Mt. Rainier Nat'l Park Project - help with Excludes Ple...

[1st fltsimguy 466]

I am working on a soon to be released freeware scenery design project (lol, hopefully before FSX overtakes me) that encompasses the entire land area of Mt Rainier Nat'l Park. I need help with excludes.As it is Mt Rainier looks pretty good if you have beefed up you scenery with payware packages, but its possible to do some enhancements that would make low and slow flying a better experience which is what I am aiming for.BACKGROUNDI am doing this project largely with Ground2K4 (for the VTP2 work), but will switch to SBuilder for any other work I do of this nature. As a base I am working with UT-USA installed, 38.2 m mesh from FS Genesis, and BEV textures for summer and fall, and default for SP, WI and HW. Also using EZ Landclass and EZ Scenery, and many other of the usual tools.I am completely redrawing, all lakes, alpine meadows with small alpline lakes, all park trails, landclass adjustments, absolutely all creeks, streams, rivers, floodplains, all glaciers, snow field, glacial moraines, floodplains, mudflows, swamp and marsh areas. As a second tier I am putting waterfall effects for many waterfalls in the park and starting work with installing objects of importance ie bridges. I have created several new textures especially for glaciers to improve the look and feel. I have utililized some of Holger Sandmanns textures from his freeware packages with his permission.I approached the folks over at UT and they would not let me modify their HL and HP 915140 so that my MT Rainier rivers and steams would mesh as seemlessly as possible, because that would have meant that I would be having to circulate their files with my work.HELPI would like to get some help as to how I can exclude the rivers and steams from the entire park area as easily as possible without impacting other features.Can someone please advise me on what the best or most appropriate tools would be to exclude all the default and UT streams and rivers and lakes in that area and how to do it?BETA TestingI have one volunteer to beta review this work and would like to know if someone else out there would be interested as well.

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Hello, hello, hello...a fading echo sound.I have been away, working to earn a living and just returned to find, no response so I am replying to my own post to raise it up the queue again.Anyone out there with a suggestion on my excludes question?Please, please!

[Guest mloeschner]

Hello !Just a quick shot - what does the SDK say ?Will check it for myself and come back to you later on. I'm also interestet to beta - test your scenery.Rgs, Martin.

[edgarone 0]

Hello BWallis,when roads and stream from UT are VTP line objects (like the default roads), they can be excluded with 'VTPExcludes' (G2K und SBuilder offers function for that). This must be done per Area. Have a look at the 'Beginners Guide' for the used layers per road and stream. The layers for UT data might differ, here you must check it for yourself.To 'exclude water' you overwrite the lake with a LWM polygon in your own scenery. Have a look at the recent thread 'GPS causing crash' for some problems and solutions concerning land and water data.Just a curious question: Why do you use both programs: G2K4 and SBuilder? As far as I know both offer the same functions. But I can imagine, its more difficult to coordinate the data of 2 different projectfiles in 2 different tools...Best regards,Edgar

[1st fltsimguy 466]

HI Edgar, thanks for your comments.Starting from the easiest to the hardest: I am using SBuilder only for elimininating the UT streams, rivers in the park area. SBuilder is easy to use this way, selecting and deleting and joining up my creeks with theirs. I can do this for my scenery in my system but the flight1 folks won't let me redistribute the files when I upload. Almost all other work is using G2K4 because I had experience with it before learning SB.Excluding water (lakes) has not been an issue for me, I have been able to use the exclude feature for VTP polys in G2K4 and replace with my own lakes where I wanted.My real problem area is the rivers and streams. I tried a G2K4 exclude over the whole park area for layer 4 listed as rivers in the menu, clicking on every area in each cell for the entire park area and this had no effect on steams. I wonder if I did something wrong? Mayby I don't understand where to put the exclude.bgl file, I put it with my mt rainier scenery folder, is the priority of the scenery important for it to override the main scenery folders?In the end I had to go into the Flight Simulator 9SceneryNamw and Flight Simulator 9SceneryUTUSAScenery and Holger Sandmann's Columbia River Gorge and remove the ST915150 files to get rid of the double streams.

[1st fltsimguy 466]

I am struggling to understand this problem. I have had no problem excluding lakes. I have used small exludes to remove objects, thats easy.But the streams over a large area has me stumped. My other post to Edgar speaks to this. I have stream files all over the place the cover the same LOD5 cell *915140.I will PM you on the beta testing.

