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FS2004 Compiling Mesh

No ideas on the runtime error? I want to get these lakes in to FS9 but if I can't even get SBuilder running again then I'll be limited to FSX versions.
 
If you zip the BLN file and attach it, I could load it into my SBuilder and see what I can see.

Dick
 
Here's the BLN, it's not the BLN that's causing SBuilder to crash though, some times it will crash the second I open it, sometimes when I open the menus and sometimes when I try to open the BLN. There is something seriously screwy going on with SBuilder.

Since I'm running Win7 64-bit, could it be a permissions problem?

As for the scenery problems, when I compiled each SHP file seperately in SBuilderX the BGL's came out with no problems whatsoever. The only issue I've noticed so far is that some lakes are a couple of pixels out of where the terrain mesh places them, its not all of them though with many placed accurately. Odd given that the data for both comes from the same source. I believe its probably due to the accuracy of the data, since the mesh is accurate to ~21m while the lakes are accurate to between ~1-21m depending on the province. I think the first release of the lakes will be a v0.1 release with a final release with lakes moved to suit taking much longer (2 million lakes and up in Canada after all!)

So I'm guessing that something happened when combining the SHP files together as I haven't had any issues since. The only problem I've still got is how to change the sea level on some of my mesh source files (my other thread here), its at 1m and I need it to be at 0m obviously but I don't know how to change it without screwing up all the land that is at 1m too.
 
As far as the mesh, if you do have GlobalMapper, you could apply a watermask to lower the elevation of the ocean. Or you could just lower everything 1 meter, as that is not a significant amount.

There might be ways to lower the data for just the 1 meter elevations... i've done it to BIL files with a hex editor's replace function.

The water mask BLN is faulty somehow. GlobalMapper won't even load it. I did append it back into SBuilderX, and re-export it as BLN, and that worked.

You might want to slice the data to QMID7 ( LOD5 ) to act as replacements for the default BGLs. In SBuilder for FS9, you'll need to change islands to land designation, and maybe reorder the polys so the land loads after the water.

If it was easy, everyone would have already done it. ;)


I haven't had any issues with Windows7-64. None. I don't know why others have been having problems. I install programs to default folders, usually Program Files (x86), and everything works just fine... SBuilderx, FSX, ADE, etc...

Dick
 
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As far as the mesh, if you do have GlobalMapper, you could apply a watermask to lower the elevation of the ocean. Or you could just lower everything 1 meter, as that is not a significant amount.

There might be ways to lower the data for just the 1 meter elevations... i've done it to BIL files with a hex editor's replace function.

The water mask BLN is faulty somehow. GlobalMapper won't even load it. I did append it back into SBuilderX, and re-export it as BLN, and that worked.

You might want to slice the data to QMID7 ( LOD5 ) to act as replacements for the default BGLs. In SBuilder for FS9, you'll need to change islands to land designation, and maybe reorder the polys so the land loads after the water.

If it was easy, everyone would have already done it. ;)


I haven't had any issues with Windows7-64. None. I don't know why others have been having problems. I install programs to default folders, usually Program Files (x86), and everything works just fine... SBuilderx, FSX, ADE, etc...

Dick
Watermask now that's a good idea! I didn't want to lower elevations even by a meter as obviously that then affects contiguous tiles, I'm really surprised that it isn't possible in any of the GIS programs to have a MSPaint "Fill" type tool to simply and easily change an interconnected feature like this. I'll try and give the watermask a go, shouldn't be any harder than what I've just done combining the NED data along the US/Canada border with the CDED data drawing the NED data before the CDED data so that the NED data only filled the missing spots and didn't affect the core CDED data.

I'm confused as to why I need LOD5 tiles? I'm probably missing a point there. Ultimately I intend to finish this LOD11, then repeat the process for LOD10, LOD9 and so on down to the default mesh resolution. Landclass meanwhile hadn't even occurred to me about that but I guess any new islands this data creates that are in the middle of an existing body of water are possibly going to need Landclass data updated. Thankfully Canada according to MS is mostly land with very little water so that shouldn't be a huge issue. You should see the difference between the MS Labrador Island and the real world updated one, its astonishing to say the least!

Currently toying in FSX with the lakes and I've being trying to think what to do with the rivers, the lakes have such a good realistic water effect on them obviously that plain textured non-animated rivers just don't look right alongside the lakes so I'm going to see how things look if I give them the Legacy_NoFlatten water type too.

You are right that if this stuff was easy that everyone would do it, the same is true of all things that I've developed for. I still get some people ask me about AI traffic and how to make flightplans and no matter how hard you try to explain it would be easier to squeeze blood from a stone!

The only issues I've ever had with Windows 7 is because of the UAC so anything that wants to save in the Program Files directory needs to be run as Administrator, I could turn it off as many have but I do like the small level of additional protection it offers, the small inconvenience to set things up to bypass it is no big deal for me. I think some people do have problems almost certainly when they don't install things in the correct directories but other issues can arise if you are missing the wrong libraries and other files that were only found in older issues of Windows.

Thanks for your help Dick, I'll let you know how I get on with the watermask!
 
In FS9, you cannot exclude flattens. You would need to replace the entire LOD5 file for the area you are fixing.

Dick
 
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