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FSX ground showing through apron

jyarddog

jyarddog

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us-washington
Hope this is the right area.

Having trouble with ground showing through some scenery - flickering shows up at higher altitude. Aprons and such are fine, but I placed a rectangular ramp with sloped ramp added which goes down into the water.

Rectangular ramp shows ground bleed-through only when I am in the air about 650 ft. On the ground only one small patch of ground shows up. This seems to show up where the ramp meets the edge of the apron of the airport.

If I raise the ramp this solves the problem but then I have a tell-tale lip or edge where the ramp meets the apron. This ramp does have a hard surface attached to it. Any ideas how to lower the ground? My Xbuilder flattens haven't solved this as yet. I need some good ideas. Thanks, Bob
 
Hi Bob:

A few questions:

* What version of FS and what version of SBuilder (FS9 or FSX) does this involve ?

* Could you post a slew mode cockpit view (with no panel) screenie at the altitude where the "flicker" shows up, but 'zoomed in' on the "flicker" area ?

* Is there a textured custom ground poly, 3rd party custom, or "FS default" land class textures underneath the ramp object ?

* Is the ramp object textured (if so, what 'type' of DXT *BMP or *DDS is used) ?

* Have you considered putting a sloped flatten 0.0125 Meters (0.04101038 Feet or 1/2 inch) underneath the hardened surface elevation of the ramp slope ?


Hope this helps with sorting the situation out ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Gary- Thanx for the response. I may have solved this for now, but I may have cheated sort of. :)
Info- FSX, sbuilderX, No screenshot necessary at this point because the flicker is gone. More on this in a minute.
standard default ground underneath.
ramp object is textured with dds and hard surface attached.
sloped surface I'm just barely learning how to do.

Originally no airport at this location. However, during WW II this evidently was one of the first air naval bases on the west coast in the Seattle area. This is located by a bay or lagoon just north of Ksea and Seattle.
My friend used to fly into here during the mid 60's and 70's.

To get rid of the water roll-up at shore line, especially where aprons and/or rwys come close to the water, I made some flattens with Xbuilder with a slope hdg north. In Xbuilder window top left window I place 1 and box just below a 3 and clicked on 'set'. This seemed to help slope the land nicely down to water's edge fairly well (having not the foggiest idea of what I was doing, but it seemed to work). :)

I noticed any aprons too close to the water causes small cliffs (standard problem).

Main apron I pulled back away from the water then installed this hardened ramp with Instant Scenery.

If I left it this way the ground would flicker through or a patch of ground would show at on end or the other. If I raised the EL of the ramp this was solved, but then, of course, I would have a small lip (bump up) between the ramp and apron.

Even then sometimes at high altitude and looking down (top down) I would see flicker. Lowr EL's it seemed to go away.

What I did a few nights ago was to make another ab-flttan, mask class, exclude autogen in Xbuilder to cover most of the airport. Afterwards I then readjusted the ramp EL in Instant Scenery to +.02. This time I saw no flicker and also no decernable bump up between the ramp and apron.

Oh, I also set my scenery slider for terrain mesh to 1m instead of 10m.

I can be found on Skype as jyarddog. I'm sending two screenshots anyway- still see flicker at altitude. And sending scenery file and xbuilder project files in a zip. I used knsp as airport iaco. Also having a bear of a time getting rid of link/rwy designator mismatch. Never had this problem before. Rwys are labeled with small number first as base end.

Please note that my AFX file is not yet done. I still have roads and some taxiways to fiddle with. Still a work in progress.

Main problem seems to be that the ground raises up to meet whatever I do with the airport which I guess is standard op. Anyway, any tips for solving this and future problems would be appreciated. I probably should have started off with Xbuilder. :) Bob
 
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Hi Bob:

I have seen varying results in FSX with "flicker" from what IIUC is actually "Z-Buffer Fighting" manifesting as intermittent gray patterns when 2 objects are in close proximity with 1 behind or below the other.

The susceptibility to this happening IMHO is greater in FSX, and varies as well by video card manufacturer / driver version... and 'other' variables I'm still trying to better comprehend. :confused:

But it is generally simple to solve (when only '2' layers of textures overlie each other) by just raising the top object elevation slightly and inspecting by flying circles around the object at various altitudes; and yes, the flicker usually can't be seen on ground or at lower altitudes below 100 Feet.


BTW: I find the old FS2002 Cosmos Bidulm Trike (freeware or the LAGO Emma Field 2002 version) is able to go slower than the AirCreations Trike, so it makes a great inspection aircraft (it actually works in FSX too, but has a strange ground shadow with lights, clouds and autogen trees showing through the wing fabric).

I wish I knew how to fix that legacy aircraft FSX draw order issue... I love the old trike as much as I do the new one ! :eek:


NOTE: To get rid of the aircraft panel display, cycle "A" key in either Trike for 'Cockpit' (not VC) mode, then cycle "W".



Oddly, I sometimes can solve 'layered object flickering' by raising the top object only +0.0125 Meters (+0.04101038 Feet).

Yet other times I have seen a higher top object elevation required (usually seen as +0.021 Meters or +0.06889743 Feet) in Instant Scenery to stop the 'flicker artifacts' from showing.


If one has '2' textured planes above another 3rd textured object or a photoreal ground texture, it becomes a nightmare of jockeying the 2 top planar objects up and down to finally eliminate the flicker.

