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P3D v2 Ground poly shift?

ralinn

ralinn

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unitedkingdom
Hey there,

We seem to be having an issue with the Ground Poly Wizard placement when running in P3D V2.2. The placement of the GP seems fine in FSX, but when testing in P3D V2.2, the GP seems to shift ~10 meters.

I'm wondering if this is at all similar to the Instant Scenery placement shift issue, but I wouldn't want to steer anyone in the wrong direction.

Any ideas what this could be?

Thanks,

Russ
 
FSX
FSX.jpg
P3D V2.2
P3DV22.JPG
 
I really wish it were. If you look at the P3D V2.2 screenshot, you'll see that it has shifted enough for the runway on the PR to show at the bottom.
 
It looks to me like it is above the ground. It looks like there is a shadow being projected on the ground at the near end.
 
I find it hard to spot the difference as well in the pictures.

You use the same bgl in both?

Might be something has changed in the shape of the earth or in how old fs2004 style polygons are handled.
 
Yes, same BGL used in both. It's definitely shifted a lot, in all three airports we're currently developing.

Look at the P3D V2.2 screenshot and you'll see that the GP has shifted up enough to show the PR runway under it.
 
Last edited:
Sorry, I still find it hard to see where the photo real is showing in the screenshot.

If I look at the image I have the impression that for P3D v2 the elevation is different, it looks like the runway is on some kind of plateau.
 
In the following screenshot, I've drawn around the PR (photo real) runway which is showing under the GP. I've also drawn an arrow to show the shift direction.
 

Attachments

  • P3DV22b.jpg
    P3DV22b.jpg
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Just to add a bit of clarity to Russ' post here's some top-down shots. I marked key positions on the GP and underlying PR to show the shift.

NB: It looks to be shifting the same distance/direction as you get with Instant Scenery and drawcall batching. Arno, does the MCX GP wizard use drawcall batching if it's enabled in the settings? I'm noticing this GP shift at all three airports we are working on. The shift is more pronounced (greater distance) the higher the altitude.

Cheers,

Greg

KBLU_FSX.jpg

KBLU_P3D2.jpg
 
Hi,

So all the bgl files are the same in both versions?

And can you double check the airport elevation is the same in both as well?

If all that is yes, I'm afraid something seems to have changed in the rendering engine. Maybe we can ask LM.
 
Hi Arno,

Yes it's exactly the same set of files in P3D as in FSX. Both altitudes are 1610.6m

Cheers,

Greg
 
OK, I'll see if I can reproduce the position offset here with some test case.
 
arno said:
OK, I'll see if I can reproduce the position offset here with some test case.
Click to expand...


I've just been doing some more testing and it seems even if I use the original placement file to place the groundpoly model (instead of the GP wizard bgl) I get the same offset between FSX and P3D.

I'm now at a complete loss so hopefully you'll be able to reproduce my results.

Greg
 
Hi,

I can't reproduce it yet, but I also haven't installed the 2.2 update of P3D yet. With the older version I have everything still seems to match (3D objects and ground polygons line up as expected). I'll install 2.2 and see if it is any different.
 
From my experience everything shifts drastically in P3D2, the only saving grace is that GPs and objects seem to shift the same at this point so if you have buildings placed on the GP they seem to retain their relationship with one another between FSX and P3D2. Afcad runways and aprons also shift relative to the PR between FSX & P3D2 incidentally. There was no shift with the initial v2.0 release at all that I could see, batched or unbatched, but building shadows were screwy on batched models, at v2.1 beta they came up with a shader fix for the shadows (they had us test the mod ourselves by editing one of the shader files with a txt editor) but the shifting now approximated batch shift in FSX, we complained, "put it back", and LM said they would revert that but keep the shader fix. Then at the release v2.1 the revert apparently didn't go so well and now it's anybody's guess - things shift differently - like the whole world shifts or something - GPs themselves didn't shift before but they do now. It was mentioned that there was some uncertainty as to why the shifting wasn't behaving as expected, I'm guessing priorities got in the way of further refinement of the shifting problem which is understandable. Nothing changed in that respect with v2.2 beta, I haven't downloaded the official v2.2 patch yet either due to internet difficulties.

I just mathematically shifted about 1000 placements this afternoon myself - at least it seems consistent enough that a mathematical offset applied to all objects takes care of it. Hang on to your original placements though, I believe this will eventually be fixed and if so it will break any compensated placements you do now.

Jim
 
Are we sure that the objects are shifted and not the PR? That's the first thing I would look at.

I had heard of the shadow issue before, it seems like a negative side effect that now everything has moved. That is very annoying for developers, especially since there is difference between different P3D v2 versions. That will result in a night mare for version control :)

But from your description Jim it sounds like this is something LM has to fix, as it sounds like a bug.
 
It actually does seem that maybe the PR itself is shifting rather than the objects & GP. I just did a quick test placing an object against a PR at 10,000' MSL in FSX and saved the flight. I added the same scenery area to the library in P3D2 and loaded the .flt I saved from FSX, I took some screenshots for comparison. It appears the relationship between the aircraft and the object stays the same but the PR jumps something like 5m. It does seem that the LC textures also shift if I disable the PR however. Like I said, "the whole world shifts", it's just weird, I need to do another placement off the airport background poly somewhere so it'll be easier to tell. I'll try some more stuff. Maybe we need to shift our PRs in the .ini somehow for the time being instead of shifting objects. At any rate I agree this is an LM bug.

Jim
 
I'm planning to do a similar test tonight. But interesting to hear you think the PR might have moved.

If I get the same result, I also want to test if it makes a difference to recompile the PR with the P3D v2 resample instead of the FSX one.
 
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