FSXA Adjusting only part of island coastline

[Diverskii]

Hi all,

Currently in the process of updating FPST (whilst learning how to at the same time).

I need to adjust the coastline but don't want to redraw the entire island of Sao Tome like Tiberius K does in the flightsim.com tutorial for Nauru.

Here is my view from tmfviewer:

As you can see I just want to exclude the default section northeast and draw a new section to match my photo reference.

Is this possible without drawing a new hole for the entire island?

Thanks

 

[Tejal Bernardo]

of course, Ade could do that, FsxKml tool , and others. Easy, just draw the polygon for the new coastline, there was a problem which I can't remember exactly right now. I think it was that you have to créate the polygon greater that the área to modifiy. not ask me why, but sometimes some áreas left without wáter and just showed land. If I remember well.

 

[Diverskii]

I understand that an exclude will exclude all of the water in that QMID grid.

I didn't know ADE could be used, but after looking I found this guy who swore by the method rather than use SBuilder. http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/modifying-a-shoreline.427993/

I cannot figure out how to get the QMID square back to water after my exclude though. I thought drawing a large water poly in ADE would do it but it didn't. I think maybe my exclude was messing it up.

 

[JRobinson]

I'm assuming since you mentioned Tiberius' tutorial that you have SBuilderX installed and you probably already have a photoreal file for SBX? I would open that back up and then do View > QMID grid > Level 11. That will show you exactly what you need to exclude and replace and you can click out your hydro poly overtop the exact imagery you're trying to match. Save it off under a new filename so nothing happens to the original SBX photoreal file.

Start your first click just outside the west QMID boundary then click all the way around the shoreline until you get to the QMID boundary on the other side, continue beyond the QMID boundary and then move up to the northeast corner of the QMID cell and click again just outside the QMID cell, and finally move over to the northwest corner and click again outside the QMID cell. Right click to finalize the poly. This is your new hydro poly and you leave it overlapping the QMID cell slightly because you're going to use SBuilderX's "Slice to QMID 11" function to precisely trim the hydro poly to fit the QMID cell - but not before you make the shorelines. Next right click the edge of that poly and choose Properties, press "H" to scroll the list to "Hydro" and then find Hydro_generic_ocean_perrenial.

Next I see there's a small island a couple miles north of the airport so get the polygon tool again and click the perimeter of that out. Right click the edge of the island poly and choose "Set as hole", SBX now wants you to choose the parent poly so go out to the edge of the QMID cell and click the edge of the big poly - it should now have a hole in it for the island. Save the project so you don't lose your clicks!

Now you need a shoreline. Right click the edge of the main poly and choose "Make line". That was tough, wasn't it? . Click View > All polygons to hide the polys leaving just your line showing. Right click the line and choose Properties, press "S" a few times until the list lands on "Shorelines_generic_ocean". Now select the line tool and then right click the line and choose "Slice to QMID 11". Delete all the line fragments left outside the QMID cell. Turn polys back on and right click the small island poly, choose "Make line", then Properties, "Shorelines_generic_ocean" again. (you can change the shoreline type later if it doesn't match what's there in default) Fix the little end between your first click and last click of the poly, drag the line point until the ends come together, insert a new point if necessary with the line tool by holding the "I" key down while clicking the line.

Next trim your hydro poly, get the polygon tool, right click the edge of the main poly and choose "Slice to QMID 11". Delete all the poly fragments left outside the QMID cell.

Lastly with the polygon tool make a small 3 cornered poly anywhere within the QMID cell, do properties and tag it "Exclude_all_water_polygons", right click and choose "fill to QMID 11". Make another similar polygon and tag it "exclude_all_shorelines", right click, "fill to QMID 11". That should do it, don't forget to save.

In SBX do file > properties, type a project name ("FPST_water_and_shorelines" will result in a file named CVX_FPST_water_and_shorelines.bgl) and define the BGL folder where you want your .bgl to end up. Save it again. Do Select > All lines, and Select > All polygons then hit the green compile button on the right, put a checkmark in "copy bgls to bgl folder" and hit "compile". Start the sim and see how it looks.

Jim

 

[Diverskii]

Start the sim and see how it looks.

Jim

Thank you very much Jim. I appreciate you taking the time to type that. It turns out Sbuilder is much less scary than I thought.

Managed to get the island looking a little more realistic now. Just having trouble with the QMID boundary bottom right. Is there a 'simple' way to blend this nicely without having to redraw the entire island. It seems unless I redraw the entire island I'm going to have a little hiccup where the default coastline meets mine.

Now to sort out some custom ground polys and get this airport looking nice.

