dry riverbeds - a new(?) trick

[Holger 0]

Hi all,maybe this is old news but here goes...I'm working on G2K4 scenery enhancements for Namibia. In this dry country there are no perennial rivers (except for two), yet the FS9 default ST9*.bgl files contain lots of stream, all of which are drawn in the standard blue. In the documentation for my Namibia mesh file, I suggest to disable the ST* files but that makes the landscape pretty boring; the thing is, there are obvious stream networks, as the satellite image shows, they just don't contain any water for 50 weeks or so of the year.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/70471.jpgI experimented with placing the dry riverbeds as VTP2 polys and it looks good but that's obviously only an option for a few places. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/70472.jpgWhile trying different things in Ground2K4 I came across the line/shoreline texture #1115 ("dry riverbed - non-perennial"). It turns out the texture is almost symmetrical, unlike other shoreline textures, and works really well as a replacement for the standard stream texture #1024. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/70473.jpgMy next step was to disassemble all Namibian ST* files with LWMViewer and replace the #1024 with #1115. Works like a charm, except the streams don't have the same amount of undulation because the textures are straight. In other words, anyone working in dry areas might want to give this texture a try (alternatively, the same texture can also be used as a dirt road type because it's so nice and straight).Cheers, Holger