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I want to analyze ORBX ground polys and water bgls

A

Aflightsimdeveloper

Messages
10
Country
us-arizona
Hi,
So I have been working on an airport (Astoria) and it has very similar autogen as orbx KHQM. They also include a custom water bgl that references their water texture. How can I open and analyze these files? I tried ADE and MCX already. By the way , I will not be sharing this scenery , it is solely for personal use. The water file is linked below (ORBX please don't sue me).


Kevin
 

Attachments

I think it's default water texture, we just use water mask and nothing else (that works best for me so far).
 
No "water bgl" contains any texture information, it can contain a hydro poly with a GUID that's defined in the terrain.cfg. You can open that .bgl in TMFViewer, locate the hydro poly in question, right click and choose "Identify vector features". It will show a Texture with a GUID that follows, search for the first 10 characters or so of that GUID in the terrain.cfg. I think you'll find it's this one:

Code: 
// ORBX FTX-NA custom polys 4 of 28
[Texture.1055]
Name=FTX_PNW_LandWaterMask_Water_Ocean
Color=FF416BAB
guid={2E46918F-1A04-4d94-BBC0-708D11542C83}
Textures=OCEAN_SEA_LARGE_LAKE_0
FlattenMode=slope
FlattenPriority=90000
LandClassRemapType=none
ExcludeAutogen=Yes
RenderToTexture=Yes
RenderPriority=83000
Water=Yes

...but since Astoria is also in the PNW region my bet is the water around KAST is the same as KHQM and what you're seeing that looks like custom water at KHQM is actually a photoreal water overlay. Drill down to the ORBX\FTX_NA\FTX_AA_KHQM\Scenery folder and open ORBX_KHQM_PR_Bay.bgl with TMFViewer and you'll see what I mean.
 
Also another question, when I am making the ground polys, I want to add shallow water transitioning to deeper water, how would I do that? And is there any way to specify what trees you want for autogen around the area?
 
JRobinson said:
No "water bgl" contains any texture information, it can contain a hydro poly with a GUID that's defined in the terrain.cfg. You can open that .bgl in TMFViewer, locate the hydro poly in question, right click and choose "Identify vector features". It will show a Texture with a GUID that follows, search for the first 10 characters or so of that GUID in the terrain.cfg. I think you'll find it's this one:

Code: 
// ORBX FTX-NA custom polys 4 of 28
[Texture.1055]
Name=FTX_PNW_LandWaterMask_Water_Ocean
Color=FF416BAB
guid={2E46918F-1A04-4d94-BBC0-708D11542C83}
Textures=OCEAN_SEA_LARGE_LAKE_0
FlattenMode=slope
FlattenPriority=90000
LandClassRemapType=none
ExcludeAutogen=Yes
RenderToTexture=Yes
RenderPriority=83000
Water=Yes

...but since Astoria is also in the PNW region my bet is the water around KAST is the same as KHQM and what you're seeing that looks like custom water at KHQM is actually a photoreal water overlay. Drill down to the ORBX\FTX_NA\FTX_AA_KHQM\Scenery folder and open ORBX_KHQM_PR_Bay.bgl with TMFViewer and you'll see what I mean.
Click to expand...
How could I make a photoreal water overlay?
 
You need to get some imagery, if you're not going to distribute it you can use SBuilderX/Google Maps for that. If you are going to distribute it then you'll need to get some public domain imagery off the national map server or something. For SBuilder you select an area and it will download all the tiles from google and turn it into a photoreal. You'll need to add water and blend masks which you do in PhotoShop or Gimp. There are dozens of tutorials and how-to threads around here for that so search around a bit. It's a bit involved if you've never done it before but if you can find the .bgl with KHQM's water polys you can do this too. Alternately there's FS EarthTiles and Ortho4XP for FSX/P3D that can make a photoreal for you but I think you'll still need to do custom blend and water masks to make it look like KHQM and you can't distribute anything you make using those tools either.

Aflightsimdeveloper said:
And is there any way to specify what trees you want for autogen around the area?
Click to expand...
Yes, you can also make a photoreal for the land surrounding the airport and then you can add the autogen trees you want (and buildings too) with either with the SDK Annotator or Arno's scenProc tool. Another involved process, don't expect to finish it all this evening, lol. For that matter you can use the same photoreal for the land and the water overlay at the same time, it's just a matter of blend and water masking to make the different parts of the imagery look like you want.

If it were me I'd go straight to earthexplorer.usgs.gov and try to find some 60cm NAIP imagery because there are no distribution restrictions, but that gets a little more involved yet because you also need to learn how to use some GIS tools.
 
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