 

[JRobinson]

I can't really tell from your screenshots what the mismatch is like but you can slew to the default shoreline in the sim and then click View > Show aircraft and then shuffle the last few points in your poly and shoreline around to match up with the little red X that represents your aircraft. For that matter you can right click the last point along the QMID boundary and choose "get point from aircraft" to move the point, well, to the aircraft. I think you need to use caution when moving points around though so your poly stays with the QMID cell, yet still fills it entirely. You could either drag the points beyond the QMID boundary and slice it off again or you can right click any point in a line or poly and choose Properties to edit it's coordinates. You could get the coords from a point known to be on the QMID boundary and adjust the lat or lon of the repositioned point accordingly to place it back on the boundary.

PS: If you find any shorelines where the waves are on the land side instead of the water side you can right click them in SBuilderX, choose, set width, and then hit the "reverse" button.

Jim

 

[Diverskii]

I can't really tell from your screenshots what the mismatch is like but you can slew to the default shoreline in the sim and then click View > Show aircraft and then shuffle the last few points in your poly and shoreline around to match up with the little red X that represents your aircraft. For that matter you can right click the last point along the QMID boundary and choose "get point from aircraft" to move the point, well, to the aircraft. I think you need to use caution when moving points around though so your poly stays with the QMID cell, yet still fills it entirely. You could either drag the points beyond the QMID boundary and slice it off again or you can right click any point in a line or poly and choose Properties to edit it's coordinates. You could get the coords from a point known to be on the QMID boundary and adjust the lat or lon of the repositioned point accordingly to place it back on the boundary.

PS: If you find any shorelines where the waves are on the land side instead of the water side you can right click them in SBuilderX, choose, set width, and then hit the "reverse" button.

Jim

Thanks again, Jim. That has fixed everything.

 

[JRobinson]

No worries mate, it's always fun when someone "gets it".

 

[bina]

Jim,

Your tip on adding a hydro poly and converting part of it to a line (shoreline) is GREAT!!! I'm working on an island and thanks to you I've managed to add a shoreline to the terrain revealed (unwittingly) since my exclusions clip to QMID-11. It's at the bottom left corner of the image. So far so good...

But can you pls explain how would you apply the same (?) technique to other parts of the terrain to add more shorelines?
I was thinking in a reverse way - trying to fill a QMID-11 cell with a hydro poly and then decreasing its size down to squeeze it between the riverbanks but when I try to to make any side of such a modified poly to a line SBX converts the whole poly to a line...

Thanks!

 

[JRobinson]

You'd need to make your hydro poly like this Rustam, draw another to represent the island and "set as hole" within the larger one, and then unfortunately all those little potholes will need a poly and shoreline of their own. That's a nasty QMID cell but you're lucky the whole airport lies within just one .

You basically can't edit a QMID 11 cell and expect consistent results, you have to exclude and rebuild the whole thing (just hydro & shorelines). More on that subject here:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/rusted-cant-get-it-right-solved.435058/#post-721581

Jim

 

[bina]

You'd need to make your hydro poly like this Rustam, draw another to represent the island and "set as hole" within the larger one, and then unfortunately all those little potholes will need a poly and shoreline of their own. That's a nasty QMID cell but you're lucky the whole airport lies within just one .

Thank you, Jim, very useful indeed!!!

Sometimes I need more drive from fellow users to make sure that I'm on the right path...

Yes, those potholes are nasty but worth trying my skills on my first ever scenery. Unfortunately, the blend and water masks applied on inland lakes on the photo image don't work as expected since i) I had to exclude ORBX Vector hydro polygons which also make water mask invisible somehow; ii) the island is a hole and all I can see are empty holes instead of lakes. So, I decided to make use of SBX water polygons instead of water masks. Quite a work to do...

Take care!

 

[toprob]

Yes, I'll just add my thanks, Jim, although I've been producing scenery for over a decade, I don't have any experience with redoing coastlines, and I needed to do a one-off job this week -- your little tutorial was all I needed. I may not need to fix a coastline for another 10 years, so I'll bookmark this thread

 

[JRobinson]

Awesome, I'm glad you found it useful!

 

[bina]

Awesome, I'm glad you found it useful!

I'll acknowledge your support in my scenery once it's released. Promise...


Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk

 

[L_Rob]

Hi Jim,

Thanks so much for your detailed instructions for modifying a shoreline! I'd vaguely looked into it some time ago but I had decided that I'd be more productive making models rather than figuring it out. It just seemed too complicated. Until my current project, the only real issue was shoreline poking out around my ferry slips where fixing it seemed not worth the effort. But with the Nanaimo SPB I'm working on it was either fix the shoreline or abandon the project. After a couple of false starts (failure to read closely!) I carefully followed your steps one by one, and problem solved (all but one minor issue I think I can fix). So I won't have to abandon my project (or live with something ugly) after all thanks to your how -to!

Larry