Zoandar

I don't think we are on the same page here. I do not shut down FSX or even unload the flight in order to update changes to a BGL file. In fact, I 'technically' don't unload the flight to REMOVE a BGL file (but the timing can get tricky, because FSX really doesn't like it when you do that). I learned from some forum post somewhere a long time back that all one has to do after adding a file into a Scenery folder is open the Scenery Library, as if you were going to add or remove scenery. Click on ANY ONE of the listings (the very first one works just fine - it does not have to be the actual area to which you added or modified the BGL file). When you click it once, the check-mark goes away. Then click it again, and the check-mark returns. Then, click OK. It causes FSX to reload all the terrain and scenery files. I do this dozens of times during one "session" of running FSX without exiting a flight or shutting it down. Now, to REMOVE a file, I learned this trick on my own. Normally, if you delete a BGL file FSX is using it will immediately assail you with a literal stack of error messages that you can barely close before the next barrage comes at you. So to avoid that, Click Flights/End Flight (or just press ESC) but do NOT click anything further. Leave the "End Flight" dialog on the screen, while you remove your BGL file. Then, click Continue Flying, and be quick about opening the World/Scenery Library again so you can do the above 2-click procedure before FSX wakes up and realizes a file is missing. FSX will reload the files and you are still flying. If you don't waste any time doing so, it will always work. Yes, FSX loads fairly quickly using an SSD, but it still takes longer to do so than this method, so the only time I close FSX is either if I am done using it, or when it decides to "stop responding" which in Win7 seems to happen at least once a day, even WITH the recommended "crash to desktop fix" in place. Quite often it does happen while accessing one of the menus, such as selecting an aircraft. The DLL file changed in that fix must be more stable, but still not perfect, as I read it has to do with the display of the menus. My final speed trick is to reduce the setting of the LOD in FSX.cfg to 1.5 when I am working on scenery, as it significantly speeds up the reloading of the files. It presents clipping issues sometimes but if I want to go flying for pleasure I will crank the LOD back up and reload FSX. I the clipping bugs you, 2.5 works fairly well and gets rid of the clipping, it just loads more slowly. I had something happen just now that has me puzzled. Since you provided the nice bridge to use, I felt the least I could do is re-edit the imagery and lose the original image of the bridges on the ground, as well as the very prominent pair of shadows they had cast in the satellite image. So I did some editing of the base image and realized the pair of layers I had above it for fixing the horridly varying brightness and contrast here (gotta love Canadian satellite imagery) and my "green filter" to try to balance the coloration both were based on the original image, so they still had the things I just had removed from the base layer. So I deleted those 2 layers and re-created them in GIMP, and then exported the bitmap and compiled the BGL anew and updated it in FSX. As I was deciding I had too much green, I noticed the AI traffic exiting the south bridge was disappearing and reappearing about 200 feet later. I went back into GIMP and eased up on the green and exported/recompiled, and updated FSX again. But now the traffic was fixed?? I did not change anything having to do with the files created in SBX. All I did was work with the image bitmaps. Strange. But its working now, so I'm not going to dwell on it. Thanks again for the help and the nifty bridge! it really makes this area look nice!

