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Guest DonMac

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Hello Joaquin,This is a very good question. You can use the Re-mesh function to modify the elevations in your project, but it is a very delicate process.This does not modify the altitude mesh file, but instead makes use of a particular property of Land/Water Masks: they can have an altitude assigned to them.Ground2K4's Re-mesh function works by creating a very small Mask to which you give the new altitude. This Mask's altitude will affect both land and water, so you must be sure not to place it too close to the coast, or you will get that "creeping water" syndrome.If you do not want sharply-sloping cliffs, then you could try placing your 20-meter Masks everywhere on the island, EXCEPT close to the coasts. You may have to experiment with this slightly by moving your Masks farther or closer to the coast in order to get the right effect.Here is an example where I tried to get the Rocher (Monaco-Ville) up higher than the water.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/99392.jpgAs you can see, I made sure that the coast had a Mask with an elevation of 0 at all points so as to insure that there would be no climbing water.This effect will look different depending on the user's setting for Maximum Terrain Vertex Level, so you should experiment to see how it works.If you want sharply-sloping cliffs, then it is probably better to make an altitude mesh and cut it off at the coast with a Water Mask. This is how all those sharp cliffs in the default scenery appear, I believe.Best regards.Luis

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Guest jzax

Thanks a lot, Luis. I will experiment a little following your guidelinesJoaquin

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Guest DonMac

I cannot take any credit for the development of Airport. Pascal Meziat and Manfred Moldenhauer were the brains behind the project and Manfred is still at it, producing new versions of Scasm.Pascal used to let me have the latest versions as he produced them and I 'played' with them finding out how they worked and put my findings into words to build up the help files and tutorial. The tutorial was still there when I last looked. Whenever I had a problem I always referred it to Pascal. For my benfit we always corresponded in French although Pascal's English was perfectly good. I don't know what Pascal is doing now - he was involved in the French Federation of Flight Simulation.Tom Hiscox is doing a great job in continuing the Airport For Windows line and of course is now concerned with the development of SceneGenX. I wish him well.

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Guest DonMac

Hello Luis, I've been trying to put in another island some distance away at 46, 46 and an interesting point has arisen. One of the water class files is of the same name as in the original island but slightly bigger and when I try to view the first island a whole square of land is now missing (an area?). This now raises the question - am I putting my land classes directory in the right place? The directory structure that I have is: Addon Scenery LandclassScenery scenery UtopiaSceneryIf I now add another island, where do I put the Landclass files?(Utopia of course is my fictitious island!) Can I have more than one Landclass directory?

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Hello Don, This is an interesting point. Perhaps a little background information will help.Land class files are based on the L.O.D. 5 grid. It has dimensions of 2.8125 degrees of latitude and 3.75 degrees of longitude - very big! To give you some idea, that is a little less than 315 kilometers to the side, depending on where you are in the world. Or, to put it another way, this is 256 x 256 LOD13 quadrants.When you create a land class file, you are making a file that always covers that LOD5 grid, even if you only place a dozen or so land class values in it. What about the rest of the file? It gets a value of 254 - this represents transparency and means that any underlying land class value (for example, the default land class file) will be displayed.To complicate matters, you have, by the greatest of coincidences, placed your island, Utopia, at the very confluence of 4 LOD5 quadrants:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/99264.jpgIf you look at the image, you will see the red lines representing the boundaries of the LOD5 grids. This is why you get 4 land class files when you create this scenery - one for each LOD5 quadrant.If you now move over a degree and make another island, the land class file for that island will be in the same LOD5 quadrant as one of those for the first island. This is not a problem at all, since most of your land class bgl is transparent (value 254.)However, you have a naming problem. Ground2K4 gives a default name to all land and water class files; it simply calls them by the LOD5 coordinates.But, you can, and should, change the name of these files to something more descriptive and that will not conflict. Call your first land class file, for example, "Don's_Utopia_in_the_blustery_Atlantic_land_class_2004" and the second land class file can be "Son_of_Utopia_land_class_2004".But, these are just examples and you can call them whatever you want. You are limited to 255 characters which should be plenty.Where to place your scenery files? Don, I NEVER place scenery files within Flight Simulator, and respectfully suggest that you do not either. This will eventually lead to many problems as we jumble them all in there and later forget what each one is and how to remove it. But, if you want to keep on doing this, then go right ahead. It is not a serious obstacle.Best regards.Luis

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Guest DonMac

Hello Luis,Again thanks for the explanation which certainly helps a lot.However I am mystified by use of the name LOD for a grid system. I am familiar with LOD in respect of detail in a bitmap or something like that - almost akin to resolution in optics. I can understand why cells and areas are not constant in size; at least I presume it is to do with projecting a two dimensional area onto a spherical surface! although when doing elementary geography I was never happy with the various projections. Incidentally trust me to pick a location at which four LOD 5's meet!Number two point: You say you don't keep scenery files in flight sim. Where do you keep them? Do you load them in when you decide to visit a certain area?Luis I am very grateful to you for taking the time and trouble in these explanations. I look forward with great interest to your postings. I only hope that there others who read this thread and get the benefit, like I, of your experience with these problems and detailed solutions.I hope you don't mind my persistent probing!

