Ashtabula TS Pack (Ohio Project) (pics)

[RandallR 444]

The Ashtabula project pack is now ready for uploading - I hope to get it up tonight. This tile continues the Lake Erie shoreline, picking up the remainder of Cleveland and extending as far NE as Erie, PA. It extends as far south as Youngstown. As with the rest of the project, just copy all the folders into TerraScene 2.1, set the render parameters to match the readme and generate.Over Cleveland/Cuyahoga Airport, looking to the WSW over Cleveland

http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/3132.jpg

The landscape near Ravenna, not far from Portage Co. Airport

http://forums.avsim.com/user_files/3133.jpg

[Guest michaelb]

Randall,Thanks for another great addition to the Ohio scenery. I am originally from Ravenna but now live in Columbus (home of the 4 global tile intersection), and look forward to getting this set up on my machine and flying over it. I tried to terrascene this area a while ago but wound up with some land in Lake Erie. I could live with it but this is so much better. I really appreciate all the work done with this.Michael

[RandallR 444]

Michael,I knew there had to be some of us around - Columbus is my home also. :-)Whenever you are near the border of the country and there is a shoreline, the land use data will eventually run out as you move away from the shore. After all, once the water starts, the USGS considers the remaining water of no interest - everyone knows it's water from now on, right? With no data, TS fills in the missing segments with the Background Texture, which is normally swamp-bog. Now, I wouldn't change the background texture except for very special circumstances, as its job is to fill in all the little areas of missing data (often near shorelines and creek beds) and the swamp-bog texture is perfect for that - it removes a lot of editing headaches in the land areas!In the "old days", we would clone the water texture in bad lake and ocean areas over the swamp textures with a paint program, then rerender. Today, with the water mask of Fly! II, it's a little easier. Unless you don't want reflective water, just open the water mask image (or mini-images) in a paint program. All land areas are white and all water is black. If there are any white sections where there should be water, paint them black - that's it!Now, if you edited the small segments (normally the case, because of memory issues), be sure to delete the original full water mask image. Rerender, choosing "Use existing" under Tasks and "Use existing segments" under Options. The water mask will be recompiled from your edited images. When sliced, the water will then "cover" all the errors in the day image below.This is why I include a custom water mask with the scenery packs - since it is only made of a couple of colors, it compresses down by 99% and can be easily included with the scenery data to "hide" such problems.