My friend, you are so far over my head on this I can't see your shoelaces. :) Those 5 steps you listed are all things I have barely ever heard of, much less that I have not used them. I did try out GMax once, trying to make a flashing beacon for the top of a tower. But the learning curve was so steep I gave up on it. Thanks for sharing the files. I just spent an hour trying to figure out how to place individual platforms at the correct elevations and slope to turn the jpn_ohmishima bridge into a solid surface, and was barely making any progress at all. I decided to check to see if you had answered my post, because I was digging a deeper and deeper hole trying to wrap my head around this. Instant Scenery 2 is a nifty utility, but it can be a nightmare to try to navigate the aircraft as a vantage point, or cursor tool "aircraft", if one uses it, AND move objects into position in 3D space, as the controls moving back and forth between aircraft and scenery don't transition very well. And I never cared for the fact that once a scenery object is selected it 'sticks' to the cursor and you drag it around while you are trying to manipulate the object you have already placed. Instances where intuition tells me to press ESC to stop doing something in IS2 simply offers to close FSX. But I have managed to use IS2 to place a lot of objects. I have never tried anything like making a working bridge surface, though. Thanks for including your very beautifully done bridge as a library object. I'm guessing it is the one with "LIB" in the name, since it is larger than the one with "PLC"? What is the one with "PLC" in the name? I am guessing PLC means "place"? Landing on your bridge would be cool. I would be more inclined to try with a helicopter. Actually, I once visited a place in some retail scenery of California, at which the runway for the small airport was somehow mis-positioned onto a freeway. As I came to a stop in my plane I was greeted head on by a moving semi truck suddenly rounding a bend! Freaky. Have you ever noticed (presuming you use the shortcuts to reload the FSX scenery I had mentioned way up above) that sometimes, just before you use the Scenery Library uncheck/check item step to get changes made in your scenery files to load that FSX will sometimes begin to adopt 'part' of the changes you made? I placed your bridges, changed my exclusion rectangle from "all" to "extrusion bridges" and then as I went back to FSX to update the changes I saw a car running over your bridge! :) Some of the traffic was still running across the water, as the change had not yet been made permanent. However, once I did upload the changes to FSX, I then of course saw I had to add some traffic routing. I've got things almost working correctly. I had to add an exclusion poly tagged exclude_all_freeway_traffic and then add lines tagged freeway_traffic across the bridges. But on the east end of the north bridge I have an issue. If the approaching vehicle stays in the left lane, it uses the bridge. If it is in the right lane, it drives THROUGH the bridge approach ramp, along the ground, then sharply flies upward near the support arch, and emerges on the bridge deck. [ATTACH=CONFIG]142153[/ATTACH] I have tried moving and even rotating the bridge end for end and it doesn't matter. So I don't think it is an issue with the bridge's platforms. It must be something left over from the default traffic path. But it won't 'exclude' with my exclusion polygon. I even tried making the traffic exclusion poly a lot wider in this area to make sure it is covering things, but it didn't matter. Wow! I just fixed it!! :) I was thinking about things and decided to try compiling just the exclusion, without my freeway traffic lines, to make sure the default traffic got excluded, and it did. That meant that the problem, whatever it was, HAD to be due to my own freeway traffic line. So I started closely examining its placement. As you know, lines by default in SBX are very thick. The center points for where the lines entered that end of the bridge were just a little off center away from the bridges. I moved them tiny bit south, more centered on the FSX image of the bridge approach, then recompiled both exclude and traffic lines together once again. Now the traffic uses the bridges very nicely! It was only off by the tiniest little bit. I'll have to remember that! The strange thing, though, is that even trying to move the end of the bridge sideways, I was never able to 'scoop up' that rogue traffic being caused by the slight misalignment. I don't understand why moving the line would not be the same as moving the bridge, but moving the bridge didn't fix it. Only moving the line fixed it. Thanks again for the cool bridge! I'll have to consider looking into all those other utilities you used to make it.

Holy Crap!! :) That's gorgeous! Now I HAVE to do it! :D You're the man!! { afterthought before I sent this -- I was just re-reading your posts after I typed this reply, and I am thinking I may have misinterpreted something. Did you meant to say I should fill to QMID 11 on the EXCLUDES? If so, I do not have a default hydro poly exclusion here. Is that how you fixed the river? Normally I can just let my hydro poly intersect with the default lake water and it works, so long as my set elevation is correct. The only time I have excluded anything was when it needed to be hidden or replaced. Never thought to try that on the water issue here. } I could sure use some dialog on exactly what kinds of steps you took, and how you arranged the platforms, and whether or not they can be resized (I don't remember.....if they can, it would be much simpler, for sure). Nothing I tried last night fixed the water, but it looks like you fixed it. If you don't want to tie up the thread, PM me on how you did this. Also could you tell me which scenery library provided your platforms? Mine are I think from a download I got on one of the Sim forums (maybe even this one, but its been a long time since I downloaded them). Seems like the name Finney was in their description. I did not create a shoreline exclusion here, because I wasn't seeing any remnant shoreline "lines" in the scenery. Had you done that? If you meant filling a hydro-poly to QMID 11- Originally I tried that, specifying my land area as a hole in it. But there are some downsides to doing it. Mainly that when you do so, the whole terrain area's elevation gets sucked down to whatever height you set the hydro poly, and if you check the land scenery at the edge of such a QMID 11 setup, you get the same unwanted cliffs as we saw in the water here in Sarnia. So I adapted my procedures to use hydro polys only where they are needed, never under the land. It eliminated the problem. It works fine for an island in the ocean. But not for these inland areas.

