• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Does SBuilder have compat programs?

CrashTestDummy

CrashTestDummy

Messages
181
Country
vaticancity
Does SBuilder work with any other graphic programs...

Like for example clipboard compatibility... I tried copying a line and pasting to Adobe... but it doesnt take... I'm wondering if it has compat graphic packages that will allow that?
 
CrashTestDummy said:
Does SBuilder work with any other graphic programs...

Like for example clipboard compatibility... I tried copying a line and pasting to Adobe... but it doesnt take... I'm wondering if it has compat graphic packages that will allow that?
Click to expand...

Not that I am aware of.
It appears to me that the "line" you are trying to copy and paste is not an image but a vector or polygon which is created inside the program and cannot be copied to the clipboard.
A workaround is to use print screen but you won't get just one thing, you will copy the entire screen and will have to work from there.
 
You can copy and paste in SB... the item must just be selected...

But it doesn't seem to move across which is a damn shame because then we could use Photo-shop or Gimp to make those tedious coast lines, in 2 seconds ;)

I'm just wondering... perhaps the clipboard format is compatible with some graphics package... as you probably know clipboards can hold more than one format... thus we can copy from a web browser to notepad etc etc...

It would make SB ultra quick and powerful... coast lines kill me... :)
I just did a 40 km island... I'm all clicked out ;)
 
When I do my next island this is what I'm going to do...

Its very easy in Adobe to get a vector coast line done (2 mins) but the scale is wrong... so what I'm going to do is export it to SVG... then write a little program that scales it back to lats and longs and writes a little SBX file... then I import that and done!... one coast line... and while I'm about it, why not make the water class exclusion zones as well...

Coast lines is a SB killer... it takes forever and then if you decide to move a mountain or widen a river or... its another 1000 clicks...

So there is a way ;)

I looked I couldn't find anything out there that just makes a coast line and gives you the line... they all seem to be going the other way... contour to DEM... and these pro packages which I'm not even sure will do this simple thing cost as much a lunch in a French restaurant in Moscow ;)

Anyway have a look at something like that... SVG to SBX will be easy to code... to take adobe out of the picture would require Elevation Map coding... thats too much effort, basically rebuilding the magic wand that Adobe has...
 
Inkscape has some tracing features. I don't know if it compares to what Adobe uses.

Dick
 
That looks like it traces the whole image... no good...

Maybe others are interested so I tell you how Adobe does it... or I do it in Adobe...

I open the height map in Adobe... click on Magic wand with a low bit tolerance... and it finds the outer 0 contour edge... ie the coast line.

Then I say Edit Stroke and say to the thing give me a red line... so now the coast becomes a red line... then I select the red line... again with a the magic brush and paste it as a layer into adobe... then I delete the base layer... so now just a red line of my coast which is raster...

Then I save it as PSD... actually I do that at the beginning as well...

Then I open Adobe illustrator and say Open PSD... that photo-shop made for me... it says do you want layers as objects... I say yes... and now I have a vector of my coast... I save it to SVG...

But the problem is there is no conversion from there to the format that SB uses...

Its really quick.... how are these guys putting coast lines on whole countries... you just cant do that by hand?

You need that line... it becomes your VTP masks both for water and land...
And lakes are also possible this way... the magic wand finds the nearest contour...
 
In the past I have used elevation DEM files loaded into global Mapper and generated contour lines which I then exported as shp, but using DEMs isn't all that great, especially if the gradient is pretty flat. I spent a lot of click time cleaning up the contours.

I also tried using the US NOAA electronic navigation charts (ENC) and exporting the shoreline as shp, but the vector resolution of the ENC isn't that great. I also tried some software (Magic Tracer 2.0) to do raster to vector on the NOAA raster navigation charts (RNC). the RNCs seem to have better resolution of shorelines, but I could only use the Magic Tracer in trial mode, and wasn't getting good success (admittedly there is a learning curve as the program basically gives you a bunch of tools to apply in the raster domain, then extracts the vectors, and then has a bunch of tools to clean up the vectors so proper application of the tools is a must). It didn't seem promising enough to buy a license for it.

I didn't see any good way to generate SVG in GIMP without becoming a Python expert, and didn't see an easy way to get from SVG to shp.

If you look at those RNCs, it seems to me it has to be 100 times easier than trying to use a satellite image.

One thing in Google Earth is that they colorize water (but they stopped doing it in the ocean) so they have a good tool for edge detection.

scott s.
.
 
Once you got your Height Map have a look at FSTerrain... it allows you to adjust the water level... I think thats what you missing...
Have a look at the end of that post... those conversions are proving to be useful... I especially like that VTBuilder prog as well.

Mountain Maker

The coastlines I get in Adobe just using the magic wand are very accurate.

Ok convinced me... will write the code that converts from SVG to SBuilder SBX... either that or I need a million click mouse... :(

Ah... a better way... that little LandSerf program can do contours and export them to KML... they a little jagged up close, probably because of the DEM resolution to begin with... but going from KML to SBX is a lot easier than SVG with its Bezier curves... and contaminated Adobe features.

So I'm thinking that I just put them through a cubic spline... will be smooth... and we leave out Adobe altogether... LandSerf is free... LandSerf is Java so I think I'll do it in Java as well...
Going from Adobe would require calibration to longs and lats... and when I looked for an export plugin that could do KML... the cheapest I could find was a map making prog for Adobe Illustrator starting at 695.00 dollars ... ha ha

So next island I do... I will make "Ring Piece"... what I think of all these mapping file formats ;)
 
Last edited:
Scott: GotIt!

This is how you get smooth contours and I'll write the program to convert it to SB...

Open the USGS DEM in LandSerf... go to tools and generate your coastal contour... note that LandSerf doesn't like the lowest altitude so if its 0, make it 0.2... use a grid of 1

Then... export it as SVG... and look at the data... the man is a beauty ;)
He doesn't throw out Benzier curves... he's interpolated it internally and he throws out SMOOTH Polygon POINTS!... yippee!

That is almost what SB needs... so easy to convert... and you can look at it in a browser...

But you are right... if I bring in a raw terragen... the contours are already much smoother than a DEM... its that DEM resolution thats killing your coast lines... and if the prog doesnt apply a cubic spline... it picks up the pixel edges...

Only thing wrong with LandSerf is the guy wrote it in a dinosaur Java version... probably windows JRE 1 era... but its good if you play a little.

I see that Shape files also don't apply cubic splines... jagged edges so this is also the problem... what I'll do is make "Ring Piece" also export smooth KML files so I can view contours on Google... thats as far as I'll go without an Adobe salary ... ha ha... but from there you can get to shape files...

To think I nearly didn't bother loading this "game" called Flight Simulator :p

No LandSerf wasnt that smart... turns out the display prog IE is doing the smoothing... so I had to make a smoothing alg...
Anyway Scott... its done... I got my perfect coast lines...
See Ring Piece

I use 9 so don't know what the shapefiles are in X... but I made it smooth and output KML files for you... and you can convert those to shapefiles... have fun.
On my system for what I'm doing its perfect... no more coast line clicks for me... I'm click-less :)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top