Exclude GPS water polygon?

[DonB312]

Hi All,

I have been working on a small project to improve the coastlines, etc. of Lord Howe Island. I have basically completed the project except for one remaining small problem. I have not been able to exclude the default GPS water polygon. Since the island in the default scenery is offset to the east the default GPS poly cuts off the west side of my new island when viewed in the GPS. It is not really a "show-stopper" but I would be interested if anyone has any ideas on how to exclude the GPS polygon.

I used an "Exclude Everything" exclusion (null guid) and that did, in fact, exclude everything ... except for the GPS water poly. I have also tried exclusions for "WaterPolys" and specifically for "WaterPolysGPS" but still no luck.

I am using FSX_KML and the files it produces appear to match the SDK documentation so I am beginning to wonder if this is an issue with FSX.

Has anyone been successul in excluding a default GPS Water Polygon?

Thanks in advance for any replies!

Don

 

[Mace]

Has anyone been successul in excluding a default GPS Water Polygon?

Yes, you can exclude default water polys.

You can use FS_KML; I would first load your cvxxxxx.bgl into TMFViewer, to see exactly which water poly(s) you need to exclude, and to also determine which GUID to exclude with.

Then using GoogleEarth and FS_KML I would make a small poly and apply the appropriate tag to it (in your case probably Exclude_Water..._Ocean......blah blah).

Remember, the default water polys are often large in size (arranged on QMID11 squares)--and because of that, when you exclude the water poly, you're going to end up with a large area excluded.

So you will need to first exclude the default poly, and then ADD in your own water poly to cover back most of the area.

---------

If you island appears on the boundary of two default waterpolys (you can determine this with TMFViewer), then you have a slightly more complicated situation, especially if you used PolygonHole.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Hi Don.

{EA0C44F7-01DE-4D10-97EB-FB5510EB7B72} is supposed to be the GUID to exclude for a GPS Water POLY.

So you need an EXX type exclusion poly with the GUID of {EA0C44F7-01DE-4D10-97EB-FB5510EB7B72}. That should work.

That said, the GPS water polys in the sim seem to correspond with the real world GPS polys... they are of very poor quality and a very low number of vertices per poly, so you might just want to leave them "as is".

Dick

 

[DonB312]

Thanks for the replies!

Dick,
After thinking about this a bit I tend to agree that the default GPS poly will be fine. The default poly is, as you said, of very poor quality but it is good enough for the GPS and it is probably better to not add additional overhead by having a detailed polygon just for the GPS.

Now my next step is to learn how to actually generate a decent terrain mesh for the island since the default FS mesh is really flat. The FSGenesis mesh looks quite good but I think I will use this small but mountainous island as my "guinea pig" to learn how to make terrain mesh.

Thanks again for the tips!

Don

 

[vincent]

Hi Dick

I'd still dearly like to exclude the default gps map and replace it with a higher res version of our own, but so far no matter what I do the default map persists and overides the new one. Using the guid suggested above and compiling the .SHP file with SbuilderX I do get a resulting .bgl that is described by tmf veiwer as an exclude and with the right guid.
I've also created gps waterpolys from a different shp file and compiled that using sbuilderX latest version. This too appears in tmfveiwer and is correctly described also.
Some further information about our Photo scenery project that might be relevant and also explains why it is important for us to overcome this problem.
When we compiled the photo scenery we were forced into also creating blanket excludes and blanket water polys in order that our coastlines and water features displayed correctly. This works perfectly in that the veiw from the cockpit is uninterupted by nasty interactions with the fsx default scenery.
However a result of the blanket waterpolys is that the gps map is now only showing water and effectively we broke it. We really need to keep the blanket waterpoly because in creating watermasks for our photo scenery we have gone into an insane level of detail which would be virtually impossible to reproduce in vector format (as well as also complete overkill just for the gps map and no doubt would have an associated overhead)
Have I understood correctly that using the shp2vec options for gps water poly excludes and gps water polys should in fact be all we needed to re-instate a fully functioning map regardless of the fact we have a blanket waterpoly .bgl covering the area located at at a lower level in scenery.cfg?
As it happens though, even with our own photo scenery disabled and only the new gps files I created active the default gps map persists.

please help if you are able.

regards
Vincent

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Hi Vincent.

I had looked at the GPS polys and they can be excluded and redrawn.

But the problem is the Garmin GPS gauges don't use them! The GPS units appear to read the terrain waterpolys. This applies to the map view as well.

