Custom texture ground polygons?

[ErikBwall]

Hello,

During conversion of my old FS9 scenery of ESMU Älmhult, a small swedish airport, to FSX I´ve run into a problem that I can´t find a solution to. Everything works OK now except for the peat milling area which surrounds the field. I have a temporary solution (which works very well, see pic.) where I´ve used modified dirt LC textures (131B2....) on a "dirt" land class poly in FSX_KML.

The problem with that is that this texture will show up here and there all over the world in places where it is supposed to look like dirt, not peat, so to be able to distribute the scenery I need to use a unique texture to cover the polygon. After reading the SDK Overview, the FSX_KML manual and several threads I still don´t know how to start.

So my question is: Is it at all possible to create custom texture ground polygons in FSX_KML and, if possible, where can I learn how?

Best regards,
Erik

 

[MatthewS]

I don't think its possible using FSX KML. Btw nice looking scenery you have there.

 

[Mace]

So my question is: Is it at all possible to create custom texture ground polygons in FSX_KML and, if possible, where can I learn how?

It's not possible with FSX_KML as was said. The only way to do it is to use the FS2002 gamepack with gmax. I suggest you go to the other forums in this site because there is much discussion of custom ground texture polys. --> There is a link in the other forums to a wiki which explains step-by-step how to do it. <--

It involves the FS2002 gamepack, gmax, photoshop/paint shop pro, and a program that lets you modify the mdl directly (ASM). As such it is outside the bounds of the FSX SDK specifications, which may be of concern for the future.

We are hopeful that with FS11 the MDL format will allow us to do custom ground textured polys without resorting to hacking.

 

[meshman]

withdrawn.

 

[ErikBwall]

That sounds promising Lance,

I´ve been thinking along these lines myself and made some unsuccessful attempts. Here´s what I´ve done so far:

I´ve created a new entry at the end of "terrain.cfg":

// Land Class Polygons - Peat milling area
[Texture.384]
Name=LandClassPoly_Peat_Milling_Area
guid={FB7B4818-45A3-444e-8190-171A792AB454}
Textures=peatwi.bmp,peathw.bmp,peatsp.bmp,peatsu.bmp,peatfa.bmp
ExcludeAutogen=Yes
RenderToTexture=Yes
RenderPriority=200000
Water=No

(Guid is created with GuidGen. The numbers behind Render Priority is just a guess; I´ve tried some different numbers with no difference).

I`ve placed 5 textures (peatwi.bmp,peathw.bmp,peatsp.bmp,peatsu.bmp,peatfa.bmp) in Scenery\world\texture.

I`ve created a new tag in FSX_KML tags:

<tag>
<tag>LandClassPoly_Peat_Milling_Area</tag>
<description>LandClassPoly_Peat_Milling_Area</description>
<guid>FB7B4818-45A3-444e-8190-171A792AB454</guid>
<Feature>LandClassPoly</Feature></tag>

After that I´ve tagged the area "LandClassPoly_Peat_Milling_Area" in FSX_KML, saved and compiled the scenery, started FSX, all with no warnings or crashes but also with no peat milling area!

Obviously I´m missing something or/and doing something wrong; I just don´t know what. If you could lead me in the right direction I would be very grateful!

Obiously it is also so that managing of the changes in the "Terrain.cfg" file in the users set ups could become a problem. Didn´t Holger Sandman once address the matter in a thread somewhere?

Best regards,
Erik

 

[HolgerSandmann]

Hello Erik,

the thread about issues with respect to editing the terrain.cfg is here: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6204

I don't see anything wrong with your process but I'm not all that familiar with KML either. Does the poly show up with the correct GUID in TMFViewer? Did you adjust the DefaultTextureCount= at the top of terrain.cfg (i.e., add 1)?

By the way, I can think of two more ways of placing your peat moss textures. One is to place them as photoreal ground, which is described in the "Example 4: Custom Terrain Texture with Water and Blend Channels" section of the Terrain SDK. Basically, you'd need to save your new texture to a georeferenced tif (doesn't need to be geotiff, you can define the spatial parameters in the .inf file) and create a blending mask tif to show the default ground where you don't want the peat textures to show.

The other option is to utilize the FS2004 back-compatibility entry in the modified terrain.cfg, http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxscen&DLID=93289 . Using its "Land Class Polygons - Custom Seasonal" entry you can create a poly with that tag and then turn your current peat moss tiles into the numbered tiles that tell FS exactly where to place them. The tricky bit is to determine the required file names. I don't think that the TCalc version for FSX provides that information. Thus, you'd need to use FS9 and its TCalc version to determine the file names for your location and then use them in FSX.

The "cleanest" option appears to be straight photoreal. It doesn't require the modified terrain.cfg or your own cfg modifications and you won't have to fiddle with GMax just to place a custom texture.

Cheers, Holger

 

[ErikBwall]

Holger,

Thanks, that helped a lot! As you suspected(?) I had forgotten about the "DefaultTextureCount" line. With that corrected, and a change of "RenderPriority" to 30000, everything works OK now; seasonal textures, autogen exclusion and all. Pictures below.

Next problem of course is how to deal with the changes in "Terrain.cfg" for the users of the scenery. As there (as far as I know) is no suitable installer available I have to show them how to do it manually. Perhaps a WARNING in capital letters to "fiddle with this only if you really know what you are doing" will be enough? Probably not.

I´ve not yet looked at the other two ways of creating the area that you wrote about. There seems to be a lot of work with (for me) unknown methods involved; we´ll see what happens.

This is however a hypothetical question right now. I´ve seen somewhere here at FSD that the DXT1 format I´m using for my custom trees in this and other sceneries will be unusable in SP2. I sincerely hope it isn´t so, otherwise it will probably take some time to get everything working again. And I really don't like the idea of releasing different versions of the scenery for SP1 and SP2!

Best regards and many thanks,
Erik

 

[Mace]

This is however a hypothetical question right now. I´ve seen somewhere here at FSD that the DXT1 format I´m using for my custom trees in this and other sceneries will be unusable in SP2. I sincerely hope it isn´t so, otherwise it will probably take some time to get everything working again. And I really don't like the idea of releasing different versions of the scenery for SP1 and SP2!

Yes I am intrigued by this DXT1 issue also. I don't yet have Acceleration so I really can't comment on it with any accuracy...

I can already tell you what I am going to do though: I will only design 1 version of anything I do, and it will be for the latest version of flight sim available, that presently being SP2.

 

[GaryGB]

Hi All:

This may prove to be an interesting thread to watch on this related topic also:

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=121&topic_id=419944&mode=full

GaryGB