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Puffy Terrain

CrashTestDummy

CrashTestDummy

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I'm hoping there is a trick to this because right now its a mission...

When one pushes back a mountain, or uses a water mask, or in some way "bends" the mesh... the ground gets puffy.

And that means I have to reroute my roads after a modification, often several times... the reason is that I have car models and like driving around my scenery.

Even if one lays a VT road along the side of a mountain, its often unusable because it gets too puffy... because it carves the mountain.

What I mean by puffy is that there will be a bump in the road, and the car drives right through it... you see white and the roots of tree's ;)

Also have another problem... when I build stuff on a mountain, and then want to take a road up there... it flattens the mountain, and thats not what I want it to do.

Very often... if I could just get it to lay the texture on the surface... a suitable road can be found by driving the route... but if the road carves into the mountain... that often creates its own puffy problems.

Is there a trick to the puffy issue?
Can one get a road to lay on the surface of the mesh, without any flattening?

On FS9...
Thanks
 
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One way around this... what I do now is draw a poly where I want the road and then select a dirt class... that lays on the mesh...

But naturally I lose the night lights of roads...

So a better problem definition is that lines (roads) are carving all the time...

On a steep slope it must carve, thats what makes those passes through the mountains... but with that comes the puffy problem... but when you laying the road yourself by driving the terrain... then line on the surface is what you need, and I cant get it to do that.

I need to figure out if you can turn the knife off in line... thats the issue
 
Road1.jpg

This is a section of road...
Notice that its crossing a bridge on a river and theres a waterfall just out of view.
Notice also how the road has etched (flattened) the path its on...

I made that river... it pushed the mesh out the way to do it... and now you get puffy sections.

Road2.jpg

This section for eg is just a little puffy... look at the car tyres, they under the ground.

From the air it looks fine, you'll only know this if you drive around in cars as well.

On a big puffy bump, the whole car can disappear ;)
You don't know its puffy until you in quicksand... the car does drive through but its not a nice user experience... its because the masks are bending the original mesh.

So what I then have to do is move the road, maybe apply a little flatten if its bad, but its a hit and miss thing because the road itself is moving the mountain and making puffy sections... which look like normal bumps... but they not hard...

Now if I could tell SBldr to not let the road flatten its path... its often easy to find a path the car likes... but thats no good if the road then goes and moves the mountain... and so you find a bad puffy patch and you move the road again... and eventually get lucky...

If you making roads and rivers from a sat image I can see why FS has to do it, but when you actually walking out the exact path... then you'll make the flatten if you have to... and want the road on the surface...

I hope that makes sense... the road itself, messes up the road because it changes the whole mountain... and so whatever u did before, was a waste of time ;) Its hit and miss... thats the problem.

The road must sit on the surface... unless told not to...

Near the peak of a ridge on a mountain its really bad... as soon as you apply the road, the mountain turns into a table top... and that looks bad... the VT lines are roads are too clever... they have a built in knife (flatten) and thats what I cant figure out how to turn off...

If I make a poly that looks like the road... that texture sits on the mesh, it doesn't move the mountain... but thats a crazy amount of work... and the texture is not annotated (no night lights)...

I was wondering... how is a runway actually done because it looks much better that the low res roads... how come runways have a better res?

Because I use the roads... a better texture would also be nice if I have to redo the whole thing...

Look at that road... thats an asphalt road with a center line... it still looks like dust to me ;)

So... ?
thx
 
View attachment 7129

Heres another shot of that river... you can see how much I carved out of the mountain... the price is puffyness ;)

And if you do make scenery where the roads work, its quite spectacular, is amazing actually, like i wonder how many people have seen the animated amusement park in FS9... when you drive past you cant help but notice the big dipper and cars moving ;)

And the views are great... heres a view of my volcano from the road... damn I like FS ;)

View attachment 7130

Just my roads spoiling it a little... a few puffy area's
 
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View attachment 7131

And Arno...
I used ADE for the airport... v v good dude...

I can see the white line at night... but not my roads :(

View attachment 7132

And here is a nearby island, they pyromaniacs... what i do is take a pitt and do aerobatics in the fireworks with the quad speakers turned up... its amazing...

... by my roads look crap... help!... ha ha

I have hundreds of pics of this island...

Oh and you see the little red beacon on the airport, thats a layer of info towers that I've made... if the aircraft is near one.... it tells you about things to do on the island... damn I like FS :)
 
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Ok one more and then its bed time for me...

First thing my info tower says to a pilot landing at conjure is... fly past the volcano at dusk... and this is why...

View attachment 7135

Cool hey :)

... but my damn roads .... :D
 
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Theory... after much deliberation, I think that if one makes the layer level higher, the roads will lose their "carving" effect...

I cant do that now, it will move my mountains and the trouble with that is that one then has to redo all the effects... like camp fires and people.

So I'll try it later... my roads are now layer 6 and I think that after layer 8, it will lay the road on the surface and not carve out the mountain.

But to really fix this, I have to figure out how to make my own road textures and my real problem is that the feature "named" textures in SB9 is broken on my system.

So... I think... higher layer... less knife action...

I can see now why X went photo scenery... this is work making the ground "grow" what you want... but I prefer "intelligent" ground to pretty pictures.

I think I'm going to end up using both... something like this...

  • Use "intelligent" ground to carve out mountains, fix puffy areas... what I'm doing now...
  • Then take a picture of those big ugly dirt roads... which should look like tar
  • Make a photo mask of some good looking roads... draw them
  • And overlay it over my island...
  • Then I'll have to annotate for street effects as well...

I'm on FS9...

Its interesting because theres a conceptual difference...

  • X seems to be big pretty picture and then you grow your tree's
  • 9 is let the ground grow your stuff and use pretty pictures where you have to.... so the road thing is now one big experiment...

My general impression is one of awe... these terrain coders are gurus.
 
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