So it appears the GPS Hydropolys are useless.

Dick

 

[vincent]

Hi
Thankyou for investigating this Dick. Obviously the findings are somewhat dissapointing. I hope MS once made aware of this issue can possibly set it for a fix in SP2.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Hi Vincent.

The only alternative I see is to forego the large blanket waterpoly and make the detailed waterpoly for the scenery.

Dick

 

[Timmo]

on a similar vein.... (Sorry for possible hijacking but didnt see much of a need to start a whole new thread)

ive created a photoreal Island (See the Coffee house for more details) but I also have a problem with the default shoreline showing through in some areas (i.e it goes from the Photo shoreline to Water to the blended edge of the default land defined by the extent of my blend mask and then back to the water)

I cant seem to exclude the shoreline? It think its made more confusing in that 'Shoreline' seems to be defined as two different things- In one case, its the 'wave effect' (The default wave effect is fine for this island) and in the other case it seems to mean the line of the shore??

Question 1) Ive changed the Clip level in the XML to 13 so that i dont mess up vector data on the 'mainland'....is it OK to change this value (compiles fine)
Question 2) Can i exclude the default shore line or is it a case of replacing the shoreline data....if so, can lower clip levels be used??

Cheers

 

[Timmo]

hmmm...strange.

I have made new Water Polys using the "cliplevel = 13" setting...It compiles fine and show fine in TMFviewer. The new data doesnt show in FSX however....its also interesting to note that the data doesnt appear to be clipped to this (or any) QMID boundary....the extents of the water polygon are exactly the same as my shapefile.....????

Im also a little confused at the GUID and UUIDs in the SDK docs compared to those in the sample vector data... some of the GUIDs used there arent listed in the SDK docs...
Ive used the ones in the SDK docs:
GUID: {1B6A15BB-05FB-4401-A8D1-BB520E84904C}
UUID: {956A42AD-EC8A-41BE-B7CB-C68B5FF1727E}

Ive tried using no -AddtoCells and and -AddToCells...no difference.
Another question is where should the boundary of the water polygon sit? i.e. If it goes slightly over the QMID boundary, will it stuff up the data in that next cell? If it doesnt completely fill a cell, will it ignore the contents of that whole cell??

Very confused and a little frustrated at the moment...everything seems fine but it isnt showing in FSX!

 

[DougMatthews]

hmmm...strange.

I have made new Water Polys using the "cliplevel = 13" setting...It compiles fine and show fine in TMFviewer. The new data doesnt show in FSX however....

For FSX, you must use clip level 11 (except for Freeway Traffic, which is 15).

its also interesting to note that the data doesnt appear to be clipped to this (or any) QMID boundary....the extents of the water polygon are exactly the same as my shapefile.....????

Compiling with Shp2vec should clip your input polygon to Qmid11 (or smaller) portions. The sum of these parts should represent the input polygon.

Im also a little confused at the GUID and UUIDs in the SDK docs compared to those in the sample vector data... some of the GUIDs used there arent listed in the SDK docs...
Ive used the ones in the SDK docs:
GUID: {1B6A15BB-05FB-4401-A8D1-BB520E84904C}
UUID: {956A42AD-EC8A-41BE-B7CB-C68B5FF1727E}

[assuming you are referring to values in the DBF files, NOT values in the XML file which should NEVER change]

UUIDs are unique identifiers. They will not be present in the SDK docs since each piece of geometry should have a unique one.

The GUID you provided is the identifier for a Texture AttributeBlock. This should NEVER be in the GUID field of a Shapefile. You probably want the identifier of a specific water texture.

Ive tried using no -AddtoCells and and -AddToCells...no difference.
Another question is where should the boundary of the water polygon sit? i.e. If it goes slightly over the QMID boundary, will it stuff up the data in that next cell? If it doesnt completely fill a cell, will it ignore the contents of that whole cell??

If you omit -ADDTOCELLS, any Qmid11 intersected by your geometry will be replaced.

Very confused and a little frustrated at the moment...everything seems fine but it isnt showing in FSX!

Try posting Shapefiles that exhibit your problem. Remember to delete them once your problem is solved.

-Doug

 

[vincent]

Hi Doug

Are you possibly able to make any comment on the problem with GPS hydropolys/excludes described above at all?

 

[DougMatthews]

Hi Doug

Are you possibly able to make any comment on the problem with GPS hydropolys/excludes described above at all?

At FSX, the GPS subsystem has no exception processing logic. Sorry.

-Doug