fsx-ms Mesh and Landclass

[Humpty 751]

Hi,

 

 After doing some mesh work for Xplane 10 , I went ahead and made one for FS9 / FSX which is a LOD11 (don't know what that means).  The same mesh works in both FS9 / FSX. 

 

This is the area I have done Dehradun / Kathmandu to Mt. Everest.  I have the forests / roads and railway for the whole of India. The coastline is pretty correct. Still some work to do. Not yet tested  Kathmandu / Mt. Everest.  still some things Like Bridges over sea / water are to be done.

 

The mesh looks very nice. Using 2011 ASRTER DEM. SRTM 2014 has some problems.

 

Will also do the SW after finishing the NE area. 

 

For me doing all this is very difficult but a colleague who is quite intelligent doing the whole thing, I am only doing the mesh as it's very easy.

 

More interested in doing areas with mountains / forests as that's where I love flying.

 

Rgds.

[ckyliu 1,749]

LOD = [terrain elevation mesh] Level Of Detail. LOD10 is 38m, which is the level of detail used for the USA in the default scenery (rest of world varies between LOD9-76m and LOD6-612m by default, although most of the Northern hemispher is at least LOD7-306m). The highest quality mesh available for FSX is typically LOD12-10m in the USA & EU and whilst FSX will support 1m mesh the viewing distance for this would be so short it wouldn't be worthwhile away from an airport.

 

You can make a very high LOD mesh but it's obviously only as good as the source DEM data. SRTM2 is 90m (typically downscaled to LOD9 for FSX by mesh developers) and SRTM3 is 30m (currently available in FSX at LOD10-38m using FreeMeshX). I don't know the resolution of ASRTER DEM you've used, but the LOD11 you compiled is 19m.

 

I'm not aware of any landclass products for India or Nepal, so you've done some great work here filling gaps that were previously sparse or low res data :-)

 

There's a lengthy article at http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.php?13844-Introduction-To-Terrain-Mesh that goes in to the technicalities in some detail.

[Humpty 751]

LOD = [terrain elevation mesh] Level Of Detail. LOD10 is 38m, which is the level of detail used for the USA in the default scenery (rest of world varies between LOD9-76m and LOD6-612m by default).

 

You can make a very high LOD mesh but it's obviously only as good as the source data, so SRTM2 is 90m (typically downscaled to LOD9 for FSX by mesh developers) and SRTM3 is 30m (currently available in FSX at 38m using FreeMeshX). I don't know the resolution of ASRTER DEM.

 

I'm not aware of any landclass products for India or Nepal, so you've done some great work here filling gaps that were previously sparse or low res data :-)

 

 Hi,

 

 So my mesh which is LOD11 with ASTERM DEM 1arc sec 30m should be better over the default and flying over Dehradun I saw the difference, thanks for the clarification.

 

 The land class only covers India atm. There are some forests areas still not done but most of the major wild life reserves and national parks are. 

 

Rgds

[ckyliu 1,749]

With a 30m DEM I would suggest compiling as LOD10-38m because it will improve performance in the sim. However, there is some visual improvement by oversampling to LOD11-19m; if you can compile different LODs for different areas, you could use LOD11 in just the mountainous regions.

[Humpty 751]

With a 30m DEM I would suggest compiling as LOD10-38m because it will improve performance in the sim. However, there is some visual improvement by oversampling to LOD11-19m; if you can compile different LODs for different areas, you could use LOD11 in just the mountainous regions.

 

I tried compiling LOD12 but the time it was taking was too much to be doing it on a laptop but yes I will try two tiles @LOD13 I guess it should be good.

[Humpty 751]

I just made a LOD13 Mesh for N30 E78-79. Took a lot of time just for two files. Let's see what it looks like now.

[ckyliu 1,749]

There's no benefit to LOD12 or LOD13 unless you have very high resolution DEM source. It'll just slow the sim down (you're drawing more points to render the same level of detail). Also it will only be visible close up, since it is hard coded in to FSX what LODs display at what distances.

[Humpty 751]

Oh, didn't know that. Let's see what the LOD13 shows as. I think Aster DEM seemed pretty good at LOD11. Hmm about the fps not sure I had any issues. But still to test.

[Humpty 751]

Trying the LOD13 now in FSX-SE ICAO - VIDN

Ooops, ASTER DEM has a big hole. I will try and mix SRTM + ASTER

[Humpty 751]

Why is my autogen way above the ground ? I think this is something to do with the Mesh, I put the mesh right at the bottom of the SceneryLibrary but I am still noticing autogen all in the air hehehe this is so funny.

 

Other thing I have noticed is the inland water has my roads wow FSX . Guess I will insert the inland waterpoly shapefile and check. 

 

I got the extrusion bridges but noticed a few of them still need to be done.

[Humpty 751]

Both SRTM 1 arc and ASTER 1 arc seem to have holes in fact elevation issue in similar places but SRTM. Though the mountains look very nice. Next try will viewfinder panorama DEM.

 

Will update shortly

[Humpty 751]

Being a holiday here i am making the viewfinder 3 arc mesh, let's see how the NE area looks.

 

BTW does anyone know how to remove the default city textures in FSX ? it look yuks

[Humpty 751]

Some issues generating using Viewfinder DEM so going back to SRTM 1arc. These SRTM and ASTER have craters at certain places but overall the mountains are pretty good. 

[Humpty 751]

Just added N18 E74 and N17 E74 where there was a crater , seems like it is ok now, this is SRTM 2014 1arc.  So the same tiles also be generated for Xplane 10. Other few tiles still left for the south, but I will make them.

 

I can do a LOD13 but the compilation time is just way too much. But I am going to try compiling on my other laptop which is an i5 4th so let's see how fast it compiles.

 

So far SbuilderX is pretty good with shapefiles but some abnormalities are observed that has to edited manually.

[Humpty 751]

Mesh looks good now. Still some issues with the roads in the rivers.