question about filling in a 1x1 of land...fs9 - ground2k4

[bob.bernstein 0]

I've just been working a problem that has been discussed before, that of wanting to add land where there is no default land class.Reading several posts and tuts, but all dating back to fs2k2, I've attempted to add a 1x1 of landclass, yet no display, and I've attempted several ways that seemed like it would work...but no. I attempted to add an entire area landmask, but only succeeded at showing me where the worldlc includes land and where it doesn't. places without land remained withoutland. I noticed that Rhumbaflappy wrote during fs2k2 days, that he always starting by adding landclass, and then a new watermask....but does this work in fs9? Probably a dumb mistake on my part...but could someone set me straight!images are just of things I've tried without success:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45395.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45395.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45396.jpgThanksBob Bernstein

[Guest christian]

I didn't understand 100% what you tried to do, but I think the answer is this:You are trying to do an island in water? You DO need a landclass for that. Islands are just reversing water masks. One thing to bear in mind is that the island has to be defined AFTER the water mask in the file, otherwise it won't work.I hope this is correct. I'm just making my first large scale water masks myself.Cheers, Christian

[bob.bernstein 0]

sorry I didn't express the problem clearly. I wish I understood what you mean by "after"...you mean alphabetically "after", in the sense that excludes are made to be "before"? When your just learning its hard to follow words like "after". You mean "after" in the code of the lmw file? Let me try to show the problem better, in this image is my island. The one tip extends past an lod13 boundary, and no land will be drawn:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45449.jpgIn the user guide that Luis wrote, he shows the exact same problem in his troubleshooting section.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45451.jpgUnfortunately the instructions in the users guide says the fix is to draw an lwm polygon, which is exactly what my entire project is at present. So either I'm misunderstanding that instruction, or its not a valid fix.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45452.jpg

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Bob.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45449.jpgThat island tip has a landclass value that looks like water... you need to extend the land-looking landclass further into the water, by perhaps some distance.Water-looking landclasses, usually LC value #100, look and behave as water. But like CUSTOM LC #253 or #252, they dominate the four groundtiles that any vertex assignment touches ( they don't blend like other groundtiles ). So one value #100 assignment forces 4 tiles to water. So to nail the offending vertex, you may need to extend the desired landclass out a ways into the water. TMFViewer shows the landclass assignments for worldlc.bgl, and most of the world is value #100.Your LWM landmask is fine... it's displaying whatever landclass is under it ( in this case water-looking value # 100 at the tip ).You could also paste a VTP2 poly with a proper landclass assignment and Layer #4 over that small area, and it should look and behave as land ( but vertically flipped ).Dick

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Bob, The solution for this problem, as indicated in the guide, is to "Assign a land class value to all parts of your new coast." Land class is assigned to the vertices of the LOD grid and affect the LOD13 Area on all sides. They must therefore be assigned on all the vertices surrounding the Area in order to fill it with land class.What does this mean? Just extend the land class assignments beyond your coast - this will cover your coast completely with land class and, viola, (as Geof Applegate would say), land will appear.Best regards.Luis

[bob.bernstein 0]

<>I'm still fuzzy on how to alter the landclass 100 tiles (nothing so far has worked, and the help offered hasn't clicked with me....need pictures, perhaps). but this advice appeared simple enough, so I tried it. no luck. The pic shows my vtp2 polygon with 252 landclass and custom textures provided. You can see that I still needed also my lwm poly to display landclass below it (some of the lwm poly shows beyond my vtp2 poly). But this vtp2 poly did not defeat the 100 landclass designation of the lod13 grid 000333301032111su. :((http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45593.jpgI know its painful, but my newbie status with ground2k is showing...what am I missing? Luis talked about changing the corners, like landclass assignments are made at the corners, I've clicked on the corners of the lod13 gridlines in ground2k, but nothing different occured than occured when I clicked on the center of the grid. and no amount of attempting to change the landclass values have altered the assignments.Bob Bernstein

[Holger 0]

