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hobofat

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Please forgive me if this question has already been answered somewhere, I've spent a couple hours reading forums trying to figure it out first, after hours of playing around and testing the program of course :)

The short story: I selected the island of Ofu in American Samoa to design a scenery as a way to learn how to create a scenery (this will be my first). I picked it because it has never been done and it appears to be very very simple. One road, a simple airport, and two small towns, coast lines, etc.

Creating a mesh is WAY beyond comprehension for me (I've spent three days reading about it), so my first project was to create the road.

I traced part of the road in Google Earth, and decided just to test it and see if it works. I saved the road polyline as a .kml file, created a new scenery with FSX KML, imported the .kml file, assigned to it a dirt road, and the file converted just fine into a .bgl file.

I load it up in FSX and the presto! the dirt road showed up, in good form. One problem: it's way out in the ocean by a good distance.

Could it just be that FSX doesn't have Ofu Island (a tiny, obscure island) positioned correctly or is there something I am doing wrong? More importantly, any advice on how to fix it?
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Windows Vista
FSX
FSX_KML 1.10
 
hobofat said:
Could it just be that FSX doesn't have Ofu Island (a tiny, obscure island) positioned correctly or is there something I am doing wrong? More importantly, any advice on how to fix it?
Click to expand...

Yes probably FSX doesn't have the island; or, it is way off from its actual location.

After you have verified in GoogleEarth and FS that the island doesn't exist in FS, you will want to add it; FSX_KML can help with that; You will need to load up TMFViewer, see what the layout of the default water polys is, exclude the default water poly(s), then add your own water poly, then use FSX_KML to make a PolygonHole for Ofu island.

That's a start--
 
Thanks for the responses. FS definitely has the island, it has the airport too. I think it is just in the wrong position.

My first thought would be to simply exclude FS's version of Ofu and create it from scratch in the correct position (the island is quite small, something like 2.5 sq. miles), but I don't know how to create a mesh and from my research there is no viable SRTM data for that area that I can use to create one.
 
Is the island hilly? If you already have a mesh that is good enough, there's nothing you need to do--when you create your new island, it will take on the mesh that you have installed automatically. If the mesh is not good enough--then the only option is to make a custom mesh or find data on the 'net that you can convert and reprocess using resample.exe (not easy).

And yes if the island is mislocated, you will have to first exclude the original island and shorelines (make a poly and tag it with the appropriate exclude).

You will also have to exclude the airport/xml in a separate bgl. You can do that using one of the airport maker programs (ADE,FSXPlanner) or from scratch using xml/bglcomp.
 
Two questions then, and thank you SO much for your responses so far.

1) If I exclude the island (with the default mesh) and rebuild it in the correct location as seen in Google Earth, how will the default mesh show up?

2) Is there a thread or tutorial I can read to get informed on creating a custom mesh without using SRTM or .dem data? As in, is it possible to create a mesh for FSX for a completely fictional location for which there is no real world terrain data?
 
hobofat said:
Two questions then, and thank you SO much for your responses so far.

1) If I exclude the island (with the default mesh) and rebuild it in the correct location as seen in Google Earth, how will the default mesh show up?
Click to expand...

Usually, the mesh that you have is much, much more accurate than the vector poly data that Microsoft has laid down over it.

As Lance says...the FS world is all land, but it is covered by water polygons.

Think in terms of the mesh being underneath everything else...under all of the water polygons and so forth. So ALL of the hills, depressions, etc. that may be in the mesh are completely covered by flat water. Flat. Then imagine poking a hole in a water polygon. The underlying mesh then can show through--so if there is a hill there in the mesh, it will now suddenly show in the sim.

What you'll be doing then, is poking a hole through water polygons (using the PolygonHole tag in FSX_KML). And this will allow the mesh to show through.

Will you have a hill there where your island is? It depends on how accurate your mesh is. I have FSGenesis world mesh, and it is amazingly accurate. I have relocated/fixed Great Corn Island and Little Corn Island in the Caribbean, and when I poked my holes through the water polys to make the islands, the mesh was there. The hills were there.

2) Is there a thread or tutorial I can read to get informed on creating a custom mesh without using SRTM or .dem data? As in, is it possible to create a mesh for FSX for a completely fictional location for which there is no real world terrain data?
Click to expand...

There are some threads here at FSDev about mesh design; you can do it with a drawing program, and indexed color, amazingly enough. However it is tough to do in my opinion. Beyond the threads you might find here, I don't know of any tutorial.

Really I think you should make your island first, and see if the mesh there is even remotely accurate. You might be surprised.
 
It's starting to make more sense now :)

Just another quick question:

You mentioned that I should make a separate .bgl file to exclude the existing airport. Is a normal scenery made up of different .bgl files that FSX then reads into one entire scenery or is it better to try and get as many elements into one .bgl as possible?

For example, one .bgl would be the airport exclude,the other the terrain exclude/recreated hydro_poly/hole in the hydro poly, and then a third .bgl maybe would be shorelines and such?

Bah, I don't think I make sense. One more try:
Is it better to put all the elements of a scenery into one .bgl or can there be multiple .bgls that combine to create a scenery, and will this affect in-game fps performance in any way?

Thanks in advance.
 
For a project like you're doing, the SDK would force you to make at least 2 bgl files:

1 for the terrain (vector) data--roads, shorelines, your island, any terrain exclusions, hydro polys

and,

1 for the airport (apx) data--runway,exclusion rectangles (not the same as terrain excludes),taxiways,comms,etc.

The reason you would have at least 2 bgl's is because the SDK has bglcomp, which compiles the airport data, and Shp2Vec, which compiles the shape (vector) data. They each make their own type of bgl, and they can't be combined.

Beyond that, you could, if you wanted, split your airport scenery into an obx (object) bgl, and a apx (xml airport data) bgl if you wanted. This is what Microsoft did...

Furthermore Microsoft has their Shp2Vec/vector data in cvx type bgl's. You can see these different file types in your FSX/SCENERY folder. You will see 0303apx.bgl and 0303cvx.bgl and 0303obx.bgl

As for performance, I like to do exactly what Microsoft did; I figure they split it out that way for a well-researched and engineered reason so I do the same. I don't see any point in having 20 cvx bgl's out of FSX_KML. Combine 'em all. It can't be good making the file system read 20 files vs. 1 or 2 files.
 
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