How to create photoreal scenery for FSX

[den19]

Zoander

What an excellent tutorial!

I look forward now to using this on my project ( I am actually doing Rathin Island, off the coast of Norther Ireland)

I suspect it will now be into the new year before I get the chance to finish it. Christmas has a habit of getting in the way of more interesting things don't you think?

I will report back here with pictures when complete so yuo can see the result of your tuition.

 

Again many thanks and have a good Christmas

 

Den

[Zoandar]

Thank you very much! I really enjoy working on this myself, so I am glad I can share with others. When you get into it, I'd like to know which satellite server of the 3 choices offers you the best imagery. It is puzzling to me why Google Earth looks so good all around the globe, yet their downloaded lakeshore scenery in Canada is often barely usable, and the other 2 range from worse to no imagery at all for Canada.

 

Merry Christmas to you as well, and have a Joyous New Year!

[den19]

Well, with Christmas over I have had another look at my first photoscenery attempt- Rathin Island off the N coast of Northern Ireland.

Zoander, your tutorial above was spot on the mark and I created the blendmask I needed and complied the .bgl file.

It looks pretty good for a first attempt, at least I think so. Any constructive comments would be welcome though.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140140[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140141[/ATTACH]

 

As you can see there is some default terrain still showing in a few places which I need to get rid of.

 

The big problem I am left with is the fact that the elevation data in fsx doesn't match up to the photo imagery resulting in the awful looking cliffs on the land and tsunamis washing over the land because of this mismatch. How on earth do I get rid of this?

 

Regards

 

Den

[Zoandar]

Nice work!

 

Both of these issues are something I have dealt with numerous times, and are fixed using SBuilderX313. For some reason setting the elevation on the hydro-poly (the part in the tutorial where you draw a polygon around the perimeter of the island, then set its properties, type of water, transparency, (and elevation which if I recall he never mentions)) is quirky. It has to be the very LAST thing you do before you close the properties dialog window after going there to set the water type. If you set the elevation FIRST, and then the water type, the elevation won't get preserved. Perhaps a bug in SBX?

 

To set the elevation, after selecting the water type (where the tutorial says to press H for the most commonly used non-seasonal ocean water) notice in this dialog window there are tabs at the top. Click the first one on the left. Enter the desired elevation in meters in the field toward the upper right, then click SET. (If you forget it won't work :) You will see another elevation field below take on the setting you entered. Then click OK or Apply (which ever it says, I am not near my PC right now) and close the window. You will notice the hydro-poly you had previously set to a transparency of 25 is once again opaque. Right click the edge of the hydro-poly and reset its transparency to 25. NOTE This is one of very few steps I have found after setting the elevation of a hydro-poly that does not undo the elevation setting.

 

Now, still in SBX, Select/All Polygons, and click Compile, remembering to check the box that copies the resulting BGL to your scenery folder for the project. You can also fix the exposed default terrain right now, without affecting the elevation data. So leave SBX open until you read below.

 

Now, for the exposed default terrain. It took me awhile to wrap my head around this concept, but what you are doing when you draw the hydro poly (aside from setting an elevation and water type) is creating a polygon OUTSIDE OF WHICH no FSX default terrain is allowed to be displayed. But it doesn't affect YOUR satellite image scenery, so it can be (and must be) drawn either exactly along where your land meets your water, or more easily drawn a little bit inland, all the way around the island.

 

BUT....... (there is always a but!) :-D

 

The change in elevation, from the level you set in your hydro-poly, to the elevation data buried within the compiled BGL file, is going to happen precisely on the edge of your hydro-poly. This means if you are doing an island such as Nauru, not much. But an island such as yours, with vaulting seaside cliffs, a LOT. For those cliff areas I would try to zoom in and literally draw that part of the hydro-poly very exactly along the edge of the actual image.

