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Beginner needs help, please!

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norway
Hi folks! I hope I can bother you with a few questions as I am new to scenery design. I am working on creating a few detailed VFR sceneries on some islands along the Norwegian Arctic coast. The default FSX scenery is lacking in many places, but with new custom mesh installed things are becoming better.

I've edited the lanclass of the islands with EZ Landclass (took a week) and have now gotten all the small towns and villages more correct, not to mention a more realistic terrain. I still find the default textures in FSX to be lacking though. Why's everything so bright in colour? The tundra, marsh and grass lanclasses are all very bright for some reason. Where are the dark browns, reds and greens? Hopefully there will be released some good texture replacements in the future.

With Flight1 Instant Scenery I've added some generic objects around the island. As you understand, I am no computer geek :) I need intuitive and easy software to help me with my project. As I'm still not satisfied with how my scenery looks (I want even more details) I found FSX KML after searching the net for a few weeks. It looks like the program that can get me a bit further. What I want to do is create small skerries/islands off the coast, piers/brakers around the many harbours, more detailed coastline, more detailed village/town placements, correct errors in the height of some mountains and lakes (those that rise like mountains out of flat ereas and those that looks sucked down in a big hole). FSX KML seems to be the right software for the task, am I right?

I've read the manual and tutorials a number of times, even some of the recent posts in this forum, but still my slow brain is unable to get the logic of working with FSX KML. I was hoping some of you could help me with a more detailed step by step tutorial on how to solve/create different things. I need it fed with a small spoon. I know how to draw polygons in Google Earth, save them and import them into FSX KML, but there my troubles start, probably because I screw up the order of things, or miss a few commands. The only thing I've managed to do successfully is to make a "global" landclass change for the entire island. Here's how I did it (to illustrate how detailed I need the tutorial to be to wrap my brain around it :)):



GLOBAL LANDCLASS CHANGE

Google Earth:
1) Draw a polygon around the location where you want to change the landclass. Save the drawn polygon as a KML-file with name of choice.

FSX KML:
2) Add the KML-file from step 1 to import the polygon into FSX KML
3) Describe the polygon as "polygonhole"
4) Duplicate the polygon, and change description to "LandClassPoly_XXX", XXX being your landclass of choice.
5) Go to the Build tab and press build.
6) The entire area inside the polygon should now be covered with landclass XXX.

I alternate between two scenery directories, turn off "Copy generated scenery to FSX addon scenery folder", so I can work with FSX open and see the changes by changing the scenery library after each edit.

Now, that is the only thing I've managed to do successfully. Tyring to create an island left me with an outline in the water, or an island with water inside it :). Creating a new shoreline for the area I'm working on left me with the same thin outline, and when lowering a lake I got a mountain running through the middle of it, and no shoreline? Can anyone please make one or two more detailed step by step guides (for dummies) than the ones found in the current tutorial on how to create things?

Here's a screen showing the strange lake (with the cliff going though it), and the unsuccessful shoreline that is just a line with water between it and the "real" land.

fsx_1.jpg
 
Regarding landclass polygons:
1) You shouldn't need to cut a hole. Just draw the landclass poly, thats it! FSX should now draw the landclass poly ontop of whatever is underneath.

Regarding coastlines:
1) You need to exclude the water which will expose land, use a polygon tagged with Exclude__WaterPolys
2) Redraw the coastline by using a water polygon (tag with Hydro_Polygons_Generic_Ocean_Perennial) to "cut" the land away.

Regarding islands:
1) Draw a polygon around the island (make a little bit larger than the island) and mark it as Exclude__WaterPolys. This will "erase" the existing water and hence erase the existing island.
2) Copy that polygon and mark it as Hydro_Polygons_Generic_Ocean_Perennial. Now you have a new patch of water.
3) Trace the new island shoreline and mark it as PolygonHole. This will make the island.

nb: The polygon hole is associated with the preceeding polygon, so whats happening is the polygon hole in step 3 is cutting a hole in the water polygon of step 2 which exposes land and thus makes the island.


There's some discussion here about creating islands (and sample kml too)
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5516
 
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