Hi Bob:these may be obvious questions but where do you place the landclass (LC*.bgl) file and how does it look in TMFViewer (you can use an overlay of the corresponding hyl* or str* file for better orientation)?Not directly related: one thing I noticed about Ground2K and 1x1 fills: if I used them in combination with LWM polys, FS9 crashes every time I load the map view/weather map. These crashes don't occur when using hand-coded 1x1 fills instead (a la Dick's tutorial). Don't know what the difference is but there was a discussion about this in another thread.Cheers, Holger

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Bob.Do you know how to create a landclass file with Ground2K?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45601.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45602.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45603.jpgI installed G2K into my C: directory, then I have no odd filename issues. But the BGL should go where you have directed it in the file preferences ( No spaces allowed in the Landclass or Waterclass destination ).Dick

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

For goodness sake, Bob, will you just extend the land class assignments out into the water beyond your coast? Just place land class everywhere on your land area and ALSO on the water bordering the land.A LOD13 Area will NOT display land UNLESS it is surrounded by land class assignments. This is because the ground texture is made from the land class assignments on ALL 4 corners of the LOD13 Area - the 4 land class assigments are blended together to create the ground tile. If even one of these land class assigments is missing, then the ground tile is not created and you do NOT see land.So, again, will you PLEASE just try extending the land class assignments out beyond your coast into the water?Once you understand this simple concept, you will understand the simple solution.Best regards.Luis

[bob.bernstein 0]

Luis, your tone is out of line. I, myself, have been on your side of folks misunderstanding scenery design concepts that I am expert at. I've found that my choice of language is supremely important to getting the point across. Pictures are a must. You've given me very oblique instruction from my point of view, due, of course to my own ignorance. You have my sincere apology for not understanding your instruction. Beyond that, you can take your attitude and ****** it.Bob B

[bob.bernstein 0]

thanks for the pix, Dick. Yes, I knew this, but I gave up on it because of not understanding that an LOD13 quad wouldn't change unless its neighbors all changed. That's a new idea for me.I'll attempt it tonight.Best,B

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Bob,An anonymous internet forum is a difficult place to express attitudes, and they are often misunderstood because a few simple phrases can be misinterpreted. You have misinterpreted my intent, or "attitude", as you call it. I had no desire to offend you, nor do I think the less of you for not understanding such matters as are discussed here. But, you have misinterpreted my comments, perhaps because of your frustration in not understanding this problem.It is interesting that you should react in such a manner to my remarks, since you have often been the recipient of such a reaction when you have replied to posts. Perhaps you could think back on those instances when you have not wished ill of people who post in the fora, and yet who have thought that you were unduly harsh or offensive. Attitude is in the mind of the person receiving the comments. Often, the intent of the person making the comments is quite different from the way that it is received.I NEVER assume that someone has unfriendly intentions towards me, particularly not on an anonymous forum, particularly NOT on the basis of 3 or 4 lines of comments made. I have no advice for you as to how you should react, but perhaps it is good to place everything in its true perspective. How important is a perceived unpleasant "attitude" compared to the really important things in life? The love of one's family, friendships, real life. And why get upset over these matters when they only deal with a computer game, that should be enjoyable, or "fun" as Americans insist everything should be.I sincerely apologize to you if you have misinterpreted my intentions. And while I certainly do not expect an apology from you, I do point out that I did not resort to insults or vulgarity in my comments, and that your reply was certainly not called for.As for this problem with land class, I repeat, once again, since you have not wished to apply this solution and finish with this matter, that all you have to do is extend your land class into the water beyond your coast. It is a simple problem and this is the simple solution. If you will just take a minute to do this, you will realize that you could have resolved this a long time ago.Best regards.Luis

[bob.bernstein 0]

