MSFS20 Problematic MSFS Ground Poly

[Majid]

Hi,
First of all sorry about my broken English , I apologize for that ,
I need help with my ground poly for msfs , I am working on Gpoly for msfs using 3ds max 2022 , every thing is looking good when i work on my project inside 3ds max (pic #1) , even the GP looking fine when i import it into MCX (pic#2) , the problem appear when i import the file (gltf) into sim as a projected mesh (pic #3) , some areas texture is not correct and looks wavy , looking for any possible solution .
What have I done to correct it?
1-used polygon and terraforming to correct terrain surface .
2- try to separate GP elements ( asphalts and concretes) and import them into sim individually over each other.
3-Export the model in various formats fbx , ade , 3ds etc and convert them into gltf as well.
none of these help me fix the issue.
PS : I import exported gltf from 3ds max into mcx to working on textures , its easier for me to do it using mcx.

Regards

 

[Finni]

Could you post a wireframe of your model? I assume it looks something like the attached picture, vertices in orange.

Try and add a few edge cuts like I did in green. All faces will be triangulated in the Sim, and sometimes - especially with complex models, it doesn't do it correctly leading to texture warping.

Sent fra min MAR-LX1A via Tapatalk

 

[Majid]

Could you post a wireframe of your model? I assume it looks something like the attached picture, vertices in orange.

Try and add a few edge cuts like I did in green. All faces will be triangulated in the Sim, and sometimes - especially with complex models, it doesn't do it correctly leading to texture warping.

Sent fra min MAR-LX1A via Tapatal

Hi dear finni ,thanks for your reply , I was very suspicious to wireframes too because i checked my model in MCX and notice about some strange wrap in this specific area of model (pic #1) , also upload the wireframe shot for you to check what happend exactly in this area (pic #2) and finally i did what you suggested to cut edges but unfortunately the problem not solved. (pics #3 #4)

Majid.

 

[=rk=]

i checked my model in MCX and notice about some strange wrap in this specific area of model (pic #1)

Hello! What you are calling a "strange wrap," is the graphical representation of texture UV values only, without the color of the texture. FS2020 has very strict limitations on UV values outside the zero to one norm and Arno has designed that feature to display shades from white, meaning no distortion, to deep blue, meaning unacceptable distortion. The algorithm is quite accurate and the reason you see the distortion only in FS2020, is because most graphics software, including MCX, 3ds Max and Sketchup, can handle the calculations required to render extreme UV value textures.

Likely, if you opened the Hierarchy Director, right clicked the node for the blue tinted texture and selected "Normalize texture coordinates," it would remove the distortion.

 

[Kuba320]

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...uv-after-building-package.455256/#post-902021 same problem

 

[Majid]

Hello! What you are calling a "strange wrap," is the graphical representation of texture UV values only, without the color of the texture. FS2020 has very strict limitations on UV values outside the zero to one norm and Arno has designed that feature to display shades from white, meaning no distortion, to deep blue, meaning unacceptable distortion. The algorithm is quite accurate and the reason you see the distortion only in FS2020, is because most graphics software, including MCX, 3ds Max and Sketchup, can handle the calculations required to render extreme UV value textures.

Likely, if you opened the Hierarchy Director, right clicked the node for the blue tinted texture and selected "Normalize texture coordinates," it would remove the distortion.

Hello rk , thanks for your useful info , I really didn't know anything about texture distortion in MCX and its duty , now its getting more complicated for me ! because i don't know how to Normalize texture coordinates in 3dsmax , I have to say i only texture the the model by adding uvw and used planer mapping , could you please tell me about Normalize ?

 

[Majid]

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...uv-after-building-package.455256/#post-902021 same problem

Hi Kuba320 , yeah this is my exact issue , The problem is I dont know how to solve it using Normalize texture coordinates .

 

[=rk=]

There is a lot of online information about UV mapping and here is the link to the SDK article. You want to read the section about UV precision.

