River depressions... any way to get rid of them?

[spotlope 0]

I'm fairly sure I know the answer, but has anybody figured out how to get rid of the valleys in which FS9 rivers flow once the river has been excluded and/or rerouted? I know we're all anxiously awaiting an SDK, but barring that has anyone done much research in this area?thanks,

[John_Cillis 2,406]

There's a file called Terrain.cfg..... Within it, look for an entry called "offset=-10" for the rivers.... Should be the first couple of entries. Change that to "offset=flat".... -John

[spotlope 0]

Thanks, John. That sounds like a global change though, eh? I was thinking more of some way to flatten out specific areas in my scenery so that users could see VTP line changes made to default rivers. Interestingly, even when the river itself is excluded from an area the offset remains. Curious, to say the least. Perhaps it's because my exclude comes later in the datastream and the scenery engine has already calculated the terrain vertices. But then, how would LWM flattens work, since they are calculated later as well? Mind you, these are rhetorical questions -- but if someone does have an answer, I won't reject it ;-).thanks,

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Bill.The stream depressions suffer from the same problem as LWM flattens and water ( and the roads, now ).The all alter the mesh, and we have no way to "return" to the mesh with an exclusion... unless the next SDK shows us a trick.Ground2K's remesh function or SCASM Area16n elevations could elevate the ground to a specific height... but a different mesh set would not look right with this option.Perhaps we could add to the terrain.cfg file and lay an invisible +10 line to place over the -10 line... but I haven't tried it.Dick

[Guest]

Indeed Bill I've tried as well to no avail it does seem that all the exclude does (in the case of rivers at least) is remove the texturethe offset remains. Oh well I guess we could just call what's left a big ditch LOL. I guess all we can hope for is that the terrain SDKis out before too long. Dan

[Guest PaulL01]

>There's a file called Terrain.cfg..... Within it, look for>an entry called "offset=-10" for the rivers.... Should be the>first couple of entries. Change that to "offset=flat".... >>-JohnLooking for the "local" solution myself, I have tried to enter the "offset=flat" line to the "my new scenery..." in the scenery.cfg of my custom scenery hoping to be able to use it there without effecting the whole planet, but no dice! It just wont work there and that sux as much as the hidden coastline terrain features overriding custom/hi-res mesh. :( :(

[Guest]

I've found no way to remove the depressions with an exclude, but I do use a workaround. I remove the "offset=-10" line from my stream records in terrain.cfg. Then I make a copy of those stream records and paste them back into terrain.cfg with a new record number. Add the offset line if you wish to (I set it to "offset=flat" for now, but I'm still deciding if I like that) and use the the new stream record with the new record number in your scenery.I did this for the other elements I use in my sceneries. While this doesn't solve the problem, it does help me in determining what my scenery will look like when a true fix for this comes along.Lee Steffensen

[spotlope 0]

Thanks, Lee. That's a good idea. Although I'm sure it'll just make me mad once I get it looking good that I can't share it! Never the less, a good tip.

[GHD 21]

>There's a file called Terrain.cfg..... Within it, look for>an entry called "offset=-10" for the rivers.... Should be the>first couple of entries. Change that to "offset=flat".... >>-JohnJohn,Your tip has made a dramatic difference to me. I use the VFR photographic scenery and Terramesh England and Wales and now the scenery looks fantastic (as it did in FS2002). I also have to remove a few flatten bgl's to stop some lakes being on plateaux, but it is worth it.George

[Guest Marky Parky]

Hi,I am not sure if offset=flat is correct. I thought that offserc=flat still has some infulence on the landscape - it is used for the roads and rails so they dont go to any hill in some strange angle, but they make a valeys and cliffs to climb out nicely. I use offset=0 for clearing rivers, which appears have totaly no effect on terrain.But I did not investigate it a lot and I migh be wrong.Marky Parky

[Guest Checkmate]

I'm having the same problem. MS for some reason dug a below sea level ditch accross a barrier island. I didn't even notice it until I dropped some PR on it.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/44532.jpg(I haven't done much touch up on the imagery yet)Aren't rivers drawn the same way as roads and if so can we use the new info about the road format to get rid of this?Regards,John

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi John.Those depressions are caused by the terrain.cfg file ( offset=-10 ).All flattens in FS9 cannot be "excluded". They can only be eliminated by another flatten, to raise the terrain. This has been called re-meshing. There is no code or switch to return flattened terrain to the underlying mesh.You can alter your terrain.cfg to eliminate these flattens, but then if you distribute scenery, it won't work on someone else's computer the same way... unless you can get them to also alter their CFG file ( not the best idea ).In one regard, I'm not surprised by this limitation. The design team are not necessarily concerned with reworking the scenery... only with their own process of creating it. Although many are now designing mesh, landclass, photoreal, watermasking, and VTP2 polys and roads, MS hasn't done much of this. Just a few photoreal examples for large cities, Niagara, and Oshgosh.They don't have any examples of remeshing, because they have never done it, and might not consider that important to their work... which is designing the original scenery and terrain that we are actively trying to change.Dick

[bob.bernstein 0]

I'm thinking Prozac may be the only answer...at least till the SDK comes out.B

[Guest JoeW]

>I'm thinking Prozac may be the only answer...at least till>the SDK comes out.>>BProzac?.... I thought that was for emotions.... Where is the Botox?Joe W.