Invisible airport terrain polygon

[hjwalter]

Hi all ye technical experts,

 

The terrain of one of my addon airports is covered by a separate photographic satellite scenery, which is part of the much larger scenery area around it.

 

I would very much like to create a better looking airport terrain polygon via the SBuilder program, as I have already done successfully for many of my other airports/airfields, which do not have such "cover all" photographic satellite scenery.

 

However, I suspect strongly that my newly created SBuilder polygon stubbornly remains hidden beneath the satellite scenery and have already spent many hours in unsuccessfully trying to make it visible above the satellite scenery.

 

I believe that there just must be some simple way of getting my newly created polygon visible above the satellite scenery but HOW ??

 

Anyone please ........ and thanks in advance.

 

Hans

[Tom Gibson]

Not that I know of....  But I don't do much photo scenery.

[jgf]

5 hours ago, Tom Gibson said:

I don't do much photo scenery

 

Lol, I often wondered why there couldn't be "transition tiles" to smooth the effect, instead of such sharp demarcations...

[chris_eve]

12 hours ago, hjwalter said:

Hi all ye technical experts,

 

I believe that there just must be some simple way of getting my newly created polygon visible above the satellite scenery but HOW ??

 

Anyone please ........ and thanks in advance.

 

Hans

I don't think you can get a terrain polygon to display OVER a photographic scenery ... at least, I've never managed, but what you can do is isolate the photo-scenery element in question and edit that using photo-editing software such as PhotoShop in conjunction with DXTBmp ... I've done this successfully (for my own purposes) in several areas in the UKVFR scenery.

Alternatively create an overlay polygon with an associated (hi-resolution?) BMP and incorporate that in the conventional way. This is how UK2000 built their airfields for the UKVFR scenery.

[chris_eve]

6 hours ago, jgf said:

 

Lol, I often wondered why there couldn't be "transition tiles" to smooth the effect, instead of such sharp demarcations...

 

 

It can be done, by introducing transparency to the edge of the overlapping tiles, manually edited to match the local features of the underlying terrain ... but it's an awful lot of work, each tile needs to be handled individually and features like roads and rivers rarely line up exactly. Colour matching would only ever work for one season unless you had four sets of overlay photographic scenery, also all manually edited.

A nice quiet project for someone with nothing else better to do, but commercially, probably a non-starter

[hjwalter]

Thanks for all your reactions and/or comments ....... BUT ....... via my "antique" Afcad program, any created ground polygons, e.g. aprons, terrains, grass, etc. can show up on top of just about anything and that includes ground covering satellite photo scenery areas.

However, the single remaining problem with the Afcad program is the very specific program bound texture set, which by any realistic means, cannot replace the far more subtle and for larger areas made SBuilder textures, e.g. for whole airport terrains.

 

Does anyone know how Afcad manages to do this, while the far more modern SBuilder program cannot ? SBuilder doesn't even have a selectable option, e.g. for a higher or "on top of" scenery layer.
 

Regards

 

Hans

[chris_eve]

4 hours ago, hjwalter said:

Thanks for all your reactions and/or comments ....... BUT ....... via my "antique" Afcad program, any created ground polygons, e.g. aprons, terrains, grass, etc. can show up on top of just about anything and that includes ground covering satellite photo scenery areas.

However, the single remaining problem with the Afcad program is the very specific program bound texture set, which by any realistic means, cannot replace the far more subtle and for larger areas made SBuilder textures, e.g. for whole airport terrains.

 

Does anyone know how Afcad manages to do this, while the far more modern SBuilder program cannot ? SBuilder doesn't even have a selectable option, e.g. for a higher or "on top of" scenery layer.
 

Regards

 

Hans

You're not comparing like with like.

It's not a case of one program being more "modern" than the other, they're both generating files to a specific standard, but different standards!

SBuilder creates files which effectively replace the default terrain ... AFCAD, ScenGenX, ADE and such create files which overlay the default terrain.

SBuilder is very good at creating scenery where no detail exists in the default terrain ... this would then normally be overlaid with AFCAD-type scenery for the fine detail, which may include a background polygon of hi-res photographic origin.

Photographic scenery sits "between" the default terrain and the AFCAD-generated sceneries, so anything you want to see over photographic scenery has to be, for want of a better term, AFCAD-type in nature, not default-terrain type.

The "usual" way of doing this is to generate a flatten of appropriate size and shape, then superimpose a polygon which has been textured with suitable detail ... often photographic in origin, but edited to suit, and in higher resolution than the photographic scenery.

To all intents and purposes, SBuilder, as good as it is, is not the tool for the job when dealing with photographic scenery.

[hjwalter]

Thanks chris-eve for your lesson.

 

Even after more than 20 years of experience with editing and/or improving my own personal FS9 (airport) sceneries, I often run up against new (and higher level) impossibilities and this one was certainly one of them.

 

Thanks again for your very clear explanation.

 

Hans