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MSFS20 Grass length - suddenly i need a mower for my airfield.

S

Senchay

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246
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germany
Hello.

I dont get the grass really... I know it seems to depend on the color of the poly/apron texture, or the ortho. But there has to be other parameters that i dont understand.

Suddenly all my grass is 30 cm high, without me changing anything at all with the colors. Cant figure out why.

This was the grass the last 2 months while i was developing the airfield.

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Now, over night basically, the grass is 3x higher.... Way too high. I did not change the color or something. If it looks different it only from the shader/lighting in different daytimes/weather.

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Before, it seems to got automatically lower on some parts of the apron, seemingly around 3d objects (or whatever the rule was...) but now it seems all the same height, that is way too long. One can see it on first pic, the very left middle area has higher grass than near the buildings. Now its all same height.

Any idea why?
 
Well, i kinda fixed it, by giving the exclusion poly ive used to exclude the building here vegetation with density 0.... Not sure why i suddenly need that. It worked for 2 or 3 months now without that.

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Without an actual Project example zipped and attached, you are unlikely to get a definitive answer. Everyone guessing a solution simply wastes time and bandwidth.
 
Hi Senchay:

Your screenshots are showing us the results of some excellent work with MSFS scenery creation. ;)

While I have not yet examined all the XML parameter values which we 'now' have available with changes in MSFS-2020 since RTM, I did notice at RTM in August 2020 that grass RWYs were plagued by grass that was too tall, and many of us needed a lawn mower tool.

As we learned more about how to use the XML parameters via the MSFS-2020 DevMode dialog boxes, several options to "cut the grass", and also to determine what tree heights are to be displayed ...were discussed in the SDK forums here at FSDev, and at:

forums.flightsimulator.com

SDK Discussion

Hello scenery and aircraft designers! Read the SDK here: <a href="https://docs.flightsimulator.com/">https://docs.flightsimulator.com/</a> or check out their <a href="https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/">Answerhub</a>! Share SDK tips and tricks, tutorials, and more. Please do not distribute...
forums.flightsimulator.com forums.flightsimulator.com

However, there was at some point after RTM in the Fall of 2020, a change occurred in the behavior of MSFS-2020; that change resulted in the Grass RWY height being automatically decreased to a more reasonable level compared to what it was at RTM.

I have not yet been able to discern what that exact cause of the grass height change was, but it resulted from a MSFS-2020 "update".

Perhaps there are issues with exclude or other polygon layer priority, affecting prior work with polygons assigning grass length ? :scratchch


I agree with Dick that the FSDev Community would do well at this time, to gain more understanding about what may have changed in your XML code in assignment of polygon priority.

Additionally, there may have been changes in other XML code that defines attributes for vegetation types / height limits etc.,, versus something having changed in MSFS-2020 itself as a result of an "update" in default scenery and/or SDK functionality.

So, please consider posting a link to a download location for your project in a ZIP / 7z / RAR file archive (with a preserved relative folder structure) , so we all can better understand what may have caused this 'recent' grass height anomaly after months of already having been configured correctly.

Keep up the nice work ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Thank you for the kind words Gary 👍 i will take a look at it. I've missed a lot, yes. Just went into it fully this January, besides short 3 day playing around with SDK and standard objects last year.

The project has over 2 GB (1gb output) and my drive folder is full. Have to make dropbox account or something. Or can I upload that without textures?

There is nothing fancy though. That grassy area has exactly 2 layers. 1 for the exclusion of the Standard building (that now has Vegetation set to 0 density, since yesterday, to cut the grass again) and one apron with grass texture (groundGrass02). Well, there is another big poly for the flatten that goes over the whole area. But that's it.

Also, it seems to be different for different ppl. I let some ppl try the package and they didn't have high grass. Another one though had it even higher than me.... Very weird

@rhumbaflappy

I will see that i can post the project and i understand that it's easier to troubleshoot. The other side is that one is handing out his whole work from months and let it be downloaded by whoever is reading this. Not everyone who is reading is someone who tries to help, i imagine. But probably one can get the same outcome from the released package anyway, so I guess it won't matter if it's the whole project or not that is openly available to download.
 
