Ground2K problems

[betelgeuse 41]

Hello HolgerThanks. I want to add shoreline detail around the estuary of the Karluk River. In reality there is a strip of land across the river entrance and an island near the south shore. Neither of these show in default FS9. The runway in the screenshot is in the FS9 default position but this is incorrect according to topozone. The UT scenery has it nearer right but the ramp is then in the river. I was not planning on changing the runway position - just fixing the shoreline. I do not understand why you are so sure that the combo is wrong since the shorelines on the map and the screenshot line up pretty well. Betel

[Holger 0]

Hi Betel,if you want accurate shorelines then using an accurately placed map would probably be preferable; thus I'd suggest my approach listed above.As to the scale: according to the Alaska FAA link above Karluk's runway is 2000ft long. The black grid on the Topozone map has a 1-mile spacing (not 1 km, as I first thought). I based my observation on the scale of the runway in FS vs. the grid on the map and the landing strip drawn on the map; if your overlay is correct then the FS runway should be more than 1 mile long but AFCAD has it correctly at 2000x50ft.Cheers, Holger

[scott967 62]

I know nothing of Alaska, but a quick play of things I got this:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/127572.jpgIt looks to me like the default shoreline is pretty far off here. I highlighted the default runway in yellow, and the position/size looks pretty good using the faa data Holger referenced.The jpeg consists of ms terraserver "topo" (USGS DRG projected NUTM5 NAD83) captured by USAPhotomaps ver 2.75 (9/3/05) reprojected to geo/WGS84 by Global Mapper 6.09, with a screen cap of FS9 area (slew/top down view north up) manually georefeerenced in Gobalal Mapper. I set transparancy of about 60%, created a vector line feature over the runway as displayed in the FS9 capture, and saved all as a jpeg.scott s..

[betelgeuse 41]

Haha! Thanks, scott. I just need two last, vital pieces of information: 1.How to get a jpeg image like this into G2K4? 2.How to make seamless joins where the shoreline meets the default?Betel

[scott967 62]

For ground2k, your background image/map must be in windows bmp format projected as geo (lat/long) and WGS84 datum and you must know the lat/long of two points. Best case is that you know the lat/long of the northwest and southeast corners. Lacking that, you need to determine the lat/long of any two points (closer to the corners is best) that you can readily identify in the image.Start g2k4 and create new project. double click on the project box to enter the file name for the project, click on next, then double click on the map box to enter the name of your bmp mapfile. Then click on the "NW/SE coordinates on the map" button to bring up this window:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/127680.jpgIt defaults to the NW and SE corner. If you have those positions, enter the lat/longs into the appropriate boxes, observing the correct format.If you don't have the corners, but instead points within the image, enter the lat/long as before. Then click on the NW point box, then scroll your image to see the point on the image and click it in the image. That should cause the crosshairs to move to your point (in the above image, intersection of two gird lines from the topo). Note that as you move the mouse over your inage, the pixel postiion is displayed. Also, your entered lat/long values are shown in the red area to the left. You should try to verify these values to make sure you didn't make a data entry error. When you are happy, click OK and you are returned to the project creation dialog page. Note that your lat and long positions are displayed here too, as another check. Then click next and move down to fill in the bgl names and folder locations. Once you get all the required data antered and click OK you should get the main g2k4 view. As far as merging with default data. I'm not sure of the best technique. If there is an obvious inflection point, where the coast takes a sharp turn that would be easier. Lacking that, I would probably try to approach the default coast at a LOD13 area boundary. You will have to play with the texture and width to get it to look natural.scott s..

[betelgeuse 41]

Thanks again, Scott. I get the general drift. I plan to do some work on this now. Will post again if and when I have something worth reporting. Betel

[betelgeuse 41]

I have run up against more probs. I installed Ultimate Terrain Canada and Alaska because I thought it might produce a better shoreline at Karluk. Sadly it didnt, and as I noted above, the ramp ended up in the river. There were other major scenery nonsenses all around Kodiak Island so I decided to uninstall UT.The end result of that is that I no longer have a river! In fact the entire west coast of the island consists of a series of regular zig-zags with sea forming the sides and tops of mountains in places etc.I have deleted the scenery.dat files for the area and re-run FS9 with no change. I have removed all files relating to UT that are obviously part of that program. Still the same. What to do? Am I heading for an uninstall of FS9 or can I re-install over the top of the existing version?Wot a carry on!

[scott967 62]

I don't have UT canada, but I do have UT USA and I guess you didn't uninstall properly (maybe you should have configured UT for default prior to uninstalling, but that's just a guess).What UTUSA does, is rename the default scenery files to an XXX extension. If you do a search on that you probably will find a bunch of files in the following default locations:scenerynamwsceneryscenerynamcsceneryscenerynamesceneryIn particular, you are looking for files like HP906110.XXX and HL906110.XXX (these cover west Kodiak, but there are probably ones like this for all of Canada/Alaska.At any rate, assuming you find those files, just rename them all to BGL extension (i.e., HP906110.BGL). Barring that, you should be able to load the namw scenery region from the CD. Note that the 9.1 patch changed some bridge files which you might have to restore also.Note: you might find LWMViewer helpful in working your scenery area. This program can display the terrain files without constantly having to look at FS. Get it here:http://www.jimkeir.co.uk/FlightSim/LWMViewer.htmlscott s..

[betelgeuse 41]

Haha! Thanks, scott for putting me on the right track. Instead of doing this manually, I installed FS9 on a old, very slow laptop which I then networked with my FS9 PC. Just did a straight transfer of the NAME, NAMC, NAMW folders into the FS9scenery folder. After this re-sorted by file type and deleted all .xxx files. Running perfectly again! Now, I'm back to where I started ;-). NO chance for scenery design next week but hope to post again. I can't let all you good folks down who helped me so patiently. John (Betel)