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MSFS20 SU12 update

rhumbaflappy

rhumbaflappy

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Any questions or comments? The DevMode GUI seems to have changed a bit. It seems more responsive. The slew function seems to be fixed so it works after using the DevMode camera.
 
For me it seems to have "broken" some things. When moving an apron the whole scenery is "removed" during the moving phase, when I release the mouse button, the scenery shows up again, however since it dissapears the reference to where I am moving the apron to is gone.

Also when using custom materials on the aprons, the same happens when adjusting the texture offset u and y, like above, the scenery "dissapears", which makes impossible to make a precise selection without trial and error.

As always, fix some things, breaks others. Wish I could break things on my job without repercussions lol
 
I haven't seen those issues yet, but it doesn't mean they aren't there. I'm testing with a pretty simple airport.
 
rhumbaflappy said:
I haven't seen those issues yet, but it doesn't mean they aren't there. I'm testing with a pretty simple airport.
Click to expand...
I've just restarted windows, so fingers crossed it will "fix it", but I have my doubts.

If you can, for testing purposes, just select an apron and "slide" it to another position to see of the rest of the scenery "dissapears then refreshes" it would be awesome.

Something kind of similar happened before when creating taxiway lights, sometimes after adding a point the scenery would freeze for 2-3 seconds to refresh, very very annoying
 
I now find the ability to slew in DevMode editing is still messed up. Also. I noted a problem with aprons disappearing or partially disappearing as you change distance from them while editing a project in DevMode. It doesn't seem to carry over to a compiled project in Community.
 
rhumbaflappy said:
I now find the ability to slew in DevMode editing is still messed up. Also. I noted a problem with aprons disappearing or partially disappearing as you change distance from them while editing a project in DevMode. It doesn't seem to carry over to a compiled project in Community.
Click to expand...

Thanks for clearing that up, now we know it's a "feature" that those darlings have left for us.

Do they beta-test flights only, not the dev mode? I mean, this is a very very obvious error that does not take long to discover.

Sorry for venting, but it's very frustrating the update methods always breaking things
 
A couple of things I have stumbled across working on a project today:
  1. Water - Only type "Lake" and "Ocean" seem to work for me now. None of the others show up (Though this seems to work if used by a default body of water).
    I also had a few occasions where type Lake bugged out and only rendered a portion even after building the package and reloading the sim. The next time I was in the Scenery Editor: a quick toggle on and off with the water option seemed to clear it.
  2. Terraforming - Along the edge of a Rectangle or Polygon with terraforming enabled, I would get a sharp drop-off, even if the falloff distance it set to something that should smoothly blend with the surrounding terrain.
    It would still blend, but along the edge of the shape would still be sharp. Almost vertical.
 
AFAIK, MSFS may still utilize the FS Terrain Quad Grid.

In light of recent topics on textured tile dropouts:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/...0-and-are-still-broken-in-1-31-22-0/577738/49

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...d-lines-partly-not-showing.457066/post-914262

...one might wonder if similar considerations still apply to the ability to successfully drape and display very high resolution texture Materials onto terrain only after first setting internal terrain grid density to a sufficiently high level ...as discussed in this thread for FS2Kx :

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/difference-in-resolution-tmfviewer-fsx.427971/


If the same Terrain Grid interval relationship of FS2Kx Quad size to successful drape and display of imagery still applies in SU-12, then (7) Terrain Grid Quad levels lower than intended imagery resolution to be successfully draped / displayed may be required internally by MSFS configuration.

Thus, LOD-20 at 0.0375 Meters =(3.75 cm) / pixel imagery may require a FS Terrain Grid Quad level of 4.8 Meters to successfully drape and display.


Or worded differently, since each Terrain Grid interval doubles or 'halves' the Grid Interval value (...depending on a LOD increase or decrease) the (7) LOD levels lower LOD value required would be 1/256th of imagery resolution intended to be 'draped'.

This is in keeping with the fact that each Terrain Grid Quad is subdivided into 256 "Area Points" which are actually 'mini-Quads'.


