FSX Ground Poly Texture Alignment

[Diverskii]

Hi,

I have been experimenting with Ground Polys with my own textures. I've read through all the manuals but something eludes me.

When applying a texture to a ground poly (in this case a runway) is there no way to precisely align it? For example the rotate tool only seems to work in large increments meaning I get this sort of thing going on:

Obviously over the length of the entire runway this small offset becomes huge so it won't do. What am I doing wrong? (Note the pink line is just for my reference in the sim, it doesn't mean anything here)

Also, am I correct in thinking this is the correct way to go about texturing the object? I have a 1024x1024 texture file set in the Texture_Def.txt to display as 45m square since 45m is the width of my runway. I then align it to the bottom of my runway and it seems to tile the entire length which is what I'm after.

Thanks

 

[gadgets]

the rotate tool only seems to work in large increments

That's true if you just use the mouse wheel, However, by selecting all vertices and placing your mouse cursor over any one of them you are able to rotate the texture to any angle you wish.

In order to position a texture for the entire runway with any accuracy, you may have to use a combination of rotating and moving individual vertices at very large magnification. Please also note that, in order to provide reasonable viewing resolution close up, such a texture would have to be extremely large - I suspect well beyond the capability of FlightSim.

Don

 

[Diverskii]

That's true if you just use the mouse wheel, However, by selecting all vertices and placing your mouse cursor over any one of them you are able to rotate the texture to any angle you wish.

In order to position a texture for the entire runway with any accuracy, you may have to use a combination of rotating and moving individual vertices at very large magnification. Please also note that, in order to provide reasonable viewing resolution close up, such a texture would have to be extremely large - I suspect well beyond the capability of FlightSim.

Don

Thanks Don,

The rotation is a lot better now thank you. Although I still can't seem to get the accuracy with my mouse and my unsteady hand. Is there no snapping available or maybe the possibility to input degree values? I see the degrees appearing in the top left as I rotate but I'm still not able to get it perfectly horizontal.

I'm not quite sure I understand you. I'm used to working with say a 1024 texture and UVW Mapping it in GMAX which tiles this texture the entire way along (with alpha blending on the edges etc). Would I not be able to line the texture up at the bottom of the runway and it would tile giving me a decent resolution along the entire length?

Thanks

 

[gadgets]

I didn't infer an intention to tile from your initial post. Hence my concern about display resolution.

While ADE_GP doesn't preclude tiling, tiling is not directly supported. And, as you've discovered, there is no snapping nor user input of angular value provided. While, of course, both are possible, I suspect they would be of limited usefulness. Indeed, if you are tiling, a snap operation would be of no help whatsoever. As for user input of angle, note that the precise angle involved for, say a 5000' runway, could have many numbers following the decimal point. But, this wouldn't help much since, within ADE_GP the position of a vertex must be resolved to a single pixel - which may not lie directly "on the line". Then, as you note, any error would be magnified many times.

The only thing I can suggest if you are unable to get satisfactory results with ADE_GP is to create your runway surface with the FS8 Gmax Gamepack. (which is what ADE_GP emulates).

Don

 

[Diverskii]

I didn't infer an intention to tile from your initial post. Hence my concern about display resolution.

While ADE_GP doesn't preclude tiling, tiling is not directly supported. And, as you've discovered, there is no snapping nor user input of angular value provided. While, of course, both are possible, I suspect they would be of limited usefulness. Indeed, if you are tiling, a snap operation would be of no help whatsoever. As for user input of angle, note that the precise angle involved for, say a 5000' runway, could have many numbers following the decimal point. But, this wouldn't help much since, within ADE_GP the position of a vertex must be resolved to a single pixel - which may not lie directly "on the line". Then, as you note, any error would be magnified many times.

The only thing I can suggest if you are unable to get satisfactory results with ADE_GP is to create your runway surface with the FS8 Gmax Gamepack. (which is what ADE_GP emulates).

Don

Thanks for the help, Don.

Indeed, I have only just discovered the GP feature in ADE and so thought I'd try it out. I will probably revert to the FS8 method for now as it's better suited to my end goal.

Thanks again.