Ground2k NightLight in Crops Texture

[Guest Cazador]

Dear All:I have made a valley polygon (Crop texture) using VTP2 polygon but in the night i see lights on that polygon.Is there a way to avoid lights on crop polygons?Thanks.Alfredo

[Holger 0]

Hi Alfredo,please see this thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchCheers, Holger

[Guest mtom]

Hi Holger.Could you please spell this out for me. It's not clear what's meant by one BGL without night textures and one BGL with night texture. As you say in other thread: "the work-around is to split the project into one file of VTP2 polys with night textures and one of VTP2 polys without". I'm confused because a default ground tile poly such a that representing fields will have an associated night (lm) texture, so all BGLs will trigger night textures. Or, is it the case that some ground tile polys actually don't?Cheers,Matthew.

[Holger 0]

Hi Matthew,only land class texture sets that include autogen buildings have an associated nightlight file set. That actually does include most of the agricultural textures so if your VTP2 poly is supposed to represent a field without night lignts then you'd have to make your own custom texture set to achieve that.There's a very neat land class table in MS EXCEL made by Arnaud Cl

[Guest mtom]

Hi Holger. Thanks for the reply and the link to Arnaud's landclass table. Nice work.So the lanclass texture set I'm looking at - which has autogen and library objects associated with it - does have dedicated night textures. The reasons I asked and thought something might have been astray, was that these textures show a lot of lighting at night. This is much more than I would have thought, given the sprasity of roads and dwellings. The real-world country-side in these conditions is usually pretty dark. Anyway, thanks for the input.Cheers,Matthew.

[Guest]

Hello Alfredo and All,I tried posting a reply earlier this morning but apparently it didn't work. I'm experimenting with drawing my own fields as VTP2 polys using default textures that don't show the night lighting effects. I wasn't concerned about the night lighting but the default crops textures just aren't realistic for Montana. Here, the fields are mainly large grain and hay crops of generally square and rectangular shapes. Many of the wheat fields have alternating bands of grain and fallow ground. Anyway, drawing your own fields can eliminate the night lighting although it is tedious and time-consuming. I'm using Google and USGS aerial photos that include a lot of agricultural and other information. It's not too difficult to correlate them with the topographic maps on which I'm drawing my scenery modifications.I've attached two snapshots showing my experimental fields. Both show areas of default crops and other textures, my fields and areas where I have changed the default forest/brush texture to tan dry grass and green irrigated grass textures. The green is an attempt to simulate hay and other fields but it doesn't come off very well. The native grasses are green in spring and early summer but dry and turn a tan color later in summer and autumn. Since suitable default textures are limited, I've chosen the late summer tan to contrast with the green hayfields, etc.In fields 1.jpg my fields are below the airplane and off to the left. You can see default crop textures immediately to the right and ahead and the generally wooded default texture which is not realistic for this area of short grass high plains. Other areas that I've changed are visible in the distance toward the Crazy Mountains at upper right. Some of the narrow bands in the fields disappear as you get close to them. Otherwise, the fields are commonly bordered by dirt roads some of which I have not yet added. Much of the landclass remains to be changed.Fields 2.jpg shows one of the banded wheat fields and adjacent large fields. The textures need changing, more variety. Please pardon the distant tearing/banding. My computer and video card aren't the fastest in town. Areas where I've changed the landclass appear as stips or bands in the default woods/shrub texture.I'm not yet sold on the drawn fields because the borders are too stark but they do reflect the nature of the fields much more realistically than the default textures. Any suggestions, comments etc. would be appreciated.Wil Husted

[Holger 0]

Hi Wil,those fields look actually very good, as far as I can tell. For the narrow bands I would try to put those into the actual textures. As long as you keep them aligned in N-S, E-W, NW-SE, NE-SW directions you shouldn't notice any tiling. Of course, this involves editing and making your own textures but that's not as difficult as it may seem at first. The sticky thread at the top of this forum contains the names and links to the tools that allow you to compile the textures in the correct format.On the other hand, if there aren't that many striped fields around it might be quicker to place them as VTP stripes. But what do you mean by "Some of the narrow bands in the fields disappear as you get close to them"?Cheers, HolgerP.S.: As for the texture "tearing": have you tried a value of less than 4.0 (e.g., 3.0) for your TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS= parameter in the FS9.cfg Terrain section?

