Sunken River

[falcon409]

Ok, new project and an image to illustrate. The scenery I'm working on must work for both Orbx as well as default FSX users. In Orbx, the river is there, in FSX it is not. . .so in SBX I traced in the river, set it for Hydro_River and gave it "0" altitude. Compiled, and loaded the scenery and you see the results.

I have done two other scenery projects where I recreated a river system that was left out of the default FSX scenery. I checked both and both poly's have an altitude of "0" and display perfectly. This one seems to want to be a problem. The altitude of the airport (Gadabout Gaddis_ME08) is about 3.5'.

On a whim I tried giving it a set altitude but it remained where it was, no effect, so something is causing it to drop, but I'm unsure what. There is nothing else at play here except the small photoreal ground texture visible in the image.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Ed:

A quick check in Google Earth / Google Maps shows ME08 at 336 Feet / 102.4128 Meters AMSL


AirNAV shows:

FAA Identifier:

ME08
Lat/Long: 45-02-25.2020N / 069-52-08.2100W
45-02.420033N / 069-52.136833W
45.0403339 / -69.8689472
(estimated)
Elevation: 342 ft. / 104 m (estimated)
Variation: 18W (1985)
From city: 1 mile S of BINGHAM, ME
Time zone: UTC -4 (UTC -5 during Standard Time)
Zip code: 04920

http://www.airnav.com/airport/ME08

The scenery I'm working on must work for both Orbx as well as default FSX users. In Orbx, the river is there, in FSX it is not.

. .so in SBX I traced in the river, set it for Hydro_River and gave it "0" altitude. Compiled, and loaded the scenery and you see the results.

IIUC, in SBuilderX, the CVX vector poly you used in the 'test' example above was:

Type 140 - Hydro_River_Generic_Perennial


PS: When using a FSX CVX vector polygon (and not a legacy FS2Kx LWM vector polygon), if one imparts the slight slope of local terrain to the river surface, according to Doug Matthews of ACES, one must use at least 13-decimal places (even if all are trailing zeroes) for slope, and at least 3 decimal places for altitude values supplied for the Hydro Poly vertices (...otherwise applied values default to nearest integer values ? ).

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/bglviewer-for-fsx-bgl-files.432840/page-3#post-710325

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/th...evated-lakes-in-the-andes.435147/#post-722619

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc707102.aspx#TheShp2VecTool

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc526968.aspx

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc707110.aspx


FYI: 32-bit Floating Point = "FLOAT32", and requires a minimum of 13 decimal places to represent a value at that level of 'single' precision

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-precision_floating-point_format


Hope this helps !

GaryGB

 

[GHD]

I think you need to use a mesh-clinging water poly.

Here is a quick and nasty fix:

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Ed:

Indeed, unless you plan to render the entire river via the Water Mask channel in the FS SDK Resample custom photo-real aerial imagery, if you instead only use a small local area of such textures, IIUC, you could utilize the "mesh-clinging water poly" option George indicates in his post above.


Please tell us if you have a specific entry in your working copy of Terrain.Cfg at:

[FS install path]\Terrain.Cfg

...similar to what Richard Ludowise (aka "rhumbaflappy") cites in this post ?

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/th...when-creating-water-polygons.4887/#post-33648

[EDITED]

CAVEAT: To both create and render at run time, the river via a FS2Kx legacy-format LWM vector "mesh-clinging water poly" option, would require you (and all end users of that scenery) to have the custom legacy GUID for a "mesh-clinging water poly" entry manually added to the working copy of Terrain.Cfg (not a process for folks who are not accustomed to "working under the hood" in FS).

However, reportedly, it seems that one can still implement the water poly via a "Type 140 - Hydro_River_Generic_Perennial" CVX vector object, by assigning the elevation manually to each and every vertex of the water polygon ...as described by other posts within that same thread:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/th...when-creating-water-polygons.4887/#post-33648


IIUC, that latter work-flow would NOT require you (and all end users of that scenery) to have the custom legacy GUID for a "mesh-clinging water poly" entry manually added to the working copy of Terrain.Cfg.

[END_EDIT]

Hope this helps with exploring your options !

GaryGB

 

[falcon409]

All, interesting information and I've made note of it for future reference, however what ultimately caused the problem was simply that I was using erroneous elevation information. Where I came up with it I have no idea however once I set the river poly elevation correctly (104m) it rose to the surface. I do like the tiles that George is depicting in his image . . . .however I found nothing that good (as you can see from my image) via the SBX capture process, which is the only process I use for acquiring ground textures. Very nice George.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Again, Ed:

AFAIK, the aerial imagery in George's example above may be MS' "VirtualEarth Satellite" (IIRC, c/o NOKIA's "Here.com" licensed from Digital Globe):

https://wego.here.com/search/BINGHAM%2C%20ME?map=45.04201,-69.87007,19,satellite


To toggle this in SBuilderX:

1.) SBuilderX Menu > View > 'un-check' "Show Background - F1"


2.) SBuilderX Menu > Edit > Preferences > {Background tab}

(a.) choose "VirtualEarth Satellite in pick-list

(b.) 'check' "Use "VirtualEarth Satellite" check-box; click OK


3.) SBuilderX Menu > View > 'check' "Show Background - F1"


BTW: I have not yet looked at the USGS / USDA NAIP for that area yet, but that is typically at 30 cm / 1 Foot per pixel (LOD-17) resolution.

[UPDATE]

The USGS / USDA NAIP 30 cm / 1 Foot per pixel (LOD-17) resolution aerial imagery for that area, even when streamed via WMS into ex: Global Mapper and exported as UTM / WGS84 projected GeoTiffs appended to SBuilderX ...does not merit much consideration, as it is blurry compared to the sources discussed above; however it is freely available ...and free to use.



GaryGB

 

[falcon409]

Thanks Gary, that's the process I use for all my scenery. ArcGisImagery and VirtualEarthSatellite seem to have the best tiles. Nokia is very poor and not worth using.

UPDATE: Current state of project.

 

[GaryGB]

Thanks Gary, that's the process I use for all my scenery. ArcGisImagery and VirtualEarth Satellite seem to have the best tiles. Nokia is very poor and not worth using.

FYI: NOKIA had previously been the provider of aerial imagery for Yahoo, and the "Nokia Satellite" tile server in the SBuilderX pick-list... both of which IIRC no longer are online.

Since restructured under the "Here.com" brand, NOKIA D/B/A Here.com continues to supply Bing Maps / MS VirtualEarth / ESRI ArcGIS World Imagery using satellite imagery licensed from Digital Globe in many world areas.

Although 'Terms of Use' info is hard to find online, technically all NOKIA imagery requires licensing.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi Ed:

BTW: Knowing that you use P3D version 3.x, do you also intend to make this scenery for Prepar3D (aka "P3D") version 3.x ?

PS: Considering once more, the option George presented above, while I am confident that CVX vector format scenery content should display compatibly regardless of whether FSX or P3D SDK SHP2VEC compiler is used, I have found no documentation thus far as to whether a FS2Kx legacy-format LWM vector "mesh-clinging water poly" can be rendered by P3Dv3.x at run time.

My "guess" is that it still could, but AFAIK, one may find it easier to work with all one's content in 'post-FS2Kx' SDK file formats for P3D 2.x/3.x.

GaryGB