though a new scenery.cfg file was created almost immediately. I looked through it and all the areas and layers match and there don't seem to be any duplicates. FS9 still wants to go through the new scenery instal dialogue though. This is obviously not a major problem, just a nuisance and if there is not an easy way to fix I'll just let sleeping dogs lie!