The flatten I tried had no effect at all. Here's a shot of the elevation issues in the headwaters of the Saint Clair river: [ATTACH=CONFIG]142120[/ATTACH] I did look into platforms for having the AI traffic use the bridges, but the platforms I have access to are small. The largest one is 10 meters square. It would take a TON of them to even begin to try to do a large high-level bridge. So I am just going to leave this traffic issue be and move on. I did get the traffic excluded from the water with the exclusion poly suggestion. With some trial and error I was able to mitigate this elevation issue somewhat by using a slope setting of -0.2 on the hydro-poly for this segment. But once the river opens up into Lake Huron (into which I have extended my hydro-poly) there is another elevation issue that I can't seem to have any effect on. It's like they have intersecting elevations in the CVX file here, but they don't align. Each of the Great Lakes has a different elevation, and I was expecting to run into something like this. But I had hoped I could work it out. I think I have it as good as it will get.

Nope, not the same bridge. Progress, my friend! That was the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor. This one is further north, and is called the Blue Water bridge, going into Sarnia, but it actually has 2 bridges. FSX had rendered them as extrusion bridges by default. Not only is that unattractive, compared to the real world, it also won't work on a Great Lakes shipping channel. They are far to low to the water. :) Thanks to street level Google Earth photos I got a nice look at what the real bridges look like, and the ones I mentioned using are very similar. These are 'high level' bridges to allow the passage of lake freighters under them. So unless I can find a way to place platforms on a slope (I've placed helicopter pad platforms, but have not used them for anything else) I won't be able to direct the AI traffic across them. I do recall that many of IS2 Library Objects can have a Z axis slope setting though, so it might actually work. I would have to make several platforms conformed to the curvature of the access ramps and bridges themselves. I did encounter the ability to turn a line into an exclusion bridge, while looking through all the settings for lines drawn in SBX. That may come in handy later. I don't recall even seeing traffic at the Ambassador Bridge (perhaps because it is technically not a 'freeway'). But the Blue Water bridge, being a pair of 4-lane bridges, must be seen by FSX as freeway traffic. There is something else going on at this location, the south end of Lake Huron, even with the default FSX scenery. They had a problem with the elevation of the lake and river coming together. There are several 'cliffs' in the actual water here. One runs up the middle of the river out into the lake, and there are more within the lake itself. Since they are there even when I remove my scenery, it has to be an error on the 0302/CVX2616.bgl file that covers this whole area, no? I will probably just leave it be, because I don't know how to fix it. I tried putting a hydro-poly set to the correct elevation over top of it in my scenery, but it gets ignored. When I drew the line and made it freeway traffic across the water, the vehicles conform to the cliffs, dropping down or climbing up the water in the river to get across. Hmm. What if I put a flatten in this whole area under the water. Would that possibly fix the broken elevation continuity issue? Thanks for the platform idea. I'll try that and see what happens.

I've run into something weird and would like to ask for some help. I had to use an Exclusion Rectangle at the Blue Water bridges between Sarnia, Ontario and the US, across the Saint Clair River, to remove the incorrectly rendered FSX bridges (ending in the middle of the river) and replace them with a pair of similar bridges, using Instant Scenery 2. At first I was noticing that the traffic was 'swimming across the river' instead of using the FSX default bridges after I had removed them, before I was finished installing the new bridges. But today I saw the traffic was missing near the bridges. I guessed it was because my exclusion was set to 'all objects', so I changed it to be set to 'Library objects'. That puts the default bridges BACK, so I had to leave it at excluding 'all objects' to make them stay gone. But now, the traffic approaches, gets to where the exclusion rectangle takes effect, TURNS AROUND, and heads back the other way!!?? (it is a freeway - dual highways with 2 lanes). I've seen AI traffic disappear and reappear around certain things, but never have I seen it actually do a U-turn! Is there a way I can fix this? Ideally I'd like it to USE my bridges, but I don't know how to do that. Edit - Ooooh! I just was experimenting with drawing a LINE in SBX, and they can be defined as Freeway_Traffic_Line, which provides a path for the AI vehicles! :) I drew it as a "bypass" away from my bridges just to make sure the line was what I was actually seeing, and the vehicles are running on it. I see it can also have an elevation defined. So I am experimenting with that. But so far the elevation setting seems to have absolutely no effect.

