elevated lakes

[jgf]

I've edited these in the past but it's been so long I've forgotten the procedure.  This particular one is near Kilimanjaro but I also have several in Hawaii that need attention.  (Then I get to deal with RAF bases in England that are all in pits.)

 

[hjwalter]

Have you tried any "flattens" yet at the elevations outside your lakes ?

 

Good luck.

 

Hans

[hjwalter]

jgf,

 

Long ago I downloaded the Kilimanjaro airport from somewhere but cannot remember from where. I also installed mesh and LC scenery for the whole area around mount Kilimanjaro and it still looks great. However, I do remember that I had many elevation/bleed-through and other problems with the airport itself but not with the surrounding country or with the mountain.

 

Following your "elevated lakes" pic I took off from the Kilimanjaro airport and flew around the mountain, while searching for possibly elevated lakes but found none even remotely resembling your pic. There is one large lake within a few miles at about 124 degrees from the Kilimanjaro airport and a few more smaller ones North of the mountain but none of them were "elevated".

I have 5 flattens in my scenery.cfg file but these are most probably all related to airports/airfields in the immediate area, e.g. Moshi, Kilimanjaro itself and others.

 

Do you have any installed addon scenery at all in the Kilimanjaro area or is it all still default ?

 

Hans

 

 

[jgf]

I have installed better mesh for most of the areas I frequently fly, including much of Africa.  This is also the reason for the RAF bases in England all being in pits, they were designed forthe default mesh. 

[PhrogPhlyer]

To a fish, is a lake ever really ugly? Just a thought.

[hjwalter]

Hey Guys,

 

You've now made me very inquisitive and tomorrow I'm going to test-delete some of my meshes for the Kenya/Tanzania border area, in order to see what happens in my version of the, by the looks of it, rather "meshy" Kilimanjaro countryside ..... and ....... to see what exactly I did all those years ago to make it look that way.

 

I'll report back in this thread.

 

Hans

[hjwalter]

Bernard,

 

As the Massai people say in East Africa: Hakuna Matata. I think you will be able to find what that means somewhere on the internet.

 

Now then, my own problem.

 

I switched on my trusty desktop machine this morning in order to do as I had promised but ........ nothing ......., it was as dead as dead can possibly be !! Most probably a power supply problem.

 

This machine was custom made back in 2012 with at that time all the fastest available hardware and especially with a stutter-free FS9 and video processing system in mind. It has run problem free ever since then ...... untill this morning. Tomorrow I have an appointment with my supplier in Amsterdam and I certainly hope the machine can be fixed without to much trouble.

 

Anyway, my promise still stands, although it will now take a little longer. Sorry Guys.

 

Hans

 

 

[jgf]

But is the solution lowering the lakes to match the new mesh or raising the terrain to match the old lakes?  And I recall reading ages ago that it was not easy to raise or lower an airport to match terrain so you typically had to blend the surrounding terrain to the airport level (which seemed a can of worms).

[hjwalter]

Hi Guys,

 

I had my power supply replaced in the supplier's workshop and it took all of two full hours for the technician to finish. Not only that but my two SSDs in RAID-zero setup, which contain my Win7-pro, were replaced as well after cloning my two original ones. The reason for this was that the original ones were of a "not so trustworthy" brand ........ according to the technician and he was "surprised" that they were still working after 11 years of very intensive service !!

 

O.K. Guys, when I got back home I immediately test-deleted all mesh sceneries for both the complete countries of Kenya and Tanzania, which in so doing also included the area around my addon Kilimanjaro airport and around the snow covered mountain nearby. I did the same for all "flattens", even although these were only related to my East African airports/airfields.

 

I again took off from the Kilimanjaro airport, flew around the mountain at low altitude but saw no elevated lakes whatsoever. Even the large lake at about 124 dgrees from the airport looked pretty normal but in any case, not elevated. However, the airports which were now missing their "flattens" were in a real "mess".

I also test-deleted all my default FL957nnn.bgl files from my default "Afri" folder but still no elevated lakes.

 

sgf.  After all of this I still do not have any direct solutions for your elevated lakes problem at Kilimanjaro because I just cannot succeed in re-creating your problem myself. However, I would now want to suggest that you make one or more flatten files at your elavated lake(s) level and make them in such a way that they also cover the direct land area(s) around those lake(s). Anyway, I wiish you good luck.

 

Bernard, The back-ups I've been doing upto now have only been my complete "D" SSD containing my whole FS9 but the technician in the workshop had also suggested that a complete "image" or clone could be made for all three of my SSDs and that is certainly something I will be following up with haste.

 

Regards

 

Hans

 

 

 

 

 

[defaid]

On 4/21/2023 at 5:58 PM, jgf said:

I've edited these in the past but it's been so long I've forgotten the procedure.  This particular one is near Kilimanjaro

 

 

 

 

Hi.

