MSFS Airport custom aerial, weird patches of grass

[sleepy_t]

Hey everyone,
I am building some custom aerial images for my home airport.
Everything works fine, I used the method presented by Flying Theston, using QGIS and tiles2bing with LOD 19.

But there are some weird patches of green grass, looks like something generic, it's definitely not in the aerial images created by me.
Any ideas how I could remove this?

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Those look like aprons created by Asobo to cover defective areas of their aerial imagery. You need to exclude the aprons if that is the case.

 

[sleepy_t]

Great, that's it, thank you!

 

[Christian Bahr]

Hi there!

I am facing the same problem right now:

There are these weird spots on part of the airport and I don't know how to get them away. Has anyone had a similar experience and knows how to get rid of the anomalies?

 

[GuidoH]

Hi use exclusion rightangulars to exclude all you need to. As a reference take a look at what bing maps is showing at these coordinates. So you know if it's generated or just on the map.
Damit bekommst Du alles weg was darunter liegt, egal ob generiert oder auf Bing Maps.

 

[GuidoH]

Which airport is it?

 

[Christian Bahr]

Hi,

I had already tried that. The stains remain anyway. What I had tried: polygons, exclusion rectangles, rectangles. Do I have to change the priority?

 

[Christian Bahr]

Hi,

I had already tried that. The stains remain anyway. What I had tried: polygons, exclusion rectangles, rectangles. Do I have to change the priority?

The airfield is called Hengsen-Opherdicke EDIU.

 

[sleepy_t]

I used Airport2Project (https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...here-is-a-small-app-to-help-you-draft.450344/) to first create a copy of the ASOBO default airport and then I removed all the "aprons" that are the reason for these patches. Aprons do not need to be asphalt, they can be grass too and Asobo uses these to hide for example airplanes on the Bing aerial imagery using these patches. Aprons are not removed by exclusion zones.
Maybe this is of help for you Christian.

Greetings from Paderborn :-D
Tobias

 

[Christian Bahr]

I had actually hoped there would be a simple solution, so I have to work my way into the subject first. Thank you Tobias!

 

[rhumbaflappy]

You could get rid of the aprons as noted above. Then create new aerial tiles from Bing maps if possible, so they are more apt to blend in. Then you can alter the tiles in a paint program to get rid of whatever Asobo was covering up with the aprons. Then compile the new aerial tiles.

 

[Christian Bahr]

You could get rid of the aprons as noted above. Then create new aerial tiles from Bing maps if possible, so they are more apt to blend in. Then you can alter the tiles in a paint program to get rid of whatever Asobo was covering up with the aprons. Then compile the new aerial tiles.

I already have my own Open Data Orthophoto from our state government in use. There are no spots in there, the orthophoto has already been retouched and embedded in the color space of the MSFS:

The orthophoto in Photoshop ...

... and in MSFS.

Probably I can't avoid Tobias' suggested solution.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Yes. Exclude the Aprons.

 

[Rotornut44]

If I remember correctly, it should be as simple as checking the following setting:

 

[sleepy_t]

Yes, I think so, too. This checkbox is sufficient. If I remember correctly, for some reason, most of the airport I am working on consisted of aprons, even the "taxiways" were gone 🙃 So, that was the reason to use Airport2Project to have a base to work on, instead of doing everything new from the start.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

deleteAllAprons in the airport XML is the only way to erase them.

 

[Christian Bahr]

Hello

As described, I deleted the aprons using the delete function in the airport settings. That worked perfectly:

The patches are still there in the Scenery Editor

When activating the option "deleteAllAprons" the patches are gone immediately

After compiling and restarting MSFS, the patches are gone

Thank you everyone for your help!

