Vegetation exclusion

[Fabien77]

Hi !
Impossible for me to remove vegetation with polygons.
Vegetation slide bar doesn't change anything.
Any idea how to do ?
Is that a general bug or just on my pc ?
Thanks for any help.

 

[=rk=]

The bug does not seem to be general, as you are the only one reporting it and I am the only other person I know of, that is experiencing it. It seems to have started since SU10 and the previous trick of reducing the Vegetation Size slider to zero, no longer works for me. However, since others are not reporting it and I have seen grass rendered "properly" at my own project on one occasion, I have begun experimentation to see if there is some sort of switch. I would like to test an airport that was created outside of ADE, to eliminate that possibility.

Below are images of the same location. Both recorded since SU10, one shows grass as intended, one shows uncontrollable abundance and the difference was the number of other packages loaded and a switched but largely identical airport.xml.

I believe the issue is a consequence of Asobo restructuring the way scenery package priority is assigned.

 

[AlpineScenery]

I have had it randomly stop showing your real-time changes, but I don't recall ever having it completely ignoring the veg removal after reloading the entire game.
Whether or not it will show real-time changes is very flakey lately.

 

[jpfil]

Same problem at Signal Hill for the environment of Cabot Tower POI in Newfoundland since WU11 canada. I can remove some trees but others no.

 

[Jérôme]

Hello, same problem here: impossible to exclude the vegetation with a polygon, but I am 100% sure that it was possible before. This problem has been raised after one of the updates but I don't know which one and I still don't know how to remove the vegetation...

 

[AlpineScenery]

Try terraforming first, duplicate the poly, then on the 2nd one set vegetation (just an idea not sure if it will work)...

 

[GaryGB]

Are we back to this again ?

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/polygon-to-exclude-vegetation/496868

BTW: I have not been able to make this work yet since SU-10 / WU-11.


Is MSFS DevMode FUBAR-ed again ?

GaryGB

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I think the process is that you need to use more than one polygon to achieve the results you want. Material might need it's own polygon, and excludes may need their own. Vegetation deletion is done with the density slider set to 0.

 

[GaryGB]

Thanks, Dick; I do recall your prior admonition to use separate Polygons until more is certain about how DevMode ends up working.

Multi-Attribute Polygons had been working for Months now; but I'll try that approach again this afternoon.


PS: Do you happen to know how to permanently toggle off: DevMode Menu > Options > Ground > Enable Water Flattening ?

GaryGB

 

[Fabien77]

I think the process is that you need to use more than one polygon to achieve the results you want. Material might need it's own polygon, and excludes may need their own. Vegetation deletion is done with the density slider set to 0.

Thanks, I know that but when I set the slide to zero, vegetation doesn't disapppear.
The slide is not changing anything so I can't do any scenery at all.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

The slide is not changing anything so I can't do any scenery at all.

Make a project with an example and attach it here as a zip file, and I'll look at it.

 

[=rk=]

I am absolutely certain that the vegetation density slider is ineffective on my polygons created in DevMode, unless I apply a material and unselect transparent. I have tried multiple combinations of excludes, terraforms, sliders and revisiting projects that used to work, that no longer work.

 

[GaryGB]

I also did a quick test at C59 with an empty Community folder.

I attempted to make a Polygon to exclude the trees on the left of the RWY-18 position at C59; the trees persisted..

With that Project still loaded / active, I Teleported to my current Project area in the PNW and was able to create a Polygon to exclude the trees in my airfield area, but the trees persisted.

When I attempted to save the vector SHP data into the PackageSources\Data sub-folder, MSFS crashed with this error:

I then restarted MSFS, and made a Polygon to exclude the trees on the left of the RWY-18 position at C59; this time the trees excluded.

With that Project still loaded / active, I Teleported to my current Project area in the PNW and was able to create a Polygon to exclude the trees in my airfield area, that actually excluded those trees.

When I attempted to save the vector SHP data into the PackageSources\Data sub-folder, MSFS did NOT crash.

I exited the Project Editor and MSFS, then restored a backup of my Community folder.

I then restarted MSFS, during which time it stated it was synching data (with an MS online storage area ?).

When the synching was done, MSFS started normally.

When I re-started MSFS, everything seems to work properly, and my PNW scenery appears intact ...with a working tree exclusion.

GaryGB

 

[=rk=]

Great! Now do it with grass...and you're quite confident, that I need only jump around to one other airport, while I'm making mine? Is there a particular place in the PNW we need to jump to? I know Oregon pretty well..

It kind of seems simpler to place colored polygons that can be edited out when the problem is resolved by Asobo.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

I've had occasions (in DevMode) where I had to take the Developer camera to an extreme elevation, and bring it back down to display poly and aprons correctly.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Hi Rick.
I looked at your ZUBI that you attached above.

This is your big poly. It is killing off all vegetation (a bit of overkill as only the density factor needs to go to 0). It also controls elevation and selects "L" as the type of default buildings the sim will automatically place. The priority is 0, so any polys meant to go over this need to have a priority of at least 1. As a rule of thumb, I set my poly priorities as 1 for a base, and then apply polys over that with 2 or higher... just in case Asobo or Microsoft has already set polys as priority 0 in the area. If you didn't want any default buildings, you could have set that in this poly, and got rid of the many noTIN excludes.