 

The reason some default terrain is showing is that FSX has terrain that is not realistically and accurately rendered in that spot. Your hydro-poly line strayed out away from the actual edge of your island image's true location, and thus has exposed FSX incorrectly positioned default terrain for the island. All you need to do is zoom in to that location and, if you have enough "nodes" (the little square data points where you clicked to draw the hydro-poly) on the poly line in that area, drag them back to or just past the shoreline onto your island image. Then click Compile again (making sure all polygons are still selected). At this point you should be able to see the elevation and unwanted default scenery both fixed, once you either start or update the scenery library in FSX. :)

 

I have not found a way to add a node to the hydro-poly line (as one might do in a CAD program). So if there are not enough nodes to drag around and fix the exposed default terrain, you may have to delete the hydro-poly in SBX and re-draw it.

 

A word about SBX313 - for every satellite image capture project you do in SBX, when you add a map and compile, 4 files are created in the SBX Work folder. If you aren't satisfied with the resulting image, and delete the map and add another one, SBX will create 2 new files (both having names with a long string of numbers) and overwrite the other 2 files with shorter names. If you start another project (say a different island) SBX will add to/overwrite these same files in the Work folder. However, if you want to return to an earlier project, such as to make the edits described above, those 4 original files from when you first compiled the map MUST be in the Work folder. Since SBX OVERWRITES some of these folders for new projects, the only way I have found around this problem is to keep archival copies of each set of these 4 files so I can empty the Work folder and paste them into it before trying to open the previous project. So I suggest you also do this. And since the 4 files are cryptically named so you have no clue what they are, I suggest each set be accompanied by a text file whose file name is the same as the project itself. That way when you load the file set into the SBX Work folder you can easily identify them.

[Zoandar]

As my project has evolved, I have had to deal with some satellite imagery which is very poorly colored, often with a shade of red. Thanks to the fine folks on the GIMP support forum, I have learned how to apply some effects to the imagery to make the colors more realistic. I am also developing a process to re-color rivers and inland water bodies that just don't look right when the satellite image coloring is off. If anyone would like to know how I am doing these procedures, let me know and I can add the information here.

[archfer]

Hi Tiberius K.

 

This is an excellent tutorial and I have got to this point without any major problems. It took me a while to get round the fact that you can't export in GIMP any more but saving as a BMP seems to do the same job. The problem I have is to do with FSX basic scenery, I guess, as my island has no topography, it is as flat as a pancake and looking at your screenshot above the island should rise up from the shore. Any ideas what I can do about this?

 

Thanks

 

Archie

[Zoandar]

Hi Tiberius K.

 

This is an excellent tutorial and I have got to this point without any major problems. It took me a while to get round the fact that you can't export in GIMP any more but saving as a BMP seems to do the same job. The problem I have is to do with FSX basic scenery, I guess, as my island has no topography, it is as flat as a pancake and looking at your screenshot above the island should rise up from the shore. Any ideas what I can do about this?

 

Thanks

 

Archie

 

Hi archfer,

 

Since my questions posted to Tiberius back in October have remained unanswered, it appears he hasn't been back here since his last post in September 2012. But I'll try to help if I can.

 

Why do you say GIMP can't export anymore? I'm exporting scores of files ever day, spending hours working on various methods to polish my scenery in FSX.

 

Elevation data comes from a couple different places. The first place I would check is any water-poly you have applied. I described the quirk of it losing its elevation setting a few posts up above here. If that is not the cause, something may have gone wrong in the capture of the satellite image and resulting compiling with resample.exe. You might need to run those steps over again. Are you doing Nauru, or a different island?

[archfer]

Hi Zoandar

 

Thanks for your reply. In Tiberius tutorial there is a screen shot of the file menu in GIMP and options to import and export but in my version (2.6) they are missing. I checked on the GIMP help forum as I thought I might be missing a plugin and there was a thread about using save instead. I have just had another look around and it would appear that you can export in 2.8 and have to because the original format is converted to XCF. As I see it the only difference is that when I save as a BMP file I don't get the 'Do not write color space information' check box. I don't know what effect this would have on the saved image, maybe it just reduces the size a bit.

