Im using sbuilder rto create photoscenery, is there any way to create a water mask for photoscenery? Im new to scenery design, so if sbuilder is the wrong tool for the job is there some kind of tutorial explaning how to do it? And, btw if I I state that ms virtual earth was used for all the textures, and acknowldge that i did not make the textures is it legal to distribute them on avsim for free?

Hi Mike,you need to use photo editing software (Photoshop, PSP, GIMP, etc.) to add a water mask and/or blending mask to your file, either as a separate file or additional channels in the original image. Assuming we're talking about FSX your best sources of information about the process are the FSX Terrain SDK as well as Luis' excellent tutorial: http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxsd&DLID=112595Sorry, but distributing add-ons based on any of the image tile servers (Google Earth, VE, Yahoo, etc.) isn't legal, as their terms of use clearly state. Freeware or payware makes no difference in this case as you'd have to purchase a licence for the imagery, which costs about $30 per square kilometer!Cheers, Holger

Thanks for the info, thats too bad about the distribution, the avsim community would have had a good portion of south florida photoreal ;), an area which is very very innacurate even with utx and scenery tech landclass.

Hi Mike,you might want to check the USGS seamless server - http://seamless.usgs.gov/ - or do a web search for Florida GIS data. Many US states now provide public domain orthophotos at 3ft or better resolution. The difference is that you'd have to use free or low-cost GIS software to pre-process the images, which typically are in UTM or some state-specific projection. Some of us here have hands-on experience with these tasks so feel free to ask specific questions.Cheers, Holger