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FSX reef

Messages
5,214
Hi,

I wonder why reef is land class and not water class.
I am also wondering how I can (i.e. with what tool) change the water color close to the shore so as to imitate tropical reefs. (Default shores do sometimes present shallow light blue water with reef like underground but if you alter the shore line to match the real world, the reef like shallow water is replaced by dark blue ocean water).

Roby

Update: Golf Hotel Delta explained: "But a reef is not water. A reef is a solid land mass under the water (on which many a ship has been holed)."
But that is the whole point: you cannot put it under water!
 
Messages
258
Country
us-california
I wondered about the reef landclass too. The only ways I've heard of to make a reef is to use photo and blend/water masks, or use water and set the water class to one of the shallow tropical types.
 
Messages
5,214
Thanks Barry,
I already have the first but as I am not sure I can use the photo real, I would like to substitute it by land/water class.
As for the water class, I get an error (TIF not found) when selecting one of the shallow tropical water classes.

Roby
 
Messages
558
Country
newzealand
Some observations from my experience:
You can update 'waterclass' pixels using resample, similar to resampling a raster landclass file- This changes the colour of the water.
You can put also use a reef landclass by re-shaping the shoreline so that the reef is 'land'. Unfortunately, there is a bug in FSX where if a ground texture intersects a coastline, the alpha channel isn't rendered (The alpha channel/transparency channel for ground textures is rendered with a water effect). I initially had a great idea to have mudflats with small areas of water defined on the texture with the alpha channel...which worked fine on all the tiles except for the ones which intersected the water.
 
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