 

On the elevation data problem, I have read your response above and will give your suggestions a try. I am doing Nauru only to get my head around the tutorial but my intention is to recreate the old flying boat base in Poole Harbour in the south of England.

 

How would you go about sorting out alignment problems on a small portion of a larger landmass? It is easy to relocate an island like Nauru but Great Britain would be a bit more difficult I assume.

 

Thanks for your assistance, it is much appreciated.

 

Regards

 

Archie

[Zoandar]

Since it is completely free, why not update to GIMP 2.8?

 

I'm not sure what you mean by relocating and alignment references. For items on the land mass, such as airport features, the Airport Design Editor (ADE) section of the tutorial has that covered. But for the land masses themselves, placement is very accurately done using LAT/LON coordinates to a large number of decimal places. Why would you want to move a land mass? It is true that some islands and coasts are misplaced in the default FSX scenery, but that can be obscured using the hydro-poly in SBX so the misplaced land doesn't show in FSX. If you really wanted to move an island, you could calculate the offset in gps coordinates and apply it to the INF file when you prepare it for the resample compiler. It will dutifully place your scenery exactly where you tell it to place it, even if you make a mistake. :) But as far as matching up the edges of adjacent scenery BGL files, FSX does that perfectly, so long as the coordinates are spot on. In fact it will technically overlap the edges, and the resample compiler allows for enough edge to overlap when creating your scenery BGL.

[archfer]

Hi Zoander

 

Since it is completely free, why not update to GIMP 2.8?

 

I will do that.

 

 

The area I am interested is on the south coast of England and I was concerned that it wouldn't overlay the original scenery properly but, as it turned out, it is seamless.

 

I would be very interested in knowing how you fixed the off-colour satellite imagery as the area I have created has two different shades. Part of the image is normal but another part has a reddish tinge.

 

regards

 

Archie

[Zoandar]

Dealing with off-color imagery captured from the satellite servers can be an annoyance or a downright frustration. When I was working my way around Lake Erie along the north shore of Ohio, USA I found that of the 3 servers available in SBuilderX313 at this time, (Google, Virtual Earth, and Yahoo) Virtual Earth yields the best looking scenery and most natural coloration. But for some odd reason, when I crossed the international border into the Canadian side of the lake, its islands, and shorelines, I found getting decent scenery is next to impossible.

 

I should mention that, from the very start, I could NOT achieve capturing ANY scenery at the LOD 16 Tiberius K. describes in this very nice tutorial. I just won't happen. The very best I can get is LOD 15, which I used for most of my project dealing with US scenery. Ontario, Canada shoreline and its islands, such as Pelee Island, I had to settle for LOD 14 or 13, simply because there IS NO scenery above that level. The screen just blanks out in SBX when trying to capture that part of the world in the higher resolutions using either Virtual Earth or Yahoo, so I was forced to use Google. But I had to go with terribly low resolution to not have part of the image simply missing. In fact, one of the Canadian Lake Erie islands yielded such terribly poor imagery that I had to "paint it" with forest imagery garnered from one of the LOD 15 Bass Islands as a GIMP pattern, just to have it look any better than butt ugly. :)

 

Aside from the terrible mess these satellite servers create along Lake Erie shoreline (which was the driving force for my wanting to get into this project in the first place) they also have a tendency to put the aforementioned red tint on certain areas. I'd love to learn why this happens. But it certainly doesn't look normal. It reminds me of the blood-thirsty aliens from the recent remake of the movie War of the Worlds and how they began terraforming our planet by spraying blood all over it. Not pretty. ;)

 

So, with the help of the Gimpernet forum members, I learned some more cool tricks with GIMP and used them to help fix what I call the 'red-shifted' scenery areas. Sometimes very nice results can be achieved. Other times I was not so fortunate, but at least I made it look better. I also learned how to handle rivers that aren't very naturally colored. Many times in the red-shifted areas the river water is pink. I'll work on putting together a post with the details on how I did it. :)

[Zoandar]

For this project on fixing red-shifted FSX scenery I'll use Pelee Point, Ontario Canada as an

example. Here you see a screen capture of just how the point image looks from FSX at about 13,000 feet AGL.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140368[/ATTACH]

 

As you can see I have already addressed the shoreline gradient for shallow water along the beaches, as

mentioned earlier. I'll assume you have worked with this scenery tutorial enough already to have a

grasp on the basic steps leading up to compiling the final BGL file, so I will only include images of

what I am doing that is different from above.

