Creating a 'valley'

[Guest]

I would like to construct a road which passes partially around and partially under the airfield via a tunnel. As such I want to 'dig' a valley through which the road would pass. I know that it's not possible to create the tunnel but is it possible to create this 'valley' up to the point where the road reaches the airfield?I have attached a pic to illustrate what I want to achieve.Tnx and RegardsDaniel

[Guest christian]

Unfortunately, no...Christian

[Guest]

You could try to carefully place some small road-sized invisible runways with different altitudes over/under the road. That worked for a noise protection wall (alt > scenery alt) and also for a river bed (alt < scenery alt). But, that also belongs to the terrain mesh at Your project's location. Not everywhere this will look good.ReadU,TM

[Guest GeorgeDorkofikis]

I may be wrong... but I think it IS possible...I have the idea, but I don't know how to use the tools...Since I want to do something similar (not a tunnel, but a bridge in my case), I thought that the best way would be by altering the mesh terrain of the area. What is is highest level of detail for mesh? 3m/pixel ?George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

[arno 1]

I indeed think that way it should work, but ussually airport have a flatten polygon and that would mesh up the mesh again.I want to make something similar. At Schiphol you have a taxiway that passes over the highway. There is a bridge there. I real life the taxiing aircraft have to increase thrust there a bit to get over it (you can hear that nice when you are spotting :)). So I would like to add that in the sim too (in a future version probably :)).Arno

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Member Netherlands 2000 Scenery Team[a href=http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen]http://home.wanadoo.nl/arno.gerretsen/banner.jpg[/a]

[Guest gorchi]

Hi guys!I have an idea. Maybe will VTP poly do the trick? I would also try using LWMDraw4, made a couple of lands underneath the road and change the elevation for every LWM poly in quadrant. If it can be used for mesh emulation, why not also for tunnels? But this is only theoretically and involves some work of course...Best regards,Goran BrumenFS Slovenija 2002 teamhttp://slovenia.avsim.net

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all.This is how the default flattens are handled in FS2002:include TDFMacros.incinclude TDFHeaders.inc; Flatten MaskingBGLHeader 24, 25, 26, 24, LWMHeader, TerrainHeaderStart LWMHeader label word LWMFileHeader 513, LWMIndexStart, LWMStart, LWMEndLWMStart label word data_start_0 label word LWMDataAreaDrawPolygons 1, 2, 1, 30, 28 ; parameter #2 is flatten LWMPoly2 4, 0, 0, 700, 0 ; parameter #3 is water LWMPoint 10, 10 LWMPoint 45, 10 LWMPoint 45, 65 LWMPoint 10, 65 data_end_0 label word Cell_437_189 EQU LWMCellID 0, 0, 2, 437, 189 ; parameter #3 is flatten LWMIndexStart label word LWMIndexHeader 1, LWMIndexData LWMIndexData label word LWMIndexEntry Cell_437_189, LWMStart, data_start_0, data_end_0LWMEnd label wordDick

[Guest]

As such I managed to create sort of like a 'valley' using the flatten polygon (using Architect2002) and giving the offset altitude a lower value than that of the aerodrome. Unfortunatley the problem is that it is flattening an area much larger than the polygon I created. I think it all depends on the resolution of the mesh terrain. The higher the resolution the more precise your flattening polygon. BTW I don't actually want to create the tunnels, just the 'valley' through which the road passes. The entrance to the tunnels will probably be a bitmap.Daniel.

