Going underground

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

As many of you know, some land class types will not display on slopes. At least, not if they are placed as land class. It is easy enough to get around this limitation by drawing a VTP and assigning a land class value to it - this will cover the rocky slopes and display the desired ground textures.However, there is the problem of autogen. Mostly, it does not appear on slopes, and if it does, the few houses that are displayed perch precariously on the slope, looking like some California canyon with an accident waiting to happen:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/124442.jpgRather unsightly, isn't it?Thanks to Jim Keir, I have been able to look at all the default objects, yes, all of them, and a few comments come to mind.First, the FS Team has really been hard at work. There are a multitude of objects in there of all sorts. The list of objects in the BGLComp S.D.K. does not even begin to cover all the objects that exist. There are many more than that.In addition, there are some areas with many objects (Seattle - not surprising, North America, and Western Europe) and others with little or nothing at all, such as Africa, Asia, and Central and South America. So, there is still much work to do.But, I also came across something very interesting with a number of the objects, buildings and others. Here, for example, is one of the buildings from the complex built by William Randolph Hearst in San Simeon, California, the so-called "Hearst Castle":http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/124443.jpgA nice enough building, but the interesting part is when the ground is removed:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/124444.jpgWhen the entire objects is viewed, one can see that there is a large part below ground, a basement level, if you wish.This is a very interesting design technique that neatly solves the problem of sloping ground (and mimics the real world, of course, where basements are often visible). All my objects henceforth will have a below-ground part so that they will not hang off a slope.It would be an interesting idea for the autogen buildings to also incorporate this technique. Not only would it solve the problem of buildings about to fall down the hill, but it would also allow urban land class to be assigned and displayed on slopes. We would finally be rid of the rocky slope fallback.Best regards.Luis

[Guest artmartin]

Wow, great idea you've uncovered Luis. I, like you, have also gotten more respect for the FS team as I've delved deeper into the underlying files and textures. There's a huge amount of man hours in their creation. Art

[jonpatch 1]

... as well some of the FS skyscraper objects have an extended concrete section at the bottom I assume for this purpose.Jon