Combining Adjacent "Half Tile" TerraScene PODs

[dkohl 0]

Several months ago, I TerraScened Seattle. Last week I was working on Portland. I realized that I had already Terrascened the top half of a tile that borders Washington and Oregon in my original project. So I Terrascenened the lower half with the Portland project.Unfortunately, as I found out by reading through archived posts on this subject, there is a bug in Fly!2 that prevents both "half tiles" from loading together.I figured I could try to unpod them both, create a new combined response file (thanks to Scott's help in a post in this forum), and re-pod the area, but I realized that the GXX.trn files will also have to be modified, presumably.Am I setting myself up for a big, frustrating project? Or should I just scrap the two half-tile pods and re-Terrascene the full tile. The latter is obviously easier (automatic). But I'm trying to learn more editing techniques so if the former is not a big deal and someone can give me some tips, I'd like to give it a go.Thanks all.-DKPS: I'll be gone for a 4 day weekend, so I'll be reviewing responses on Tuesday next week. Happy Valentines day all.----David KohlFly! II v2.5.240Dell 8200 P4/1.8G, 1024MB RAM, Nvidia GF4 Ti4600 v41.09, WinXP Home Edition SP1.CH Pro Pedals and Yoke USB.

[RandallR 444]

David,I have always recommended slicing and podding full tiles, especially full global tiles, for the very reason you stated. It's not so much a "bug" in Fly!, as it is the way Fly! reads scenery. If Fly! has already loaded the tile that contains the top part of the scenery, it ignores your new scenery, as the tile that contains a portion of it is already loaded. Now if you approach from the other direction, the reverse may happen: Your new scenery would load and Fly! would ignore the old scenery - again, after all, it considers that tile already loaded. This is why there is a "snap to grid" setup in TS that makes sure you create the exact amount of scenery for Fly! to load properly, with just the proper amount of overlap built in.Though you can make TerraScenery any size you wish, it would need to be considered "personal scenery" and should not be shared. Otherwise, persons that then try to adjoin it with other sceneries would run into problems.It's up to you - do you want to practice with editing the response and TRN files, or simply recreate them with the exact borders? Todd Klaus has designed TS so that the border overlap is created properly when "snap to grid" is used - trying to set this manually can be difficult.

[Guest Hagar]

Randall,Making whole Globe Tiles depends on where in the world you live, and the quality of the data. With the low-quality shapefiles I got, it is just impossible to edit a whole Globe Tile. No chance. So I always snap to a Quarter Tile.And off course I can share it with you, I`m the only chap here in Norway doing this :)Regarding adjacent tiles I had this problem with ENZV. I made two separate Quarter Tiles, and to my surprise they both showed up, but the textures on the border, well, indeed looked like a border...I solved the problem by rendering both Quarter Tiles at the same time.

[Guest Fly II Pilot]

David:I think I know how you can merge both manually. Send me an e-mail and I'll tell you what I need.Take care,Alejandro AmigorenaCheshire, CTFly! II Beta Team MemberAthlon XP 1800ABIT KR7A-RAID768Mb RAMMSI GeForce 3 Ti 500 64MBSB Audigy GamerCH Flight Yoke USBCH Pro Pedals USB

[RandallR 444]

Hagar,As you have stated, problems sometimes occur, even with quarter tiles selected - this is why I make full global tiles whenever possible and edit the small TGA images, then reslice. This may not be possible in some situations when working with a lot of shapefiles, so I understand your approach.Thanks for all the work you have put into scenery for Norway - I enjoy flying there very much! :-)

[Guest Hagar]

Randall,When you hand-edit every single shapefile by hand you can only swallow a Quarter Tile, especially with all those fjords in there.Sometimes I whish I lived in Denmark instead, lolAnd many thanks to you for the much-needed NAV updates :)If you check one of my other posts here today, you`ll find a link to the ENBR beta scenery, it should appear there soon. Been so busy in here today that I haven`t gotten a chance to log out yet >:-)

[RandallR 444]

Andrew,I'll check it out. Right now, I'm trying to gather all of my former DB edits into a new package or two so they can be installed from just a few files. This will make it a lot easier for people to replace if they have a drive failure or need to reinstall Fly! or are looking for such updates for the first time. This is especially fresh in my mind, as I recently lost the drive I had most of my Fly!II stuff on - I ended up having to reinstall all of my own updates, so consolidation would have helped me too! After I finish the consolidation, I have about 30 corrections for U.S. airports I'll be uploading in a new package in the near future.Ironically, lost forever from that failed drive was a database-editing tutorial I had been working on for about a year. Everything in the tutorial was based on the approach and NAV updates I built for ENHD. This made especially good tutorial material, as there was no exact data listings on these items - I was interpolating the placements and performance on approach and NAV chart data. Lost were all my notes on how the locations were extracted and about 20 screen shots showing how the information appeared in various editing tools and in Fly!II. In order to start the tutorial process, I need another good candidate (like ENHD) where exact data is not available, but there are good charts to work from and Fly!II is missing a lot of approach and NAV data for that airport - any candidates you can think of?

[Guest Hagar]

Randall,I just uploaded a "slicer setup" picture with the beta files. The scenery has jagged edges, but that doesn`t bother me right now.Link: http://home.online.no/~an-thoms/artimages/files/betaI just had my first success with Flattenator, on default data, added a mountain at Engm. I suspect the Subdivide Tolerance I use at Enbr may be the reason for the crashes, I have to reslice at 500ft and see if Flattenator accepts it then. It would be a pity if it is, a Subdivide Tolerance of 300 gives better scenery...I always back my projects up on a CD. But also I have manged to loose two of my "advanced" Max models, and that was hard, I had to make it all from the start, and it took a week. That is the bad news about computers, they may kill weeks or months of your work. So now I have ordered a DVD-player, looking forward to throw in the complete Fly II catalogue with all NAV updates, patches and scenery, ready to fly :)Recently I`ve been working (maybe too much!) on the scenery, and are not familiar with airports like ENHD. At least nothing comes to my mind right now. But I`ll talk to Johnny, and I can also ask this question in the Norwegian forums.I`ll se what I can find out!

[RandallR 444]

Thanks - that particular airport was a big challenge, missing many approach components - it made a great tutorial subject! See what people think - I'm in no hurry right now to restart the tutorial as I'm involved with the DB updates and a few TS projects.Maybe there's another ENHD out there that is missing an ILS or two, etc.

[Guest Hagar]

Hmmm, ENFB (Oslo`s old airport) just came to my mind. It was very interesting approaces there, a little bit like Kai-Tak. The complete runway is gone. I miss the place!But I`ll talk with the other flyers first and hear what they suggest, then I`ll get back to you.

[dkohl 0]

Post here so everyone can benefit...-DK----David KohlFly! II v2.5.240Dell 8200 P4/1.8G, 1024MB RAM, Nvidia GF4 Ti4600 v41.09, WinXP Home Edition SP1.CH Pro Pedals and Yoke USB.