[edgarone 0]

Hi Bwallis,so you use SBuilder to change other files? I think, this is not necessary here.You should be able to do what you want with your own additional scenery files. You can put your own exclude files and your own stream files into the same scenery folder. This scenery folder must be above the default and UT sceneries in the FS Scenery Manager (higher priority). The name of your own exclude files should be alphabetically before your stream files. So they are processed first and don't delete your own streams.I do not understand, why you are not able to delete/hide the default streams. They are on Layer 4. Maybe the default streams are already hidden by installing UT and you see UT streams only.The layer of UT streams and Holgers streams could be different. Maybe they choosed a different layer. You either test different layers by yourself or ask them personally. I am sure Holger will gladly answer...Best regards,Edgar

[1st fltsimguy 466]

OK Edgar, I never looked at the layer issue you mention above and the names of the files in relation to excludes and my files.I will take a look at that relationship and test out some of those proposals and see what happens.Maybe the answer was right under my nose and I didn't see it, which is why these forums are so useful and people like you who take the time to provide help. Thanks.

[Guest Horst]

Hello@ BwallisDo what Edgar wrote!a)Append the data in your area, (do not touch them!)b)Notice the layers are used (proberties) and the widths.c)Close the dataTo find the area for your exclude you can use 2

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Horst, if I understand correctly, excludes of this nature will take priority over say UT streams or default streams when it is "appended"Does my new exclude file have to be in the folder with the UT streams or default streams or in a separate scenery folder of higher priority in the library?Some explanation would be most welcome, as this technique is a new one on me.

[Guest Horst]

Hello,I know, I am always confusing.There is currently a thread in this forum, where user mgh tells that decompiling is not allowed and illegal. (But a very good and easy method to find piracy of Gis data and handmade scenery data!).So I do not know what to answer now?All you need is the layer information of ALL the addons in your area, to exclude this layer. The properties in Sbuilder for VTP.Think about the layer in this way:0-3 covers water (the mask), and not land4-7 covers land, and not water8-100 covers both.Default are used from 4-8. shoreline (default) is in 8 to cover both.Inside a layer you can use VTP Replace/Coexist.So 9-100 is more or less free, when nobody else is using it, in the area.When you have the information for all the default (SDK) and addons together, you can think about in which layer you want to put your data and which layer and area you must exclude.To see your data in the end.You should not use a vtp layer (all vtp data) used from all the other addons (vtp replace from other code).You can do this in Ground2k and in Sbuilder.But I am sure, you want to do this perfect.So you need the other data for orientation.I use LWMViewer (illegal software (?) (IMHO: NO) to open the data, and save the data to a bitmap (play a little with the size and resolution necessary) with exact boundaries (inf file).And this bitmap you can use as background map in Ground2k and Sbuilder.You have a perfect map to define the area for the exclude and you can

[edgarone 0]

Hello Bwallis,I'd love to add some to the confusion. No just kidding...I think, it is quite simple: You need 2 kind of scenery files1) one to exclude ('hide') other vtp data (default MS, UT)2) one to draw your own vtp dataBoth can be in the same scenery folder. This scenery folder must have an higher priority than the default and UT scenery folders (in FS Scenery Manager).From both of your scenery files the exclude file must be alphabetically before the vtp data scenery file ('be processed first'). Otherwise the exclude file could hide your own data.The default streams are on layer 4. UT streams might use another layer - ask them, or try it with some sample excludes on different layers to find the correct UT streams layer or explore it with LWMviewer.I vote for using the 'standard' layer 4 for your own streams. When someone else comes and want to use your scenery and enhance the upper left corner (with his own scenery on top of yours in the Scen. Manager), he doesn't need to experiment with excludes until he finds the correct layer for your data (like you seem to do it for the UT data). At least document it in the readme, which layer do you use for your own vtp data.A good tool for creating exclude files is 'Defarea' from Christian Fumey. It connects vi FSConnect(?) with the FSim and you just slew the along the streams, roads and other lines.However, I prefer to create a G2K project and keep everything in one project file.Best regards, Edgar

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Finally home from work.Thank you Horst and Edgar, I think I finally get it. These are helpful explanations.I will likely finish my base scenery tonight and will start with looking at this issue and masking the LOD 5 lines that appear in large polygons.And, now move onto the objects placement.I will advise if I need any more help. Thanks guys. I will put a good word in for all those folks who are helping me through this project. LOL I should have learned to walk before I ran.:-lol

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Layers, Layers, Layers.You were correct! :-yellow1 :-yellow1 yahoo!:-beerchug Thanks for putting me on the correct track.This issue was this, UT Rivers and Streams use LAYER 5 which is normally reserved used for Railways I believe, so I never thought of testing that out. I tried messing around with layers like you folks were suggesting and could not figure it out, so I posted over at SimForums and the UT folks over there advised me that they used Layer 5. I made up and exclude for layer 5 and just as simple as that the problem was solved.