Luis, thanks for your reply and your perspective. Of course you were right in all points. A totally mature point of view, and I applaud your ability to think beyond the emotion of a moment.My biggest frustration is how words are meaning something different to the teacher than they do to the student, the teacher doesn't realize it, and the student doesn't understand the scope of the problem sufficiently to realize it.Now that I'm finally understanding what you and Dick meant, I've gone back and reviewed your posts. You've said to extend landclass beyond the coast in 3 different places, BUT...if you put my mindset on for a sec, can you see how I viewed the area containing the coast as having area "beyond" the coast. YOu never said that the entire area needed to be "beyond the coast."In the same way you spoke about the corners having landclass assignment. I spent a few minutes looking for a hook or edit box to apply new landclass assignment to the 'corners' of the area in question. You'll chuckle, but that is what it meant to my mind, that did not have the perspective of global understanding that your mind had when you expressed the advice. What you meant was each area looks to its "neighboring" area for landclass assignment...now I'd have applied your advice immediately.When you capitalized PLEASE, you were frustrated that I did not apply your advice. You must have assumed, when you wrote that, that I COULD apply your advice. Again, that is only possible if I understood your advice. Lack of a student's understanding is frustrating to everyone, but as soon as Dick provided a pic of the right tool, I could continue to seek the solution with confidence.Why was the pic needed? Mostly because I needed two key understandings to get this right..The idea that I needed to extend landclass was clear to me from reading the history of the subject in the past threads. However, I found that applying land(class?) thru the cell command area was an option. I also found that applying landclass designation to an lwm polygon was an option. So to me, there were three choices to do this, and it made my experimenting somewhat tedious. In addition, the focus on corners, and extension beyond the coast never made me realize you meant an entire area beyond the goal area needed to be converted to area landclass. This was especially confusing to me, because I was under the impression that by applying a cell's worth of landclass without success, the real answer had nothing to do with amount of land class applied.Anyway, sorry for the harshness of my response.As you can see I have now figured out what you both were talking about...here's that stupid Island with a complete coast. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/45805.jpgB

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Bob.I'm glad you stuck with it and are making progress.Yes, Luis and I were speaking the of the same solution. And it is hard to visualize these things. Had either one of us been able to lean over your shoulder as you worked, we could have shown you the solution in a few seconds, rather than days. :(I do understand your frustration. And I do wish we could have communicated the answer in a better manner for you. QUite honestly, I sometimes get frustrated in trying to find the right words to communicate some of my ideas concering VTP and LWM design.When I start a terrain project, I usually convert everything to land, and save the BGL. This is a little hard with Ground2K for a large project because 1x1 areafills don't cover much ground. Sometimes simply using as large LWM poly does the trick. I handcode 16x16, 8x8, 4x4 and 2x2 areafills to quickly fill my design area. Perhaps Christian will be able to add a function that will automatically fill a large designated area with the best choice of those types of areafills, in a future version.Compiling that BGL will reveal which tiles are a value #100 landclass ( water-looking ). Those tiles need to be changed with a landclass BGL or you'll see the truncated polys as you did in your example. Whenever I see a cutoff LWM land poly, I immediately think of it as a landclass issue involving the value #100. Dick

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Bob,It is easy to forgive those who apologize. So, please let's forget all about it.Glad that you have finally solved this little problem. Please note that land class is NOT assigned to the Area itself, but to the vertices of the LOD13 grid. This matter has been abundantly discussed here over the last year, and even illustrated by Dick Ludowise, who included an image of this effect with his utilities. There is even a major creator of land class programs who has just gone over to a 257 x 257 grid in recognition of this fact. The 4 land class assignments are blended within the Area to form a ground tile.This is explained various times in the guide to Ground2K, but the guide is a learning experience. For the beginner, of course, who must learn new concepts and think through their implications, thus arriving at certain conclusions for himself. But, also for me. I wrote this guide using the simplest language and explanations that I could master, thinking of those who did not have the same knowledge as me. Then, I asked various people to read it before release and propose any changes that would make the guide clearer. In the end, however, it is inevitable that some matters would not be perfectly clear. In light of the issues that arose here in the forum after its release, I extensively modified the guide for its second version in hopes of making it even clearer and easier to use for beginners. Therefore, I learned from their comments too, and was able to better understand their problems.Please be assured that your little problem will form part of the modifications for the next version of the guide, and that you have, perhaps inadvertantly, helped to make it better.Best regards.Luis