Making my own Scenery Texture Tiles.. Just a couple of questions.

[Guest AL_Kaiser]

I am working on a project right now to mesh, and LC the entire area of the carribean.Mesh is done, LC is primarily done the only issue is that MS does not have any really good tropical textures.So I have taken some of the default textures, and altered them going off of pictures to get a more tropical feel. Heres where the questions come into play.1) I know I cannot have them in the same directory as my LC files so do I add them to the mesh /texture Directory? The Mesh sits lower in the SceneryLibrary will this affect the viewing of the new tiles?2) can I just place them on the landclass surface as new textures to get them to show or do I need to alter the scenery.cfg file?Im sure I will think up more laterthanks for any help.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Al,Great project, and very vast!Altitude mesh for this part of the world is a real mess, as it probably is much of the FS world.Lacking accurate data sources for land masses, the FS team has done as best as possible to create the islands. Unfortunately, these islands do not align with altitude mesh that is always more accurate. Here are some examples:Anguillahttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/126246.jpgSt. Barthhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/126247.jpgTortolahttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/126248.jpgVirgin Gordahttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/126249.jpgThe Water Fills at the coasts will level the altitude mesh, resulting in a very sharp cliff everywhere that the mesh and land mess do not align, as can be seen in the default scenery. This problem occurs pretty much in all the islands, although it is not as visible in the Greater Antilles where coastal plains attenuate the effect.The present default mesh is a LOD8, and seems to be sourced from SRTM data. While you can go up to LOD9 with interpolation, and I have, the mesh will still not be aligned with the land masses.So, to avoid the unpleasant cliffs, you will have to re-draw the islands:St. Barthhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/126250.gifThis implies modification of the default hyp files, and the mess of distributing such modifications.I am curious as to how you will handle this, and certainly wish you a lot of luck.Best regards.Luis

[Guest AL_Kaiser]

Thank you for your response, and while you seem to have opened a whole new can of worms lol I think My original question may not have been clear.First my original question made mroe plain, and then questions for your post.1)Say I take the standard texture for tropical forest. I alter the texture to more closly resemble the ground cover for the islands, and save it as a new tile with the same name. I place this texture in a /Texture folder, and assign the texture in the Landclass. Is that all I would have to do to get it to show the new texture as opposed to the original FS texture? 2) This is directed at your comments.I was under the impression that new mesh would override the default mesh and display in its place instead of the original. What I have done so far is taken data from different sources, and made new higher resolution meshes for all the carribean. I place this folder far down the list and it appears to show up inplace of the original i.e. St Thomas usvi now has some nice looking mountains instead of the hills that were there before. Also it wouldappear that Water island, and some of the smaller islands that were not showing in FS originally are now showing up. I do see some of the "Cliffs" that you wrote about, but not horribly. Are my new islands covering the original, or am I lucky in the few that I have visited since meshing them? Also I dont understand what you mean by repainting the hyp files. what exactly is the hyp file?Thanks again.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Al.Let's see, to answer your question, if you wish to use your own version of the ground textures, simply create a Texture folder in the land class folder and place ALL the ground textures that you have assigned in the land class file in there. All the ground textures that you have used must be in there, including your modified texture, and also the unmodified textures.Since ground textures do not have the same numbering system as the land class system, you will have to figure out which ground textures correspond to your new land class assignments. You can use Arnaud Cl

[Holger 0]

Hi Al,would that be the Al Kaiser of the Stemme (aka air file for AI choppers) fame??? If so great to see you back in FS design!!!Luis did a wonderful job on summarizing your options and the various issues with them. If you do want to try your hand at editing the default HYP files, PM with your email and I'd be happy to send you a tutorial I wrote a while back for doing these edits.Cheers, Holger

[Guest AL_Kaiser]

Yes it would be me, one and the same.I am actually working on a version of the Stemme for FS9. I have also been redoing the B307 from the ground up very slowly over the past year or so. I hope to have something fairly soon on one or the other. I however have recently been playing with scenery mostly. It came from the fact that I am really wanting to move to the USVI, and started flying there pretty much exclusivly. The default scenery is a huge dissapointment, and the meshes, and new landclasses I have made are an incredible upgrade to what was there before. I do however want to be able to make it as close to reality as possible.You can e-mail me at medic72@cox.net and Ill see what I can do with the hyp files.Thank you for all the help so far in this thread it has opened up somethings, and created some fog in others I thought I had figured out lol.Texture question (Im at work right now so I dont have the actual texture names etc infront of me)Let say I take the standard Landclass 33 (033h2su1.bmp) texture, and apply it to my landclass map. anywhere 33 is called in the landclass file this texture is called, correct? Now say I alter this texture say its original name is 033h2su1.bmpthere are several variations 003h2su1-su7.Now if I remake the texture by repainting it then name them 003h2su1-su7, and place them in my Landclass texture directory will this be enough to show them or will I still have to include the original?also would the directory structure befs9/ scenery/ MYScnenery/ Scenery/(all my Landcass .BGL files) Texture/ (All my altered Texture files)I also think I may be having an issue with my meshes. For the USVI I used SRTM data 1 arc second, and fixed any holes and imperfections.I used resample on the original *.bil files to convert them to .bgl files. However if I use anything over lod=auto my .bgl files show up as being 1kb files. If I set to auto they are 450kb+ epending on how much land is in the area. (Puerto Rico is 2000kb+)Now when I load into fs9 there is obviously a difference as the lod is in greater detail, but if I place the mesh folder high in the scenery library the meshes dont show making me think they are actually the same LOD as the original files. Is there an issue with converting .bil files directly that causes the 1kb file issue when trying to use lod=10?Thanks again. someday Ill figure this out and wont have so many questions to ask.If you would like to have a look at what I have done so far I can zip up the USVI islands (Mesh/Landclass) and attach them to try out.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Welcome to the Caribbean, Al. Glad to have you with us. I am sure that you will appreciate the change. Don