All of the water in any given LWM tile/cell (whatever they're called, I forget) is at the same altitude; it's why very long FS9 rivers fall in steps and why so many water bodies are at the wrong elevation. It's best to create a flatten slightly larger that the lakes, else the original elevated terrain bleeds through, and set it to the elevation of the surrounding (correct) mesh.

 

The simplest procedure is with ADE - you can essentially just draw a shaped flatten polygon near the nearest airport and compile. ADE is particularly good for this because it will lock to your plane's position while you slew in FS9, and it compiles airports and flattens into separate bgls despite their being in the same project.

 

Your nearest airfield is HKNV.

 

You can make any shape of flatten in ADE and give it whatever elevation you want. It's not tied to the airport elevation.

 

ADE compiles flattens separately from the rest of an airport so...

 

You can open the stock HKNV, add a flatten to it of whatever altitude and compile. Both bgls compile to the same location. The newly created airport bgl can be dismissed. After all, you have the stock.

 

The other bgl, a *_TER.bgl should go somewhere above all your mesh.

 

I have a separate layer for elevation corrections.

 

***

 

In a nutshell, with pictures below:

 

1. Open the stock HKNV in ADE.

2. Load a flight and slew to the edge of the elevated lake.

3. Connect & lock ADE to FS9.

4. Slew the boundary of the terrain that you want to modify.

5. Make a flatten polygon in ADE that matches the shape of what you are slewing around. (Top-down view in FS9 is good for this).

6. Double click to finish.

7. Set the elevation. The best way to do this is by noting your aircraft's altitude when it's sitting on the ground. Take into account the height of the model origin (3.7 feet for the stock C172).

8. Compile the airport.

9. Delete the newly-created airport bgl.

10. Move the *_TER.bgl from World/Scenery to a layer of your choice, above mesh and below airports (don't want it interfering with them...)

11. Make a cup of tea.

 

It took about 30 minutes while preparing dinner. Making the screenshots took the rest of the evening  .

 

My lake with FS Global 2008 mesh:

 

Nearest airport HKNV.

It's interesting to note that you can see flat terrain in the map texture and it shows MS LWM is offset laterally as well as vertically:

 

Me parked up on the grass by the side of the lake with ADE connected to FS9:

 

Click the green polygon button and start dropping in some polygon vertices:

 

6174 feet per the terrain, not the lake surface and not the airport:

 

I messed up, slewing straight past my start point. It doesn't matter -- double-click closes the poly and you can delete surplus vertices:

 

Compile:

 

Delete this one: you don't need it:

 

This goes above mesh layers and below airport & custom scenery layers:

 

Ter files in the correct place -- I have a layer dedicated to them:

 

Took about 30 minutes:

 

HKNV still at 6380 feet:

 

But the lake is now at 6174 feet:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[defaid]

8 minutes ago, leuen said:

Flatten could indeed be at least a local solution. Using a more simple method than Defaid, I flattened a greater area while FSGlobal 2010 is activated:

 

 

 

But I'm not sure whether you wouldn't have such elevation issues elsewhere. Therefore I would search what creates the elevation problem. I don't see any other way than deactivate all yur scenery entries and reactivate tehm step by step until you have found the troublemaker. I know, it's quite annoying doing ths way, but everything else would just waiste time. 

 

Bernard

 

Hi Bernard.

 

What creates the "elevation problem" is that MS's default scenery is just a placeholder and is offset laterally and vertically, as well as lacking resolution. That is compounded by the fact that their default scenery LWM is all at the same elevation in any given cell.

 

It's not a problem and there is no fault to find, not by reactivating scenery or by any other means. That would be the waste of time. It's simply that addon mesh is more accurate and more detailed than the default.

 

Because of the way LWM works in FS9, adding new mesh doesn't alter the elevation of water so flattens are required in order to force MS water to the correct elevation.

 

D

[defaid]

5 hours ago, jgf said:

But is the solution lowering the lakes to match the new mesh or raising the terrain to match the old lakes?  And I recall reading ages ago that it was not easy to raise or lower an airport to match terrain so you typically had to blend the surrounding terrain to the airport level (which seemed a can of worms).

Because the mesh is certain to be more accurate (you described it youself as "better") than MS placeholder default terrain, in the case of the lakes change the lake elevation with a custom flatten. For the RAF bases, change the airport elevation. It's simpler and quicker than the nested-flatten wormcan.

 

ADE will do that too. If you also add a flatten (3rd party mesh is pretty lumpy) then that creates three bgls: airport, flatten & elevation adjustment. The first two compile into your project folder. The elevation adjustment bgl, an *_ALT.bgl, compiles into ../FS2004/Scenery/World/Scenery as it has to be at a low priority.

 

I don't like cluttering the stock folders so I move alt files to a separate low layer, too:

 

 

 

[hgschnell]

As far as I know is the altitude of lakes in the HPxxxx.bgls (Hydrogen Polygon) defined..

 

Sbuilder9 should be the tool to change it.

