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Creating ground polys

A

atco

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ca-ontario
Just starting to dabble a bit more with scenery design.
I'm very much new to this, having made an AI aircraft model, done various textures, flightplans etc I've done a lot of FS stuff but scenery design is very new, so please be gentle.

I want to make for myself an airport background using the decent high-res images from google.

I've read that I need to make ground polygons, and I have been reading today about MCX and using the ground poly wizard.

Thing is I have no idea how to create the ground poly to begin with.
I want to use sketchup, and I have seen numerous threads here about people successfully using sketchup to create ground polys and with nice high-res textures.
For the life of me I cannot even get started, would someone be kind enough to explain how I create my ground poly in sketchup and get the google earth/maps images onto them?

Many thanks
Garry

*Edit* Just want to be clear because its not from my original post, that I am looking to create ploys for a high res photo background. Not ready for creating custom polys for runways, taxiways etc etc. At this stage I just want to make a custom set of background tiles sized at 1024x1024.
None of the tutorials I have seen so far indicate this very basic step, they all seem to start by assuming that you have created these already or are dealing with adding runways or taxiways or taxi lines etc. This is for an FS2004 project to start with maybe with FSX conversion later.
 
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Hi Garry,

Which version of FS are you using? I would suggest that you have a look at a tool like SbuilderX, it is a good way to make photo sceneries. Custom ground polygons and the ModelConverterX wizard are more for making detailed airport layouts.
 
Sorry Arno, FS9 initially.

So Sbuilder is the way to go for creating the photo ground?
I assume I cannot use SbuilderX for FS9, I would have to use the older version?
 
OK this is frustrating the heck out of me.
I have now wasted almost two entire days trying to make this happen.

I've spent all night trying to get Sbuilder to do this and I still can't create a photo based ground.

I think it might be time to accept that scenery design is out of my reach.
I'm growing weary of all the wasted hours trying to get various bits of software to do what I want them to do.

Surely there must be an easier way of creating these high res ground photos, so many sceneries have them now. Wish I knew how it was done :(
 
Hi resolution scenery is either resampled terrain (up to 7cm/pixel in FSX)

Or

Custom groundpolygons made in Gmax.

Two days is not long in development terms ... Albeit frustrating. You need to be tenacious to develop FS scenery.
 
Hi,

In FS2004 the photo scenery made with resample is at 4.8 meters per pixel. SBuilder (the version for FS2004) has a function to make higher resolution photo scenery as well, but then it will place them as custom ground polygons following the terrain. This requires the use of elevation data in the tool as well.

But in general I think that approach takes quite some trouble. So I would stick with the resample techniques if that looks good enough for you.

For detailed and flat areas (like an airport) you can use additional ground polygons with higher resolution textures. That would require a tool like GMax and the kind of tweaking that ModelConverterX can help you with.
 
Hi guys,

Well with a bit of perseverance and the help of more web pages than I care to remember I have actually got this to work.

I created my ground poly in gmax, and added my tiles.
I made a flatten in sbuilder and exported everything to FS9 and it looks great, I am so happy.

I ran into two problems though just before having to leave for work (stupid work getting in the way of important stuff!)
1: I was getting flickering ground textures when viewed from high up

So I used MCX ground poly wizard to fix this as I read that it does the same thing as using the FS2002 techniques.
After running the mdl through the wizard though my poly looked way worse with huge seams between some tiles and almost like the poly was moving on something. Also there were large chunks where the default terrain was showing through the top of my poly which made no sense as I made my flatten and that was working perfectly before I compiled the (seperate) ground poly through MCX.
I can post screenshots when I get home later.

Basically the issue now is if I leave my ground poly bgl as compiled through FS2004 techniques it lies nice and flat on my flatten but flickers from the air.
Or, if I use MCX to compile with FS2002 techniques the flicker is gone but my flatten does not seem to work, I lose a lot of the ground poly because the terrain underneath rises up through it.

This scenery design really is 3 steps forward 2 steps back. However the utter joy I felt after seeing my ground poly in FS for the first time was immense.
I'm really looking forward to fixing these niggling issues and getting the buildings and runways/taxiway poly made and putting this whole thing together, its amazing fun (if highly frustrating too).
The help on this forum is incredible, and the knowledge of the people here (especially Arno) is just mind boggling. Thank you for having the patience to help beginners like me to navigate this minefield :)
 
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