 

One thing I DO strongly recommend is adjusting the default number of UNDO levels in GIMP, if you have sufficient memory to do so. By default you are given only 4. The setting is under Edit/Preferences. I worked with 12 levels of UNDO for quite awhile, but still got into wishing I had more, so I now have 20 levels of UNDO set. It may seem like a lot, but it sure is nice when experimenting to be able to move back through time and try something different at any point along the way.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140369[/ATTACH]

 

I have already created and saved the following files for this area to make the BGL currently in use:

 

Point Pelee Watermask.BMP

 

Point Pelee Blendmask.BMP

 

Point Pelee.BMP

 

Point Pelee.INF

 

Point Pelee.BGL

 

And of course I have a copy of resample.exe in the projet folder as well, so I can drag Point Pelee.INF

and drop it there any time I want to recompile the BGL file.

 

So to start, I'll right click Point Pelee.BMP and Edit with GIMP. Then, right click on the layer Point

Pelee.BMP and select Duplicate Layer.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140370[/ATTACH]

 

Once you have a second copy, ABOVE the original (this is important - if it isn't above the original drag it up there and release it) right-click the new copy and select

 

Edit Layer Attributes. I then change the name to "Green".

 

Select the original layer and lock it (click on the brush icon where it says Lock, above) so you don't

accidentally edit the original bitmap.

 

Leave BOTH layers visible. Now select layer Green.

 

In the GIMP window, use the Colors menu and select Colorize. Instantly the image will take on a bluish shade. Don't worry about that just yet. It will look even worse before it gets better. :)

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140371[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140372[/ATTACH]

[Zoandar]

Adjust the Hue slider, which defaults to 180, to set to 140-150. 150 will be a bit more into the blue

range, and can help a lot with toning down the reds. Ugly, no?

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140373[/ATTACH]

 

Now, go over to the Layers - Brushes dock for GIMP, and set the Opacity of the layer down to 28. You can use whatever setting looks right for the specific area you are dealing with. For most of the Ohio red areas I did I used a setting here between 17-27. It depends on how red the satellite image ended up being stored on their server. It does vary a lot across geographical areas.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140374[/ATTACH]

 

The red area looks somewhat better now, but of course the area above it with the fields sometimes might not need this much correction. So it becomes a trade off. How much correction to make the large red area more green, without overdoing correcting the pink fields above it. Varying the shade of coloration can help a lot here, as well as setting the other sliders, such as Lightness or Saturation. Sometimes I will have to colorize an area, lower the opacity, then use the Colors / Brightness - Contrast menu to make the area lighter or darker, especially if I am doing a red area right next to an area that is naturally green.

 

If no compromise can be reached, you can start over on the Green Layer and do a selection of just the red "point" section and work with that. Then make another duplicate layer of the original, select only the fields area above the point, and make a different amount of correction with that. As long as you leave all 3 layers visible when you export the Point Pelee.BMP, it will look just like what you are seeing in GIMP with all 3 layers visible.

 

I think in order to get the red area looking better, without doing more to the fields, I'll add another layer and just select the red parts. So right-click the base layer Point Pelee.BMP and Duplicate Layer again. Name this one Green2. Note that since we locked the base layer, its duplicate layer we just created is also locked, so we have to unlock it. Lock layer Green now.

