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Random Tree placement with Annotator

falcon409

falcon409

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us-texas
I have been using the SDK Annotator (FSX & P3D) for a long time, but one thing that is still an ongoing problem is the appearance of misplaced trees during seasonal changes. One airport I'm having a problem with is Twin Mountain, NH. I have placed trees down both sides of the rwy but trimmed back approx 50'. For Spring/Summer and hard Winter everything is fine, but go to Fall and I have two or three trees that show up smack in the center of the rwy. This isn't the only airport I've seen this at, it just happens to be the one I'm trying to correct at this time. Seasonal changes will introduce various combinations of tree placement regardless of where you place the trees with the annotator.

Is there a surefire way to be able to place trees in specific spots and have them maintain that position throughout the seasons?

Thanks.
 
Hi,

There is no vegetation polygon or rectangle that covers the spot where you see those trees? Each season loads different models for the trees, but they should have the same size and thus similar placement.
 
Easily solved with an autogen exclusion polygon, downside is you'd have to do it at every airport where this is happening.
 
arno said:
Hi,

There is no vegetation polygon or rectangle that covers the spot where you see those trees? Each season loads different models for the trees, but they should have the same size and thus similar placement.
Click to expand...
In the case of the airport I'm currently working on. . .no, there isn't an agn poly within 60 feet of where the trees show. Also, placement and coverage varies depending on seasons. An area that has 3 or 4 trees in Summer might have none at all during the winter or more than what's actually placed in the Fall. I believe it was Holger who suggested the individual placement years ago when I was having trouble getting the area poly to fill like I wanted. He said then that individual placement is far more precise. It can be. . .but it's also not a sure thing, lol.
 
"Sets" are most likely the problem here, that's what the "city" varieties are for, there are no sets in the city varieties so they don't spill over onto runways, streets, fields, etc. No idea why one season would be different than another, there must actually be a difference in the .mdls, or else some transparency on the Sp, Su, Wi, and Hw textures that isn't transparent on the Fa texture sheet. I'd open it back up and check around the edges for tree types, you can expand the groupings out in the autogen configurator and if you see something like veg_tc_DouglasFir_set_15m" listed under object name try changing that particular placement to "tc Douglas Fir 5-25m City" for example. You can select as many of them as you want and change them all at once by selecting the appropriate grouping in the autogen configurator and then hitting the set GUID button on the control strip.
 
Thanks JR but I don't use sets, ever. I select individual tree types, set the GUID button and start placing individual trees. I'll do a random placement of approx 10 trees, select those, copy and begin pasting in large segments. The airports I specialize in are small GA private airports, more often than not located in sparsely populated areas surrounded by large areas of trees. I use the tmfviewer to zero in a location, check the autogen type and select that. When I get the bulk of the trees laid in and need to do individual trees, then I'm positioning them directly on the trees shown on the background texture.

As an example, if I set a single line of closely positioned trees 50yds long as down a long driveway entrance, then select various seasons, those trees will not only change coloring but also positions and at times (again depending on the season), not appear at all. The Annotator is an invaluable tool but it isn't precise. I've done hundreds of airports and in almost every one I can point to an area where trees have encroached into areas where there are none placed.
 
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Can you tell what the grouping was that was used in these placements? Honestly I can't say I've ever seen autogen placements change, I'd like to check it out. I hate sets too, lol, sometimes I throw a few out in the middle of a large tree area for some discontinuity but that's about it. Maybe I haven't looked closely enough but I've never noticed them changing positions from one season to another either, that's weird. I know sometimes I've had to go back and delete a few cottonwoods because the grouping put a veg_tb_Cottonwood_40m near a road or something where I'd have preferred a veg_tb_Cottonwood_14m but that's not really anything abnormal. I've also noticed where changing one tree on a large PR has had an effect on another tree half a mile away but again that's just the randomization of the grouping - albeit somewhat annoying. :)

I wanted more control of autogen than you get with the groupings, I hacked a set of autogendescriptions specifically for annotating that allows you to place individual models rather than groupings, you can place an individual tree with the annotator just like you'd place it with Instant Scenery except seasonal changes work. The descriptions are hacked so when you run the autogen in the sim with normal descriptions it fools the sim into placing individual trees without needing to supply custom descriptions. This could easily solve your problems I think, you can read about it and download the hacked descriptions (post 17) here if you're interested:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/th...delentry-guid-rather-than-grouping-id.429331/
 
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