The error showing on one poly is simply that it has an unknown biome selected... so that isn't showing at all. This is caused by my custom biome setup. (Asobo has quietly changed something in their default biomes).

 

[=rk=]

Yes, the scenery has only one poly to control vegetation and terraforming, for the time being, thank you for reviewing. The version I left "locked and loaded" for you, was created specifically as a consequence of the vegetation issue, so I'd eliminated all other terraform/vegetation excluding polygons to avoid some sort of priority issue. There is no default scenery in the area, no other packages affecting the area, so in my mind, the matter of "priority," will have been deprioritized.

Hi Rick.
I looked at your ZUBI that you attached above.


This is your big poly. It is killing off all vegetation (a bit of overkill as only the density factor needs to go to 0).

The error showing on one poly is simply that it has an unknown biome selected... so that isn't showing at all.

Not overkill, at all. Over "futility," because vegetation sliders do not work, for me. You interpreting that after setting Vegetation Scale to zero and seeing no results, then futilely pushing the other sliders to zero, also with no effect, would be the desired interpretation of my futility, because that is about the size of it. For me, the exclusion is not killing of all vegetation, some vegetation, or even a single blade of grass. Are you confirming my vegetation exclusion works, in your system?

When vegetation sliders failed to work, I experimented with other means to attenuate grass. I see that my airport runway has environmental properties that other polygons lack and that perhaps "Airport Size" affects the range within which grass will be suppressed. I know that the suppression used to work with airport size "L" selected. 90% of the buildings on that island are handmade, but thank you, again, for the heads up on how to get the remaining ones to change shape.

The one polygon I set and left as "biome," was a test to see if sliders work on other vegetation than grass, they do. Are you saying "Scrub_Instead_Of_Trees," is not a default biome type?

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Are you saying "Scrub_Instead_Of_Trees," is not a default biome type?

Nope. It is default. I use a custom biome for the world as Asobo (or BlackShark) has screwed up the vegetation types and placements. They updated the default biomes, and I needed to change my definitions a bit. I can chose the default vegetation types, or my own vegetation types in DevMode. I then covered the earth in polygons to show a more standard general vegetative representation of the planet, according to the official EcoRegions.

 

[GaryGB]

Great! Now do it with grass...and you're quite confident, that I need only jump around to one other airport, while I'm making mine? Is there a particular place in the PNW we need to jump to? I know Oregon pretty well..

It kind of seems simpler to place colored polygons that can be edited out when the problem is resolved by Asobo.

I'm not certain yet as to whether Asobo intended for Grass to be excluded by Vegetation Exclusion Polygons.

AFAIK Grass is rendered as a function of local terrain mapped Material type / colors; it is a separate annotation routine from that of Trees.


This image is a Vegetation Exclude Polygon area in my Project that sets all sliders to (0) except Brightness at 1.0 (less=darker annotation):

Note that Grass persists like a deplorable "Grass Roots" rebellion by a Poaceaen, ubiquitous family of monocotyledons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae


Allergenic Autogen Anomaly ?

< Zoysia ! >

(...Gesundheit.)

Zoysia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

AFAIK, it is by design in the current SDK methods, that Grass is rendered where there is various shades of Green, and less so in "Dirt" areas.


IIRC, to exclude Grass, one must use these methods:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/issue-with-grass-not-the-smoking-kind.451405/post-874261

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=site:www.fsdeveloper.com+MSFS+Exclude+Grass+concrete


Notice the OSM Road is able to exclude the Grass even if superimposed over MSFS' default MSVE (aka "BING") photo-real imagery ground texture; notice as well that OSM Roads are "tinted" with the color of underlying MSFS default MSVE photo-real imagery ground textures:

PS: Has anyone else noticed that when MS' servers choke during DevMode, in offline mode, land class type textures are applied to OSM roads ?

One might wonder if we can toggle the 'transparency' / 'Opacity' attribute so OSM roads have a proper road texture in online mode ?

Regardless, IIUC, there should be no Grass popping up through OSM Roads anywhere in the MSFS world.

GaryGB

 

[=rk=]

I'm not certain yet as to whether Asobo intended for Grass to be excluded by Vegetation Exclusion Polygons.

I cannot speak to your certainty about Asobo's intentions. I can tell you that the Vegetation Slider used to work at my project, to remove grass and now it does not. In post #2, you can see a side by side comparison of Asobo procedural color matching grass and the same area, covered uniformly with Asobo procedural vomit green grass. If the grass worked as the first picture, I would not need vegetation excludes at all. Below are two images of the same project, pre SU10, one with an active exclude for grass and one without.

Since SU10, there does not seem to be attenuation of the vomit grass whatsoever, the only thing besides a visible material polygon, is essentially the same, in the form of runway markings:

However, I just checked OSM relevance and the vomit green grass is attenuated.

You can even see the OSM road kind of "pie sliced" into the terrain, with some sort of default material and the vomit grass even tries to "grow" between the wedges.

Anyway, this all changed after SU10. While solving another issue with ADE, I briefly saw the procedural colored grass, you describe. It was..inspirational. If I had known what was to come, I would likely have left the computer running and just reveled in it for a few days. Now, the situation is as I've described and perhaps no one else has vegetation issues, until it is trees. I've tried other airports in the same area and the only common link I can find beyond geographic region, is SU10.