[defaid]

43 minutes ago, hgschnell said:

As far as I know is the altitude of lakes in the HPxxxx.bgls (Hydrogen Polygon) defined..

 

 

It is.

 

But, if you use SBuilder to modify the bgl, it will change the elevation of all water bodies in that hydro poly bgl because you are changing that LWM cell. It works fine if you only have one lake in the bgl but if there are several, it will set all their elevations at the same time. I referred to that in the first sentence of my post with the instruction and again in my reply to Bernard.

 

Creating a flatten is much more precise and, if you do have several lakes in that HP bgl, you can use several different flattens to set them to different elevations so they match the terrain more closely. SBuilder will also do flattens but the process is a lot simpler in ADE.

 

D

[defaid]

On 4/24/2023 at 4:04 PM, PhrogPhlyer said:

To a fish, is a lake ever really ugly? Just a thought.

 

World map drawn by a fish:

(I'm not sure how it held the brush)

[hgschnell]

1 hour ago, hgschnell said:

Sbuilder9 should be the tool to change it.

 

Sbuilder9 can create these flattens too...

[defaid]

1 hour ago, defaid said:

 

SBuilder will also do flattens but the process is a lot simpler in ADE.

 

D

 

[alexrentier]

On 4/25/2023 at 10:21 PM, hjwalter said:

Bernard,

 

As the Massai people say in East Africa: Hakuna Matata. I think you will be able to find what that means somewhere on the internet.

 

Now then, my own problem.

 

I switched on my trusty desktop machine this morning in order to do as I had promised but ........ nothing ......., it was as dead as dead can possibly be !! Most probably a power supply problem.

 

This machine was custom made back in 2012 with at that time all the fastest available hardware and especially with a stutter-free FS9 and video processing system in mind. It has run problem free ever since then ...... untill this morning. Tomorrow I have an appointment with my supplier in Amsterdam and I certainly hope the machine can be fixed without to much trouble.

 

Anyway, my promise still stands, although it will now take a little longer. Sorry Guys.

 

Hans

 

 

Interesting expression Hakuna Matata with different meanings)))) I often visit South Africa, this is a great place!

[PhrogPhlyer]

6 hours ago, defaid said:

World map drawn by a fish:

(I'm not sure how it held the brush)

Nice perspective and "scale", if you're not too "fin"icky."

Maybe his "gill"ie helped hold the brush.

He had to use watercolor paint. Tired to paint with oils, but oil and water don't mix.

 

[jgf]

"if you only have one lake in the bgl but if there are several, it will set all their elevations at the same time"

 

hmmm (this is in India)

 

[hjwalter]

Great surprise for me because jgf clearly wrote in his initial post that his elevated lake was near Kilimanjaro (in Tanzania), while it now turns out that his lake problem actually lies many miles to the North/West and near the Naivasha airport in Kenya !!!

 

Hans

 

[hgschnell]

No, no, no

 

it can appear everywhere on earth if there is a mesh like Global Terrain.

The HPxxxx.bgl has an altitude to every Hydrogen Poly (lake or big river)

[hgschnell]

5 minutes ago, leuen said:

There is no doubt that one of your meshes is creating the elevated lakes

No, the mesh doesn't create the elevated lakes, but the elevation around them.

I have seen lakes in holes too, because of mesh around them.

[hgschnell]

13 hours ago, defaid said:

But, if you use SBuilder to modify the bgl, it will change the elevation of all water bodies in that hydro poly bgl because you are changing that LWM cell. It works fine if you only have one lake in the bgl but if there are several, it will set all their elevations at the same time.

I doubt about.

Sbuilder9 can change the altitude different of every single polygon.

 

 

 

 

[defaid]

59 minutes ago, jgf said:

"if you only have one lake in the bgl but if there are several, it will set all their elevations at the same time"

 

hmmm (this is in India)

 

 

 

Forgive me if I misunderstand and I don't mean to be condescending but:

 

The lakes you show in India are in a different bgl...

 

Changing one HP***.bgl with SBuilder will only alter the water elevation for that bgl.

 

All LWM water bodies in your installaltion were made by MS, as was the default mesh. The default mesh is inaccurate but MS made their water to match their mesh.

 

So, except where by chance & coincidence default and real-world happen to coincide, pretty well every water body in FS9 is at the wrong elevation and nwhen you use accurate 3rd party mesh, will either be on a little plateau or in a big sinkhole. Every one of them.

 

The only exceptions will be in any areas not covered by your addon mesh. they  will still have default terrain elevation and so the water bodies will *appear* to be correct.

 

*****

 

I can't think of a way of asking this question without it seeming sarcastic. That's not my intention so please just take it at face value:

 

Is this a difficult concept for most people to understand? It just seems really obvious to me:-- MS made wrong mesh and then made LWM waterbodies to match. So they are also wrong. 3rd party mesh does not affect LWM so you now have correct terrain elevation paired with incorrect LWM.