[Guest christian]

I think I'll have to explain my original 'no' answer.Of course, like people mentioned here, you could use Land / Water masks to make a dent into the mesh. However, it would just be a dent with slopes on the side, whereas you really want to cut into the mesh with only the road going 'into the tunnel' having a slope. The other walls should be 'clean cuts', especially where the road goes into the tunnel, ie the surface you want to glue the tunnel texture on (which can't really be done either). Like you can't do tunnels with elevation mesh, you can't do vertical elevation offsets (walls) either. It's just not possible with digital terrain models...But, I was thinking about this a bit further, there is a way you could do it. It's a lot of work and probably would be a pain to get to work with the default runways, since they interact with the mesh.Whenever M$ had to do some accurate fitting of models into the terrain they used gmax models (eg Hoover Dam is a good example, Kiliauea on Hawaii is another one). So you could flatten the elevation of your airport too low as a base to work off. Then you do the whole airport surface and the terrain below the airport in gmax and probably you should even make your runways in gmax instead of using the default runway commands. This way you could do the roads cutting into the mesh (which is a gmax model now), and you could even do the tunnel if you wanted to. A lot of work though...Cheers, Christian

[Guest]

Just as I was thinking as I read this thread, but my thought was just made a custom mesh with a greyscale raw file, and resample.exe....then make a "filler" tunnel in GMAX, that has a tunnel as the intereor, and the exterior fully fills the unnatural appearence of the mesh.Bob B

[Guest]

The idea of making a major reconstruction using gmax is very good however you have to be careful that the area you have flattened does not include an area through aircraft have to taxi e.g a taxiway, otherwise the aircraft will fall into the crevice. Unless there is a solution to it and if there is I haven't got a clue of how to do it. What I mean is aircraft which are able to taxi over 'false' mesh terrain e.g created with gmax regardsDaniel

[Guest]

That's similar to what we did for several different models for our Thunder Bay scenery and while it does mean spending some time in Gmax it's not all that hard to do. Dan

[Guest]

Not sure if this is what your looking for or not but I was able to do it with Airport 2.9 and Nova 1.6.First thing I did was lay out the road in Airport and then placed a 350 m invisible runway oriented and sized to by taxiway centered where I wanted the bridge.Next thing I did was created a flattened area where the underpass would lie. I made it the width of the road and approx 24 feet below the airport elevation. You can adjust that to the height of the underpass. Not sure if it makes much difference how you adjust the width depending where it lies on the mesh or the airport elevation.I then created a runway for reference where the overpass would lie. I made it the same width as the length of the underpass.I then created my polygon taxiway using the runway as reference. I created an invisible hard surface beneath it much in the same way you would create a helipad surface. I chose the texture to match my taxiways.Next I just created a Nova structure. Two cubes with angled sides to fit on both sides of the road. I created two cubes to span the between the two cubes to simulate concrete fencing. This I placed at the approx altitude of the overpass with the tops of the cubes coming up as close to the overpass as I could. Use the same taxiway texture on the roofs of your cubes to eliminate any possible bleedthrough.Ok now with my skeleton in place I then went back to Nova and added a sign to the structure using my taxiway texture on both sides. I chose a roof option and made it the same length and width as my reference runway. I deleted the reference runway and then just custom fit the length until it bridged my flatten area and married up with my spanning taxiway. In other words the polygon taxiway with the hardened invisible runway surface lies on top of my macro.Voila I can taxi over the bridge. Stop and watch the traffic or I can even take the aircraft on the road underneath the overpass.The aesthetics aren't the greatest and it still needs a bit of tweaking but its functional. Now I figure all I have to do is landscape around the underpass to semi-bury the macro and to simulate the sloped surfaces on all sides of the road.http://www.vnwa.com/Noramair/img/Deltabridge.jpgPaul J. Mainville

[Guest GeorgeDorkofikis]

Nice work, although the dusk screenshot doesn't show too much...Exactly what I want to do to my LGAV scenery... And there I have 2 bridges.My problem is that if I use flatten polygon as you did, the flatten area's 'walls' are not 'clean cuts' but rather non-uniformed patterns!Anyway to say to FS that the flatten must be clean cut ?Cheers,George DorkofikisAthens, Greece

[Guest]

Sorry I'm slow getting back to you on this but life has been extremely busy for me lately. At any rate I saw your other thread on this subject and have a better idea of what your looking for. I think the trick on your end would be to smooth the walls somehow using a designer. My favorite trick is to use the sign tool in Nova. I can slant tilt and skew the object to any position making a sloped appearance to the side wall. The only obstacle I have had is getting the seasonal change to occur.Paul J. Mainville