I'm afraid that would be beyond my current skill set. Perhaps Jim or one of the others here could help you. Sorry I could not do more. My only guess is that the elevation for those sort of islands would be coded into the CVX file that FSX uses for that QMID 7 grid square. I don't know of a way to edit such a file. The only thing I would know how to do is to try to make polygons in SBX using land-class for the individual areas and set their elevation. Even thinking about trying that seems like an involved process. However, since you created these islands from scratch, it might not be that bad, because you could literally terraform the island to whatever shape in elevations you wanted. But I've never used the land-class tool in SBX, so I can't be of much help as far as specifics on how to do it.

Are the islands fairly flat with a single elevation, or are they hilly and/or have mountains or cliffs on them? If they are simple in regard to elevation, you may be able to do it with polygons in SBuilderX. I have worked with setting elevations on inland lakes this way, but I have not tried creating an island.

I suppose if the area were large enough it might work. But when dealing with, for example, an estuary shaped like the SBX screen shot I put in post # 164, I can't imagine making that work with large square blocks. I would probably try to do it from the artistic approach instead, using colored base layers.

I did not have much success. You are right, Jim, that the poly types you can define, such as Hydro_Generic_Canal_Channel_Perennial, have absolutely no affect on their appearance in the waters of non-seasonal FSX scenery. The only way I was able to make the water look different (short of changing the underlying coloration, of course) is to try using water class segments, which are limited to squares of a few ranges in size, and oddly centered not on the middle of QMID grid blocks, but on the crosshairs of them?? Why did they choose to do that?? So here is a shot of some water class (WC) blocks applied to Lake Saint Clair. Muddy outflow water on the left, and shallow tropical ocean water on the right. [ATTACH=CONFIG]141752[/ATTACH] This appears to have some potential when it comes to trying to create the kind of effect which can be seen on my shot posted earlier of the East side of this lake. However, in trying to constrain the surface to only display such coloration within the boundaries of a drawn polygon, I can find no way to create a shape which would allow the WC coloration to be seen inside it, and excluded around the outside of the shape. Is there a way to do that? In the exclusion lists of both the poly tool and the exclude tool I did not see any mention of any water classes which could be excluded. Unless there is some way to do that, the only method I can see for creating such an effect as seen in the estuary on the other side of the lake, if one does not have the coloration in the satellite imagery itself, is to artistically paint the colors onto a layer in the pre-compilation bitmap.

Thanks, Jim, but the problem with using waterclass tiles in SBX is that they are only square, and usually far too large. Ever seen a square body of water in the natural world? :) Goes back to what I said about the default choices programmers make. ;) I am not aware of any way to use one of those by drawing a polygon. AFAIK you can only "place" the squares constrained by the QMID grid and the too few choices for size. I've used them a couple times when necessary. But I much prefer the ability to draw the poly point by point, and with the smoothing option one could, at least in theory, create the shape of any lake or pond or stream. But I've not played with the other hydro-poly choices. I do know they look different in the preview window. Some are bluer, some greener, and some browner like muddy river water after a rain. I'll play with them and let you know what I discover.

Um, DUH!! :foreheadslap: In my eagerness to try your suggestion, coupled with the fact that I have always 'just pressed the H key' as the tutorial recommends, when setting the water type, I had never actually looked to see there are no less than SIX types of Hydro style and 5 of them all start with Hydro_Generic_. I got lazy and just copied what you had typed, pasted that into Notepad's "Find", and did indeed change THAT one. But............ that one is not the one I normally use. :) By pressing H, I use Hydro_Default_Perennial, because it closely matches the water color in Lake Erie as rendered by FSX before applying any modifications. Your trick DOES work! I have now applied that "78" prefix to all 6 of the hydro listings. And as I use any other types of polygon, I'll do the same. Thanks! While we're on the subject of hydro polys, I've been wondering which one would provide the closest to 'clear' (as in the least amount of coloration) water for FSX? I am working on the east side of Lake Saint Clair, which has some really nice looking colorations in a huge estuary. I decided to try to preserve those colors when I did the scenery there, so I applied a gradient edge to my typical 273d2d green coloration in GIMP that I place under lake water, and faded into using no added coloration at all for the bottom of the lake/river where these interesting color patterns emerge. I figured the Hydro_Default_Perennial color would have enough impact atop the natural coloration that it might not turn out looking the way it should, and began wondering what type of water would have the least impact. You may recall when I posted how to make FSX rendered water match up with the muddy greenish brown water in some photo imagery of upstream rivers, I was perplexed until I realized that the typical Hydro_Default_Perennial water is, in essence, blue. I wanted pea soup green, or close to that, and only when I realized I in fact needed to add a shade of yellow to the bottom of the river did I end up with the green color. But here, it seems to have worked out fairly well, on the part I have done so far. [ATTACH=CONFIG]141723[/ATTACH] Still, I am curious for future use which water color has the greatest clarity.