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Hello Don,The standard disclaimer: I am neither the most knowledgeable nor the most competent person in this forum. Just the guy that is answering your questions. Many others here could give you much better guidance.But, on to your questions.Why did the Flight Simulator team call it Level of Detail? Beats me. Perhaps because this is the standard term in the profession for this kind of resolution scheme - the LOD grid determines and contains the various terrain elements in their differing resolution. Or, maybe it is, as you mentioned, something to do with bitmap resolution - the terrain engine is, among other things, a means of displaying bitmaps (all your polygons and all your shorelines and roads are, in the end, displayed as bitmaps.) But, I am not expert in this domain and could not give you a definitive answer.As for keeping scenery files outside of the FS directory, it is all due to my experience with previous versions of the game. When moving on to a new version of FS, un-installing would wipe out the entire contents of the directory, including all my custom textures (that really hurt!) and anything else that I had put in there. Recent versions of FS no longer do this and only remove what was originally installed. But, it made me wary.In fact, I wish that future versions of FS would allow us to keep all of our files outside of the directory, including aircraft, effects, gauges, modules, and common textures. Perhaps we could simply declare another path in some configuration file for this to work - just an idea.In addition, many people place all their scenery in the FS/Add-on Scenery folder. As time goes by, one no longer knows exactly what is in there, especially as many scenery designers give quite cryptic names to their files and do not provide a complete list of all the files in their package. A nightmare to clean up this folder and remove unwanted files.I have created a Scenery folder outside of the FS directory, but in the Microsoft Games folder. It is called simply Scenery and contains all scenery placed in individual folders and declared in the FS scenery library in the usual way. It provides me a more organized means of keeping scenery, and lets me easily activate and disactivate scenery at will (for example, Dick Ludowise's CellGrid that we all use constantly for design purposes, but can be distracting when we go flying. But, then again, when was the last time that anyone here went flying?)But, do as you wish with this matter - it is not a question of life or death, and of little importance in the end.Best regards.Luis

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Guest DonMac

Hello Luis,I am getting really desperate now! I was having all sorts of failurestrying to repeat my island success that I began to wonder if I had corrupted a Ground2k4 file and so I re-downloaded the Ground2k4 and the patches for V5.3 and V5.32 and re-installed them after having removed the original with Add/Remove in the Control Panel.Now I can't use my original .LWM file for my island and to-day I referred back to your 'jigsaw' example, printed it all out and followed it word for word. Tried to compile it and it came up with error message : Erreur generale d'execution du processus: G:Ground2k4Resample.exe "G:Ground2k4TempTmpLC.inf"I've had a look in TmpLc.inf to see if there is any thing obviously wrong but no joy. It would appear that resample.exe doesn't like TmpLc.inf. I should be grateful for any advice and help.

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Hello Don,It seems as if you have a serious problem, but do not worry too much about it.There are two things that you should know:1. The Ground2K4 file (utopia.LWM) contains numerous directory paths, all those that you indicated when declaring the file parameters - where to create the LWM file, the bgl files, and the location of the background image and the RAW image file.If you have changed your directory structure afterwards, Ground2K4 will not be able to find any of those things and will give you an error (usually error 530 or something like that.) You will not be able to open your LWM project file.So basically you should not change your directory structure while you are working on a project. And, if you do, then you will not be able to use that project file.(Although, you could easily open it with Notepad and simply modify all the directory paths inside, if you are up to it.)2. Microsoft operating systems since time immemorial have problems with spaces, both in directory paths and in file names. It is hard to understand why this is so, since they have been working on the different operating systems for decades and could have remedied this a long time ago.Anyway, Resample will not work correctly if it must navigate a directory structure containing spaces.Did you change the names of your folders, Don? Does this directory structure now contain spaces in the folder names?From what you have written, it would seem that you originally had Ground2K4 in this directory: G:Ground2k4 and I assume that you have since changed your setup.You could try re-creating your original directory structure and see what happens. Normally, this will make everything work again.Best regards.Luis

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Guest DonMac

Hi Luis,I have done as you suggested and edited the LWM file to change the file paths and that certainly helped.However I have cleaned everything out and started again and I have had partial success - I have a coastline and part land! ... but no matter what I try I cannot change the resultant scenery.Before I forget, what is the significance of 'metres per pixel'?Secondly, you say that resample doesn't work if there are spaces in the path. Why then does the install program suggest 'Program FilesGround2k4' There is a space in 'Program Files' - does this have any effect? I am attaching three small jpeg's which I hope will indicate to you my present problem. Please forgive me with this constant presentation of my problems - I feel I must be coming 'a pain in the a... neck!'I have a feeling that perhaps my problems arise from the background map which I've used up to now. This is a bmp made from the original Airport for Windows bgl of my island. The grid squares when entering LC and WC seem to be rather few and very restricted in their total area making it difficult to extend the LC's well beyond the island boundary.I hope you can understand my questions and why they arise.Thanks as always, I look forward to your replies.