While the Microsoft Bing (Virtual Earth) Maps website has only slight numeric differences from FS' grid system parameter values:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/bingmaps/articles/bing-maps-tile-system


...those new to these concepts may wish to refer to this table I created to summarize these concepts for the FS2Kx environment:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/flattens.425495/post-633002


IIUC, whereas in FS2Kx terrain normally shows Quad sized / shaped jagged edges (aka "aliasing"), to achieve 'smoothing' by utilizing a mix of smaller Quad sizes (regardless as to use of mesh or CVX vector sloped flattens), requires that MSFS is first configured with a very high internal Terrain Grid resolution setting.

From images in Asobo's thread superspud linked above, it appears MSFS SU-12 may now have the 'option' to enable terrain smoothing. :wizard:

4737-1679481011925.png


However, it remains to be seen if MSFS SU-12 by default enables terrain smoothing throughout the entire 3D world model ...or only in "some" local areas. :stirthepo

GaryGB
 
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With terraforming, the new method adds a line to each poly in the XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<FSData version="9.0">
<Polygon altitude="285.76940917968750">
<Attribute name="UniqueGUID" guid="{359C73E8-06BE-4FB2-ABCB-EC942F7761D0}" type="GUID" value="{F6AAE3CD-7AB1-485F-9AC0-C0F3D850F406}"/>
<Attribute name="FlattenFalloff" guid="{5548FDB5-2267-4328-8E6F-FD0A45ADEC8F}" type="FLOAT32" value="5.000000"/>
<Attribute name="FlattenMode" guid="{065E9D4D-6984-4D2A-91FD-3C33C4F53B22}" type="UINT8" value="1"/>
<Attribute name="Layer" guid="{9E2B4C3E-7D84-453F-9DCC-B6498FF46703}" type="UINT32" value="2"/>
<Attribute name="PreciseTerraforming" guid="{4D2A51D4-91AC-412F-833E-212CC10E5FBC}" type="UINT8" value="1"/>
<Vertex lat="42.65035299568797" lon="-88.74516749936167"/>
<Vertex lat="42.65087967508948" lon="-88.74615717334680"/>
<Vertex lat="42.64992697114068" lon="-88.74605592594480"/>
</Polygon>
</FSData>

If you use a text editor, you can replace that line with a blank, and the old-style terraforming is shown in the compiled package. The 'value' makes no difference. It's not boolean. Just the presence of the Attribute compiles as the new method.

If anyone has examples of water polys not acting right, I'd be interested in examining them. Attach XML or projects.
 
I love it... the example code is conveniently located next to "The Vegas Club", and across the street from "Whiskey Ranch"; my kind of places. :laughing:

GaryGB
 
rhumbaflappy said:
If anyone has examples of water polys not acting right, I'd be interested in examining them. Attach XML or projects.
Click to expand...
I have this thread going for water polys:

[SU12] Issues with Water Polygons & Excludes - MSFS DevSupport

Enterprise solution for all your Social Q&A needs.
devsupport.flightsimulator.com devsupport.flightsimulator.com

You can download the two projects sources here:

Asobo has these projects as well and will be investigating more on their end.
 
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rhumbaflappy said:
With terraforming, the new method adds a line to each poly in the XML:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<FSData version="9.0">
<Polygon altitude="285.76940917968750">
<Attribute name="UniqueGUID" guid="{359C73E8-06BE-4FB2-ABCB-EC942F7761D0}" type="GUID" value="{F6AAE3CD-7AB1-485F-9AC0-C0F3D850F406}"/>
<Attribute name="FlattenFalloff" guid="{5548FDB5-2267-4328-8E6F-FD0A45ADEC8F}" type="FLOAT32" value="5.000000"/>
<Attribute name="FlattenMode" guid="{065E9D4D-6984-4D2A-91FD-3C33C4F53B22}" type="UINT8" value="1"/>
<Attribute name="Layer" guid="{9E2B4C3E-7D84-453F-9DCC-B6498FF46703}" type="UINT32" value="2"/>
<Attribute name="PreciseTerraforming" guid="{4D2A51D4-91AC-412F-833E-212CC10E5FBC}" type="UINT8" value="1"/>
<Vertex lat="42.65035299568797" lon="-88.74516749936167"/>
<Vertex lat="42.65087967508948" lon="-88.74615717334680"/>
<Vertex lat="42.64992697114068" lon="-88.74605592594480"/>
</Polygon>
</FSData>

If you use a text editor, you can replace that line with a blank, and the old-style terraforming is shown in the compiled package. The 'value' makes no difference. It's not boolean. Just the presence of the Attribute compiles as the new method.
Click to expand...
Adding to this, if you use rectangles as well (Terraforming or DEM), you can do a find and replace in the XML for:
precision="TRUE"

Then just change it to FALSE. This will disable the new method for rectangles.
 