General Principles

docs.flightsimulator.com

For me, this gets a little hazy, but basically what it means, is that if you take a photographic style texture and just rubber stamp it everywhere, the UV values remain close to zero. It is true that each time you stamp it, you are moving at least one unit value from the original, but I think the percentage amount remains the same, so that is the zero. Now, when you bend around curves and turn around corners, you bend the texture, like skewing a lens and the software will only trouble itself to calculate so much distortion.

You'd commented on 3ds Max, which I happen to have available. Here is the Material Editor pane open on a model of a wig-wag that is available in the Resources section. You can see that there are values for the UV offset, tiling and angle, as well as modifications to those parameters and that this texture is set with zero offset.

Likely, you could examine your own texture, manually adjust those values within the zero/one range and I am guessing that will throw the texture into an alignment you don't prefer. however, I bet with practice and this knowledge, you will be able to do both, bend the texture to within the maximum range and have a desirable effect.

The normalize function is available from the Hierarchy Editor and also I believe, from a pull down menu. There is a manual that describes functionality included in the release.

 

[Majid]

There is a lot of online information about UV mapping and here is the link to the SDK article. You want to read the section about UV precision.

General Principles

docs.flightsimulator.com

For me, this gets a little hazy, but basically what it means, is that if you take a photographic style texture and just rubber stamp it everywhere, the UV values remain close to zero. It is true that each time you stamp it, you are moving at least one unit value from the original, but I think the percentage amount remains the same, so that is the zero. Now, when you bend around curves and turn around corners, you bend the texture, like skewing a lens and the software will only trouble itself to calculate so much distortion.

You'd commented on 3ds Max, which I happen to have available. Here is the Material Editor pane open on a model of a wig-wag that is available in the Resources section. You can see that there are values for the UV offset, tiling and angle, as well as modifications to those parameters and that this texture is set with zero offset.

View attachment 84647

Likely, you could examine your own texture, manually adjust those values within the zero/one range and I am guessing that will throw the texture into an alignment you don't prefer. however, I bet with practice and this knowledge, you will be able to do both, bend the texture to within the maximum range and have a desirable effect.

The normalize function is available from the Hierarchy Editor and also I believe, from a pull down menu. There is a manual that describes functionality included in the release.

Thank you so much dear rk , just going to read and do more tests about this , I will inform you about the result by mention you right here in this post.
Regards
Majid

 

[=rk=]

 

[Wickedbacon92]

There is a lot of online information about UV mapping and here is the link to the SDK article. You want to read the section about UV precision.

General Principles

docs.flightsimulator.com

For me, this gets a little hazy, but basically what it means, is that if you take a photographic style texture and just rubber stamp it everywhere, the UV values remain close to zero. It is true that each time you stamp it, you are moving at least one unit value from the original, but I think the percentage amount remains the same, so that is the zero. Now, when you bend around curves and turn around corners, you bend the texture, like skewing a lens and the software will only trouble itself to calculate so much distortion.

You'd commented on 3ds Max, which I happen to have available. Here is the Material Editor pane open on a model of a wig-wag that is available in the Resources section. You can see that there are values for the UV offset, tiling and angle, as well as modifications to those parameters and that this texture is set with zero offset.

View attachment 84647

Likely, you could examine your own texture, manually adjust those values within the zero/one range and I am guessing that will throw the texture into an alignment you don't prefer. however, I bet with practice and this knowledge, you will be able to do both, bend the texture to within the maximum range and have a desirable effect.

The normalize function is available from the Hierarchy Editor and also I believe, from a pull down menu. There is a manual that describes functionality included in the release.

UV Precision, there's all sorts of factors to it, specifically with aircraft is the problem you're mentioning here. FSPackagebuilder uses a much more compressed, compression, for our GLTF's in flight sim. Meaning several factors come in to play, say you've mapped an overhead shell, but cut out the cylindrical insets for the lights and mapped them elsewhere in a cylindrical way. The further you move from the source uv, the more likely precision fails. This also means scaling, keep textel density for everything and don't "SmartUV" complete objects that should be peeled.

Now, for the above issue, UV precision comes into play another way. Value of between -5 and +5 is what's recommended, 10 on both is sometimes okay, anything after that you're "surfing" as you see. What is UV Precsion for ground polys? Tiled textures.
In graph form to better understand.

