mesh scenery - two questions

[Guest tompeel]

Hello I'm working on my first ever terrain mesh, which is to fix elevation levels along the African coastline near Abijan - airport code DIAP. The elevation of the coast in the MSFS scenery is much too high - around 200 feet. I've download some DEM data as HGT files from here- ftp://e0srp01u.ecs.nasa.gov/srtm/version2/Africa/ - and using replace.exe from the MSFS SDK, the results look good except for two problems. 1. The lagoons behind the coastline are stuck at around 200 feet altitude. I've found I can use FLATTEN to lower the altitude, but is there a way to do this using the terrain mesh data?2. There are a few places in the DEM data which go below zero altitude. MSFS seems to interpret this as vast spikes in the sky. Any good way to correct this? I could search for all the locations using a hex editor on the terrain mesh data, but I would like a neater solution. T.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Tom,There is no problem asking the question here in this forum, you are quite welcome to do so, and you will get a reply, but you might consider asking in the mesh forum, just a few down from here.The guys there, often the same as here!, will appreciate the traffic.Best regards.Luis

[Guest tompeel]

Hi Luis thanks for the reply. I think I have now resolved the "spikes in the sky" effect, I found a great tool called FSDEM written by Emerson de Oliveira that cleans up the mesh data.That leaves me with the other problem, the lakes in the sky, which I don't think is a mesh problem. Using LWMViewer, I figured out it`s the bodies of water in the file EasthemafricacSceneryhyp500252.bgl that are up at around 200 feet. The mesh terrain doesn't have any effect on these, it seems.BTW- if I wanted, is there a way to x-post this to the mesh forum, or would I enter it as a new topic?CheersTom

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Tom,A good find - Emerson's FSDEM is probably the best tool for making FS mesh.The water bodies, on the other hand, are polygons called Water Masks. One of the properties of Water Masks, besides displaying water, is that they have a specific altitude, and that this altitude overrides the mesh. To modify them is tricky and is one of our requests for the next version of FS since at present it can be difficult.In short, you can take apart the default file, probably a HP (hydrographic polygons) file for that area, and either delete the lakes and create new ones at the correct location and with the correct height, or modify the height if you don't want to create new ones.Probably the easiest way to do this is with SBuilder by Luis de S

[Guest tompeel]

Hi Luis I fixed it! I couldn't get SBuilder to run - it displays "FS2004 not installed" - but I edited the LWMPpoly2 and HeightData values with a text editor and recompiled - it works- the scenery is 1000 times better than the default - you can see catchment basins for reservoirs for example, and sand dunes on the shoreline- great!Tom

[Guest luissa]

> ... I couldn't get SBuilder to run - it displays>"FS2004 not installed" Hi,There is a key in the Windows Registry that points to the folder where FS2004 is installed. The referred to message means that FS2004 is not present at that folder. Many addons look into that key. Most of the times this message is caused by a "manual move" of the FS2004 installation.Regards, Luis