FSX - Blue Sky Scenery - Water Going Uphill

[aspenleaf 4]

I'm hoping someone can help me solve a problem I'm having with Blue Sky photo scenery. 

This is the first time I'm trying photo scenery, and I fly mostly in the Yellowstone and Glacier National Park areas.  Almost all of the lakeshores and larger river banks have water going up the slopes surrounding them.  In addition to the Blue Sky scenery, I'm using Nuvecta Landscapes for Wyoming and Montana. 

I'm at a loss as to what is causing the problem, so I'm hoping someone here has experience in correcting it and can point me in the right direction. Thanks.

[HighBypass 2,339]

I'm assuming Nuvecta supplies a detailed mesh? Not familiar with the product yet. Photoreal scenery will just be placed on top of whatever mesh is there I believe, unless it comes with its own mesh.

Even with the highly detailed mesh supplied with the payware VFR Real photoscenery for the UK, water can and does do some strange things. Look at the step in the reservoir...

Your problem may just be "one of those things" sadly.

[klamal 282]

1 hour ago, aspenleaf said:

I'm at a loss as to what is causing the problem, so I'm hoping someone here has experience in correcting it and can point me in the right direction. Thanks.

My bet would be that this is just a limitation of the "effect" of water.  There probably is no notion of a direction of "flowage".  At the very least, I'd bet it doesn't take into account the effect of gravity - whether it's flowing uphill or down.  Or, maybe when water masks area created, a direction can be specified but either hasn't or has been set the wrong way?  I have never checked myself whether it's possible to do that in the SDK.

[aspenleaf 4]

Nuvecta simply adds autogen trees and buildings to photo scenery.  It just uses the autogen items you have installed and generates files that are supposed to be accurate to the vegetation and buildings indicated on satellite imagery they use, although there are trees in almost all of the rivers and in the water along most of the lakeshores.

It sounds like it may be a problem with the mesh.  I forgot to mention that I am using a 10m mesh for the USA, although I have disabled that and tried it with the default mesh that came with FSX and the problem persists.  I've tried various mesh resolution and complexity settings in the Scenery tab of settings, and it had no effect on the problem.  Too bad really, because at altitude it looks spectacular, but I like to fly a Beaver floatplane and spend a lot of time on bodies of water.

[scianoir 610]

I guess the terrain mesh would have to be extremely precise to avoid seeing this water climbing effect in all situations. As has already been mentioned even highly detailed mesh can be associated with some anomalies but, if you are flying floatplanes, then any water anomalies are going to be even more evident than if you were just looking down on the scenery from altitude. I have only done about 100 hours of simulator floatplane flying but I have noticed these anomalies fairly frequently when landing on lakes and rivers and have even come across step changes in the level of water bodies after landing on them! If more detailed mesh is available, you could try that but, although I can understand your frustration, it may be something that you just have to learn to live with. 

Bill

[aspenleaf 4]

Here's an update for those interested:  I installed a 5m mesh of the USA to see if that fixed the problem.  It did not.  I uninstalled the Nuvecta Landscapes Montana program to see if had any effect on the boundaries of the bodies of water.  It did not.  So I think the problem lies in the way that FSX determines the boundaries of a body of water.  On almost every one, it makes it larger than it should be by a small amount.  Does anyone know how to correct this globally, without changing every single lake or river?  It sees to be happening everywhere, and by the same amount.

[electricman 5]

Default mesh for USA is 10m, try reducing the mesh to 38m or even 76m but reduce first the texture resolution to 1m, if this is set below 1m then it will reset the mesh resolution back to 19m. If this doesn't help then maybe you have FTX vector installed and may have airport backgrounds that cause this effect.

Herman

[aspenleaf 4]

I was just flying about 100 feet above the shorlines of lakes in Glacier National Park, and I can clearly see the correct boundary of the lake through the translucent animated water that FSX adds.  It appears that FSX is indicating a higher water level than should be in the lakes, almost as if there was a flood and the lake level rose by a couple of feet.  But it happens on every lake, so there must be something in a cfg file that is causing this, and presumably can be changed.  The lakes are at different elevations above sea level, yet they all display this anomaly.

[aspenleaf 4]

I got it worked out.  In the Terrain.cfg file, I changed the hydro polys sections related to lakes from flatten mode=slope to flatten mode=none, which causes the water level to cling to the mesh.  I've flown in several areas and the problem seems to be corrected.