LWM/VTPP problem ??

[hjwalter]

Hi All,

 

I'm trying to improve the scenery around a small default Panamanian airfield named "Punta Cocos" (MP0H (the "0" is a zero)) but near the beginning of runway 25 I just cannot get rid of the water area inside part of the existing (default) shore lines. I've tried the SBuilder program to cover that part of the island with a VTTP texture and that works great but sadly, not for my problem area where the water persists whatever I try.

 

My first question is therefore if any of you scenery experts can confirm my problem by "going to the default MP0H" and having a "top down" look around there.

If your answer is "yes" then my more obvious question is, what can be done about it.

 

Looking forward to any reactions and thanks in advance.

 

Hans

 

 

 

 

[Tom Gibson]

You need to create an LWM land polygon in that area first.  SBuilder can do that too.

[hjwalter]

Tom,

 

Thanks for your reaction but because it seems that my issue could be caused by an error in my default FS9 setup, I've become very inquisitive about whether or not this can be confirmed by anyone. Could you therefore, whenever you have time, please take a "top - down" look at your FS9 (default) MP0H airfield and then post your findings about my water problem. Your answer will at least give me a direction as to where to begin looking.

In the meantime I will certainly try to create a Sbuilder LWM land polygon as you suggest, but will need to find out how to do that first.

 

Thanks again.

 

Hans

[michaelkalinowsk]

Here comes a top down view of the default Punta Cocos.

[chris_eve]

Sorry, can't help any more than the previous posters, but it continues to fascinate me that, nearly 20 years after the program was released, obvious design flaws like this are still being uncovered!

[hjwalter]

Thanks guys and especially michaelkalinowsk for taking the trouble to post your top-down pics.

 

Some time ago I had already discovered more of the same issues around some of the most Northern Bahamas islands, which I had also wanted to improve by giving them the real tropical look, e.g. like planting palmtrees, coconut trees, etc around self created little GA airfields but alas, this now seems to be a structural and non-fixable default FS9 issue.

 

In the meantime I've been trying to use the Sbuilder program as Tom Gibson suggests, for creating a LWM file to cover the very specific Punta Cocos water area in question but that only seems to work on or on top of existing default scenery and quite evidently not on purposely left "blank" (= basic water coverage) areas of the world.

 

On the positive side though and after a sigh of relief, the issue is/was not caused by something I had done wrong somewhere within my own FS9.

 

Thanks guys.

 

Hans

[chris_eve]

On 3/8/2023 at 11:30 AM, hjwalter said:

 

 

In the meantime I've been trying to use the Sbuilder program as Tom Gibson suggests, for creating a LWM file to cover the very specific Punta Cocos water area in question but that only seems to work on or on top of existing default scenery and quite evidently not on purposely left "blank" (= basic water coverage) areas of the world.

 

 

It's been a while since I used sBuilder, but if I remember correctly there's a tutorial included which covers the building of an island in the ocean from scratch. I'd anticipate applying a similar procedure to this problem could achieve the desired result.

[hjwalter]

Hey there Chris,

 

Thanks for your reaction and I will now certainly go searching for a tutorial on the subject because this issue just keeps bugging me.

 

The strange thing about it is that the airfield's elevation is at 60 ft, the terrain stays at that elevation across the straight land/water border for some distance and then gradually decreases towards the surrounding coast lines in all directions. Not only that but the water surface undulates as land would normally have done, which to me then means that there is something mesh-like under that water texture.

As I've said earlier I've created a (test) SBuilder tropical forest VTTP polygon for the whole water area but strangely enough and as I've now discovered, that only works for the automatically included (autogen tropical) trees and not for the hoped for terrain texture. There is now even a (small) possibility that one of the other SBuilder VTTP terrain textures might actually do the trick.

I'm testing further but have not succeded yet with creating a LWM file as Tom Gibson has suggested. I'll also see if the SBuilder tutorial can shed some light on this as well.

 

Hans

[hgschnell]

13 hours ago, chris_eve said:

but if I remember correctly there's a tutorial included which covers the building of an island in the ocean from scratch

It is in the Help of SBuilder9

[hjwalter]

hgschnell,

 

I had already gone through the initial parts of the SBuilder tutorial immediately after Chris's suggestion and had more or less gotten as far as creating an island's shorlines in a non-default covered ocean area but the filling up of the land within those island shorelines then seems to be just as impossible as trying to do the same between the already existing shorelines of my problem area. As a result I've now given up on this problem as being unsolvable but also because my problem area already has visible island-like shorlines.

Creating an LWM file has no effect either.

However, it definitely does not concern a "life or death" situation on my part nor am I somehow emotionally involved with the airfield in question, it was just an anomaly I saw by chance as I was flying over it and immediately related it to the same anomalies I saw with some of the most Northern Bahama islands.

 

Too bad but I now dare any experienced scenery expert to solve this seemingly impossible problem, not directly for this rather trivial problem but far more in order to prove that the impossible can sometimes become the possible.

 

Good luck. and comments remain welcome.

Hans

[hgschnell]

Sorry, I never created this island, I just wanted to point to the tutorial.

[Tom Gibson]

I just tried it with a different program, Ground2K4.  It didn't work for me either.  Looks like a bug in FS9 IMO.

[hjwalter]

Thanks Guys for all your reactions but the problem at hand is most probably caused by the island's visible terrain area being at the very edge of a much larger default area, which
normally consists of a combination of terrain and transparant areas, hence the now visible straight border between the two. This automatically also means that nothing in the form of terrain coverage can be accepted there. Strange though that the shorelines do remain visible.

 

Yes Tom, a bug but in any case, a very interesting one.

And hgschnell, no need to be sorry because you at least got me reading my dusty old tutorial again. LOL !!

 

Regards

 

Hans