MSFS20 Grass not showing in certain areas

[Rick Celik]

Hi all, as some of you know I'm working on a project at the moment of a seaplane base in Sydney. I'm nearly on the home stretch but would like some ideas on what might be going on.

Below is a screenshot of some grass areas, now I've played with the CGL etc to get more green on the aerial but still no luck. I even tested a grass polygon on the default aerial and still no grass.

My issue is, when I apply a texture correction to the CGL or even a grass polygon and play with the color, the right grass patch (pointed out in RED) never shows any grass. However the grass field on the left (pointed out in yellow) I CAN get grass to show there? I'm wondering if there's some missing data or low res data in the CGL being so close to the edge of the water that its registering as water? I'm trying my best to avoid making 3d grass for such a large portion of the scenery the "No Grass Zone" stretches along the whole coast

Any help or ideas will be useful. Thanks in advance:

 

[=rk=]

This is payware? There are grass models for situations like this. Personally, I would not risk leaving such to an algorithm. A couple vector lines of grass placement and you're back in black.

 

[mamu]

Water polygons have a built in "falloff" to remove grass (roughly 10/20 meters)

Your only option to have default grass is to exclude water a bit more (and being a seaplane base is not an option, isn't it?)

Some 3d grass is the solution, some 100k tris would hurt so much

 

[GaryGB]

Water polygons have a built in "falloff" to remove grass (roughly 10/20 meters)

Your only option to have default grass is to exclude water a bit more (and being a seaplane base is not an option, isn't it?)

Some 3d grass is the solution, some 100k tris would hurt so much

Hi Federico:

Considering the lack of replies by Asobo and/or others to this prior inquiry:

https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/falloff-water-polygon/5870

...is the above cited "10/20 meter" 'Falloff' for water polys only for default water polygon objects ?


If so, would a custom water polygon for this local area allow a different and lesser (ex: 1 Meter minimum) 'Falloff' ?


And if so, does a minimum water 'Falloff' only display in MSFS via run time rendering when we disable water flattening via:

MSFS Menu > Options > Ground > un-check: "Enable Water Flattening"


Thanks for sharing any insight you may have into Asobo's intent to allow precision terrain ...instead of the prior quick-and-dirty fix they implemented to deal with MSFS' slowly evolving 3D world water body vector model ...still fraught with shoreline "water creep".

[EDITED]

PS: FYI status on SU-13 for the OP and others tracking the evolution of MSFS' ability to enable precision terrain adjacent to water bodies:

https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/t/su12-issues-with-water-polygons-excludes/5454/10

[END_EDIT]

GaryGB

 

[=rk=]

If so, would a custom water polygon for this local area allow a different and lesser (ex: 1 Meter minimum) 'Falloff' ?

Indeed:

One need only set a polygon with type "ocean," I believe and you can have grass directly adjacent to water. Notice how the grass placement is driven by the underlying CGL color and it does not place brass in the "wells" around several of the bouys.

 

[Rick Celik]

This is payware? There are grass models for situations like this. Personally, I would not risk leaving such to an algorithm. A couple vector lines of grass placement and you're back in black.

Hi @=rk= , yes this will be a payware release. My first project I'll be releasing to the public, so quite excited.

@GaryGB @=rk= @mamu thank you all for your input, I will try tomorrow to see if a custom water polygon will help in this situation. Will report back, might have to make some custom grass if that's my only option.

 

[Rick Celik]

UPDATE: no go on the grass, will have to make them in 3dsmax

 

[Losco Nosciuto]

UPDATE: no go on the grass, will have to make them in 3dsmax

I know it might sound stupid but I ran into some similar issue before. I never used Polygons but just aprons to add or remove grass. And when I do I gotta manually check the material used for it to be GRASS type in the properties because there are some "grass" named materials which are though marked as "tarmac" and so doesn't let MSFS render grass at all.
Here's a little example.

First time this was also editable and I ended messing up my original texture files, so I made a custom copy of that with a nice "GRASS" surface flag.

Had the same issue with the one above.

I did my color correction manually in-sim with aprons and coloration fine tuning, never had an issue with grass once you get into the workflow of color=amount.
Not sure this could be the case, but worth looking into it

 

[GaryGB]

Hi again:

I agree with the options that mamu and Losco allude to above; we must jump through more hoops with MSFS by first excluding the default water poly, then replacing it with a custom water polygon that is fitted to the intended local shoreline at that part of Rose Bay.

Next we must choose the shoreline terrain polygon type that correctly displays the desired type of default grass color and length.

