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Coastlines

B

Bernd Podhradsky

Messages
22
Hi everyone!

I read a few posts on this forum regarding shorelines in FSX. The SDK doesn't explain how they really work in FSX but what I read so far here is, that shorelines are just used for wave animations and NOT for the lines where water and land meet.

This brought up the question: where and how in a scenery file can I define where land and water meets? I have a database of (high quality) coastline polygons (Shapefiles) and want to get them into FSX (via an automatic process) but I couldn't find any information on it.

Thanks in advance!

Bernd
 
Hi Bernd.

Shorelines actually refer to the beach areas of the sim... the waves are an incidental effect attached to those lines in the terrain.cfg file.

For example:

Code: 
// Ocean Shorelines - Perennial - ocean / white sand / perennial
[Texture.2]
Name=Shorelines_Ocean_White_Sand_Perennial
Color=FFC0C000
LegacyId=1026
Textures=o_whitesand_ls.bmp
Layout=3_PLUS_4
Size=4
Effect=wavecontroller
LandClassRemapType=natural
ExcludeAutogen=Yes
RenderToTexture=Yes
RenderPriority=90000
Water=No

SBuilderX could import shp files and give you a good GUI for compiling the resulting BGL. Or you could alter the shp file and compile directly with the SDK tools.

The terrain.cfg can be read with notepad to see the available options for shorelines.

Dick
 
Hi!

I guess that's what I already discovered, but these shorelines don't actually define the "line" where land and water meets. It's only for the simulation of the waves.

But what I want is that to edit the coastline (the "shape" of and island i.e.). I've read a few tutorials how to do this "manually", but I'm looking for a way to do this "automatically". Something like telling FSX "these are the land polygons: fill them with the landclass you have defined and the mesh you have already defined".

To sum it up: I have a shapefile that contains many very detailed polygons defining real world coastlines. I want to convert them to FSX coastlines (but not only the wave simulation but also the actual shape of the land).

Thanks,
Bernd
 
Hi!

Thanks for your help. Guess I got it: is it corret, that if I transform my "land polygons" to "water polygons" it would be much easier for the thing I'm trying to do?

That's gonna be a lot of work... any ideas of how to "invert" a shapefile polygon?

Thanks,
Bernd
 
Do you have access to a GIS program (I.e. ArcGIS?)

In that case it is fairly simple- You will need to examine the Shp2Vec part of the SDK documents.

If your polygons represent the land, you will need to do a little bit of work in GIS to make them into polygons representing water (i.e. the opposite)

You can just use a simply 'cookie cutter' for this- The best way is probably digitise a simple bounding box of your data. Save a copy of this and use it as the exclusion for the default water data. Then copy and paste your land data into the bounding box polygon and clip it. Delete the land portions so you are just left with polys representing water.

You will then need to attribute these polygons with the correct GUID and UUID (which is just a dummy such as 0000-0000-000000 etc)

Then just chuck it though shp2vec.exe.....This will chomp through a heap of data: Ive done the whole shoreline of New Zealand and vector landclass polygons with no problems.

It is all in the SDK :)
 
Hi!

Thanks, that helped a lot! I'll purchase ArcGIS - which edition do I need?

Do you have experience with ArcGIS? If yes, it would be great if you could help me a bit out with my task ('cos I haven't used this software before).

Bernd
 
Bernd Podhradsky said:
Hi!

I guess that's what I already discovered, but these shorelines don't actually define the "line" where land and water meets. It's only for the simulation of the waves.

But what I want is that to edit the coastline (the "shape" of and island i.e.). I've read a few tutorials how to do this "manually", but I'm looking for a way to do this "automatically". Something like telling FSX "these are the land polygons: fill them with the landclass you have defined and the mesh you have already defined".

To sum it up: I have a shapefile that contains many very detailed polygons defining real world coastlines. I want to convert them to FSX coastlines (but not only the wave simulation but also the actual shape of the land).

Thanks,
Bernd
Click to expand...

First, shorelines are the actual lines of beach texture, some with wave effects attached.

Next, the land-water elements are formed by polygons, not lines, and should not be refered to as coastlines or shorelines. They are landpolys or waterpolys.

