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sirsanka

Shoreline with AutoAsm

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Hi guys,I'm using ground2k4, autoasm and Terrascene to update the island of Puerto Rico. I have the data in shapefiles which include LULC and Roads. So far, I have created the new shorelines with autoasm but I had to exclude the areas with ground2k4. The problems that I'm having are the chunks of land outside of the LWN polygons which are suposed to be water.This is how it look:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/87511.jpgHow to fix that?The other problem is that autoasm is putting the shorelines with the waves crashing on the wrong side. It's not a big problem but I would like to fix that as well.Thanks in advance!Regards,Jay Pi

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Guest cwright

Hi Jay, for the first problem: this is precisely what will happen if the AUTO FILL option is disabled (just to the right of the top READ DATA button). AUTO FILL does what its name suggests: it fills all the water LOD13 squares that have no coastline data with water. I'd be confident this will fix it. If not, let me know. By the way, if AUTO FILL is off you can still fill the water squares with the FILL button. Finally, you can use the FILL CHECK button (TOOLS panel) to ensure that all water squares are correctly filled. Another useful check would be to view it in LWMViewer. Waves going the wrong way suggests that the polygon has been read in incorrectly. All water polygons must go clockwise - apart from putting the water in the right place it ensures that the waves go in the right direction. First, ensure that the ISLANDS option is enabled. With it enabled, you will find that islands are shown in a different colour (probably red) and the island polygons go counter-clockwise (there's some stuff about this in the manual). Also, be sure to run the bitmap through the editor and check that SEARCH gives you a green banner (no errors). Actually, a green banner bitmap is required for auto island detection to work correctly. With AUTO FILL and ISLANDS enabled, read in the bitmap, create the scenery and view in LWMViewer. If it looks okay run it in FS. Let me know what you find. If this doesn't fix the problems, we'll take it from here. With it correctly set up you certainly shouldn't have these problems. Best regards, Chris

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Guest cwright

Hi Jay, just another thought. Are you comfortable with the procedures in the editor? (fixing breaks etc, adding the edge lines and finally eliminating any residual errors with SEARCH) Even if there are no lakes cut off by the bitmap, it may be necessary to do the BITMAP EDGES process to correct the bitmap geometry. Crucially, you need to set whether the top left pixel is water or land. If it's wrong AutoAsm will assume islands are lakes and the sea is land. And, yes, the waves will probably go in the wrong direction! Think about it this way. Suppose your bitmap has a single polygon. It could be a lake - or an island. By defining the top left bitmap pixel in the BITMAP EDGES process, this uncertainty is removed. Best regards, Chris

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Thanks Chris,I have the island enabled but not the auto-fill. I'll try all your tips and will report back!Thanks again!

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Guest cwright

Hi Jay, just a few more thoughts. Although AUTO FILL should be enabled, it probably won't fix the problem. As the scenery is an island then most likely the top left pixel is water. In this case it is essential that you run the BITMAP EDGES procedure, which includes defining the top left pixel (pixel 0,0) as water (click in the box to alternate between a land and water setting). This procedure will draw lines around the bitmap edge where there is water. If this is not done you will get both problems you reported: default land will not properly be covered by water and the waves will go in the wrong direction. Good luck and let me know how you get on! Best regards, Chris

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Guest cwright

Hi Jay, just to confirm a couple of points. I assume that now:1. The bitmap has lines running along its edge, thus creating an outer water polygon.2. The SEARCH function gives a green banner. You have fixed the original problem by adding the outer polygon. I actually thought of adding in my posts a warning: that fixing the current problem may reveal a new one. I think that's what has happened. The screen shot shows that some of the land areas defined by your polygons are actually filled by water. This occurs if the default scenery does not have land in that particular area. It often occurs because the default scenery can be so inaccurate - of course that's precisely why you're re-doing it! Remember that, when adding water polygons, you can take land away - but you can't add it! Unfortunately it means that you will have to add some landclass to 'add' land where it's required. You can do this in AutoAsm (the Terrain panel) but landclass support is fairly basic - that's one thing I intend to improve in the future. You can draw a bitmap to define the generic textures, but remember that landclass only works at LOD5, so your landclass bitmap will cover quite a large area. I believe you can use colour index 254 to make part of your bitmap transparent, that is, it won't affect the original default landclass. Good luck. If you can add the required landclass then it should all work. Best regards, Chris

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Thanks again Chris,I ran the Seach again and found errors related to the bitmap edge for water but I didn't fixed them. So I didn't get the green banner. I unchecked the autofill to make it go faster.This is the area as it look in LWNviewerhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/87844.jpgSo as you said, I'll to play with the landclass.I'll keep you posted!Thanks,Jay

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Well,I renamed the file hp930250.bgl and got the results below...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/87860.jpgSo I'm getting there.How can I exclude the default island without having to rename?Also I'm seing all those discrepancies between MS rendition and the real world data. I might have to exclude some of the static buildings out there...:-grr

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Guest cwright

Hi Jay, yes, you're getting there! It looks fine in LWMViewer. You'll notice that LWMViewer shows small islands completely inside LOD13 squares as green - that's completely correct. Also the main island is shown in red, even if your original polygon was a different colour. This shows that it was detected as an island, which is also correct. This applies to all the small islands as well. Removing the bgl seems to have fixed the missing landclass problem - interesting.... Unfortunately I don't know a lot about exclusions. Maybe one of the experts could jump in here.... A lot of the MS scenery doesn't seem to be very accurately positioned. I doubt if the runway ends right on the beach in the real world! There's always AFCAD.... Here's a tip to speed up LWM asm creation. There are a lot of water squares and they can be quite slow during LWM asm creation - it's one thing I want to improve. Of course, if you have the option when setting it up, you could frame it so there is a minimum amount of surrounding water. However, you could try this:1. Completely remove the lines around the edges.2. Draw a water polygon that surrounds the island polygon, using a different colour (range 1 to 249). The water will only be inside the new polygon. Therefore, draw the polygon relatively close to the island. This will greatly reduce the amount of water in the asm file.3. Assign the new polygon as LWM type (not BOTH). This ensures the new polygon will not have a shoreline.4. Run SEARCH to fix any stray pixels etc. Repeat until you get the green banner. As well as having no errors, this will drastically reduce the time needed to create the asm file, probably less than two minutes. Good luck. Best regards, Chris

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Chris,Something that I noticed is that even if you exclude the shorelines using ground2k4, the polygons that are surrounded by them will still be there hence creating a conflict of water and land that I had. If I remove the HP930250.bgl, Puerto Rico will look correct but it will damage the shorelines of the Virgin Island, Vieques and Culebra. That's a major problem. Besides that, I see some static buldings and antennas laying in water and boats laying in land.It's going to take some time to figure out how to solve all those issues!This the end of runway 8 at TJSJ in real life...http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/88160.jpgI just need to edit the bitmap a little bit to match it!Thanks again Chris!Jay

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Thanks Holger,Before I saw your reply, I was working in the same concept that you did with bglpatch. So basically decompiled the Hp*.bgl, deleted the appropiate cells and recompiled it.The good thing is that we are moving forward to our goal of accuracy!

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