How to make a realistic 300 mile long river?

[Gridley 257]

Maybe I should be posting this in the other scenery forum, but my issues are with the mesh more than the river, per se, so...I would like to make a realistic Connecticut river valley from New Hampshire/Vermont all the way to the long island sound. I have FSG's 38m appalachian mesh. The river, as it is, switches back and forth between lake and line way too often north of hartford CT. Also, there are numerous deep gorges which don't exist in reality, and points were the river flows uphill. I've looked at several utilities, but none of them seem to do everything I need to do...Where would someone who has never done more outside the plane than an AFCAD or some FSE objects begin with a project like this?Best,sg

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi sg.There are probably good mesh sets already available for the eastern US. So your issue really isn't mesh, if this is not what you need.All other terrain features can be created with either Ground2K4 or CoastLine Maker... with Ground2K4 perhaps the more flexible choice.The project size you describe is huge in terms of terrain design.I'm working on a project to relace one LOD5 sized area covering about 2/3 of Wisconsin... a similar size. It will take me hundreds of hours.I have the use of several GIS programs, to process TIGER shapefile vector data, a program to translate that data to a format Ground2K4 can use, LWMViewer to help "clean" the ASM files, and a good working knowledge of just how to do this.I don't believe you can run without first learning to crawl. It may take you a year of learning Ground2K4 by making simple projects, and a substantial monetary investment for a good GIS program or two ( hundreds of dollars ), and time learning to use those programs.Fortunately the data for US roads, rails, streams, rivers and lakes and shorelines is free as US TIGER data.All this will help you create an accurate river and valley.If you don't require that level of accuracy, then check out LWMViewer, and it's capability to display BGL imagery over mesh... Those images can be exported as Georeferenced bitmaps that can be loaded into Ground2K4 to use as templates for drawing new water, shorelines, roads... Christian Fumey's Ground2k4 is available in AVSIM's file library. Jim Keir's most recent LWMViewer is here:http://www.jimkeir.co.uk/FlightSim/LWMViewer.htmlDick

[Gridley 257]

Wow. Quite a can of worms, huh? I'll look into LWMViewer - correct me if I'm wrong though - in FS9 bodies of water have a flatten associated with them and that's why I see some water filled craters or gorges where the elevation of the lake is incorrectly set? A lot of the connecticut river between Vermont and New Hampshire is "lakes" connected by line rivers. Is there a way to avoid that? Is LWMViewer the way to go?Thanks a ton for your help!sg

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi sg.If you want to persue it, you can use LWMViewer to view the HP bgls for the areas the river covers. These can have the source code exported as BGS files ( same as an ASM file ). You could then use Edgar Knobloch's "cfs2conv2" ( LWM Converter ) to change the LWMs sourcecode to CFS2-style LWMs which hug the mesh, and have no height data. Then you could recompile the BGLs... rename the extension of the defaults as OLD, so they are deactivated, and replace them with the new mesh-clinging BGLs.If the river is close in shape, it might not look too bad. The replacement CFS2-style water can be covered up, and there are no leftover flattens!If the shapes need changing, newer LWMs made by Ground2K4 or Coastline maker can make new water polys and shorelines, and you can add your own elevations for that water... if needed... without having odd gorges or misplaced residual flattens.This is how I'm approaching projects lately... replace the default HP file with mesh-clinging CFS2-style water.make new HP files with the right shapes for my area of interest, and new HL files as shores.add good mesh to enhance the reaism.make roads, streams and rails. If other areas outside my scenery look odd with the mesh-clinging water...well, they look odd with elevational water as well, because they are the wrong shapes in the wrong place to begin with!And you're right, all FS9 default water is elevational.. with no way to exclude the leftover flattens. So replacing the defaults with mesh-clinging water makes good sense from a design standpoint. Then we can add our own water with the right shapes, locations and elevations.Dick

[Gridley 257]

Thanks a ton! The complexity here, and your grasp thereof, astounds me. I'm amazed that anyone does this. I have new found appreciation for those sceneries I've downloaded, that's for sure!I've got LWMViewer on the HD now - I'll start there, and see what I can break over the weekend!Best,sg