What have I done????

[Guest GabrielR]

Hi all this is my first post in this forum....Ok here are the questions, I am a scenery designer, I work mostly using gmax and my only intervention in terrrain elevation modification is doing flattens in Scasm.Last week I started to investigate about mesh design and I came across with a program called FSterrain 2002 by MW graphics (No tutorials, no help), I also made a search on yahoo by the most common term found in the program GTOPO30 and found a website with the Earth divided in "Tiles" I downloaded the one I'm interested in and loaded into the program and changed the "resolution" to 3 Arc Sec and generated the BGL. I found in the scenery a somewhat good improvement in the mesh display at 95%.After that I found in the program the acronym SRTM and went after that in Yahoo again, and found a source for South america (that's from NASA, I guess) and did the same with a file .hgt.I found the results to be WAYYY better, after optimizing for some "errors" in the elevation data with the automatic function of this program.As you can see I have no Idea what I am doing I am just doing trial and error. Please let me know if I am going in the right direction, is this an accurate source of data??? are there any better sources for South America??I have not been able to correct the elevation of the Lakes and the rivers that now look Sunked with the original (default) elevation...Also there are 2 mountains that appear as a single one in both the default and the one that I did, I would like to have this mountains separated and with a shape closer to reality, how can I edit this tiny section???Thanks, any tip or advise even a tutorial will be appreciated.

[Holger 0]

Hi Gabriel:welcome to the, errr, club! Looks like you've come a long ways already with your trial-and-error approach.There's no step-by-step tutorial for mesh design out there but the site that comes closest to that would be Steve's: http://www.fs-traveler.com/welcome.shtml. In addition, you do want to read the FS2002 Scenery SDK (http://www.microsoft.com/games/flightsimulator/fs2002_downloads_sdk.asp) for the basics. Finally, the MS TMFViewer utility is the most efficient tool for checking your mesh before installing in FS (part of the Custom Terrain Textures SDK on the same site)."Please let me know if I am going in the right direction, is this an accurate source of data??? are there any better sources for South America??"SRTM 3-arcsec data are definitely the best continent-wide set of elevation data for South America. There's a freeware utility available here (srtm_to_bgl_104.zip, by Matthew Styles) that's specific to using SRTM files. However, it's possible that an in-depth internet search might reveal free elevation data for the specific area you're interested in. Yahoo/Google away..."I have not been able to correct the elevation of the Lakes and the rivers that now look Sunked with the original (default) elevation..."Steve's website has a simple utility that allows to change lake elevations (http://www.fs-traveler.com/flatten.shtml). In the near future, Steve will provide a nice upgrade to this tool. Also, Gilles Gauthier and myself are about to uplaod a tutorial that describes Steve's method as well as an alternative procedure. If there are many lakes to adjust, you might want to have a look at this post of mine from yesterday: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho..._id=15058&page="Also there are 2 mountains that appear as a single one in both the default and the one that I did, I would like to have this mountains separated and with a shape closer to reality, how can I edit this tiny section???"Here's what I know about editing elevation files with freeware tools:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...g_id=1206&page=Hope this helps. Cheers,Holger

[Guest GabrielR]

WOW!Thanks Holger for the prompt reply, Lots of info in those links.....it looks like I am going to have a very busy weekend!!!Thanks... I will keep you guys posted about my "progress" Thanks