Can you play God with the Sea in FS2004?

[MikePotten]

I'm presently working on a project (Scenery for UK Portsmouth Royal Naval Dockyard) including ships, the quay/dock itself etc. and would like the dry docks to be realistic i.e. I want to place some ships in dry dock without the water. So, my question is, I know how to use the 'Flatten' command to flatten scenery but can anybody advise me how I go the other way i.e. to create a 'depresion' in the ground 'an oblong hole to be precise'. Is there a command which can be used as is the flatten command but goes 'sub zero'. I was hopeful that the first part of the flatten command structure i.e. the 0=0 at the beginning might be he answer i.e. assuming this flattens scenery to sea level I was hopefull that putting -10 might give me 10 mtrs below sea level but it didn't. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Also, can we mere mortals place the default MS 'moving/animated sea' in places where it doesn't currently exist? can one specify an area, again similar to the flatten command that tells FltSim to put water there?

Again any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Mike P

[Sgt Caribou]

I tried doing something that may be along similar lines to what you are trying to do. In my case it was making a depression to represent a creek. The mesh size seems to be key to getting this to work, e.g., with default mesh, you would have to build a very large depression to have it display correctly. Mine didn't because the creek was narrow and the mesh was unchanged from default. Possibly an alternate way might be to take out a large enough chunk in the general area (using the flatten method you described) then rebuild the area using custom scenery objects made with GMAX or FSDS, as the holes, channels, etc., can be created with these tools. This might present challenges in texturing the items, e.g., ground around the area might blend in during summertime but not winter. As for the new water areas, I haven't tried it but it looks like FSX-KML permits manipulating of land and water areas (presuming you are building for FSX of course). Nice thing about this utility is how it allows you to work with Google Earth open, making it easy to see where you are placing everything.

[MikePotten]

Thks for that, I think you are right i.e. the moment you mentioned mesh it struck home i.e. if you add 3rd party mesh to put hills in right place I assume a depresion is a hill in reverse so playing with the mesh is the key. Might have to leave that bit till a later date then and simply have water in my drydocks for now. Thanks as always for taking the time to respond. Appreciated. Take care