 

Select Layer Green2 and then use the Free Select tool (also known as the Lasso Tool in some programs) and select the red area. The "marching ants" aren't showing up very well in the inline view of this image, so I suggest you click on the image to get a better view of the actual selected area, and then read on.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140375[/ATTACH]

 

Then use the Colorize tool to adjust the color you are overlaying on the selected area, as well as the Opacity of the Green2 Layer, until you like what you see. One thing here to consider is that you would like not only to quell the red, but to also try to get an acceptable match with the green surrounding it. By varying the Hue to 139, and Lightness to -16, and Opacity to 69, I got a fairly decent match up.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140376[/ATTACH]

 

If you are happy with how it looks, Select/None to remove the selection “marching ants”.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140377[/ATTACH]

 

One thing I have been doing is not only exporting the BMP when I am finished, but also saving the

current 3 layer file in GIMP's XCF format. This makes it very easy to come back later and make changes if, for example, you do several areas and while flying over them in FSX decide " I wish I had made that second section a little more or less green", for example. Just re-open the file in GIMP, make the changes to whatever layer you choose, save the file anew, and re-export the bitmaps.

 

So, at this point I lock all 3 layers as a matter of habit, making sure they are all visible, Save the GIMP file with a descriptive name, then Export the new Point Pelee.BMP. Then drag the Point Pelee.INF file onto resample.exe and let it compile the new BGL file.

 

As I mentioned above in my shoreline gradient presentation, I have learned that it isn't necessary to shut down and restart FSX when working with scenery files. The only thing you can NOT do, without negative repercussions, is to move or delete a BGL file that is in USE. But you CAN OVERWRITE IT on the fly, and FSX won't care. So once I have the new Point Pelee.BGL file compiled, I copy it into the Scenery folder, then (with FSX running through all of this) I go into the Scenery Library in FSX and work the voodoo I mentioned above to reload the scenery. Simply un-check ANY one of the loaded files. Then re-check it, then click OK. All the files will reload, and FSX will display your changed scenery.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140378[/ATTACH]

 

Mission Accomplished!

 

This area does not have any rivers in it. I have also devised a procedure to recolor rivers in areas where their coloration is not acceptable. If anyone would like to know how I do that, just let me know and I can post that here as well.

[Zoandar]

One thing I meant to mention at the start and then it slipped my mind. You may be wondering about the dark green coloration I have on all the parts of this image where FSX will render water. Satellite imagery typically has a lot of crazy coloration surrounding islands and along shorelines where the water should be. I got tired of trying to deal with changes in the way water looked everywhere (it is transparent, after all, so any color you place under it will have an impact on its appearance).

 

In order to get a nice uniformity along the shores, especially when using my gradient Blendmask procedure outlined above, I eventually settled on a single color, after trying quite a few. GIMP references specific colors and their shades with what it calls an HTML Notation code in Hexadecimal. The color you see here is code 273d2d.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140379[/ATTACH]

 

I found a very easy way to apply it too, which seriously beats painting along the shoreline, as I did in the beginning.

 

What I do is right-click the Watermask.BMP image file for the area under construction, and Edit with GIMP. Select All, then under the Colors menu, choose Invert.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140380[/ATTACH]

 

You end up with a negative image of the Watermask.BMP file:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140381[/ATTACH]

 

making the water area white. Now, use the Bucket Fill tool, with the green color 273d2d selected, and fill the white areas with the green color.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140382[/ATTACH]

 

Next, with the Select menu, use Select/By Color, and click on the black part of the image. Then use Edit/Clear and it will remove the black part (where the land would be) making it white.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140383[/ATTACH]

 

Now Select ALL in this watermask image you just filled, Edit / Copy. Switch back to the Point Pelee image, and choose Edit/Paste as New Layer. You can name the layer something like Watermask, or whatever you like. But make sure the new layer is at the TOP of all the layers. If it is not, drag it up there.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140384[/ATTACH]

 

Now, making sure you are working on this new layer (good idea to lock all the other ones under it) Select / By Color and click on the white area. Then Edit/Clear, followed by Select/None. Your land will now show through and you'll have the green everywhere there will be FSX rendered water. In instances where you have meticulously watermasked around piers and harbors, this will assure that the coloration of the water in them is uniform with the rest of the area.

