Black Squares in my Ocean

[Guest]

Help!I was just wondering if anybody has seen these black squares before and if so how to fix them. At first I thought I could fix them with ground transform, but as I get close to the actual tile, the black disappears. The actual location is in the Gulf of Mexico just south of Gulfport/Biloxi, MS. I do have the terrascenes installed for Mobile and Baldwin County, both by Ken Salter. Also I had to place both of these pod files (incl. the associated *.scf files)in my scenery shared folder or I get a CTD when teleporting into the area.Thanks,Robert

[Guest Colins2]

RobertI haven't seen these actual 'holes' before, but I've seen others.They are caused by an incomplete watermask when the original Terrascene image was created.I don't know of any easy fix for this apart from the original author 'fixing' the watermask and re-slicing the scenery.Ground Tile Transformer won't help in this case.Colin

[Guest]

Thanks for the response Colin. Sounds like my options are to live with the squares, delete the terrascenes, or maybe terrascene the area myself. Even though I've read a lot about it, I'm just not ready for the last option.Thanks againRobert

[RandallR 444]

Robert,Remember that many water areas have no land use data for TerraScene to render with (after all, once you get a little away from the coast, it's all water). When a person creates such scenery, the water mask (or water area) just needs to be filled (painted) in before it's sliced.

[Guest]

Thanks RandallRegards, Robert

[Guest Dean]

Robert,The last time I saw the little black squares that appear in your first picture was in TS2 scenery I had done off the coast of Galveston, Texas. It was definitely a problem in the Fly II editor that was fixed in version 230. I'm curious as to what version level you are patched to?

[MGS 0]

This problem is somewhat of a trip down memory lane. I saw that problem too, offshore of Milwaukee in Lake Michigan long ago (2 years ago) when slicing Terrascene tga's with a very early version of the Fly2 editor. Many others pointed it out on the forum. The problem was cured with the 230 patch. That Louisiana scenery was sliced and podded in the good old days, when Terrascening and slicing areas was more of a challenge. The fix in those days, which I used for my Milwaukee scenery, with the help on this forum, was to edit the fulltex*.opa files by copying to a new directory, changing the extension to fulltex*.raw, editing them in Paintshop Pro, which could read *.raw files without a plugin (or Photoshop with a plugin), and then changing them back to fulltex*.opa files. Even now, that fix should still work by unpodding the original scenery and editing the opa files as above. However, Terrascene scenery is so easy to do now, that redoing it certainly should be considered. Start up Terrascene, go to bed, and have the scenery the next morning. Afterwards, just delete the extraneous dxxxxxx directories in the Fly2 DATA folder that have a few gxx.trn files. Keep the Dxxxxx directory (starts with capital D) that has thousands of files in it and put it outside the Fly2 folder as a backup. You can delete it too if the podded scenery in the Scenery folder works OK.Of course, as pointed out above, it never hurts to check the Terrascene *.tga files in the Output directory to make sure the watermask is OK, before slicing.

[Guest]

DeanThanks for the response. I am patched through the latest, 2.50.240. I keep trying out files from the library, some new and some old, just to see what things look like. The Baldwin and Mobile terrascene files are dated 7/4/01 and 7/2/01 respectively. I like the land and river areas in these files but along with it came the black ocean squares. In some cases, the older files work fine, for example all the TRI terrascene files for Paris, DC, NY and SanFran seem to be fine. Since I haven't been around in this forum as much as others, I'm probably running into similar problems from before. I try to find old (archived) posts but not always successful.When I just plain run out of gas, that's when I ask for help. *:-* :-zhelp Regards,Robert

[Guest]

Thanks Mark, I'll give it a go.Regards,Robert

[Guest Ken_Salter]

The mobile/baldwin sceneries were made by me in the days of lore.You can go to my website and look at the TS2 tutorial on how this issue can be fixed, but you will need to generate the scenery yourself (which is really easy these days!)[h3]Ken Salter (aka SaltyDog)[/h3]Fly! Forum ModeratorWEBSITE ONLINE!!

[Guest]

Thanks Ken, I'll do that after I get some sleep. :-doh Regards,Robert