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You never have to supply the full project, just the example that produces the problem. It can even be a similar project, invented to display the problem. In the above case, you used an exclusion and an apron. That might be sufficient to display the problem. Test on your own system and then post it with the inquiry. Generally there would be no need for secret or proprietary content.

We get this daily here on the forums. "I have a problem", followed by error message quotes or screenshots. Followed by a plethora of guesses from well-meaning contributors. And rarely, an actual solution is posted. Sometimes dozens of posts, handfuls of guesses, tons of wasted time and bandwidth. All alleviated if only a simple Project were to be included with the first post.
 
I understand rhumbaflappy. Will keep it in mind.

This turned out to be a visual/display bug from the editor... I found out that i have a 50/50 change that this is happening when i load the project. But seems it only affects editor mode, the package seems to always work with short grass.
 
Sorry if this is a stupid question folks but I'm having the same tall grass problem. Is there a setting somewhere for us to set the height of the grass? I've tried every grass option and haven't noticed a setting for that. After finding this thread I looked but I can't find an xml file, or any file, that shows that info for polygon-based grass shapes. Thanks!

Edit: Also wondering if there's a way to unlock grass polygons from Snap-To-Ground? I had to add some slightly elevated ground areas but can't raise the grass polygon to match the new object 'ground' level.
 
Jimbo in Thailand said:
Sorry if this is a stupid question folks but I'm having the same tall grass problem. Is there a setting somewhere for us to set the height of the grass? I've tried every grass option and haven't noticed a setting for that. After finding this thread I looked but I can't find an xml file, or any file, that shows that info for polygon-based grass shapes. Thanks!

Edit: Also wondering if there's a way to unlock grass polygons from Snap-To-Ground? I had to add some slightly elevated ground areas but can't raise the grass polygon to match the new object 'ground' level.
Click to expand...

Sawat dee khap.

Well, i had it fixed back then.

Now i loaded in first time after 2 or so months and seems, after some of the last updates, now the grass is really high again... yeah. And this time its not that bug, its real.

I didnt try to fix it yet. If i do ill let you know. There is no setting for the length, it seems to depend on color of the underlaying terrain. But it reacts really unpredictable, imo... Maybe im doing it wrong though ^^
 
Senchay said:
Sawat dee khap.

Well, i had it fixed back then.

Now i loaded in first time after 2 or so months and seems, after some of the last updates, now the grass is really high again... yeah. And this time its not that bug, its real.

I didnt try to fix it yet. If i do ill let you know. There is no setting for the length, it seems to depend on color of the underlaying terrain. But it reacts really unpredictable, imo... Maybe im doing it wrong though ^^
Click to expand...
'wahdee khap khun Senchay back at ya!

Thanks for the reply. I believe there simply has to be a 'grass cutting' setting somewhere as it makes no sense whatsoever otherwise. Yeah, I definitely agree that grass-color being totally dependent upon the underlying terrain color is indeed "unpredictable". It's also driving me nuts. I'm sure it works for Asobo but they should at least include a menu option for us to turn it off when we add/tweak a grassy area.

GEEZ it was tough enough developing scenery for X-Plane, with so many limitations, but I'm beginning to believe that some Asobo programmers are high on Colorado's Finest wacky weed as they do some of the most unbelievably wacky things.

Anyway, if you do run across a fix, please chime in. Thanks!

Chohk dee krup! 👍
 
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I just returned back to MSFS after I gave up all hope on it during the summer. I see that this shitty bug still persist and thrive...

What I just did, to save one of my fields from being completely unusable, were to place an apron with a rock texture over the entire affected area. I then set the transparency to 0. This will remove every single straw which isn't optimal at all but at least it's better than having a strip that look more like something a farmer would like.
 
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