IIRC, we would next add the paved area polygon(s) on top of the Grass polygon(s) along the shoreline in-land areas.


BTW: Mamu has previously posted one of his excellent tutorials that show how to modify the default grass color:

Federico Pinotti (aka "mamu") has a tutorial on YouTube which shows how to create a Grass replacement Polygon via a Material 'close' in color / texture pattern, which can be further edited to match its color to that of underlying default MSFS MSVE (aka "BING") PR imagery:

[EDITED]

The segment on that method is at 22:40 elapsed time.

[END_EDIT]

GaryGB

 

[Rick Celik]

@GaryGB @Losco Nosciuto @=rk= @mamu , a very big thank you to you all, after all your help, I managed to get the desired effect by making a water exclusion. Once a again, thank you to you all. Now to play around with the grass color and put in a higher LOD 19 res aerial around the bay. Sydney has some great aerials in the sim but, just my luck, it happens to drop near RoseBay. I've got QGIS so ill overlay a higher BING image to include with the final release while trying to keep the file size down as much as possible.

Yay, grass on both sides of the footpath! Now that looks better.

 

[=rk=]

This is all default grass from the model library.

The pavement includes imbedded grass tufts.

 

[Losco Nosciuto]

@GaryGB @Losco Nosciuto @=rk= @mamu , a very big thank you to you all, after all your help, I managed to get the desired effect by making a water exclusion. Once a again, thank you to you all. Now to play around with the grass color and put in a higher LOD 19 res aerial around the bay. Sydney has some great aerials in the sim but, just my luck, it happens to drop near RoseBay. I've got QGIS so ill overlay a higher BING image to include with the final release while trying to keep the file size down as much as possible.

Yay, grass on both sides of the footpath! Now that looks better.

View attachment 89517

Yay! What was the issue if I may ask? Glad you managed to sort that

 

[Rick Celik]

Yay! What was the issue if I may ask? Glad you managed to sort that

Sure, so what I done was made a water polygon with the exclusion type "water" other options didn't work. And then I move that polygon up to the shoreline. I think because the water was so close to the land, there was some sort of conflict. I was able to bring the water exclusion a little further in towards land since I have "fake terrain" at the edges of the "rock wall". If anyone has a more technical explanation of how it all works, please free to add on.

 

[GaryGB]

This is all default grass from the model library.


The pavement includes embedded grass tufts.

As Rick has illustrated above, there are indeed new MSFS options for paved polygons that include sparse grass tuft placements / annotations (...which IIRC, in prior FS versions and/or P3D, could otherwise only have been done with custom 3D grass annotations / placements).

Also to be noted is that Rick shows we can change the length- / relative "density"- of grass ...via 1 or more custom polygon properties.

IMHO, your new shoreline grass is currently rather long / dense for park-land; but for all I know, that may be because the "grass is greener" down under in Australia.

If not, you could try some of the known tweaks to MSFS' grass properties to make it look a bit more like 'well-trimmed' park-land.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.fsdeveloper.com+MSFS+Grass+Length&client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=561395159&ei=4qLvZLbzH4Cs0PEPkoGg4Aw&ved=0ahUKEwi27LP5mIWBAxUAFjQIHZIACMwQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=site:www.fsdeveloper.com+MSFS+Grass+Length&gs_lp=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&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

Overall, though, things are shaping up rather nicely with your project; keep up the good work.

GaryGB

 

[Rick Celik]

As Rick has illustrated above, there are indeed new MSFS options for paved polygons that include sparse grass tuft placements / annotations (...which IIRC, in prior FS versions and/or P3D, could otherwise only have been done with custom 3D grass annotations / placements).

Also to be noted is that Rick shows we can change the length- / relative "density"- of grass ...via 1 or more custom polygon properties.

IMHO, your new shoreline grass is currently rather long / dense for park-land; but for all I know, that may be because the "grass is greener" down under in Australia.

If not, you could try some of the known tweaks to MSFS' grass properties to make it look a bit more like 'well-trimmed' park-land.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:www.fsdeveloper.com+MSFS+Grass+Length&client=firefox-b-1-d&sca_esv=561395159&ei=4qLvZLbzH4Cs0PEPkoGg4Aw&ved=0ahUKEwi27LP5mIWBAxUAFjQIHZIACMwQ4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=site:www.fsdeveloper.com+MSFS+Grass+Length&gs_lp=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&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

Overall, though, things are shaping up rather nicely with your project; keep up the good work.

GaryGB

Thanks for the kind words and help @GaryGB yes now that I've got some time ill definitely be looking into getting the height and color correct