FU3 scenery - I'm having problems!

[Chesney 0]

Hi!Decided it was about time I started to do some work on FU3, and what better place to start than RAF (now sadly RMB) Chivenor where I flew for over 20 years as an Air Cadet gliding/motor gliding instructor. However, a lot of Chiv is a bit wet - try taxying down runway 10, you sink about half way along! So first job was to remove the water.Used Agtim's Geotilesviewer and found that the whole area looks like it is covered in small lakes. I also found it impossible to place Chivenor with any accuracy. The coastline in the tile is only approximately similar to the map. So changed a fairly large area to green land (a long job - I was using Serif Photoplus and it does not have sufficiently good colour control. Finished up using Paintshop Pro - much better!). So now I can taxi all over the aerodrome without making a splash.Next make a runway. Followed Robert Driscoll's Jan 2003 notes and, after a few false starts (and a few stupid mistakes!) succesfully made a simple 28/10 runway. The .e files are fun, aren't they!? Tried to put it into FU3 with FLED and here is where my problems started. I can get the runway in, and from above it looks ok. However, when you look at it from the ground it is invisible. This is because I am looking at its underside - it is floating about 20-30 feet in the air. So far I have been unable to find a way round this. As a side note, all A/C parked at Chivenor show 400 feet on their altimeters. Actual altitude is about 30 feet (depends on the tide state). Geotilesviewer shows the altitude as somewhere between sea level and 100 metres - I am unable to locate Chivenor accurately enough to get a better figure.Any advice anyone can give me?ChesPS After using FLED how do you get a normal Windows cursor back without rebooting?

[Christopher Low 5,353]

My modified version of Coupeville NOLF requires access to FLED whenever I reinstall FU3. I have changed the terrain elevation at this airport, and the runway model floats in the air until I use FLED to correct it. I have to highlight the runway, move it a single pixel, and then move it back again. This SNAPS the runway model to the elevation of the terrain beneath.As for the cursor, mine changes to a little steering wheel when I am using FLED. I don't know of any way to change it back to the small arrow without rebooting my PC.Chris Low.

[Guest Rich Wren]

Go into the control panel, open up the mouse settings, select the pointers tab, select a scheme (presumably Windows Default) then Apply.If you've been fiddling with cursors and have a non-standard scheme you should probably save that as another scheme for easy recall.

[Guest glidernut]

Chesney,My ansers:Dont know, Dont know, and Dont know.But Im glad you and Chris hav the FLED cursor thing cus I got it too and thort I was the only one.glidernut.:-wink2

[Chesney 0]

Hi!Thanks for the tips - they both worked. However (there's always one of them!) the runway touches the ground at one end only. Now I know why you need flat ground for an airport. I have now located Chivenor accurately by putting bumps on the map and looking at them in FU3, so made the area yellow (airport colour) in the cl5azap.tga file. Didn't do any good at all - raised a few bumps so the runway touched down more than once. So tried the e0azap.tga file. Looks MUCH more complicated than the geotiles viewer shows, what do all the colours mean? Tried putting the airfield all at one height (colour a fetching pink picked from part of the airfield). This works, but puts funny bumps and cliffs around the airfield where it meets the untouched colours. How do you guys do it? Thanks glidernut for your kind words! Nice to know I'm not the only one with problems and no knowledge of how to fix them.ChesPS The River Taw (just a mile from the sea) is at 380 feet in FU3! A couple of miles out to sea the sealevel is very close to zero feet. It's obviously flowing downhill towards America! Explains my altimeter problem.

[agtim 0]

Hi Ches,Happy to hear about a new airport builder :-) go on please !The elevation of UKS is a fractal approximation using 1 real elevation point per Km only !. This as explanation of altimeter problems. The wet parts around is a result of the automatic classification defining a special palette. After flattening an airport the area is red and dry :-)To flatten the airport, use the yellow color of the classification map. Then import classification using GeoTilesViewer. When asked for the area elevation first try the default value. The real value is too deep for the area around it so you get strong ramps around the airport.Painting the elevation map is possible also. Pic a color from the elevation scale. You can generate it with GeoTilesViewer. Take just 1 color and do not try to paint using tools with smooth border or you will get strange results. The colors of the e-map are generated from the 16 bit elevation values.A new way is to use GMAX 3 D design to modify landscape.and there is a new way using real elevation points on a 30m grid using the new data from the nasa. see my new GeoTilesViewer page.at http://www.agtim.ch/fu3/BSQ.php3Using the new SRTM values results in a quality as the Bembridge or Lundy area. feel free to ask more... :-wave agtim