[archfer]

Hi Zoandar

 

Thank you, that is a very good explanation and I will give it a go. I have got a working scenery for Poole Harbour but, as you mentioned above, the water is much too pale so will have a go at colouring it as you suggest also. I will post a screen shot if you would be interested in seeing it.

 

Regards

 

Archie

[Zoandar]

Sure, I'd love to see the work you are doing! :)

 

Tonight I am working with another new thing I have learned, how to constrain GIMP's Fuzzy Selection tool (which can sometimes spread far and wide away from what I really want) to a previously freehand selected area, using a Channel. That way I can, for example, select all the water surrounding docks and boats in a small harbor, yet not select anything outside the harbor. Having this ability makes it easier to include a harbor in a water mask if desired, for the added realism of seeing FSX generated water within the harbor. However, it also works when wanting to apply a static color to such an area. I've found that applying a 10% opaque shade of dark blue over the green water areas typical to the scenery I am working in yields a color that, from 2500 feet AGL, looks hardly different than that rendered by FSX. This works as an alternative to adding in an area to already finished Watermask and Blendmask areas which have had the gradient already applied. That can be done, but it takes a bit of work to make it look right.

[mhlarsen]

Great tutorial!

 

The only thing I have found to be aware of is that unless you find a very isolated island like Nauru, then editing grid water polys with other islands/land in the same water grid will force you to edit them as well. This makes creating a photo scenery a much greater task than perhaps first intended.

 

Michael

[Zoandar]

Great tutorial!

 

The only thing I have found to be aware of is that unless you find a very isolated island like Nauru, then editing grid water polys with other islands/land in the same water grid will force you to edit them as well. This makes creating a photo scenery a much greater task than perhaps first intended.

Michael

 

I agree the tutorial is really nice, and am very thankful to Tiberius K. for creating it.

 

That said, some of his procedures are not cut in stone. Things I have learned along the way for my own use, which includes doing the Erie Islands in Lake Erie, USA, are:

 

You don't have to delete the layers you don't want included in an export in GIMP. Just make them not visible. GIMP will export only the visible layers to the BMP file.

 

Although the only way to remove one of FSX's existing hydro polys is to remove a whole CMID 7 grid block, you do not have to use an entire grid block when creating a new hydro-poly. (More on this below - as you will eventually have to fill the entire grid block with one or more new hydro polys to hide any default land scenery FSX would put there when the CVX terrain file covering that grid block is removed.)

 

One thing I had to do was adapt this tutorial's concepts on working with an island surround by a lot of open water to working on a shoreline, on which water was only present on one side. I quickly learned I did NOT want the hydro-poly to extend back under the shoreline, because it will affect the elevation of the land sitting on it. So my hydro-poly for a shoreline area will look something like this:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140482[/ATTACH]

 

The reason it is tall and keystone shaped is that it works with other polys from other segments of scenery I made here and they all overlap to give the water the desired seamless appearance.

 

And here is a closeup of how I drew the coastal boundary of the polygon

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140483[/ATTACH]

 

I ran into situations where a hydro poly drawn further inland actually creates a "bluff" where the land will sharply change elevations if the elevation data in that area is supposed to be a lot higher than the level of the water.

 

Of course I also quickly wondered why my first attempt at doing an island in Lake Erie created a bluff in the water itself! Tiberius, working at sea level, does not point out that you can set the elevation of the water in the properties of the hydro poly. Lake Erie is about 567 ft. above sea level. When I tried to use 567 as an elevation, the bluff made a massive cliff over 800 feet tall (you can get the elevation by using an aircraft in FSX as a measuring tool). Then it hit me that difference in numbers seemed roughly like the difference between feet and meters. So when I converted and entered 173 meters for elevation, and it was correct.

 

If the land area you are working on stays at or near the level of your water, it won't matter much where you draw the side of the poly that passes through the coast, so long as you don't stray off the coastal edge of your own scenery bitmap (doing so can allow default FSX land to show through) . But if your land is higher or lower, the hydro poly line has to be drawn as close as possible along the coast line itself to get the best results.

