P3D v2 Orbx terrain object still showing texture above a ground poly on a flattened area

[spatialpro]

I've posted this as Prepar3D v2.2. but I imagine it also applies to FSX and FSXA...

Here is the situation:

• Orbx scenery installed (EU England)
• Developing an airfield using a flattened blended mesh (to avoid "cliff edges")
• Airfield uses ground polygons for textures (no orthophoto available)
• Airfield flatten (within the boundary of the flattened part of the blended mesh) included to ensure the 3D object (can't think of a better way to describe it) Orbx created for the airfield (presumably so they can bake ambient occlusions from vehicles, buildings etc. onto it?) can't appear "above" (i.e. poke through) the flattened blended mesh.

This all works fine (and perfectly with default and other 3rd party scenery), except it appears that the textures on the Orbx terrain object appear above (as if with a greater priority) than the airfield ground polygon we created.

Does anyone know how to prevent this from happening?

Our scenery is No 1 in the scenery priority list, with the Orbx scenery way down the list.

Many thanks in advance.

Andy

Here it is with default scenery:


airfield default by Andy L.J. Ford, on Flickr


Here it is with Orbx EU England installed (note that the whole area is flattened to the same elevation). Note the Orbx texture showing through:


airfield Orbx by Andy L.J. Ford, on Flickr

 

[arno]

Hi,

Looking at theimages I would say it's a flatten issue. Could it be the other scenery overwrites the flatten you made for that part?

 

[spatialpro]

Many thanks for your reply Arno.

Before I created a flatten (using ADE) and was simply relying on a flattened mesh (i.e. a DEM flattened using a 3D polygon in GIS, then exported as GeoTIFF) this area definitely poked through (rose above) my bespoke mesh. After creating the flatten in ADE this area appears to lie completely flat at the same elevation as the ADE flatten, but the texture is different.

Andy

 

[Anthony31]

Does ORBX change the airfield elevation?

ORBX has a habit of doing this by putting in a stub with just airfield elevation into the Scenery/World/Scenery folder. It is a bug of FSX that the first airport AFCAD it sees (which is usually the default ones) sets the airport elevation. Any changes you make to this afterwards are not handled well so if you want to change the elevation you have to put a stub into scenery/world/scenery

 

[spatialpro]

Many thanks for your reply Antony.

I had a look inside the scenery/world/scenery folder of Prepar3D v2.2 and found several *elevation_adjustment.OFF files. Are these what you're referring to? If so, there isn't one for the airfield in question.

I also checked the elevation of the airfield in the BGL that Orbx creates using ADE, in the folder P3D2\ORBX\FTX_EU\FTX_EU_ENG_05_SCENERY\scenery. The elevation of their version is actually 1mm lower than ours!

Andy

 

[Ayrsimming]

Hi Andy

Have played around replacing Orbx airfields. Some textured ground elements can be removed using a 'Terrain Polygon' designated 'Exclude Parks Polygons'. Try placing one in the area where you want rid of their texturing and see if this makes any difference.

Iain

 

[spatialpro]

Hi Iain,

Do you mean create an Exclude for a specific LandClassPoly (if so, the closest I've found so far is city parks)??

Andy

 

[Ayrsimming]

Hi Andy

I normally use SBuilder, but if you are using ADE, then I think you are looking for 'Exclude General - Parks'.

Iain

 

[spatialpro]

Many thanks Iain. Unfortunately 'Exclude General - Parks' didn't fix it.

Also, I stand corrected, this errant features does poke through the otherwise flat ground. Take a look at the shot below, showing a straight fence, sinking and emerging from the feature:


airfield fence by Andy L.J. Ford, on Flickr

Also, when I try to land on it (in a helicopter) a crash occurs every time! This makes me think it is a 3D object rather than terrain? I'm using an Exclude (All) rectangle, but it doesn't get rid of it.

Any further ideas?

 

[HolgerSandmann]

Hi there,

what airport is this? I'm asking because whatever texture is poking through the terrain doesn't look like any that are used in Orbx ENG, more like a low-resolution photoreal scenery like with some of the older UK2000 titles?

Also, using the "exclude all" tag with exclude polygons is generally a bad idea because it can remove a lot of features within the local QMID11 cell that you don't want excluded. The better approach is to load the cvx bgl file of the conflicting scenery into TMFViewer (the Orbx ENG airports are all in \ORBX\FTX_EU\FTX_EU_ENG_05_SCENERY\scenery), then using its Identify Features option to determine the GUID, search for those GUIDs in terrain.cfg and thus determine what type of polygons are used at the airport (Park, Airport Bounds/flatten, etc.) and use the corresponding exclusion tag.

Last but not least if you create your own local terrain mesh files they have to be compiled at least one LOD higher than what is used by the respective add-on (Orbx ENG uses LOD13 = 5m) otherwise it won't be reliably displayed.

Cheers, Holger

 

[spatialpro]

Hi Holger,

This is Wattisham (EGUW). No 3rd party addons (such as UK2000). To the best of my recollection without Orbx EU England and our Wattisham it'd be totally vanilla P3D2. It is interesting to hear that the texture poking through doesn't look like Orbx though... very curious...!

I'll take a look at the airfield in TMFViewer, like you say.

Our custom mesh is 2m GSD and therefore was compiled using LOD14.

Andy

 

[HolgerSandmann]

Hi Andy,

actually, it does seem to be a section of the FTX ENG landclass textures around EGUW (see my screenshot) I just got fooled by the absence of autogen and your display settings.

Anyway, I'd agree with Arno that the jagged edges of the area in question suggest it's the terrain mesh file "poking through" your grass polygon meaning you should check the tag and altitude of your airfield flatten and also make sure that there's no flatten exclude either inside your scenery folder or externally at higher display priority.

While the main flatten poly for the Orbx EGUW version is confined to the modern-day airport area there are a number of sloped flattens around the perimeter as you can see when loading "ADE_FTX_ENG_EGUW_CVX.bgl", in \Prepar3D v2\ORBX\FTX_EU\FTX_EU_ENG_05_SCENERY\scenery, into TMFViewer. In any case a local exclude poly with the appropriate "airport background" type and tag will exclude all of those so that your terrain mesh and overlaying flatten can take precedence.

Cheers, Holger