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Nice Island_No Mesh

falcon409

falcon409

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I have replaced a default Island off the coast of Maine with this. All was going well and I even succeeded in producing my first mesh for the Island last evening with some helpful assistance from the folks in the "Terrain Design General" Forums. Only problem I have now is that after removing the default Island, the mesh is no longer working. I placed the mesh last evening in the main FSX Addon Scenery\scenery folder just to see if it was working and it was. Is there a reason anyone can think of that it's no longer active?
 

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Hi Ed:

You may wish to review this excellent tutorial on using SBuilderX to make a photo-realistic scenery of an island, which includes clearly explained and detailed steps for the exclusion of default water polygons and creation of accurate replacement scenery content (to allow the mesh to show through the overlying water layer):

How to create photoreal scenery for FSX - by "Tiberius K."

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?250762-How-to-create-photoreal-scenery-for-FSX


A preceding thread apparently compelled Tiberius Kowalski (aka "Tiberius K." at flightsim.com) to create the above tutorial, points out common errors which can be made when making islands (ex: by incorrect use of Excludes, as well as failure to remove default CVX BGLs local to the area of an island and replace them with custom water polygons and other required content); that thread is here:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?245629-Project-Nauru-PHOTOREAL-(in-progress)/page3


PS: Jim Robinson contributed many additional valuable insights to that thread as well < thanks Jim ! > ;)



[EDITED]

After again reviewing that long and detailed thread linked above (and the linked threads therein), IMHO the above linked info still only 'alludes' to the mysterious step-by-step process of successfully creating an Island with or without exclusion of overlying default and/or 3rd party Hydro polys, so that a ex: custom terrain mesh can show through, and to then have one's ex: custom photoreal land class textures draped onto the terrain mesh.

It seems there is more than 1 way to create an island with a shoreline that allows the associated terrain mesh for the island to show through the surrounding Hydro poly(s):

* Polygon hole method with Parent and Child polygon designations

* Exclude / Rebuild Hydro polygons up to the edge of the island


Probably there is a better way to describe these 2 options when making an island (which apparently may be different than how one might modify ex: a continent shoreline). :banghead:


Perhaps Jim Robinson could point us to one or more of those topics in which he suggests that such a subject may already have been explained "Ad Nauseum" ? :o


Nearly all threads I've found seem to get close to successfully explaining this in a manner that all could follow, and then the step-by-step details are not forthcoming.


Right about now I'm thinking there are significant complications and 'gotchas' which one might encounter when trying to implement the "Polygon Hole" concept and methodology via SBuilderX for both FSX vector terrain flattens and excludes, which compels going back to legacy quad-tile segment based polygon re-drawing methods. :rolleyes:

http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1062&start=0&hilit=clip

http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1629

http://www.ptsim.com/sbuilderx/videos/normans.swf



Thus far I've only found these few threads which address this "island" topic for FSX (but IMHO, still in rather arcane language):

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showpost.php?p=231778&postcount=30

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=18328

http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6016

http://173-233-77-148.static.turnkeyinternet.net/forum/showthread.php?p=212780

[END_EDIT]


Hope this helps ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Gary, it was the proverbial "hole" in the plan that I was lacking, lol. I forgot to open up the water poly to allow the mesh to pop back up. Just tweaking the island coast line right now. Gotta go babysit for a few hours and then back at it. I'm actually about to the point of adding the vegetation, which will be relatively easy with the annotator. I'd like to leave the shoreline untouched and by that I mean without adding a shoreline via SBuilderX. . .but. . .I'd also like to have wave action, lol. . .Not sure that's possible without the use of the shoreline. Anyway. . .back later.
 

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I still have a few pesky shorelines, but otherwise. . . .
All this just so I could develop a long since abandoned airport on an Island, lol. Amazing. Thanks to everyone for the contributions.;)
 

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Your shorelines are coming from a third-party add on and will not be excluded using default parameters. They can be made to disappear, with some tinkering with SBX. Or you could adjust your introduced water polygon to reflect that those areas are there with holes inside the parent poly.
 
Thanks Lance, those little outer Islands are more trouble than the big one, lol. Now I have one last thing to do and that is to introduce wave action along the coast of the Island. If I add a shoreline in SBX inset from the actual shoreline of the current Island, will it be covered up by the photoreal but still cause the wave action I'm looking for? I don't want the funky looking shoreline to be visible as the actual Island shoreline is quite nice.
 
Waves and shorelines are different things in FSX. So you can place a line for the wave activity without getting any visual terrain assigned to it.
 
LCSims said:
Waves and shorelines are different things in FSX. So you can place a line for the wave activity without getting any visual terrain assigned to it.
Click to expand...
Ok, so I could use the contour of the "hole", make it a line and assign the wave? Sounds like a plan.
 
Perfect, I had to reverse the direction of the line, but otherwise. . .well done Lance, thanks for HU.
 
Hi Ed:

You may wish to consider some of the info in this thread as well:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=17777&highlight=wavecontroller



AFAIK, depending on which Texture # and GUID codes are available for shorelines in the version of Terrain.Cfg installed on the end users system, such vector textured shorelines with "wavecontrollers" may or may not ...be displayed in FSX at run time.


And of course, if certain attribute codes for non-FSX-default shorelines with "wavecontrollers" are not already present / added manually within the "Lines.Txt" file of SBuilderX, one may not even have them available to select when creating the shoreline CVX vector BGL.


IMHO, it would be good to pick the FSX default shoreline type(s) with "wavecontroller" for use in your shoreline CVX vector BGL. :idea:


Otherwise, if a non-FSX-default shoreline type is encoded into your shoreline CVX vector BGL, you'd want to inform end users that in order to "see the waves", they must install the "Modified Terrain.Cfg" by Luis-Feliz-Tirado and Richard Ludowise; however, this would require re-running setup configurators and/or installers for any add-ons which (disclose that they) modify the Terrain.Cfg file. :alert:


PS: Remember that SBuilderX prompts to install the "Modified Terrain.Cfg" by Luis-Feliz-Tirado and Richard Ludowise when that FS scenery building utility is itself being installed.

My guess is most developers install that "Modified Terrain.Cfg", and thus may not realize when they pick certain feature types from the list of available options in SBuilderX, they may be generating content display requests in their FS scenery BGLs that the end user system can NOT accommodate, unless they themselves also have installed the "Modified Terrain.Cfg" by Luis-Feliz-Tirado and Richard Ludowise into their FS configurations. :redflag:


Hope this helps ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Gary and Lance. . .I added your names to the credits on the Marshall Island Scenery. You were quite helpful in pointing me in the right directions and helping me achieve some things I wasn't aware I could do, lol, imagine that. Anyway, thanks for the assist.:wave:
 
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