 

I should mention here that the part in the tutorial about removing the CVX file is also not mandatory, depending upon where you are working. The difference it 'can' make on a land mass is where the default FSX scenery draws things like coastal edges where land meets water. Leaving the CVX file in place 'can' sometimes cause lines to be rendered in the water, which will show, if the FSX default scenery for the area happens to be misplaced out into the lake/ocean. But in landlocked areas, you can leave the CVX file there. Just make sure your scenery file is higher in the Scenery Library list than the original scenery you are overwriting, and yours will show on top.

 

One down side to removing the CVX files (I don't think he mentioned this) is that you lose things like AI traffic on your highways. And these files cover very large areas! In order to prevent lines appearing in the water around the first island I did, which was Kellys Island, in Lake Erie, I had to remove the file CVX2517.BGL from subfolder folder 0302 in the FSX/Scenery folder. This corrected the lines. But, it also removed AI traffic over its whole area:

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140484[/ATTACH]

 

I added a red arrow pointing to Kellys Island, tiny in the grand scheme of this area coverage. Sorry for the rather blurry image, but I had to keep the uploaded happy with a small file size. As you can see, to deal with not seeing some lines in the water I removed AI traffic over many hundreds of square miles. Eventually I may change my mind and put the file back in. But for now my main focus on this whole project has been improving the shoreline appearance around this lake, as mentioned earlier. This was one of the trade-off decisions I had to make along the way. But it is easily reversible.

 

Here is a screen shot of where my current scenery efforts end, and the default FSX scenery resumes, heading east from the town of North East, Pennsylvania. You can see the line in the water I mentioned, which would be the original shoreline for the default scenery. With CVX2517.BGL in place, there were such lines around the Erie Islands and along the shorelines to the south, but they did not line up with the edge of the water nicely like this line does here. They are out in the water itself, and very visible in low altitude flight. That's why I opted to remove the file.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140485[/ATTACH]

 

If anyone knows of a way to make the FSX generated water obscure that line, I would like to learn of it. Then I could put both the CVX2517 and 2617 files back in and regain the AI vehicle traffic across the area. As it stands, marine traffic is not affected by having those files removed.

[mhlarsen]

Zoandar,

 

 

Interesting. Could you perhaps explain, using the island from the tutorial as an example, how the default terrain can be hidden without using an entire grid block?

 

I also think its great that you extend this tutorial with further examples and alternative solutions :)

 

 

Thanks

Michael

[archfer]

Hi Zoandar

 

Here are some screen shots of the Poole Harbour scenery. The aircraft is a beautifully modelled Short Empire S33 by Jens B. Kristensen in the British Overseas Airways colours and would have been one of the fleet flown by BOAC from 1939 until about 1948 from its base in the harbour. Poole Harbour was also a base for military flying boats, RAF Hamworthy and RNAS HMS Daedalus both located on its banks.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]140627[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]140628[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]140629[/ATTACH]

[Zoandar]

Very nice, archfer!

 

I noticed the rectangle of lighter blue in the water in the basin here. With careful experimentation of applied color in a transparent layer (the principle I described for correcting red shifted scenery) that is positioned exactly atop the rectangle, you can probably make that barely noticeable.

 

I like to try to preserve at least some of these kinds of shallow water imagery colors because they look really nice from the air. But if the captured satellite imagery is poor, it is sometimes very hard to do so.

[Zoandar]

Zoandar,

 

 

Interesting. Could you perhaps explain, using the island from the tutorial as an example, how the default terrain can be hidden without using an entire grid block?

 

I also think its great that you extend this tutorial with further examples and alternative solutions :)

 

 

Thanks

Michael

 

Thank you ! I enjoy sharing what I have learned. :)

 

First, I went back and reviewed the tutorial section on hydro poly grid blocks because I could not remember why it was that Tiberius had us remove the whole block. Once I read it I now understand why. He is doing the same thing in removing CVX9232.BGL from its folder that I described in making the choice to remove CVX2517.BGL and 2617.BGL in my area. If he had left 9232 in place, we would likely be seeing outlines in the water of the original shoreline, and maybe the airport flatten and runway, all of which we had to move to their correct location. I know of no way to remove part of a CVX file (nor dig into any compiled BGL file for that matter) so there is only one option, to remove the entire 9232 file which, as he shows, covers an entire CMID 7 block.

