Hi Dave,
Frankly, I'm clueless when it comes to the detail maps that are included in Flight. I don't know what they do. I'm guessing that they are the texture files ending in "DL" (e.g.: 016b2su6
DL.dds), but I've not been able to open any of these files with my programs that usually open .dds files to see what they look like.
For what it's worth, enclosed is an example of a test custom Flight lookup file that I created that maps both landclass and waterclasses to textures.
It currently has a single LandClassToTextureSet that adds the Flight-specific Cliff textures to the default Tropical Rainforest landclass, four waterclasses to display near-shore ocean textures appropriate to tropical waters (these particular mappings are not in the default Flight or FSX-World lookup files), and a couple of vector shapes that draw reef line and beach-line textures. I'm creating my custom LC & WC files using SBuilderX v3.13 for FSX by Luis Sá & PTSim, then converting them with the tools in stonelance's Flight Toolkit (v32).
Because ContentConverter does not have a specific mode just to convert landclass or waterclass files, I'm using the -fsx mode to convert my custom FSX LC & WC bgl files to their Flight equivalent. You can avoid converting the entire FSX world every time you want to test one of your LC or WC files by creating a "test" FSX installation that only contains the files that you want to test. I've included instructions on how to do this in the enclosed zip file. I then take the converted LC/WC files and add them to a custom flightaddon, thus avoiding any dependency on FSX-World, or having to have to modify that conversion process.
Note that these instructions are just to allow you to test the ability to convert your custom LandClass definitions and see if they display correctly in Flight. You might need to unselect FS-World in Flight Addon Manager to avoid possible conflicts - without knowing the specifics of your files, I can't say for sure. Obviously, I'm not converting any detail maps since, as stonelance says, FSX didn't have detail maps.
I have not tried this, but if a detail map that is included in the various Flight .pak files from Microsoft is compatible with one of your landclass files, I think you should be able to use it by copying the file to the texture folder related to the scenery folder that contains your converted landclass file, and reference the texture in your custom lookup file.
Since I've not been able to open a detail file, or know what they do, I don't know how to create one!
Alternatively, Flight should find a (detail) texture file that comes with the product just by making your custom flightaddon dependent upon the Microsoft .pak file that holds the texture. e.g.:
[Product]
DependsOn ={c9bf8c37-3a8f-4f55-b141-cdff7be74a43} ; Core
DependsOn.1 = {7FCFA469-0694-424D-9B90-3A9A1E8A0CF2} ; GUID for the Gridded_Urban_LC that contains the detail texture that you want to use.
My test addon depends on some textures in the core pak, and Flight has no problem finding them, so I only include the first line above.
w.r.t. your question: "Is there a way to submit them to the packages author..." - you could ask the author, but if the author was Microsoft, then obviously they will not do this as they stopped development on Flight a long time ago.
w.r.t. your question: "Is there some reference somewhere so I can look up which value is which detail map?" Not specifically, as far as I know. I've been using the information in the FSX SDK, the content errors log file, decompiled lookup files and FSX texture folders to figure out how to create the new mappings in my custom lookup file.
Couple of questions for stonelance:
- DoesTextureSet id need to be unique within Flight, or just unique within a lclookup.bgl file? If unique within Flight, is there a master list of ids, or a convention for setting the id so that it will be unique across lookup files within various DLCs?
- Is the data in the PopulationDensity.bgl file actually used for anything, as Flight does not support highway traffic, recreational boat traffic on lakes, etc? If not, can it be omited from a scenery pack?
Hope this helps,
FS Tester