• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

How to create reefs around tropical islands?

AlpineBravo

AlpineBravo

Messages
6
Country
unitedkingdom
Any tips on how to create a reef around a tropical island?
I can draw a poly around the land and then around the reef and set it to Ocean - that does a very nice job of showing the clear water of the lagoon, but it then populates the area with trees (presumably reading the coral reefs as vegetation)?!.
I can make a duplicate poly and set that to 'exclude vegetation which gets rid of the trees, but you are still left with scrub. Any tips on how to get rid of this?
 
The only really viable way at the moment, if you want to retain water but having none actually works if you don't look too close, is a water mask made up of a semi transparent png hovering above the water.

It's far from great but from a distance looks OK.

Though it's horribly out of date overall, the water mask bit in here still counts - https://flightsim.to/file/17656/a-guide-to-msfs-scenery-creation

The only detail I need to change is to set the height above the water inside Blender, around 4.3 metres worked for me, not the sim. Otherwise you'll get much worse flickering. And another LOD or 2 set slightly higher should get rid of it from a distance.

The other thing you'll need is a good enough aerial image to use.
 
What works for P3D largely will not work in MSFS however. You can use Ortho4XP, it's convenient in some was, but QGIS is my go to. I like to use Ortho4XP as kind of a "scanner," I get quick snapshots of typical image providers that I can run through fspackagetool and check out in situ, so to speak, but OGIS has the tools, the precision, the flexibility, it's professional after all, that Ortho4XP cannot encompass in it's convenience. Something to explore, regardless of your destination sim.
 
I split off all P3d posts to a different thread. Please respond to the OP's question regarding MSFS reef creation.
 
On this coming Tuesday Microsoft is releasing the World Update covering Oceana, I believe. So if your reef is in the Pacific, you might want to see if the reef is added to your area before you go down the rabbit-hole of creating a reef.
 
Thanks - it's the Maldives, so not in Oceania, although I'm hoping it may bring in some new base models. And thanks for splitting off the P3D responses.

I find the Bing aerial images exposed by setting a poly to 'ocean' are more than good enough for my purposes. giving nice turquoise lagoons. Its just little things like how to best create a donut (annular) poly - if I draw a poly over the entire area and set that to ocean, it blanks the island. Or perhaps I could draw a poly around the island first and then layer it?

And the very annoying way it turns reef into vegetation. I can get rid of the trees (although some still like to creep in on the boundary line), but the scrub I cant eliminate.
 
AlpineBravo said:
the scrub I cant eliminate.
Click to expand...
I made a detailed post above, but it has been removed for some reason. If it suddenly reappears, forgive the added confusion. You must be within the boundary of an airport, add an apron and set it to invisible
 
AlpineBravo said:
And the very annoying way it turns reef into vegetation. I can get rid of the trees (although some still like to creep in on the boundary line), but the scrub I cant eliminate.
Click to expand...
I think you could make a new polygon and assign a material to it. There is an Asobo Water material, and assigning that material, setting it as invisible should get rid of the veggies. Make sure it has a priority of at least 1.
 
Last edited:
rhumbaflappy said:
I think you could make a new polygon and assign a material to it. There is an Asobo Water material, and assigning that material, setting it as invisible should get rid of the veggies. Make sure it has a priority of at least 1.
Click to expand...
Yes, I think I will try that as well as rk's suggestion (I think its in the P3D thread).

I'm very new to this so the advice is much appreciated. My next trick is to learn Blender well enough to create some Cabana models
 
Regarding Water polys: Asobo has a fix coming in the WU13 due tomorrow. Water polys and excludes are wonky right now.
 
=rk= said:
I made a detailed post above, but it has been removed for some reason. If it suddenly reappears, forgive the added confusion. You must be within the boundary of an airport, add an apron and set it to invisible
Click to expand...
Finally home from an extended work trip. Yeah your detailed post seems to have been lost - its not in the P3D thread. But I think get the gist of it - if you create an invisible/transparent apron around your airport you can use the exclude vegetation. I'm just downloading WU13 and updating the the SDK now and will be interested to see if they have made this any easier - I imagine they would have seen the problems for themselves when doing their water masks for French Polynesia. It also looks like there might be some useful new building models (resort cabanas) in the base scenery. But I'm not sure that the copyright is on using those for addons.
 
Unfortunately, you will not get the appearance or wave action of water doing the above. Only a water poly does that, and water polys are all opaque, covering the underlying aerial. Asobo is aware of this, and isn't planning on helping out here.
 
I'm just in the process of discovering this. Thanks for the timely comment. Why could they simply not have an opacity slider for water?

And I'm yet to see any real improvement in the water poly - it still creates random trees at the edge of an exclusion poly. But you can at least overlay them with a water poly to blur the edges.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top