• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

FSX Barra Island Mesh

Messages
65
Country
italy
Hello,
I am trying to make a photoreal scenery that covers all the Island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides - I made the photoreal, everything went OK and it looks great!
Now I am wondering not a lot how to make a mesh for all the island, but more on how to delete all the coastlines and eventual existing island borders (cover them with water possibly) so that they all get hidden by the photoreal and don't show. That's the main focus.
As always, any tip is well appreciated!! :)
 
Messages
3,278
Country
spain
I guess you have to redesign the coastline, if it is the entire island it could be more difficult. (never I could get to redesign an entire island you have to créate a new one) but if this is just part of this. tools like Ade, FsxKml and others cand do the work.
Basically the process could be: exclude wáter which will left you with just ground and add watter polygon. I hope some could explain better, allways struggling with the english language.
 
Messages
65
Country
italy
I guess you have to redesign the coastline, if it is the entire island it could be more difficult. (never I could get to redesign an entire island you have to créate a new one) but if this is just part of this. tools like Ade, FsxKml and others cand do the work.
Basically the process could be: exclude wáter which will left you with just ground and add watter polygon. I hope some could explain better, allways struggling with the english language.
Hello and thanks for the help,
I tried excluding all the shorelines with ADE, but there appear to be a lot of land chunks that get created. I then tried to add a water poly, which worked perfectly, exept that it completely flattens my island. I feel a bit frustrated TBH since I can't really find any good tutorial anywhere on how to doing this kind of stuff - importing GIS terrain would be a good alternative too, but I really can't find anything about doing that. Thank you anyway for your suggestion, I hope anyone else has the answer to this..
 
Messages
3,278
Country
spain
But can be achieved, when creating or adding wáter polygon it must be bigger than the exclude wáter polygon. people talk about Qmid cells ??,or something so. but I mean that it have to embrace a large área. but to créate new shorelines is not hard at all. I could ¡¡¿¿. Just a Little confusing. sometimes worked sometime not. The wáter polygon (ocean perennial polygon) is what conform the coastline, you have to draw this polygon follwing the new costline, in google earth, and as said before créate a large área of wáter.
The wáter polygons are flatten polygons, but not understood how the wáter flattened the island, it just should créate the profile of the coastline, anyway not desist and wait for better advice that that of me, it has been long time ago when I was involved in that matter. good luck
 
Messages
7,450
Country
us-illinois
Hello:

You may wish to consider purchasing one of the Playsims Publishing VFR Photographic Scenery Generation X packages:

VFR Photo Scenery - Volume 4 Scotland : The Western Isles (PC DVD)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/VFR-Photo-Scenery-Scotland-Western/dp/B0036PVBHM



Certainly it is also possible to make your own terrain mesh and custom photo-realistic terrain textures, then annotate the textures with autogen objects for use on your own computer.

But for any anticipated commercial purpose, you may need to purchase a license to aerial imagery and elevation data to match or exceed the quality in the above payware product (which is AFAIK no longer in production, in part, due to overall limited sales volume).


If you wish to make this scenery area for yourself, you may wish to review this excellent tutorial on using SBuilderX to make a photo-realistic scenery of an island, which includes clearly explained and detailed steps for the exclusion of default water polygons and creation of accurate replacement scenery content:


How to create photoreal scenery for FSX - by "Tiberius K."

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?250762-How-to-create-photoreal-scenery-for-FSX


A preceding thread apparently compelled Tiberius Kowalski (aka "Tiberius K." at flightsim.com) to create the above tutorial, points out common errors which can be made when making islands (ex: by incorrect use of Excludes, as well as failure to remove default CVX BGLs local to the area of an island and replace them with custom water polygons and other required content); that thread is here:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?245629-Project-Nauru-PHOTOREAL-(in-progress)/page3


Note: The terrain resolution in the above linked Playsims Publishing VFR Photographic Scenery Generation X packages was reportedly a much higher 5 Meter resolution; the aerial imagery resolution was reportedly 60 cm.


BTW: A history of that UK photo-realistic scenery series:

http://www.arm-computers.co.uk/Photo_Scenery/photo_scenery.html



PS: Creating terrain mesh BGLs for that area would likely be limited to publicly and freely available 30 Meter resolution SRTM version 3 elevation source data.

Reportedly, most of the world areas publicly accessible as elevation data from the SRTMv3 data set have already been made freely available as ready-to-use 30 Meter terrain mesh BGLs:

http://www.avsim.com/topic/467933-freemesh-x-global-10-release-announcement/


Hope this helps with considering your options ! :)

GaryGB
 
Last edited:
Messages
65
Country
italy
Thank you a lot guys for your support. Luckily I have fixed everything myself at the end - this is how I did:
I opened the AFCAD of the airport on the island with the good old ADE and by comparing the background image with FSX, I covered the excess coast with water polygons where needed, then I excluded the shorelines with a unique large polygon. I hope someone that will need help in the future will read this, because this is for sure the least complicated solution !! :)
Have a nice day everyone!!
 
Top