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How do I get rid of default FSX Terrain to show photoreal scenery

B

bernb

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australia
Not sure if this is the place for this. Please move if not.

Ok so I am trying to make photoreal scenery and chose the island of Mauritius to recreate using a tool called Ortho4XPFSX. Sorted all the problems with regard to autogen using scenProc, but came across this problem.
The image below is from the FSX default scenery of Port Louis in the North west corner of Mauritius:
FSXOriginal.jpg


This image below is the screen dump from FSX with the photoreal scenery installed:
bbPortLouis.jpg

I have marked the areas I noticed some weird things
1. When I come in close I can see the outline of waves breaking inland - those white lines in the upper left arrow are the waves breaking inland. This is because the underlying FSX original scenery has the coastline wrong, and the waves are breaking onm that coastline ignoring the photoreal coastline.
2. The photoreal scenery shows correctly but the original FSX scenery is showing in the area where the Google photoscenery has a water mask.

The imagery from google for this area is correct as is the water mask as below(not the full images but cropped for this post).:
Google Image.jpg
Watermask.jpg


These images and masks are used by Resample.exe and a .INF file to create a BGL for this area.
However what I found out is that the underlying Original scenery of FSX is showing thru in the areas where my water masks are and also the waves are showing thru breaking on the Original FSX shoreline.

So I need to remove or edit that original scenery - not sure if it is (terrain or landclass or mesh or whatever) so that my photoscenery shows properly without these odd things showing.

I hope I explained the problem correctly, if not please say.

How do I edit/remove the original scenery so that the underlying scenery does not appear thru the watermasks and waves do not break inland and what tools can I use?
I think I need to edit the terrain to follow the new correct contours of the satellite map.

Thanks
 
For the waves you need to make a vector exclude tagged "exclude all shorelines" (since the wave effect is tied to the shoreline in the terrain.cfg).

The building is probably a placed object from one of the OBX*.bgls so you just need an XML exclude.

I use SBuilderX but I think you can do both in ADE as well. Quick rundown for SBuilder:

1. Go to the location in the sim. Start SBuilder and do "View > Show Aircraft", that will get you started in the general vicinity
2. Do "Edit > Tile Servers" and choose Google_api3_Satellite, tick the box "Use Google_api3_Satellite?" if it's not already
3. Roll your mousewheel while watching the Zoom level in the lower left corner of the screen, zoom to about 13 or 14
4. Do "View > Show Background", wait for the tiles to download
5. Click the polygon tool on the toolbar, click out a poly that encompasses the general area where you're seeing the wave effect, right click to finish the poly
6. Right click the edge of your poly and do "properties", scroll through the list and click on exclude all shorelines
7. Select the exclude tool from the toolbar, draw a rectangle encompassing the general area of the building, a dialog will pop up when you're finished, choose "all objects" or "library objects"
8. Do "File>Properties", type "Mauritius_excludes" where is says "PROJECT" and use the button below to show SBuilder where your output .bgls should go (same folder your PR .bgl is in)
9. Do "Select > All Polygons" followed by "Select > All excludes", then hit the green "compile" button. Put a check in "copy .bgls to bgl folder" and hit the compile button.
10. Save your project in case you need to adjust something or add something else

If you want to adjust the shoreline to reposition it so it matches your photoreal that's another can of worms. Read my post here:

www.fsdeveloper.com

FSXA - Adjusting only part of island coastline

Hi all, Currently in the process of updating FPST (whilst learning how to at the same time). I need to adjust the coastline but don't want to redraw the entire island of Sao Tome like Tiberius K does in the flightsim.com tutorial for Nauru. Here is my view from tmfviewer: As you can see I...
www.fsdeveloper.com www.fsdeveloper.com

Jim
 
Hi Jim
Thanks for your reply.
1. Regarding the "waves" they are all around the island. I only used this image as an example. The problem is that the FSX representation of the island is not correct so the shoreline does not coincide with the real satellite images. So given what you said I have to draw a ploy that encompasses the complete island. So I did that and compiled a .BGL which when added removed that wave effect. Thanks for that.

