SBuilder land textures at night

[Roger Wensley]

This may be better off in the technical section, but I am pretty sure it will get more reads here. The situation is a revised airfield that has a (new to FS9) town nearby, and the grass area for the airfield and the urban area for the town are part of the same "ground_VTTP.bgl" made in SBuilder. Looks fine in daylight. But in the night the urban area lights etc show up in the grass area as well as the town area. I am currently experimenting with making them separately and the library priority but if someone has already worked out the way to go I would be interested to know.

[Roger Wensley]

The separation of town and grass areas into two separate "grass_VTTP.bgl" and "town_VTPP.bgl" areas, plus experimentation with library priority or equality, went nowhere. It seems that within a LOD only one type of ground texture modification will be tolerated. Net result is a full grass area for the airfield but a truncated town that exists only within the adjacent LOD. This at least leaves the airfield intact, both in daylight and at night, but is only a partial solution.

[tiger1962]

A separate Landclass layer for either the 'grass' or 'town' area may be the solution, eg: grass_VTTP.bgl covers both areas, and is overlaid by the town_LC.bgl to replace the town area which was obscured by the grass_VTTP.bgl - or vice-versa if the night textures don't show up in town_LC.bgl.

[Roger Wensley]

Tim, that was what I did, made 2 separate bgl's, one for grass and one for town. According to which one I put at the higher library priority I then got a town and only half the grass, or the grass and only half the town. With them both in the same folder (and therefore the same library priority) I got full grass and half of the town and left it at that, but there should be a way around this that works for both grass and town and at night as well as in the day.

[Roger Wensley]

Tim, if you meant make the grass the shape and size of both grass and town and then overlay the town on top with another bgl at a higher library priority... That wouldn't work as while grass and town are close to each other they don't actually touch.

[tiger1962]

OK I see now, I wonder if the town and grass .bgl's are at the same elevation in SBuilder? It could be worth making the town_VTPP.bgl a metre higher than the grass_VTTP.bgl as a test.

I did something similar to this with a payware airport which came with no background bitmap - the underlying landclass of open fields showed through and looked terrible on approach. I created an airport grass VTTP .bgl for it and put it in a separate folder to the airport scenery so that it could appear on a separate layer i.e.:

 

Airport scenery

Airport landclass

 

Perhaps this would also work for your grass and town .bgl's:

 

Airport scenery

Airport landclass

Town landclass

[Roger Wensley]

Tim, do you mean "elevation" as spelt in "above sea level" or as in "scenery library priority", or both?

 

Your "Airport scenery, Airport landclass, Town landclass" I have already tried, and also"Airport scenery, Town landclass, and Airport landclass". Plus just the two, "Airport scenery and All landclass".

 

The airport is at a specific elevation above sea level, and the grass is almost all at the same level (obviously) except where it crosses a road and goes off the airfield flatten. The town is not flattened at all and follows the contours of the ground down towards a lake, which is at a lower elevation than the airfield.

[tiger1962]

Tim, do you mean "elevation" as spelt in "above sea level" or as in "scenery library priority", or both?

 

Your "Airport scenery, Airport landclass, Town landclass" I have already tried, and also"Airport scenery, Town landclass, and Airport landclass". Plus just the two, "Airport scenery and All landclass".

 

The airport is at a specific elevation above sea level, and the grass is almost all at the same level (obviously) except where it crosses a road and goes off the airfield flatten. The town is not flattened at all and follows the contours of the ground down towards a lake, which is at a lower elevation than the airfield.

 

I did mean elevation as in "above sea level". I'd have thought that by keeping the grass and town .bgl's in separate areas (not overlapping) and on separate layers that they wouldn't interfere with each other. If there's default landclass night lighting within the grass area, perhaps an exclude .bgl would eliminate it? The exclude .bgl would need to be in the same folder as the grass .bgl of course.

[Roger Wensley]

Tim, I agree; I would have thought that they would not interact, but they do. There is no "default" landclass night lighting within the grass area, it is the town night texture lighting that fills both polygons (town and grass) if they are both included in the same bgl. There is nothing an exclude could do unless it could be made to only work at night! Anyway, SBuilder excludes are for specifics and exclude "airport grass and bridges" or "roads" or "beaches".

[tiger1962]

I wonder if the night lighting would be eliminated if the grass area was created as a separate photoscenery .bgl instead of landclass? Photoscenery seems to have it's own exclude built-in.

 

Edit: I've just re-checked the SBuilder Help file and there's a tickbox on the Preferences/BGL Settings tab for "VTP Replace/Coexist (checked = Replace)", the description reads:

VTP Replace/Coexist Flag - your VTP data will replace or coexist with the default VTP data on the Area and on the Layer number.

 

If you've no default night lighting in the grass area, you'll want that .bgl to coexist.

[Roger Wensley]

Tim, both the SBuilder grass and the town textures are successfully replacing the default textures that would show if they did not exist. There is no problem with default night lighting in the grass area as there is no default night lighting. There is no problem with the SBuilder town night texture in the town polygon. The problem is with the SBuilder town night texture bleeding into the adjacent SBuilder grass textured polygon. I don't see that replacing or coexisting with the default data is part of the problem.

[tiger1962]

If SBuilder itself is adding a lightmap (night) texture to the grass .bgl, there must be an on/off switch for it somewhere in the preferences or settings, there certainly is for photoscenery.

[tiger1962]

Tim, both the SBuilder grass and the town textures are successfully replacing the default textures that would show if they did not exist. There is no problem with default night lighting in the grass area as there is no default night lighting. There is no problem with the SBuilder town night texture in the town polygon. The problem is with the SBuilder town night texture bleeding into the adjacent SBuilder grass textured polygon. I don't see that replacing or coexisting with the default data is part of the problem.

 

Reading the VTP Replace/Coexist Flag info again:

 

VTP Replace/Coexist Flag - your VTP data will replace or coexist with the default VTP data on the Area and on the Layer number.

 

It seems to me that the 'coexist' function means that the SBuilder VTP .bgl will inherit the attributes of the default VTP data with the same Layer number at the same location.

Therefore if there's no night lighting in the default landclass Layer, night lighting won't be applied to the SBuilder landclass .bgl either when compiled in 'coexist' format.

[Roger Wensley]

In that case, if "coexist" is chosen the town landclass would not display a night texture with lights etc. as the default forest it replaced did not have one. So what would be the point of providing the night texture? I suspect a programming fault, in that if there is a night texture available for a particular polygon in a landclass bgl it is automatically applied to all polygons in that bgl. That explains what I am seeing.

[tiger1962]

In that case, if "coexist" is chosen the town landclass would not display a night texture with lights etc. as the default forest it replaced did not have one.

 

That's right, you'd have to save the grass and the town separately, the grass as 'coexist' and the town as 'replace'. Both bgl's should be OK in the same scenery folder.

[Roger Wensley]

I do not follow your coexist theory, at all. There is no bleed problem to be solved if they are saved separately, so saving one as coexist and the other as replace is futile. I already saved them separately; read what I wrote near top of page 1. The only time the night texture "bleeds" across is when both are saved in one bgl. And when they are saved in one bgl is the only time they both appear correctly in daylight. SBuilder and FS9 in-built mismatch. End of story!

[tgibson_new]

This happens with SBuilder in certain situations. Here is another example:

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?295134-Urban-ground-textures-at-night-and-SBuilder

[Roger Wensley]

Tom, Yep; I will just make the town with roads and placed buildings.