 

BUT...... (there is always a but! ) ;)

 

You need not create they hydro poly that will fill in the default terrain "void" left by removing the CVX file all in one step. All you really need is to make sure that you have the entire area covered when you are done. And THAT is precisely why my example above showing how I drew the hydro-poly along the lake shore uses a poly that is very tall and keystone shaped. I needed that shape to fill in the remaining void in Lake Erie's water in that segment of shoreline. As long as you make sure the whole area gets covered with they hydro polys (in water areas - this does not apply on land) of your created scenery, you can have as many constituent CVX files doing it as you want. They just need to overlap. So yes, you do need to rebuild a whole grid block if you remove a CVX terrain file, but you don't have to do it all in one step. If I had an easy way to show you the group of hydro-polys filling in Lake Erie on my project it would look like a collection of overlapping mosaic tiles. FSX will show you if you missed anything easily enough by using the global view and zooming out.

 

This is why I had said it wasn't necessary to work with whole grid blocks. But I had not thought about the requirement to fill in an entire block vacated by pulling a CVX file, as I did mine a piece at a time over months of work, having removed those CVX files quite some time ago.

 

I went back and edited the above tutorial segment I had added, to clarify this issue a bit.

[Jim Robinson]

I know of no way to remove part of a CVX file (nor dig into any compiled BGL file for that matter) so there is only one option, to remove the entire 9232 file which, as he shows, covers an entire CMID 7 block.

 

You shouldn't remove or disable default CVX files as a means of updating your hydro polys and shorelines. In FSX you can exclude a default hydro poly using a local file associated with your own scenery project instead.

 

For one thing, you make a hundred times more work for yourself than is necessary when you disable a default CVX. The default CVXs cover an entire QMID 7 cell which can cover something like 300 kilometers in both directions. CVXs contain much more than just hydro polys; roads, GPS polygons, airport flatten polys, railroads, parks, shorelines, streams, utilities, railways, and road traffic to name a few. All of these features would need to be rebuilt for an area covering on the order of 90,000 sq kilometers to make a proper replacement.

 

On the other hand it is possible to exclude only the water polys and only the shorelines, leaving everything else intact. Further, hydro polys & shorelines are clipped at QMID 11 boundaries which means you need only modify an area roughly 20 km in both directions, or around 400 sq kilometers in size.

 

This thread might be of interest:

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?256500-First-project-with-FSBuilder-X-and-first-problems

 

Jim

[Zoandar]

Hey, thanks Jim!

 

It wasn't that I "wanted" do remove those CVX files. But following the tutorial (designed on an island way out in the middle of nowhere, so none of those many features would be impacted) I tried pulling the CVX to see if it would work, and it did. But as you say, you lose a LOT in doing so.

 

I am very eager to see how I could possibly eliminate those lines in the water and yet still have all the nifty features a stock CVX gives. So I am going to read that thread ASAP. :)

 

If that thread does not cover your statement of "

On the other hand it is possible to exclude only the water polys and only the shorelines, leaving everything else intact."

Please fill us in on how one would do that.

 

Thanks again!

[Zoandar]

Well, I just read that thread Jim suggested, and in it those lines I was complaining I wanted to remove are actually specifically addressed! So I'll have to try the procedure outlined in that thread. I'll report back how that goes.

 

Not having to remove any CVX files would also save a lot of work in having to make sure all the water areas of a large lake like Lake Erie would be filled with hydro-polys. On the extreme eastern end of where I am working, North East, Pennsylvania, I did not remove that CVX file. So far the only thing I see needed is to exclude those lines, which I no know are default FSX shorelines, from showing in the lake.

 

Thanks again, Jim! :)