FSXA Ground Poly Wizard-Terrain Issues.

[Shaun]

I have some polys near a slope. A patch doesn't appear because of it, despite them not actually being placed on the slope.

What does "group polys 500m" and "optimise ref point" mean?
Is there anyway to force them to display correctly?

 

[Shaun]

I can see why, it's grouping the sections and placing them at the altitude at which the origin of that section is at, with regards to FSX terrain, not the altitude AMSL set in the ground poly editor...

As you can see, the 0,0 point below doesn't fall on the ground poly, and in FSX there is a steep drop off there.

How can I force it to place at 49ft, irrespective of the FSX terrain?

 

[=rk=]

You can export your poly as a model .bgl and use a tool like Instant Scenery to orient it and create the placement .bgl.

 

[Shaun]

It needs the layers, this wont work.

 

[arno]

The ground polygon wizard assumes flat terrain.

You can disable the grouping then the center of all polygons is used as reference point.

 

[Shaun]

Works fine now. thanks Arno!

 

[Shaun]

This works, but on a really big airport I would like to use the grouping still.

Is there any way to "force" the wizard to place everything at the same height, regardless of the terrain undulations with grouping on?

 

[arno]

Not at the moment, but I could recode it for such behaviour.

 

[Shaun]

Oh no, don't worry! I just wont use group polygons.

 

[GaryGB]

This works, but on a really big airport I would like to use the grouping still.

Is there any way to "force" the wizard to place everything at the same height, regardless of the terrain undulations with grouping on?

Not at the moment, but I could recode it for such behaviour.

Hi Arno:

When you get a chance to do this, that would IMHO be a helpful "option" to have in MCX for some development scenarios.


Also, would you consider implementing further enhancement of the ModelConverterX Ground Polygon Wizard texturing by ASM and/or SCASM legacy methods, so that G-Polys as a type of legacy 2D or "flat 3D object" ...can use multiple faces / polygon segments (ex: in a TIN mesh) in order to be "fitted" to non-flat surfaces ex: terrain skirts on 3D models, or "fitted" to custom terrain shapes implemented using legacy vector or FSX CVX sloped flattens that modify underlying terrain mesh ?

The goal would be to implement very high resolution terrain texturing on "small" areas without having to utilize multiple tiles of ex: high resolution custom photo-real land class textures on terrain mesh which use 'blend mask' methods, and to instead use G-Polys textured with a gradient blend via Alpha channel ...rather than high-resolution textured 3D SimObjects to avoid "Z-Buffer Fighting" associated with MDLs.


FYI: Richard Goldstein once stated that SCASM TexPoly methods had no limit as to terrain texture resolution displayable in FS8 / FS9


http://www.scasm.de/doc/sca_tply.htm


IIRC, in one of your previous posts, you had implemented creation of non-flat 3D surface vector objects from MCX; could this be adapted to allow additional output in other ex: "legacy" BGL formats?

http://www.scenerydesign.org/2013/04/flattens-from-3d-objects/



Many thanks for your amazing FS utility innovations, and for your generosity in making them available to FS Developers !

GaryGB

 

[arno]

Hi Gary,

Do you think non-flat ground polygons are useful? AI traffic won't work with it.

I guess it could make sense to export the ground polygons and a sloped terrain flatten together. That might work I guess. But only for FSX, not for FS2004.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Arno:

I was thinking this could be more useful in areas which do not utilize / require AI Traffic, with a primary goal being the ability to put 'very high resolution' textures onto custom "sloped terrain" surfaces / objects (ex: at bush / back country airstrips) ...without utilizing custom Resample mesh-clinging land class textures, or 3D models (MDLs) with platform attributes which incur "Z-Buffer Fighting" issues.

Admittedly, the majority of users for such a feature would be those FSX / P3D developers; but some of us develop for multiple versions of MSFS.

With regard to possible ways for implementing a ASM / SCASM non-flat G-Poly 'fitted to' legacy LWM3 vector flattens, perhaps the 3D X,Y,Z (Lat,Lon,Alt) coordinates used for the G-Poly output by MCX could also be exported into a file format ( ex: BLN, Polish MP, SBuilder 'SBX') which might be Imported / Appended to SBuilder for FS9 ...to expedite creation of the legacy format LWM3 sloped vector flatten BGL(s) ?


BTW: Manfred's SCASM documentation for LWM3 creation:

http://www.scasm.de/doc/sca_trn.htm#lpol3



FYI: Some issues in SBuilder for FS9 related to:

* Appending BLNs (can X,Y, and Z all be successfully read / used by SBuilder when "Appended" ?):

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/th...builderx-polygons-are-lost-in-sbuilder.44626/


* Creation of "VTP" high resolution photo scenery

http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2446


Thanks again for considering this.

GaryGB

 

[Shaun]

I think Arno's got enough on his plate atm. with moving and all!

The altitude forcing would be amazing though. I do get split polys quite a lot, because of the arbitrary placement of the origin of the groups, often falling off airport.