Landclass tile anomaly

[Guest Derek D]

Hi. I've stumbled across an anomaly with the landclass project I've been working on, and I'm stumped on what could be causing it.The screenshot shows a place in Canada which uses a large number of "Evergreen Forest And Fields" (#19) tiles. Although this tile doesn't exhibit any wierdness in the default scenery, with my scenery it displays occasional clumps of some sort of tropical broadleaf vegetation. I've checked and rechecked the landclass BGL in TmfViewer and there aren't any tiles in the vicinity that could be interfering.Does anyone have any ideas on where this vegetation could be coming from?http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/164520.jpg

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Pretty amusing, Derek, to see the rain forest in the midst of that lovely Winter scenery.That green patch must be a stray land class value in your new land class file. If you can't find it, just post the file here and one of the eagle-eyes that hang around should be able to pin-point it.Best regards.Luis

[Guest Derek D]

Thanks for the offer Luis, you've always been a big help. However I just determined what is causing it, and unfortunately it does not seem to be something that can be fixed. This particular landclass tile (19) uses landclass tile 6 (Evergreen Broadleaf Forests) on slopes. I have no idea why it's set up that way because the two tile types don't go together at all.Since it isn't possible to change the lookup table (as far as I know) I may just have to find some way to prevent using this tile in hilly areas, or perhaps just avoid using it altogether.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Ah yes, Derek, that is a problem. There isn't much slope visible in that image, otherwise I might have suspected it.I have communicated this problem to the developers - this time around, they have made a lot more regions, ground texture variants, and a more complex land class lookup table with greater changes on slopes. Unfortunately, nothing in life is perfect, and there can be visual anomalies.In the past, we could just draw a VTP land class over it and cover any gradient variant. But, now in FS X, land class polygons display the exact same gradient variant as the underlying land class. So, there is no solution to this problem.Too bad.Perhaps in a future version of FS, we shall have the possibility of putting together our own local land class lookup table - this would give us complete flexibility in this matter.Best regards.Luis

[Holger 0]

Hi there,"In the past, we could just draw a VTP land class over it and cover any gradient variant. But, now in FS X, land class polygons display the exact same gradient variant as the underlying land class. So, there is no solution to this problem."While there may not be a simple solution there is a practical work-around with the use of land class files with local textures and/or custom autogen.We can pick suitable classes based on their behavior on slopes (early switcher, late switcher, multiple switches, etc.) and use those classes to set up custom land class files with textures in local texture subfolders (if you don't want to create your own textures write a batch file to copy and rename the appropriate default sets from SceneryWorldtexture). The gradient mapping of the FSX classes, at least for Region B, is part of my land class table: http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=57245 (the current version of the table simplifies the 16 gradient classes but it should do for most purposes).Obviously, the process is a bit more involved than a simple land class file but the results often look much better than what can be achieved with the "standard approach". In FS9 this was possible too - see http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=58498 - but more restricted because the autogen definitions for many classes were hard-coded. In FSX we can override any autogen definition with custom agn files and thus are free to choose among the many classes. If anything, the number of options is rather overwhelming ;-)Having said that, the particular issue with the tropical trees on the mid-level slopes of some classes may already have been fixed by Arnaud Clere's lclookup.bgl tweaks: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3404Cheers, Holger

[Guest Derek D]

Thanks for the tips Holger. I'll take a closer look at those workarounds.