Usually in those scenarios I still end up with an objectionable final total elevation of those 2 raised objects above the bottom object or ground.



Yes, too big of a height differential could cause a "bump" in the rendered FS scenery object to terrain distance, and could be an undesirable situation for a ramp (especially for a water ramp) as those who fly and taxi with crash detection turned on might crash their aircraft... and thus terminate their flight too ! :eek:


I'm wondering if the use of a sloped flatten under the ramp which has a surface that is both flat and sloped parallel to the slope of the ramp might allow for a better multi-planar inter-object render by FS, thereby permitting avoidance of the "Z-Buffer Fighting" :idea:


FYI: The new FSX "CVX Vector" type flattens via SHP2VEC can be made much smaller and more precise in FSX via SBuilder (ADE makes these too) than was possible in FS9 with SCASM Area16N or LWM2/LWM3 flattens.

Those legacy scenery flatten polygons (LWM flat or LWM3 sloped/tilted) were aliased by FS to the vertices of nearby LOD13 Area Points (1/256th of an LOD13 quad's 1,223 Meters per side is 4.8 Meters as the closest achievable inter-point distance for vertices), assuming one had TMVL set to 21 or higher in FS9.Cfg.

Setting the FSX mesh resolution to 2 meters or smaller may help with rendering sloped flattens, but some users that have other content-enabling sliders set too high may find they end up having subtle performance issues below 10 Meters for the mesh resolution slider.



Yup, FSX gets some things backwards; the Irish expression "May the road rise up to meet you" is rendered by FSX as 'water' rising up to meet us instead ! :p


PS: Sloped flattens at shorelines might solve "water creep" as well. ;)

You might find some pertinent info on making "Sloped Flattens" in ADE and/or SBuilderX here:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17964&highlight=sloped+flatten



Hope this helps sort things out a bit more ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Gary- thanx for the info. I might raise the ramp a bit more and check the bump. If it gets rid of teh flicker but leaves a 'bump' I might make an extra sloped ramp with a harden, many, many feet long, with the same texture as the other ramp to ride up over the bump but hardly noticable to the user. Sneaky trick. Bob
 
Hi Bob:

I haven't dabbled with custom hardened ramp objects for FSX yet, but IIRC hardened objects cause a FPS hit if more than 1 is in view of the aircraft.

FYI: I believe FS9 could only have 1 hardened surface visible within the visual display radius of an aircraft or it would crash; FSX may tolerate more than 1, but incurs a FPS hit.



BTW: Sloped flattens already are 'hardened' since they are rendered as though they were part of the terrain mesh or ground.



One could also texture the ground with the FSX version of a textured VTP polygon (now a CVX vector polygon) which would be a mesh-clinging 'concrete' textured polygon using ADE, SBX or FSX-KML.


FSX-KML: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=81


But IIUC, it's probably going to work better from the standpoint of both performance and smoothness of aircraft movement on a surface, to have one hardened surface (then IIRC the aircraft wheels also won't kick up dirt or dust).


Hope this helps ! :)

GaryGB
 
Hi Bob:

I hadn't been over to Flightsim.coms' Scenery Design Forum in a very long time; but while there, I stumbled across this interesting and somewhat related thread regarding a way to make seaplane ramps. :p

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?213301-shore-lines-and-ramps


It might also be informative to look at how Art_P did his FSX Winter Haven, FL water ramp scenery in FSX SDK TMFViewer.exe, and in FSX itself. :idea:

http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=Winter_Haven_FL.zip&CatID=root&Go=Search

http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxscen&DLID=147349


[EDITED]

Another outstanding example of a water ramp leading to a surface (well above ground !) using hardened platforms onto which one can pilot the user aircraft is:

Thumb Harbour - PF31 (Added 07.14.2011)(Updated 02.11.2012) by Xavier Carre' at Return To Misty Moorings (aka "RTMM")

http://www.return.mistymoorings.com/scenery/#Thumb Harbour


NOTE: This scenery will require another separate download to get the seaplane ramp with elevated and hardened platform library object:

CeyX_Sceneries_Libraries by Xavier Carre'

Current Link as of 12/13/2012:

http://www.return.mistymoorings.com/object_libraries/CeyX_Sceneries_Libraries_2012_10_20.zip



FYI: Should the above "CeyX_Sceneries_Libraries" link to the required 'latest libraries by Xavier Carre' ever change or go dead, it is found in:


Barnstormers: Part One - Tweedsmuir-Nechako By Xavier Carré and Jacques Alluchon

...under: "NOTAM: The Latest CeyX Object Library Must be installed to make this work (Click Here) "

http://www.return.mistymoorings.com/scenery/#Barnstormers: Part One


BTW: One can pilot an aircraft beneath the raised platform as well as up onto the raised platform itself ...with both water and platform elevations correctly displayed ! :wizard:

Hint: Turn off user aircraft 'crash detection' to taxi underneath the platform to inspect this scenery and see how the elevations are all working properly.


PS: IIUC, the techniques used in this process should also work for making hardened surfaces over land that allow aircraft to be fully supported while keeping underlying terrain levels at correct elevations. ;)


[END_EDIT]

Hope this helps ! :)

GaryGB
 
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'Bumped' for edits to my last post above... to list another excellent example of how seaplane ramps, bridges etc. are made to look great and work properly. ;)

GaryGB
 
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