Surprised

[Guest]

I have been having an ongoing dialogue with Dick Ludowise (rhumbaflappy ) about the removal of coastline flattening poly's from FS2002. These are the poly's that describe the coastlines and also drag elevation down to zero. It appears from this and all the other forums that I am one of the few who have any concerns.My concern stems from the fact that without a method of removing or at least modifying them it is impossible to import any photo scenery into FS2002 that contains detailed coastline information. You are stuck with MS's rather crude coastline data as these poly's will drag all terrain down to zero elevation. I would be interested to know if anyone else is facing the same problem and whether they have managed to find a workaround.Regards,Tosh

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Tosh.Your scenery area may need to have replacements made for the default 'hyp' BGLs, in order to get the effect you desire. You can locate which BGLs need replacing by trial and error. The old defaults could have the extension renamed to ".old", and then they could be restored, if needed.I think your area has 13 'hyp' files, and not all may have to be redone. Your photoreal slices actually give you the LOD13 Areas watermasking shapes. They are already 256x256, so the points need to be taken from these for each Area. Ken "WeBad" Nelson was working on a simple tool to make a clipboard copyable list of points when mouse-clicked on a 256x256 image. I've made TdfCalc2, TDFCalc3, LandCalc and LandCalc2 to help identify points, locations and CUSTOM texture names.A great tool we could use, would be one which would take a black and white matermask ( properly named by the resample ), and convert it to the proper LWM point code with the Area and Cell properly identified. My programing skills aren't up to that, but it would solve the problem of incorrect flattens, by allowing you to rebuild the code much quicker than hand-coding.Microsoft made a mistake by not allowing the 'undoing' of flattening LWMs... unlike VTPs that can be 'undone'."Davidg58" and "knnygar" have run into the same problem, and are experimenting with re-meshing using tranparent flatten polys ( and 2 point polys ). -----------------------------Technically, an Area could be remeshed with tiny 3 or 4 point flattens. A four point system would yeild the equivalent of an LOD12 mesh. A program to interpolate ( resample ) the elevations could be made to spit out the BGLC code. The use of macros would help, so that a codeline could read:ReMesh 1223, 1225, 1226,... etc...Such a Macro call would require 64 parameters, hence the need for a program to produce the Macro calling code. You wouldn't want to type in 64 parameters for each LOD13 Area much less try to figure out the values, but a computer program would cough up the code in seconds from a simple list of, say, 8 elevations to be interpolated.Then, that code could be tweaked for the correct water level at the coasts, or another warermask made to level the edges of the code you just made.I don't know if there would be any framerate 'hit', but I suspect it would be on the nature of mesh.Dick

[Guest]

HiI started my project almost 2 years ago for fs2000, I spent quite a while hand building a greyscale elevation map (>10000 points!) but after completing it in the end lost interest, seemed the only way to get an acceptable mesh was with terrabuilder, which hit frame rates so much the sim was unusable. I am a registered user of tb pro and after what seemed an age waiting for the new version for fs2002 I still don

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi David.What is the LOD of the mesh under the area you are working on? I ask because I think the Mesh does effect the placement, and look of flattens.I hope to experiment some more with flattens this week.Dick

[Guest]

Hi David,The mesh terrain plugin for Architect does a great job of creating mesh from greyscale images using resample. Fully FS2002 compatible and all parameters are adjustable.Now, if there were no coastline poly's, everything would be wonderful.Regards,Tosh

[Guest]

Hi Tosh, Quite right, I have created the mesh with FSTerrain, but as you point out, when it reaches the coast everything is pulled down to sea level. The airport I am attempting is approx half mile from the sea close to a 100m hill, according MS it is "half a meter" from the sea, surrounded by flat terrain. So this issue is quite important to me. As soon as you leave the runway the sea flows uphill to meet it, not exactly as real as it gets!.Dick, I removed the bgl for the mesh, has no effect. I tried a four point polly 0,0 1,0 1,1 0,1 and it looks about 1/16th of the area, I tried a three point polly 0,0 255,0 255,255 and can count approx 16 ridges on the diagonal, this is set on land in the middle of the sea.David

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all.My mistake here, again. 64x64 polys perLOD13...4096 parameters...whew!Dick

[Guest]

Hi Dick,>I think your area has 13 'hyp' files, and not all may have >to be redone. Your photoreal slices actually give you the >LOD13 Areas watermasking shapes. They are already 256x256, >so the points need to be taken from these for each Area. All 20,000+ slices ??>>Ken "WeBad" Nelson was working on a simple tool to make a >clipboard copyable list of points when mouse-clicked on a >256x256 image. I've made TdfCalc2, TDFCalc3, LandCalc and >LandCalc2 to help identify points, locations and CUSTOM >texture names. >>A great tool we could use, would be one which would take a >black and white matermask ( properly named by the resample >), and convert it to the proper LWM point code with the Area >and Cell properly identified. My programing skills aren't up >to that, but it would solve the problem of incorrect >flattens, by allowing you to rebuild the code much quicker >than hand-coding. Forgive me for saying so but we need a tool that is a lot more user friendly than that. It should be a graphical interface that can read the .hyp files and allow us to modify/remove the poly's and recompile the file. Without this it is not feasible to create sceneries for anything much bigger than an airport.>"Davidg58" and "knnygar" have run into the same problem, and >are experimenting with re-meshing using tranparent flatten >polys ( and 2 point polys ).I too have managed to add to, raise and lower the poly's but have not succeeded in subtracting from or excluding them.I dream about the launch of Gmax PLUS, the design tool that allows you to modify ALL aspects of the scenery engine as well as ATC, Weather, and Aircraft Design. And it will be free to all current owners of FS2002 and MS promises to stick with this technology through the FS2010 release.Just think. We would have nothing better to do than design scenery!!Regards,Tosh

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi fellas.The problems are caused by the 'hyp' BGLs. It makes sense to me, that for a very large project, get rid of the offending 'hyp' BGLs, in the appropriate scenery folder, by renaming their extension to 'hyp??????.old'. The offenders could be found by a process of elimination, and the bounds found by 'BGLAnalyze' or some other decompiler.You'd have to make new, transparent LWM BGLs to change the coastal elevations anyways.For smaller projects, the problem remains.Dick

[Guest]

Is anybody continuing to find a solution to this problem, or given it up as a lost cause?David

[Guest]

Hi David,No, I haven't given up yet as I consider a solution to be critical.I have attached an image of a program created by Mazakazu Irie for FS2000 called "Coastline Editor". You are probably familiar with it. It does exactly what we need but only for FS2000. I have tried to contact the author to see if he might consider a rewrite for FS2002 but so far have had no luck finding him.The image does however give a good look at the extent of the problem. This image shows the flattening poly's used for the US Virgin Islands and in this program can be graphically modified/removed and recompiled. Imagine doing this with hand coding. And in my own case this map represents maybe 10% of what I would have to modify for my project. Unfortunately I think we will be seeing FS2004 before a solution is found. Then the rules will change again.Regards,Tosh