[GHD 21]

>> P.S.: As for the texture "tearing": have you tried a value of less than 4.0 (e.g., 3.0) for your TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS= parameter in the FS9.cfg Terrain section? Holger, I have never seen a rational explanation for TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS I have both set to 9.8, with TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES set to zero. What are your thoughts?George

[Guest]

Howdy Holger,Many thanks for your response and suggestions. This is another learning experience and I need all the help I can get.I'm leaving Thursday morning for a couple of weeks to try my hand at archaeological fieldwork one more time. This'll give me the chance to fully ponder your suggestions and determine how/whether or not to proceed.This fields business came about when I got sidetracked by forum posts about the Google maps, aerial photos etc. and a general unhappiness with the default crops textures. The project has already become larger than initially intended and at this point I'm reluctant to begin learning another process. I downloaded some more Google aerial photos yesterday and there are a gazillion fields, both homogenous and striped within the project area. There are just too many to include in the project at this point but would make a dandy upgrade. So, I think that I'll go ahead and finish the project without the fields but continue experimenting with them on the side.There aren't enough suitable default textures to realistically depict the various fields, and making my own had crossed my mind. The fields do tend to align north-south, east-west with some stripes on the diagonal. They also tend to equate with section, quarter-section, eighth-section etc. lines. Drainages are present in many fields (grass waterways etc.) and many have irregular boundaries where they end at a stream or topographic break. If I understand you correctly, including stripes within a texture might not work too well. The fields can be viewed fairly clearly in the aerial photos and correlated with the topographic maps, so more or less actual shapes and perimeters can be drawn, at least as of the last plantings and harvests.So, there's much to consider while I'm down in Wyoming. I've been concentrating on mountain areas and most of the fields are beyond the mountains and out in more or less flat eastern Montana. I'm wondering if folks would be flying around much of the less spectacularly scenic areas. Would it be worth the time and effort needed to produce the fields? I think so when they are near mountains but...???The narrow bands disappearing as they are approached is that tiling(?) effect often seen in snowy mountain areas by some folks including me.I changed the TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS to 3.00000 and this apparently has eliminated the "tearing."The more I mess with them the more I like the drawn fields. It's the default textures that leave a lot to be desired. Oddly the tan beach sand #137 and Arid #129 Y textures look best for the straw stubble in harvested wheat fields but the grass textures aren't too realistic except for hayfields and pastures. So, it looks like making my own textures may be the way to go. So much to do and so little time!Wil

[Holger 0]

Hi there,George, the following thread contains the extent of my knowledge about FS9 terrain settings: http://portal.fsgenesis.net/index.php?name...nextendedradiusWil, sounds like you're ready to experiment with custom textures ;-) It's actually quite fun once you get the hang of it. Anyway, enjoy your time in the field. I'll be doing some field research this summer too (Waterton National Park) and look forward to exchanging the keyboard with a notebook.Cheers, Holger

[GHD 21]

Thanks Holger, I am using a high res mesh (19m) so have set TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=3.9George

[Guest mtom]

Hi all.Has anyone got any further tips on solving this problem (night masks showing through vector polys). I've got a complex G2K4 working file. So I've broken it down into six seperate working file that produce seperate BGLs: custom lines; default lines; default ground polys without night masks; default ground polys with night masks; and custom ground polys with night masks. The default line working file produces the _9 and _009 BGLs. The other produce one BGL each. However, I'm still getting the night masks from the background LC showing through the vector polys at night. I'm at am dead end. Any ideas on how to progress, anyone?Cheers,Matthew.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Matthew,This bug was fixed for FS X. Are you using FS 9 or FS X?Best regards.Luis

[Holger 0]

Hi Matthew,in my experience the only way to reliably prevent this annoying "bug" is to place polys with night lights into a separate add-on folder from those without (i.e., have two separate entries in the scenery library; order doesn't matter). In addition, polys with and without night lights need to be assigned different layers in the G2K4 file.Cheers, Holger

[Guest mtom]

Hi fellas.I'm still in FS9, Luis. I've got FS10, but I need a major hardware upgrade before I can put it to good use. Ta Holger. I'll try the seperate folder approach. Did try that at one point, but I think it was with seperate lines and polys files only. Good idea about the poly levels for each file.Cheers,Matthew.