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Hello Don,If you are getting a shoreline, but no land within, then your problem is surely a lack of land class. There can be no other possibility.As you can see in your images, you only have land class for one of the LOD5 quadrants; the rest lack this essential file.Here is an image showing the LOD5 coordinates for each of the four quadrants:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/100393.jpgAfter generating your scenery, you should have four land class files with those coordinates as the file names. If you do not, then there is a problem with the creation process.Metres per pixel - in the File Parameters window, Ground2K4 indicates this value. This is nothing more than the resolution of your background image as calculated from the image dimensions and the span of its coordinates.Installing in Program Files - you can install Ground2K4 in any directory that you wish. I myself have it in a directory structure full of spaces in the names. But, then, you should not be surprised if land class and water class creation does not work as expected. I simply create the files myself from the RAW image and inf files that Ground2K has put together. For more information on how this is done, please consult the Terrain S.D.K.Your background image should have no influence at all on whether Ground2K4 can successfully create scenery. You could even use a blank image as a background; as long as the coordinates are correctly indicated, you will be able to make scenery.You are going through some learning pains, Don, but please do not get discouraged. There is nothing particularly serious or difficult in all of this.Best regards.Luis

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Guest DonMac

Luis - Once again thanks for your patience.To-day I cleared out all my gk4 files. Cleaned the registry of rubbish and started again by downloading Ground2K4 V5.33 and started all over again.Started a new file and tried using cell grid just to locate and size my island. The attached G2kjpeg shows what I used and the size of my island with respect to the grid. I got no LC files, had a good read of your letter and then of the Terrain Mesh part of SDK and tried to follow what was written there. Eventually using command mode and TmpLC.inf I managed to produce an LC bgl which by comparison with others I've seen was very big - 66kb -. Tried to put it all together in fs9 and when located found island had magnified itself! See the attached fs9.jpg .... and .... I'm getting the error report that I received the other day and told you about. This wall I'm knocking my head against is getting rather hard to bear!By the way this thread is getting rather long and unwealdy, should I start a new one?It really annoys me that I did once succeed in getting a perfectly good island to 'play' with but wasn't content to leave it at that and wanted to be more competent at making these scenery files from the point of view of understanding what makes them work.

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Thanks very much, Luis. I did not recall this important discussion of a year ago. Your exposition is extremely clear and quite revealing. I must agree with Gerrish that it would be helpful to all if you would place it in the library.This is not Don's problem at all. As you saw from the above examples, both his and mine, Ground2K4 now does handle all of this correctly and generates the land class files without errors.Best regards.Luis

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Hello Don, Perhaps there are a few things here that need to be cleared up.At the moment, I am just guessing, as you do not really provide much information as to what you have done. So, allow me to ask: you had success previously, but you have sinced changed something. What exactly have you changed in your setup? Is it, as I suspected, that you changed your directory structure? Have you tried re-creating the directory structure with which you succeeded in making scenery or have you used a different structure? Where exactly have you placed Ground2K4?Secondly, Don, there does seem to be some incongruity between these last two images. (By the way, I thank you for making small images, but there is no need to make them so small. A width of 500 to 600 pixels (or about 50 to 80 kB) is enough to convey sufficient information and allow clarity of detail.) Let me explain: the dashed lines in the Ground2K4 work space represent the LOD13 grid. Each quadrant is an Area. Likewise, CellGrid places a LOD13 grid in Flight Simulator - the red lines represent the boundaries of the Areas. So, necessarily, when you use this as a background image in Ground2K4, the dashed lines will fall EXACTLY on the red lines of the CellGrid image. If they do not, then you have incorrectly indicated the coordinates of the image.This is most likely why your island is so large now.To obtain the correct coordinates, Dick Ludowise has also provided TCalc. Just slew to the corner of an Area, make sure that the Area coordinates in TCalc are 0,0 and read the geographic coordinates (or just copy and paste them - thanks, Dick!) This makes it easy to obtain the correct coordinates.Don, let's keep on using this thread. If you have noticed, this has now become a "hot" thread - you can tell from the flames on the icon. So, let's go for the record, what do you say? We can keep it up until we get 1000 views, then we can stop for a beer:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/100571.gifBest regards.Luis

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