Sorry, but this (second suggestion) didn't work. I changed the setting to Color=780000C0, but as you can see here, once I set the poly as Name=Hydro_Generic_Bay_Harbor_Perennial, and closed the properties dialog, it came back with the typical opaque blue polygon. I would like to not have to go back in a second time and set the transparency, which is what I always have had to do. [ATTACH=CONFIG]141713[/ATTACH] The one I used as a test for this settings change is the polygon in the upper right (which is only temporary). The other larger polys are the ones I am using here, and have already been re-set to a transparency of 25.

PM'd. Now I'm gonna play with Sbuilder.ini and try some of your tweaks. One of the things I have always hated is how I need to zoom in to see details while creating a hydro-poly, but then I can't see the next segment of shorline coming up until I click really close to the edge of the visible image, and it jumps forward. I can't right-click and re-center the image in the middle of making the poly, because that ends the poly (something I would LOVE to change!!) I think I will like the 'center on scroll wheel' option. I'll try that first. Edit - OOooh! I LIKE that! I had not realized it at first, but once I started using the center on scroll wheel I quickly recalled that is the same way TurboCAD (my CAD program) works, and so it just comes naturally to me to do that when I want to zoom in on something. Thanks!! It made creating my current hydro-polys a lot easier. So, is there a setting that prevents a poly from losing its transparency when you have edited the settings in its properties? It seems redundant to me to have to set the transparency AGAIN simply because I have defined it as water and set its elevation.

Wow! Given my feelings about most programmer "default" settings is that they were on crack when they chose them, THANKS!! If you have more of these solid gold tidbits, by all means keep them coming!! :D

Jim, I tried to PM you, but the forum says you have exceeded your storage allotment for PMs, and you'll have to clear it out before you can receive any more messages. Best Regards, Z

I'd like to know what the problem had been. The only time I had seen that happen was when I had made a typo in one of the names of the required 3 bitmap files. But yours seem to all be the same, so it must have been a different problem.

I think that's basically correct, an easy way to differentiate between autogen and placed objects is to temporarily move your autogen slider all the way left - anything that remains visible will be placed objects or generic buildings - everything that goes away will be autogen. That brings up another subject, at some point in your project you'll want to check out the area with your scenery complexity slider maxed if you don't run with it maxed all the time. This will show up all placed objects, where with lesser settings there may be objects hidden that you're not seeing. Suppose you build a scenery at "scenery complexity: dense", bundle it up and release it. An end user immediately complains that there are some buildings that show up in the water somewhere, lo and behold he is running "scenery complexity: extremely dense" and seeing some buildings that you didn't. See what I mean? Just an FYI... I know nothing about Gimp, but in PhotoShop you have "adjustment layers". Generally I make no changes to the actual imagery itself, it remains complately intact at the very bottom of the layers stack. Overtop of that you can add a "Selective color" adjustment layer and adjust sliders ad-naseaum until you get the desired coloration. When you need to do something like edit the bridge out you can simply stamp out the bridge by whatever means possible on the base imagery, the coloration remains intact since the adjustment layer affects whatever is below it. Further these color adjustment settings can be saved to a file, then when you start working on another piece of nearby imagery you can simply import the settings into another selective color layer and the new imagery will match the prior with just a few clicks. You might have a look and see if Gimp has a similar function, it could save you a lot of fiddling. Jim Nice job on the night scenery! I have not ever tried doing any of that.

What part of the world is that?