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Re-visiting this topic.
Asobo has used patches to cover anomalies in the aerial imagery. They also use patches to cover parking lots in some areas. These 'patches' are aprons, and can be a deleted area in an airport xml. It's the only way they can be deleted. This is from an ADE MSFS example:

        <DeleteAirport
            deleteAllApproaches="FALSE"
            deleteAllRunways="TRUE"
            deleteAllStarts="TRUE"
            deleteAllHelipads="TRUE"
            deleteAllFrequencies="FALSE"
            deleteAllTaxiways="TRUE"
            deleteAllAprons="TRUE"
            deleteAllApronLights="TRUE"
            deleteAllControlTowers="TRUE"
            deleteAllJetways="FALSE"
            deleteAllBoundaryFences="FALSE"
            deleteAllBlastFences="FALSE"
            deleteAllArrivals="FALSE"
            deleteAllDepartures="FALSE"
            deleteAllILSs="FALSE"
            deleteAllLightSupports="TRUE"
            deleteAllTerminalNDBs="FALSE"
            deleteAllPaintedElements="TRUE"
            deleteAllTaxiwaySigns="TRUE"
            deleteAllTerminalWaypoints="FALSE"

            />

Note the deleteAllAprons="TRUE". It works, but all the Aprons are gone. With ADE, you can import the airport, and all the aprons are rebuilt... you can then delete or add individual aprons (patches) in ADE.

The problem with the grass patches is they seldom match the surrounding aerial imagery. Loading the project in the Dev-Mode allows you to see what your airport XML looks like in-sim... something you just can't do in ADE. You can save a copy of the ADE airport, so alterations made in the Dev-Mode can be added back in through ADE. Here's the problem of coloration in ADE, and where to manually edit if desired.

I use the PowerToys color picker to find the basic color correction for the patch in the Dev-Mode.

This gets the color near the right values. Play with the coloration popup to get it acceptable. (Sometimes, the shape of the patch needs to be altered to get a good cover-up).

 

[rhumbaflappy]

A caution about the apron patches. In an earlier version of MSFS, C59 had a couple of patches. In the current version, they have been removed. Apparently an updated aerial image no longer needs the patch. So revisit your airport sceneries occasionally and see if your altered patches are still needed.

 

[Christian Bahr]

Re-visiting this topic.
Asobo has used patches to cover anomalies in the aerial imagery. They also use patches to cover parking lots in some areas. These 'patches' are aprons, and can be a deleted area in an airport xml. It's the only way they can be deleted. This is from an ADE MSFS example:

        <DeleteAirport
            deleteAllApproaches="FALSE"
            deleteAllRunways="TRUE"
            deleteAllStarts="TRUE"
            deleteAllHelipads="TRUE"
            deleteAllFrequencies="FALSE"
            deleteAllTaxiways="TRUE"
            deleteAllAprons="TRUE"
            deleteAllApronLights="TRUE"
            deleteAllControlTowers="TRUE"
            deleteAllJetways="FALSE"
            deleteAllBoundaryFences="FALSE"
            deleteAllBlastFences="FALSE"
            deleteAllArrivals="FALSE"
            deleteAllDepartures="FALSE"
            deleteAllILSs="FALSE"
            deleteAllLightSupports="TRUE"
            deleteAllTerminalNDBs="FALSE"
            deleteAllPaintedElements="TRUE"
            deleteAllTaxiwaySigns="TRUE"
            deleteAllTerminalWaypoints="FALSE"

            />

Note the deleteAllAprons="TRUE". It works, but all the Aprons are gone. With ADE, you can import the airport, and all the aprons are rebuilt... you can then delete or add individual aprons (patches) in ADE.

The problem with the grass patches is they seldom match the surrounding aerial imagery. Loading the project in the Dev-Mode allows you to see what your airport XML looks like in-sim... something you just can't do in ADE. You can save a copy of the ADE airport, so alterations made in the Dev-Mode can be added back in through ADE. Here's the problem of coloration in ADE, and where to manually edit if desired.

View attachment 68481
I use the PowerToys color picker to find the basic color correction for the patch in the Dev-Mode.

View attachment 68482

This gets the color near the right values. Play with the coloration popup to get it acceptable. (Sometimes, the shape of the patch needs to be altered to get a good cover-up).
View attachment 68483

Really great what you do for the community! Like it a lot