[Guest AL_Kaiser]

Luis how about some good news for a change??? lolThanks for the input. Ok so I am going to need to redo the water polys to match up to the new mesh basically. Well this is going to be more indepth than I though but oh well It should be fun.Ok on to textures.Landclass ID, and texture number do not coincide ok cool got that. Now if I take your example and take the landclass id of 33and redraw the 019h2su1.bmp texture and place it in the texture subfolder folder of the folder I have the landclass bgls placed then it should show the new textures in FS correct? or am I missing something with location of the textures.

[pascal72 0]

Hello Everybody,Yes, that's correct but don't forget to place with your modified ones, any textures called by your bgl, to avoid memory leak.I have a question too, about modified textures for landclass tiles :How can you modify the "masks" of these textures (ex.008A2M11.bmp) which seem in different format ?best regards,pascalhttp://perso.wanadoo.fr/p.dumat

[Holger 0]

Hi Pascal,good question! I only know of one person, Joachim Buhre, who seems to have successfully decoded the technical aspects of these particular masks. In fact, he just uploaded to his website a patch for 63 of them, which he claims were done incorrectly by the FS design team!The relevant thread is here: http://www.wcm.at/forum/showthread.php?s=&...m+AND+landclass and his website is here: http://www.jobia.de/Hope your German is up to speed ;-)In his post he actually doesn't explain too much about the programming issues but the documentation for the patch itself includes a bit more. Apparently, the odd oblong format of these textures is due to the fact that each one incorporates eight different variants for blending adjacent texture tiles, thus ensuring variation that prevents repeating patterns. Each of those eight masks carefully delineates the specific features of a texture so that the blending process doesn't cut fields or settlements in half. The consequence for add-on landclass textures that replace the default sets is that they may be sufficiently different to upset those custom masks. In his documentation, Joachim shows FScene textures as an example of visual problems but any third-party landclass texture set (in particular those with agricultural and residential textures) will likely end up not achieving the same smooth transitions as the default textures.Joachim doesn't provide specific information on how to program custom mask bitmaps but he's working on a very detailed technical documentation (in German) of the FS landscape "engine" and it's supposed to include all that - I've seen parts of it and the term "dissertation" comes to mind :-eek :-cool Cheers, Holger

[Holger 0]

Hi Al,you've got that right! Note that you can have a combination of default and custom textures: a base landclass that is based on default textures only and sits in a folder without a texture subdirectory and an overlay landclass (at higher priority) that contains only your custom textures with the texture sets in a texture subfolder.There's just one exception: if you want to add landclass types as VTP2 polygons (to delineate specific features with sharp boundaries, such as clearcuts or settlements) they will always use the textures in the global "SceneryWorldtexture" folder (unless you define them as custom textures but then you don't have the full variation of a five- or seven-piece set).One other thing to keep in mind is that FS automaticaly switches most of the landclass textures when it encounters steeper terrain. For the "nature" landclass types, such as forests and deserts, there's only one switch at fairly steep slopes to rock faces (056) but the agricultural and settlement textures switch much earlier, which can be annoying. Also, if your own textures are quite different from the default version the switched areas may look strange. In those cases it's best to also include custom textures for the "switch" landclasses.Arnaud Clere made an EXCEL table (in French) that lists the textures that are used in the autoswitching process for each landclass. It's linked in this thread: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search . Alternatively, Joachim Buhre made a similar table (in German) that is available here: http://www.germany-vfr.de/Jobia/lcdoku/lctable/lctable.zipHaving said all this it is entirely up to you how simple or complex your project becomes. Like Luis said, the key thing is to have fun! ;-)Cheers, Holger

[Guest Horst]

Sorry, off topic:Quote Luis Feliz:

[Guest Horst]

Hello,A small addition to Holger :You will not see these effects:http://www.wcm.at/forum/attachment.php?postid=1677535http://www.wcm.at/forum/attachment.php?postid=1677536BUT it has nothing to do with the

[pascal72 0]

Hi Holger and Horst,Many thanks for these infos and links !The work of Joachim is very interesting and I hope his next "dissertation" will explain how to program these custom mask bitmaps..best regards,pascalhttp://perso.wanadoo.fr/p.dumat

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hey, Al, that was the good news! After all, Flight Simulator is your favorite pastime, isn't it? Well, this will certainly help you pass the time. And lots of it!Thanks for the information, guys. That Joachim is always coming up with fascinating information. Now, if we could only have a translation, because my German skills are extremely rusty.Horst, I love it! That is exactly the point!Best regards.Luis