ADE adding landclass

[benny1]

How can i make the landclass i add around airports without a hard edge or border , is there a way to blend it in better , thanks for any help, Benny

[jandjfrench]

Hi benny,

You're likely to get a better response in the Scenery Design forum but this may be of some help. I don't have a the filename but I downloaded a tutorial from the OZx website "OZx Developer Guide Series" entitled "Making Scenery For Country Airstrips" which will likely be of help.

Jim F.

[Roger Wensley]

Using SBuilder in FS9 works for me, in that the edges are "blended" together. I presume there is a version for FSX. But, the blending is a product of the ground textures used, rather than the tool used to define them, and in FSX you would be using the land textures that are supplied with FSX. From what I have seen of FSX the ground textures merge into each other, there is no straight line joining of forest to field. So I am left wondering what exactly you are using as landclass textures. Not very helpful I am afraid, but nobdy else had replied.

[benny1]

Well i add landclass , for instance " Parks " texture which is #134 i believe and if i could get it where it fades away at the edges like i see in other landclasses that wold be neat , i havent used S.Builder X and i wonder if its easy to add landclass as with ADE

[Roger Wensley]

I admit to not being familiar with FSX landclass textures; however, having said that, if a particular landclass has a "firm" edge as opposed to a "blending" edge with the adjacent and different landclass then whatever you do will not change that.

[bdf369]

In FSX you can either create landclass polygons, or you can create a landclass raster which specified landclass values on a grid with approx 1.2km spacing. ADE can create landclass polygons but those will have a hard edge. ADE does not support creating landclass raster, but SbuilderX can do that. The landclass raster tiles are blended automatically by FSX using blend masks, so you don't have square tiles with hard edges butting up against each other, but you also don't get to control the blending, so if you want a specific shape (say for example you want to place a golf course accurately), then you'd need to use a polygon.

 

One other option is to use a photoscenery patch which allows you to make your own blend mask. The downside here is that you've got all the work of color matching, blend mask, water mask, autogen, and making seasonal and night variants, compared to using a landclass polygon which does most of the work for you automatically.

 

If only we could make a polygon and a blend mask combination... you could sort of do that by making a photoreal "border" and mask the inside of the photo patch and slide a landclass polygon underneath it.

[benny1]

Appreciate the help , i havent used SBX but im going see how that goes