2. The building is probably a placed object from one of the OBX*.bgls so you just need an XML exclude.
The arrows are NOT pointing to any building but to an area. If you look at the image with the arrows you will see one arrow pointing to an area that is "lighter" in colour than the other area the other arrow is pointing to. If you look closely at this darker area it is the same shape as the water mask as I uploaded.

What is happening here is that the island shape is not correct as per the satellite image. The water mask is intended to "cutout" the photoscenery to show the FSX water but since the shoreline shape is wrong, the cutout shows the default FSX scenery in the area of the water mask is. The image below has the water mask I uploaded above layered on the FSX image and shows that the mask area is cutting out the photoscenery area but because the FSX outline of the island is wrong the FSX scenery and autogen shows thru.
combined.jpg

So what I need to do is somehow hide/edit that default island scenery.
I have looked at a tutorial by Tiberius you mention in your linked post. Seems that there is stuff there to fix what I want fixed but I am stumbling at the first hurdle.

His tutorial shows capturing a background image at zoom=17. But when I try I cannot get the whole island to appear and then SBX crashes a lot and it is very frustrating to use. All I am so far able to do is capture at zoom = 13 which is not enough. I will read further because he has a part that shows exactly how to modify the island default outline.
 
A water mask is not the same as water. If, what you made is really a water mask, the only thing it does is to make 'ripples' to suggest water. You need a blend mask.
Next you possibly have to put in water where (in the default) there is land.
 
I thought your arrow was pointing to a building, my apologies, I didn't read thoroughly.

It's a blendmask that's exposing land. The coastline will need to be adjusted. Interestingly this coastline has been fixed in P3D v4.5, the entire cvx6339.bgl has changed drastically.

cvx6339_FSX.jpg cvx6339_P3D.jpg

I would strongly suggest not following Tiberius' tutorial with regard to modifying the coastline because the first thing he suggests is to remove the default cvx****.bgl and that's not the correct way to do it. You should exclude and replace as I detailed in the post I linked above.
 
JRobinson said:
I thought your arrow was pointing to a building, my apologies, I didn't read thoroughly.

It's a blendmask that's exposing land. The coastline will need to be adjusted. Interestingly this coastline has been fixed in P3D v4.5, the entire cvx6339.bgl has changed drastically.

View attachment 60250 View attachment 60249

I would strongly suggest not following Tiberius' tutorial with regard to modifying the coastline because the first thing he suggests is to remove the default cvx****.bgl and that's not the correct way to do it. You should exclude and replace as I detailed in the post I linked above.
Click to expand...

Yes I know he says remove the cvxxxx.bgl but then he goes on to show how to recreate a proper corrected one.
Your tip about removing the waves worked. My plan was to follow Tiberius' tut but after the watermask part because I already had a watermask. But that was going to take too much time.
Your info that P3d fixed the coastline as well as other things, made me copy across the cvx6339.bgl and see. And yes they have fixed the coastline and the waves breaking etc.

However the other data like autogen and land features have not been fixed properly. My photo scenery generated from OSM data fixes that and introduces new features like hills, vegetation etc.
Thanks heaps for your valuable tips. I am going to look thru all your other posts for any more gems. Cheers. And thanks.

Original P3D Mauritius scenery - looking back with the a/c pointing at Port Louis
p3dv5.jpg


Exact same view but with Photoreal and OSM data added by me
bbMauritius.jpg

And now facing the sea and city - P3D
p3dv5PortLouis.jpg


and my Photoscenery
bbMauritiusPortLouis.jpg
 
Last edited:
bernb said:
Yes I know he says remove the cvxxxx.bgl but then he goes on to show how to recreate a proper corrected one.
Click to expand...

No he doesn't, because the cvxxxx.bgl contains a hell of a lot more than just hydro polys and shorelines - roads, GPS polygons, airport flatten polys, railroads, landclass polys, shorelines, streams, powerlines, railways, and road traffic to name a few. He got away with it because it was some horsesh*t isolated island in the middle of the South Pacific but if it had been Catalina Island off the coast of California he'd have nuked all of the above items within a 90,000 sq kilometer area on the mainland as well.

It seems to me you'd rather argue than learn and I don't have time for that nonsense so I'm out of this thread at this point, best wishes with your Mauritius project.
 
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