Thanks for the clarifications! It seems you've been around a lot more (scenery) blocks than I have. ;) I'm still learning what everything is called. Question - Could one say "autogen" items are those which will suddenly appear out in front of you while flying (especially at lower LOD levels) like trees and things, whereas the skyscrapers, bridges, etc. which can be seen the whole time, even from a distance, would be "generic placement items"? Actually, excluding the bridge and then placing a new one was quite easy, and in the interim of those steps I realized I needed to edit the bitmap image to get rid of the photo rendering of the bridge and access ramps. Which quickly materialized into the realization that I had to edit not only the base image, but 2 coloration layers, both water masks, and the layer I call GREENWatermask, which is a copy of the Watermask.bmp layer with the black replaced by 273d2d green that I use as a uniform base color under all the water in my scenery. I might not have thought to do that had it been easy to just move the bridge. I think your explanation of the bridge being hard coded and compiled is probably spot on, because on at least one instance of the crash, the factory I had moved and rotated jumped back to its default position and orientation just as FSX was locking up. One big reason I like to stick with a learned program is that I usually find the settings the programmer chose as defaults in most programs to be the opposite of what I want. So once I get one set up I would rather not have to start all over again. I still recall my hours and hours of utter frustration when first learning Corel Draw 8 years back, trying to figure out WHY none of my shape "fills" were being displayed. After a LOT of digging in, as some like to call it, the Helpless File, I finally unearthed the well hidden and mostly unmentioned tidbit that the program defaults to "wire frame mode", so doesn't SHOW fills. Seems to me that should be a prominent user setting to turn ON if you want it, not to have to turn OFF as a newbie. I'll keep an eye out for you in 0302 ;). Actually, years ago when our youngest son was still in middle school he and I used to engage in multiplayer flight in FS. That was back before we had ways to communicate with other players in these games. I researched, designed, and built a set of headset amplifiers with wiring strung between our adjacent rooms so we could talk to each other over the headsets while flying together. Very fond memories for both of us. He no longer seems to find the time, as a GE Field Engineer now, out of Colorado, but now and then mentions how much he misses, and would like to resume, the multiplayer flight one day. Probably one of the rare moments when video/computer games actually brought a kid 'closer' to a parent. lol. Oh, and I should mention.....his name is Jim. :)

I just ran into the same problem as archfer. As I worked up the Detroit River, I came upon the Ambassador Bridge going across it from Detroit to Windsor. And of course, it is not correctly positioned on the satellite imagery. So what did you guys ever decide was the course of action needed to move one of these bridges? Edit - OK, I got it to be excluded, but NOT with the "Exclude Extrusion Bridges" option in an SBX Exclude rectangle. That did not make it go away. I had to ADD "Library Objects" to that, re-compile the exclusion rectangle and reload it in FSX. THEN the bridge went away. If anyone could tell me what BGL file I might find one of these suspension bridges, so I can place a new one with Instant Scenery 2, please let me know. Aha! There is a "bridges.bgl" in my arsenal for IS2/Rwy12 Object Placer. :) Edit - That was pretty painless. I had to remove/edit the appearance of all the bridge imagery from the base image bitmap as well as all the masks and layers used in this segment. So now I am thinking this bridge was not an Extrusion Bridge. Where can I find information on what those are?

Thanks for the heads up, Jim. I'll keep it in mind, but I would not be inclined to have to start again on a learning curve unless I ran into something GIMP could not do that I needed to do. One problem with these feature-rich programs is that their help files read like an encyclopedia in a foreign language. Written by those who already know the names for everything and how to use them. Not at all newbie friendly. So when I finally get my teeth into one as I am doing with GIMP I tend to stick with it. I need a bit of help. I can post this elsewhere, but if you good folks happen to know the yes/no answer it will save me some time. Is it possible to use a tool such as Instant Scenery 2, which I have used quite a bit, so I know my way around in it fairly well, to move an FSX autogen building or object? Or is there some reason one can't do that? I have some factory buildings poorly placed along the Detroit River where I just created custom scenery. FSX has them hanging out into the water. So I would like to move/re-orient them. I found the FSX/Scenery/0302/OBX25160.BGL file in which they reside, so have IS2 displaying their label as being in that file. When I move one of them, I quickly see Windows cursor "circle of death" spinning, and then FSX 'stops responding' and I have to restart it. I just did this 4 times in a row. So then the 5th time I opened one of my own collection of BGL files in which I have placed hundreds of scenery objects around the country with IS2, and planted a few trees next to the factory. No problem doing that. So I switch and open the above file, move a factory building, and FSX instantly crashes again. Is the only way to deal with these auto-gen buildings to actually EXCLUDE them (with a polygon in SBX, for example), and then have to re-create them if we want them, in our OWN BGL file??