Next, unless you have a two thousand dollars lying around, you better stick to using SBuilderX as your design program. SbuilderX can import shp files, and you can then assign dharacteristics to them. SBuilderX is free.

Dick
 
Hi!

Yeah, but I have a database of worldwide land-polys and editing them one by one isn't what I want.

SBuilderX also has a file size limitation.

But you're idea sounds intereseting, how should I proceed? I have a file of LANDPOLYGONs not water polygons, so I somehow have to "invert" it. Any idea of how to do this?

Bernd
 
Make a water poly large enough to encompass the landmass, and then use a multipoly select and make the land polys a hole in the water.
 
Hi!

That's exactly what I need. Unfortunately I am not an experienced scenery designer; I'd be really happy if you could provide more detailed information on what software I should use what steps I have to do to accomplish this task.

Are these assumptions correct?

.) Make a big water poly that surrounds all land polys
.) Use this poly as exclude (???)
.) Select all the land polys and make them to "holes" of the surrounding poly
.) Compile the shapefile by using the "water area" GUID
.) What altitude do I have to set for the poly?
.) What tools do you recommend that can transform these land polys into holes of the water poly

Sorry for my many questions but as I said, I don't have experience with GIS software or anything like that.

Thanks,
Bernd
 
This is what I do in FSX_KML, so perhaps there are some transferrable processes here:
  • Draw the Polygon for the Island's outline (tag with whatever Landclass is appropriate)
  • Duplicate it and tag with "Exclude__Hydropolygons"
  • Duplicate again & convert to Poly-line, tag with "Shoreline_Ocean_Default"
  • Draw a big square polygon and tag with "HydroPolygon_Ocean_default"; it's needs to be larger than a 1.2 Km square. Test its coverage in FSX. You may have to adjust it.
In FSX_KML, the order is important, so check it.

Hope this provides some clues.
I will check the spelling later when I am on the right computer.
 
Hi!

Guess that's impossible in my case because I can't tag it with an appropriate landclass since I don't convert one single island manually but the whole world automatically.

But maybe I misunderstood something...

Thanks for your advices!
Bernd
 
One thing is that you need 3d polygons. If all you have is 2d you are going to need some software to add the elevation data element, and set it to 0 (sea level).

I think you are going to need to tile your data into maybe QMID 11 tiles (not 100% sure about this). That will cause a problem of some land bodies no longer being complete polygons, but rather polylines. As stated above, for each island, there needs to be created a containing polygon. You need a program which can create polygons with holes, and convert the islands into holes (this is done by setting the vertex order). Where a land area is clipped by the QMID boundary, you will need to join the ends of the line to create a polygon.

So what you are doing is creating water polygons, some with holes which will be land. I think the default water polygons are extended out to the nearest QMID 12 boundary so you need to ensure you provide sufficient coverage. Each polygon needs to have a texture attibute assigned, along with the slopex and slopey, which are 0 for oceans.

You should also have a matching set of polyline shapefiles which you can use for the "shoreline".

I suppose the UTX developers have a way to automate all this.

scott s.
.
 
UTX is a payware scenery addon which provides coastlines for the US, Canada, and Europe. They provide a huge volume of data. You can duplicate their product, but to provide the full coverage they do would be impossible without an automated means of going from source data to FS bgl files.

scott s.
.
 
Hi!

Thanks for your replies. Unfortunately all of you have different meanings on what is gonna work and what not.

The SDK doesn't provide good information on that topic, as I said.

Maybe some of you can comment my approach and tell me if it's gonna work and if not why and what alternatives there are. Especially when it comes to tiling in QMID11 tiles etc.

My plans are:
.) Load the shape-file with the land polygons into ArcGIS
.) Draw a bounding box around it and "crop" it, so that the result is one big polygon that contains the whole world and the land polygons are "holes" in this polygon.
.) Push this through shp2vec and get an output BGL file

Why I didn't try it? Because ArcGIS is expensive and IF it works I'd purchase it.

What do you say about that?

Thanks a lot,
Bernd
 
that will work. You don't need ArcGIS, there a lot of free alternatives such as (from memory) Grass.

Do a search for free GIS on google or similar.
 
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