FSX Landclass Poly's

[jclaus]

I'm trying to lay a desert rock poly over the top of a mangrove poly but mangrove poly stays on top of the rock. I've tried moving the mangrove to the back and rock to front in ADE, but it seems to have no effect.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

Jan Claus
jclaus1@tampabay.rr.com

 

[robystar]

Mangrove does not grow on rock. So I guess you have to either remove the mangrove or the rock.
Seriously though, mangrove LC will have priority on rock LC so the only way to have rock somewhere in the mangrove is to shape the mangrove texture poly so as not to overlap the rock one.
Another way of doing it would be to add a gp poly with a rock texture but the rocks would be flat terrain or not show up at all if no flatten is underneath.

PS: your putting the mangrove poly to the back in ADE is only for the purpose of making it easier to select and see what it is like in ADE but does not influence the outcome in FS.

 

[scruffyduck]

As Roby says, the order of placement of land class in ADE does not reflect the order of display in FS. I am not sure I know what the ordering of land class is - if someone knows then I can include that in ADE.

 

[jclaus]

Mangrove does not grow on rock. So I guess you have to either remove the mangrove or the rock.
Seriously though, mangrove LC will have priority on rock LC so the only way to have rock somewhere in the mangrove is to shape the mangrove texture poly so as not to overlap the rock one.
Another way of doing it would be to add a gp poly with a rock texture but the rocks would be flat terrain or not show up at all if no flatten is underneath.

PS: your putting the mangrove poly to the back in ADE is only for the purpose of making it easier to select and see what it is like in ADE but does not influence the outcome in FS.

WHOAAaaa Podner, Let me put my hands over my Chia Pets ears.

This morning when I loaded FSXA, after having brought rock to front and mangrove to rear, the rock is now on top. Go Figure.
Yesterday I wasn't restarting FSXA just removing the scenery files from the active list and reloading after compiling, maybe it's not removing all files from memory unless restarting FSX.

Thanks

JRC

 

[robystar]

Oops, you are right, rock does show up on top of mangrove (logical because as said, mangrove does not grow on rock).
It means rock landclass has a higher priority (layer order ) than mangrove LC.
It has nothing to do though with your bringing the rock to the front and mangrove to the back in ADE!
From the SDK:
renderpriority:
:
If there are overlapping areas the lowest priority textures are rendered first, and the highest priority textures are rendered last, and are therefore most likely to appear.

(mangrove = 72, rock = 130)

Very confusing, I know.

 

[jclaus]

Oops, you are right, rock does show up on top of mangrove (logical because as said, mangrove does not grow on rock).
It means rock landclass has a higher priority (layer order ) than mangrove LC.
It has nothing to do though with your bringing the rock to the front and mangrove to the back in ADE!

Unfortunately you are right, wouldn't that be a wonderful thing if you could.

 

[robystar]

Why would you want mangrove to grow on rock?

 

[jclaus]

I wouldn't, I was referring to being able to designate at what level/layer an item, be it object or poly would lay, therefore being able to .....well you know.

 

[robystar]

Oh, OK, I was already afraid you fell off your rock(ers).

 

[edphipps]

Jon,

As far as I can tell landclass ordering is controlled by terrain.cfg. I have done some experimentation with a few landclasses. I found that if you just overlay a landclass polygon onto another then the landclass on top has to be before the underlying landclass in the terrain.cfg file in order for it to show. Otherwise you have to create one landclass polygon that surrounds the other.

Ed

 

[jclaus]

Why would you want mangrove to grow on rock?

Jon,

As far as I can tell landclass ordering is controlled by terrain.cfg. I have done some experimentation with a few landclasses. I found that if you just overlay a landclass polygon onto another then the landclass on top has to be before the underlying landclass in the terrain.cfg file in order for it to show. Otherwise you have to create one landclass polygon that surrounds the other.

Ed

Well that's interesting to know.

 

[GaryGB]

As Roby says, the order of placement of land class in ADE does not reflect the order of display in FS. I am not sure I know what the ordering of land class is - if someone knows then I can include that in ADE.

Hi Jon:

It would be interesting to see this info listed / available for use in ADE.

This attribute is referenced in FSX Terrain SDK as a 'Property' with the name "RenderPriority" in a table at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc526967.aspx#texture.n

Inspection / parsing of the info inside the [FSX install path]\Terrain.Cfg with attention to the "RenderPriority" listing for each entry might prove rather informative.


Hope this helps !

GaryGB

 

[jclaus]

Thank you Gary, I will take a look at that.

Jan

 

[Helli]

In 2011, when I wrote the chapter 14 (Terrain Elements) for the German ADE-Manual I stumbled over the behaviour of the "Mask Class Map" polygones (they are the "tags" of the Airport Background "types").

Fig. 1: Terrain „Type“ and „Tag“


Their behaviour was for me totally unexpected

When a LandClassPolygon is lying over such a MaskClassMap, some of the landclasses are totally obscured, some only partially and only 32 of the total 123 available landclasses are completely visible.

In Fig. 2 my test setup is shown.

Fig. 2: Test Setup

In this picture there are the following polygones (colour: type => tag)

- lightblue:....... ExcludeGeneral => Airport Background
- yellow: :... ....AirportBackground => MaskClassMap
- green: :..... .. Landclass => varoius tags (my test objects)

The following pictures show the above mentioned behaviours.

Fig. 3: The landclass „ Sand Desert“ is partially obscured by the poly „MaskClassMap“

Fig.4: the landclass „Broadleaf Crops“ is totally obscured by the poly „MaskClassMap“

Fig. 5: the landclass „SemiDesertSage“ is visible over the poly „LandClassMap“

In the following table of all 123 „Landclass“-tags the only 32 totally visible tags are marked in red.

This experiment demonstrates that for Terrain Elements not only the sequence of layering is important, but also the selection of the polygones, because they react in a very unexpected way, which is not documented anywhere.
Before such a documentation is generated, I can only promote an advice, which Jim Vile gave me (together with a reference to the theoretical background, which is very complex):
........................................Don't overlap

Helli

 

[jclaus]

Thank you Helli, seems to be the consciences of all.

Jan~