Droughts in TS2?

[Guest]

I tried to TS the area around my local airport (ENHD), but for some reason all the water (except lakes) gets a grassy texture.Is there a "Drought" checkbox I forgot to clear? :(John IvanENHD

[RandallR 444]

John,Did you add a "drainage" layer to your shapefiles that included rivers and streams? Did you add that layer "on top" of the land use shapefiles so that they would show?

[Guest]

I followed procedures in the TS2 manual (using the Hong Kong example) and added all layers in the same order.ponetp.shpdnnetp.shpdnnetl.shppppolyp.shprdline.shp(rrline.shp doesn't exist. No local railroads.)Water is mapped to ocean texture, and the same texture is mapped to lakes.See attached picture for result. As you can see, NO water shows up (except lakes), and that includes ocean. The coastline does show up, but there's no water beyond it, only a deeper green texture.John IvanENHD

[Guest]

Hey this looks familiar. I think TS2 is using the grassy green as a default wherever your data is lacking specific information. (Sometimes those pesky surveyors must stop recording at the coastline!!)The fix for this problem is to open the .tga files and manually change the pattern from the green to the correct ocean texture. You can do this in photoshop or equivalent by freehand selecting or magic wand selecting the edge of the coastline, and then use pattern-fill (having previously selected a section of ocean and made it the fill-pattern) to fill the space. Then you can save the modified .tga and proceed to slice it manually (like, by using scenery import in build 2.1.230). You may need to check the water mask .tga if you want a water mask, and make sure the waterways are black, and the coastline is white, in order to get water effects. This may be tricky if the coastline is indistinct (all white out to the edge of the globe tile that is black). You may be able to make a new water mask by converting a backup of your .tga - first you would CAREFULLY select all the water areas (use magic wand, and experiment with the sensitivity) - and flood-fill them black, then select the inverse, and floodfill it white. Then you save that .tga with the filename changed so that w is the last character, i.e."sceneryarea1.tga" becomes "sceneryarea1w.tga", and THEN you slice it manually.I've done this successfully in Fly!2k, and just this week in Fly!II as well, although I haven't extensively tested the result in Fly!II yet (and in fact, I couldn't get the water mask to work in Fly!II, but the texture looks good... just no splash).BillyI Wish My Shoes Had a Slew Key

[Guest]

I got water texture now by choosing water texture as my background texture in TS2. However, I don't have animated and reflective water, but that might be due to my water mask (which I'm not quite sure I chose to be rendered...)I'll try another render tonight. Perhaps also with a shapefile with larger coverage (ref mare's reply to chezz in this forum).John IvanENHD

[Guest]

Yup! That did the trick. :)Larger coverage and rendering water mask as well.John IvanENHD

[Guest]

Background texture set to water? D'Oh!! Man I've wasted hours and hours fixing up .tga files for areas that I KNEW were going to be coastline anyway. If I'd just set the background texture in TS2.1 to _water_... Gutted