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rhumbaflappy said:
Were these created from shapfiles in a GIS program? I ask, because some attribute combinations of polys were impossible to recreate with the DevMode.
Click to expand...
Nope. All done in sim.
Although, the shapes data in both packs was started in 2020 and has been through every sim update. Some polygons were created back when you could have a single poly do terraforming, water and vegetation. Though, all of this should have been purged. I did all that shortly after they made that change. Maybe what you are seeing is some leftovers from this that just didn't get purged?

I did notice some water polygons that had vegetation attributes, but I couldn't tell if this was old data that never got purged or if it was because I had duplicated the water poly and just changed it to vegetation and it combines them for performance reasons? Though, if the poly's are separate in the sim, I would guess they would be separate in the XML...

Do you have an example of what you are seeing?

Edit: I went through my Alaska Lakes pack poly to poly and ticked water and vegetation options off then back on again. I also found a few dozen polygons which were still set as water and vegetation.
So, all of that legacy stuff should be gone now. Here's the new XML if you want to have a look. I am still seeing missing water in multiple locations covered by the scenery. In some cases, I was able to get water types such as "pond" to display, however in other areas it will not display in the editor or after compiled in the sim.
 

Attachments

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For example, from the DevMode, I saved ESD_Alaska_Lakes_Mat-Su_SHP.xml as a shapefile (TestPoly).
Here's some examples of the flattens with noveg and watertype with a priority:
Untitled.png

I don't know if the sim handles this OK. but it might be a problem, Probably better to handle flattens, vegetation, and water as separate polys. But the first poly, for example, displays fine in the sim. Flattened, noveg, and water displayed... go figure. But the one before it and after, in the DevMode list, don't display so well. Clicking on the poly names in Devmode, sometimes changes the name?
Some polys get sorted by priority, but the water polys have their own odd boolean type of sorting. So that might cause a problem when mixing types.
 
Hi Dick,
See the edit to my post above. I think I was typing that up as you were doing your post.

Edit: Though, looking at my new XML, I still see a lot of entries containing water, terraforming (precision) and vegetation. Though, this should not be the case as none of this is toggled when I look in the scenery editor. That is, unless this is the new default.
 
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Sorry for polluting this thread with new posts, I just keep digging and finding new info.
So, it definitely seems like the sim is not stripping out any of those legacy polygon entries from way back when. Here is a post I just published over on Dev Support:

I went through my XML and saw that there are still water, vegetation, and terraforming entries bundled together into one polygon entry. This is all legacy polygon handling and as we know, each option should now have it's own dedicated polygon. So, I did an experiment..

I set a name for one of the polys that showed as being terraforming, but also had a water entry and found it in the scenery editor. Only terraforming was checked. Unchecked terraforming, checked water, unchecked water and checked terraforming again. Saved and the XML entry stayed the same.

Then I created a new polygon nearby and set it to terraforming and renamed it so I could easily find it in the XML. Only "FlattenMode" and "PreciseTerraforming" entries show up.

So, it appears that the scenery editor is not stripping legacy entries out of the XML when saving or even redoing settings. So, if you created any polygon features before this change was put in place many many updates ago, I would check your entries.

I have not yet attempted to strip all that out manually as I do not want to accidentally delete anything. I may isolate the different types of polys and then do it to see if it makes a difference.
Click to expand...
polygon_legacy_leftovers.jpg


Edit: I just noticed that I was viewing the wrong entry in the properties window, but I went back and checked and the story is exactly the same.
 
Yep, frustrating. I duplicated a few of your polys and separated the attributes by type. No apparent change, but noticed other nearby polys were now in error... changed something back, and suddenly, all the polys displayed OK.. for no reason. I had saved the mess I made, and reloaded it. I went to the poly. And it flashed as water OK and then back to dirt. Unbelieveable. This was your poly, but I duplicated it and made it separated by attributes. All the while my CPU fan is going like a jet engine.
 
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