FSX Rendering priority

[lordofwings]

I am designing an airport using FSX Planner, with it I do the airport, taxiways, some generic scenery objects, etc. I have a rectangular Exclude polygon in which I place the runway. Since the rectangle is N-S aligned the runway is slanted with regards to that polygon but that is no issue.

Then with FSX Kml to draw terrain stuff such as trees, hydro polygons. etc.

I then combine both sets of BGL and place it in a directory (texture/scenery) that corresponds that that airport alone, i.e. MPSA.

The issue I have is, some of the tree patches I drew (polygons) in FSX KML are supposed to be rendering atop some parts of the green airfield rectangle so that it looks like real life. Unfortunately what I see is that green rectangle where the airfield is located rendered ATOP the tree polygons I created with FSX KML.

Is there a way to overcome that situation so taht the airfield is not always restricted to being in a green rectangle? that without having to set two different scenery directories for the same airport?

 

[arno]

Hi,

Did you try to make an exclude for the background polygon? That is probably the approach I would take. You could redraw it in the right location if you want to.

 

[lordofwings]

Yes, as you can see in this new attachment I created an exclusion polygon in FSX planner and to that I set the "Exclude All Objects" property.

 

[LCSims]

Yes, as you can see in this new attachment I created an exclusion polygon in FSX planner and to that I set the "Exclude All Objects" property.

No, that's not going to work. The items involved dictate how they are approached and you're trying to take out autogen with an exclusion rectangle. Won't work in FSX.

Ground based scenery is done through the Shp2Vec compiler. Scenery objects through the BGLComp compiler. Autogen is ground based scenery associated with the underlying texture. So an exclusion needs to be made that is compiled with Shp2Vec, either through SBuilderX, FSX KML or ADE.

Your original question dealt with having two polygons trying to affect a single area. FSX doesn't work crossways within the scenery library. If one file in the scenery layer takes an action, another cannot amend that action. Note, I'm addressing this specific case when I say that. Your choices are to redraw the airport area in more than one polygon. One can flatten, mask and exclude autogen, the other can lay adjacent to that polygon and flatten, but not exclude autogen or mask. Seeing as these two (or more) polygons do not interact with each other, they can create the desired effects at the airport.

 

[lordofwings]

Thanks for the clarification, I thought those things were additive in their definition order. In FSX KML you can set the order of your polygons and that lead me to believe that what I "drew" later would override what was "drawn" before in the rendering process. I was wrong.

So, with that in mind I took my FSX Planner (airport) model and removed the blue exclusion rectangle. However, after testing the scenery again the green grass rectangle that suppressed the other landclasses was still there.

Then my next step was to modify my FSX KML project to include an exclude (pun intended) and tag it with Exclude_AirportBackgrounds. That did the trick, now my tree patches are over the green airfield surroundings making it look more natural.

Strange thing is, when the airport background rectangle is there, the landclass poly that was underneath and protruded on some sides looked more like all the vegetation had been stamped to the ground. Afterwards there were some (autogen) trees on it.

My only remaining problem is that the Landclass tag I use still looks ugly, kind of more suitable for high altitude where you can't appreciate details. I wish I had a custom landclass poly with better details.

Oh yes, the other problem that remains is that I have not been able to create any photoscenery. Tried SBuilderX and I think SceneGenX but no go

Anyway, at least one problem down, thanks.