Hi Guys. I don't know how, but somehow my subscription to replies in this thread got disconnected. Jim, that image in post 136 of the huge poly is drop dead gorgeous! I can't imagine how long that must have taken, and unfortunately I DO have the bad habit of almost unwillingly right-clicking in the middle of making a poly. It happens too often. I wish there was some facility in SBX to CONTROL+Click or something to remove the last point placed. Also I'd like to be able to add or subtract the node points, like I can do in TurboCAD. Maybe in version 314? lol. Well, I've got something to share which, in my viewpoint, totally rocks this thread. Imagine if you could do a complex watermask and blendmask without TRACING the shoreline??? Well, I just DID. Here is the 'comparison' image. I drew a yellow line across where the previously created segment, with a TON of manual tracing, ends, looking northward, and where my latest segment, with NO TRACING begins. This is near Trenton, Michigan. [ATTACH=CONFIG]141429[/ATTACH] Here, I moved over that yellow line and angled the view down so you can see the details along the shorelines. [ATTACH=CONFIG]141430[/ATTACH] Last night I loaded up my retail scenery for Michigan. About 32GB as the crow flies. Since it, too, has the same ugly "photo water" issue as Ohio's Lake Erie shoreline, and since Michigan is virtually surrounded by lakes, this is going to be a long term project. I then went through and culled out all of the BGL files the retail scenery had provided which included shorelines. About 187 of them. About 83 remain of inland areas, so I won't have to re-do those parts of the state. As I set out to start this huge project, it occurred to me that I had so much luck in learning how to use GIMP's fuzzy select tool to select marinas, with their tiny boats and docks, and add those into the watermask of my Ohio scenery, maybe I could actually use the tool to MAKE the watermask, instead of doing all that tracing? I decided it was worth a try, at the very least. So, using it to select the water in the bitmap image of this area, I then used either SHIFT+click to add pixel colors the fuzzy select tool had excluded, or CONTROL+click to remove ones that had been included. Doing that, I could watch the marching ants of the selection literally snap into and hug the shoreline and all its protrusions. I made several trips around the image watching for pixels I wanted to include or exclude, until I got what seemed to be a pretty good selection of the entire watermask for this rather complex watery area. I then used the selection to create both the Watermask and Blendmask layers for GIMP by brushing it in with 100% black on the Watermask, and 50% black on the Blendmask. Inverting the selection I brushed in 100% white on those 2 layers. Then I went over the shorelines in the Blendmask layer with my gradient airbrush technique, described above. I then added a 'green' layer to correct this area's red coloration from the imagery. In less than an hour, I had all this done, plus compiling it to the BGL, and making the hydro-poly in SBX. It would have taken a LOT longer to trace this all out. Twice. I think it turned out just as nice as anything I could have made by arduously tracing. What do you guys think? If any of you reading this tutorial have not yet gotten into using the Fuzzy Select tool, and how to constrain it with channels when needed (I did not need to do that on this segment at all) I urge you to spend the time. It is WELL worth it. The Fuzzy Select tool has its issues sometimes, but at least for this segment, it saved me hours of work. One contributing factor no doubt is the red-shifted scenery itself. This makes the tool's job of discerning land from water a lot easier. In areas where the land is nice and green, and the water in the photo image is actually water colored, it might not work as well. Sometimes I find some watermask that wasn't done neatly, and I have to clean that up a bit alternating between the black and white brush to cover the stray pixels. But overall it is still a lot quicker and less tedious than tracing everything.

Although that might get you over the current hurdle, there may be other issues cropping up later in your efforts with the SDK not being current, that have yet to reveal themselves. ;)

Ah, Yes! I remember this BS all too well! Microsoft's own SDK files that can't be READ by Microsoft's state of the art OS!! Sometimes they just astound me with their............(fill in your favorite phrase here). I was advised I could use a nifty freeware file utility called FreeCommander. If you remember what Windows file browsing looked like back in Windows 3.1, where we had dual pane windows and such, you'll be right at home using FreeCommander. It does a fine job of accessing and running these files.