Newbie help (excluding small part of mesh?)

[JimmiG 244]

I just bought Georender 6 and found it's not compatible with any addon mesh because it's designed for use with the default mesh only. My favorite mesh for WA is the FS-Traveler 10m mesh. I also tried several free 38m meshes.Is it possible to exclude the parts of the addon mesh that covers the two Georender areas, so that these use the default mesh, while keeping the rest of the addon mesh intact? How would I go about doing that?

[Guest sgreenwood]

Hi Jimmi, glad you are enjoying the mesh! There is no ideal solution to the problem of fitting scenery to add-on mesh, but perhaps I can help a bit. Three solutions come to mind:1) Most of my 10m mesh is provided in small files which cover about 1 degree of longitude and 1/2 degree of latitude. (The associated .txt files specify the exact area covered.) The files are named for the approximate SE corner of the area covered. The "-t" in the bgl filename indicates that the mesh covers the top 1/2 degree, "-b" is the bottom half.For example, N39W116-b.bgl covers this area:N 39.46288 to N 39.02343 W 116.9531 to W 116.0156 If your Georender airport falls in this area, you can move this file to another folder and the default mesh for this area will be used. (Unless you have other add-on mesh for the area also installed.)This is not an ideal solution because the area removed is relatively large compared to the size of the airport, but it will work.2) The FS2002 version of resample will leave an LOD quadrant empty if there are a few missing values included in it. These missing values can be added before the mesh is constructed, leaving "holes" where the default mesh will be used. This would be much more precise, because an LOD10 quadrant is only 38.2m square. The challenge here is to determine the locations and sizes of the areas to be omitted from the final mesh.Here is an example where I have removed one such quadrant from my 30mLOD10 mesh for the Emma Field area. http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/71270.jpgBoth of these approaches may leave visible seams along the boundaries between the default and enhanced mesh, however.3) If scenery designers are interested, it may be possible to provide small mesh files for them to use when designing scenery, and then make these mesh files available as free separate downloads from public web sites. Stevewww.fs-traveler.com

[Guest sgreenwood]

Hmmm, I'm a bit slow these days!There is another way to fix it. I created my flatten utility to adjust the terrain elevation to match runways; to eliminate the patches of grass bleeding through at some airports. Others have used it to fix heights of lakes and rivers, and a few have used it to blend the terrain with airports.This sounds like another situation where it may help. It is a bit of work, but with care you should be able to blend the scenery with the surrounding mesh. You will end up with flat "terraces", since the smallest area we can flatten is one LOD cell. In this case that area will be 38.2 x 38.2 meters. By varying the sizes, shapes, and differences in elevations of several flatten bgl files, you may be able to do a pretty good job.You can learn a bit more and download the utility at: www.fs-traveler.com/flatten.shtmlAnd a lot more after reading the documentation. There is quite a bit, but it is actually easy to install and use. Once you've learned how to use it, you will probably find other areas that can use some help!Steve

[JimmiG 244]

Thanks for the reply. I looked through the bgl files in the fst-10m10-pnw folder and tried deleting the ones covering the airports. This solved the problem but as you said, it deactivates a pretty big chunk of the mesh. I did notice the "seams" or ridges but they don't bother me that much because they happened to be far from any airport or other important scenery.Your second approach sounds like something that needs to be done before compiling the mesh, correct? If so, would you be willing to do it for the Georender 6 airports and possible also for other addon sceneries (I also have Orcas Island which suffers from similar problems). I suppose I can use slew mode to get the coordinates for the borders of the Georender sceneries but it would probably be better to deactive a slightly bigger region so you don't get annoying ridges near the airfield."3) If scenery designers are interested, it may be possible to provide small mesh files for them to use when designing scenery, and then make these mesh files available as free separate downloads from public web sites."This would really be the best solution. It seems all Georender sceneries are designed on top of the default mesh and this is probably the case with other addons as well. If the sceneries actually included their own mesh, there shouldn't be that many problems with addon mesh except maybe the "seams" at the edge of the airport scenery, and it would also provide more realistic topography for the addons.Re. using the flatten utility - it sounds like an awful lot of work :) Thanks for the heads-up though. I think this utility will be useful to correct some annoying lakes and airports I encountered that have incorrect elevations and sit on top of mesas or in craters.