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PolygonHole

M

Mace

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us-missouri
[FSX_KML 1.03]

Rather than post this in the gigantic FSX_KML thread I thought I would start a thread for this specific issue.

I have re-worked a river from FSX default, and the results are very nice! But now I am trying to poke a hole in one of the river polys to make an island, using the PolygonHole tag, and it is not showing.

Shp2Vec said 20 polys were processed...and if it were processing my PolygonHole polygon, there should be 21. So it's not even being processed as a shape...

Perhaps it should not be processed as a 'poly', since I understand that PolygonHole has no uuid?

I know a workaround. I could simply re-do my riverine polys, to go AROUND the area that is the island. That would work fine. But, it would be nice to know the mystery of the PolygonHole. Is it fully understood yet?
 
phpdk said:
Hi Rhett,

The turorial promises support for polygon holes in the next version. I also had problems with holes and ended up by using Osman's small utility xml2shp, available in this thread http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3440

Following Osman's instruction it worked very well.

Peter
Click to expand...

Oh. I had thought that between FS_KML v1.02 (or 1.00??) and 1.03 the "PolygonHole" tag had been added to the list of tags. So I assumed that it was working, since it was added to the list.

Thanks for the help!
 
Hi Rhett,

I had thought that between FS_KML v1.02 (or 1.00??) and 1.03 the "PolygonHole" tag had been added to the list of tags
Click to expand...

To the tags, yes you are right there, but the manual development roadmap (in the manual) has it planned for 1.04. And it takes more than the tag. The coordinates/tag of the hole must be nested within the coordinates/tag of the polygon that needs the hole. I could not, however, make it work with FSXKml, but it works with xml2shp.

Peter
 
phpdk said:
Hi Rhett,



To the tags, yes you are right there, but the manual development roadmap (in the manual) has it planned for 1.04. And it takes more than the tag. The coordinates/tag of the hole must be nested within the coordinates/tag of the polygon that needs the hole. I could not, however, make it work with FSXKml, but it works with xml2shp.

Peter
Click to expand...

Is this hole technique the proper way to design islands, then? It appears that is how Microsoft made islands in FSX. I assume that is how you are doing the Faeroes? I am going to do a more accurate Solentiname Islands in Lake Nicaragua this way.
 
Hi Rhett,

I think this is the "correct" way, if the island is within a QMID 11 cell. But it can be done in other ways, too, since the sim seems to be very forgiving with respect to water polygon size, shape and overlap. (One thing to remember, though, is that if the water poly crosses a QMID 11 boundary, it will exclude the default water in next cell too).

I do it for the smaller islands of the Faoes (islands wholly within a cell).

Peter
 
phpdk said:
Hi Rhett,

I think this is the "correct" way, if the island is within a QMID 11 cell. But it can be done in other ways, too, since the sim seems to be very forgiving with respect to water polygon size, shape and overlap. (One thing to remember, though, is that if the water poly crosses a QMID 11 boundary, it will exclude the default water in next cell too).

I do it for the smaller islands of the Faoes (islands wholly within a cell).

Peter
Click to expand...

Other than the exclusion issue, what else, if any, does a QMID 11 cell size have to do with a polygon?

Regarding the "other" way you mention...I have considered one way, and that would be to simply draw coastal water polys "around" the islands, such that the island would essentially be simply a part of the land that I did not cover with water.
 
Mace said:
Other than the exclusion issue, what else, if any, does a QMID 11 cell size have to do with a polygon?

Regarding the "other" way you mention...I have considered one way, and that would be to simply draw coastal water polys "around" the islands, such that the island would essentially be simply a part of the land that I did not cover with water.
Click to expand...

Shp2Vec (the SDK vector compiler) uses QMID 11 as the starting clip level for vector data (except freeway traffic, which clips at QMID 15). Polygons may be clipped more agressively if there is a high vertex count.

As to the poly count reported by Shp2Vec, holes in polygons are part of the containing outer ring. It's possible (cannot remember and don't have a test handy) that the hole would not increment the reported count.

:alert: And I would recommend NOT relying on the perceived "friendliness" of the sim for overlapping water polygons. :alert:

It would be a good feature if FSX KML had the ability to display at least a QMID 11 grid and be able to snap to it.

-Doug
 
phpdk said:
Hi Rhett,

I think this is the "correct" way, if the island is within a QMID 11 cell. But it can be done in other ways, too, since the sim seems to be very forgiving with respect to water polygon size, shape and overlap. (One thing to remember, though, is that if the water poly crosses a QMID 11 boundary, it will exclude the default water in next cell too).

I do it for the smaller islands of the Faoes (islands wholly within a cell).

Peter
Click to expand...

You know what is strange, Peter? In the area I am working, the lake water polys are sized to QMID12 grid. QMID - **12**. I do not know why, but that's what they did.

If you open SCENERY\0303\cvx2528.bgl in tmfviewer and look at 11.16north and -84.96 west you will see what I mean. :)

In the stock scenery, there is a nasty-looking wall along the QMID11 boundary just east of there at the -84.84 longitude line.

I am getting rid of that little problem.

------------

Next thing I will do, is try to define a water poly using counterclockwise coordinates, then define one of the islands CLOCKWISE, and see if it works.

If that does not work, I will have to do alternate method, that is to build water polys "around" the islands.
 
Hi Rhett,

the lake water polys are sized to QMID12 grid
Click to expand...
Yes, I think that is quite normal. Probably the software used tries to draw square polygons as much as possible. I think it was the same with water masks in FS9 (almost forgot all about that program...). I find it even more interesting that TMF Viewer also seems to show that the polygons in the oceans sometimes are huge and non-square, but split into QMID11 ones (drawn huge and then split?). Anyway, it seems that shp2vec and the sim will accept any size(?) and shape.

there is a nasty-looking wall along the QMID11 boundary just east of there at the -84.84 longitude line
Click to expand...
I have seen that elsewhere and away from any QMID boundary but at the boundary of a non-square poly. (0601/5112 - 55.70/12.60 - Copenhagen harbour).

Peter
 
phpdk said:
I have seen that elsewhere and away from any QMID boundary but at the boundary of a non-square poly. (0601/5112 - 55.70/12.60 - Copenhagen harbour).

Peter
Click to expand...


Must be something pretty widespread then. I have eliminated it near MNSC (San Carlos, Nic) and things are coming along nicely there. Elevations of the lake were way off, lake should be 32m but it was a lot higher in places. I imagine Copenhagen harbor may have been like that too.
 
phpdk said:
Hi Rhett,

Yes, I think that is quite normal. Probably the software used tries to draw square polygons as much as possible. I think it was the same with water masks in FS9 (almost forgot all about that program...). I find it even more interesting that TMF Viewer also seems to show that the polygons in the oceans sometimes are huge and non-square, but split into QMID11 ones (drawn huge and then split?). Anyway, it seems that shp2vec and the sim will accept any size(?) and shape.

Peter
Click to expand...

For non-freeway traffic vectors Shp2Vec starts clipping at QMID 11. If any of the resulting polygons have more than 128 vertices, they are recursively clipped at higher QMID levels (12, 13...).

-Doug
 
Last edited:
Mace said:
In the stock scenery, there is a nasty-looking wall along the QMID11 boundary just east of there at the -84.84 longitude line.
Click to expand...

These things can happen in our default data where non-ocean polys touch other water polygons (including ocean polys). Yuck. Please bug them as you find them.

Mace said:
Next thing I will do, is try to define a water poly using counterclockwise coordinates, then define one of the islands CLOCKWISE, and see if it works.
Click to expand...

That should do it for you.

-Doug
 
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