You can see the conundrum, as my international was probably tiled +200.
But, after 8 months of (back when there was no documentation) playing, testing, studying, doing math (yuck) It made sense, and a short while later, I found a solution to my dilema, that takes about 10 seconds and two clicks of your mouse in blender, AFTER you have mapped your ground poly however the heck you want.
I'll leave a screenshot of my groundpoly's UV mapping alongside the 3D viewport, before and after the seriously dumbfounding method that was tried after everything logical didn't work.
Here's the Before UV and viewport.

And here is after bringing that mapping into precision, roughly +3, non-destructively maintaining your mapping.

And here, in sim shots taken now. This ground poly has the above After UV mapping, the one going every which way from sunday.


Relative perspective:


Furthest point to the left


Furthest point on ground poly from 0,0


And again


I'll do a write-up/Youtube video on what to do/methodology behind it, when I have a bit of sparetime!
(Of course this is Blender, but it translates the same, and i'm certain there must be some plugin/feature/modifier for 3DS that can produce the same results.)
What you're looking to do is non-destructively CLIP UV , setting clipping parameters to 1.00 and -0.50 for best results. ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE FULLY MAPPED YOUR GROUNDPOLY TO YOUR LIKING, and be sure to save a risidual, wavey-mapped groundpoly for safe keeping, in case you're like me having to re-touch things like there's no tomorrow....OCD....)
I'm around every day if anyone is curious and needs assistance, i'll help where I can, just holler at my inbox!

 

[Majid]

UV Precision, there's all sorts of factors to it, specifically with aircraft is the problem you're mentioning here. FSPackagebuilder uses a much more compressed, compression, for our GLTF's in flight sim. Meaning several factors come in to play, say you've mapped an overhead shell, but cut out the cylindrical insets for the lights and mapped them elsewhere in a cylindrical way. The further you move from the source uv, the more likely precision fails. This also means scaling, keep textel density for everything and don't "SmartUV" complete objects that should be peeled.

Now, for the above issue, UV precision comes into play another way. Value of between -5 and +5 is what's recommended, 10 on both is sometimes okay, anything after that you're "surfing" as you see. What is UV Precsion for ground polys? Tiled textures.
In graph form to better understand.

View attachment 84648
You can see the conundrum, as my international was probably tiled +200.
But, after 8 months of (back when there was no documentation) playing, testing, studying, doing math (yuck) It made sense, and a short while later, I found a solution to my dilema, that takes about 10 seconds and two clicks of your mouse in blender, AFTER you have mapped your ground poly however the heck you want.
I'll leave a screenshot of my groundpoly's UV mapping alongside the 3D viewport, before and after the seriously dumbfounding method that was tried after everything logical didn't work.
Here's the Before UV and viewport.
View attachment 84649

And here is after bringing that mapping into precision, roughly +3, non-destructively maintaining your mapping.


View attachment 84650

And here, in sim shots taken now. This ground poly has the above After UV mapping, the one going every which way from sunday.


Relative perspective:


Furthest point to the left


Furthest point on ground poly from 0,0


And again


I'll do a write-up/Youtube video on what to do/methodology behind it, when I have a bit of sparetime!
(Of course this is Blender, but it translates the same, and i'm certain there must be some plugin/feature/modifier for 3DS that can produce the same results.)
What you're looking to do is non-destructively CLIP UV , setting clipping parameters to 1.00 and -0.50 for best results. ONLY AFTER YOU HAVE FULLY MAPPED YOUR GROUNDPOLY TO YOUR LIKING, and be sure to save a risidual, wavey-mapped groundpoly for safe keeping, in case you're like me having to re-touch things like there's no tomorrow....OCD....)
I'm around every day if anyone is curious and needs assistance, i'll help where I can, just holler at my inbox!

Hello wickedbeacone ,
Thanks for sharing this useful info with me , and of course you did great job with your scenery project , im in testing UVs phase to achieve the best result. i will share the result with you all later.
Best,

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