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Holger

Coastline and shoreline width: General consensus?

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Guest V35 Flier

What are your opinions on coastline and lake shoreline width? At least one freeware lake scenery author I have encountered believes that lakes look more realistic with no shoreline. Myself, I think a small shoreline makes the transition from the land to water texture more visually appealing but Ground2k or Slarti alignment problems between the water texture and the shoreline prevent me from using a very small shoreline (what I feel looks the most realistic when properly aligned).What you say?

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Guest luissa

Hello Peter,I agree with you that a small shorline (without waves) gives a better look to a lake (I am referring to artificial reservoir lakes). I use widths between 25 to 30 meters. My "Lat/Lon to LWM" and "Lat/Lon to VTP" coordinate transformations give a shift to NW of the VTP items in relation to LWM items. The shift is almost constant within the Cell and Areas and it is about 1 unit (5 meters) in both directions. With the shown setting I can use lake shorelines of about 25 meters wide.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/98933.gifI also use different line widths along the shoreline. In order to speed up this setting I hold the key "+" while I click a point to enlarge its width. When I press and hold the "-" key, the click will make the line thiner. http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/98934.gifRegards, Luis

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Hi there,nice features, Luis! In general, I find the default shorelines boring (even width) and of often strangely colored. For smaller areas, I have used different types and widths to make the scenery look more realistic - including invisible shorelines to just get the wave action - but that is a lot of work (see first screenshot). To prevent misalignement with the LWM I draw the shorelines slightly inland of the lake/ocean.An alternative is to make custom shoreline textures that are of unequal width along their length. I came across this idea when looking at a small scenery package by texture "guru" Lennart Arvidsson: Farm Sognefjorden, available here http://www.flightsim.no/file/FS2004/Scenery/Europa/Fly_Fish/I don't know why Lennart uses 512x512 textures (the standard 256x256 do just as well) but the concept is great and they look much more real (second screenshot). Obviously, those jagged shorelines aren't suitable for all shore types but the idea is what counts here. Also, because of the "natural" variation one can use pretty large width settings (40-60) and still have sections that have almost no shoreline yet don't show alignment problems in Slarti or G2K4.Cheers, Holgerhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/98945.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/98946.jpg

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I rarely use shorelines, since generally they do not exist in the real world, but only place them where they can really be found. This is a lot of work, but this is, after all, a pastime, and that does pass the time.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/98948.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/98949.jpgThe white in the images is, of course, surf.Shorelines are a decorative element, and do undoubtedly make coasts look nicer, if somewhat unrealistic. Holger's suggestions, and the example based on Lennart's textures look very nice. A very good idea overall.Best regards.Luis

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Guest V35 Flier

Wow, I certainly agree that variable width coastlines look much better, but how long does it take you to do this type of detail per lake? I am using Slarti to build entire areas and hand editing the width for each lake would take years! :)If it doesn't already (a standard disclaimer since I certainly do not know all this program does yet), perhaps Slarti ought to have a variable width shoreline/coastline option in a future release.

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Hi Peter,this is probably a misunderstanding: the variable-width coastline is an effect of the texture itself, there is no need to alter the width at all. The second image in my post above is based on a fixed shoreline width of "40". My suggestion is to download Lennart's package and give his shoreline a try. Believe me, you will never want to look at a boring default shoreline again ;-)Cheers, Holger

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Guest V35 Flier

Oh, OK. That is a much nicer solution. I'll take you advice and grab Lennart's package.

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Guest Horst

Hello,I would agree, not looking do a boring shoreline!Can we find a realistic shoreline?I would also agree to Luis, to find a natural shoreline.It was done from the nature!To find a semi automatic (not done from

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Guest jimkeir

Hi.> perhaps Slarti ought to have a variable width shoreline/coastline optionWouldn't be difficult to do, but would it be useful? I think the texture approach is probably better. You can use that already, just specify a different texture name and you'll get instant variable-width shorelines.Cheers,Jim

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Guest HotShot

Please, can you tell us how to use such 'custom' shoreline textures (without overwriting the FS9 default ones of course) ?I've tried to declare them under Ground2k4 (in ownlines4.txt) then adding a new section in scenery.cfg, but no way: the scenery fails loading at 55% :/

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Howdy,your custom shoreline textures need to be in the 'texture' subdirectory of your scenery add-on that uses the ownline.txt feature. Also, it's easy to have a syntax error sneak into the ownline.txt code, which could lead to crashes. Finally, make sure that you understand the meaning of the parameters in ownline.txt; read the Terrain SDK for clarification.Cheers, Holger

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