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FSX Question - How to start creating terrain

T

TChapman500

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106
Country
us-virginia
Hello, I'm new here.

I've been trying to create some terrain for a couple of fictional islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (a couple hundred miles south-west of Hawaii). I've tried using Airport Design Editor, and gmax with zero success.

I've been reading the tutorials but they are way in over my head. And the FSX SDK documentation is vague! And all the tutorials seem to be geared towards adding terrain that actually exists in the real world, and not fictional terrain. Also, I can't seem to find anything along the lines of these "geoTiff?" tools that are mentioned in the tutorials.

Is there a step-by-step tutorial on how to add terrain that is completely fictional?

PS: I have limited time, so I haven't been able to do a thorough search, yet.
 
Hi,

I don't expect a step by step tutorial foutre this, since adding fictitious terrain is not something many people do.

I would try to make the elevation data as a geotiff. Either in your painting tool or in some gis tool. Once you have made the data, resample can turn it into terrain. And with sbuilderx you can put terrain polygons on the island.

Send from my phone using Tapatalk, so excuse the short sentences and possible typos
 
I have gimp, but it doesn't seem to read geotiff. What is gis? What is resample? What is sbuilderx?

One more question. Doesn't an image format only give you 256 levels of elevation?

EDIT: Sometimes I'm a bit slow to start catching onto things, but once I start, I catch on pretty quickly.
 
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In the middle of the page, to the right...
Wilbur (32-Bit) 1.77.00.00
It allows an individual to play with terrain data (height fields). It can import data from and export data to many popular file formats. In addition, it allows the data to be modified with a number of ...
Anyway there are great collection of programs for terrain manipulation, you can investigate which could be better, good luck.
 
Okay, I got the program. Thanks for the help.

EDIT: Is there any program that lets me specify the height of the terrain. My airports are 11 feet above sea level and I don't know how to get the terrain to that height when all I have is a color map.

EDIT 2: How do I export my height map into flight simulator? And how do I specify latitude and longitude limits?
 
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About the first question if you can't control the height it's difficult, anyway I guess should be the other way, you have a height then place your runway to this height,
Don't know how work wilbur, can you export as 3ds max file ?. or any wich ModelCovertex can convert. can export the file as a geotiff ?
 
I can't work with wilbur either. In fact, I can't even work how to export a gmax mesh into FSX. I can build it, but I can't export it.

EDIT: I can give you the GMAX file that I'm using as well as the texture I'm using for the file. Should I give you the airport that goes with it as well?
 
Okay, I've used ADE to create a terrain polygon. In the past, whenever I've compiled the airport, the terrain file is compiled without errors, but it never shows up, except in the airport editor. In FSX, well, it doesn't render at all, even at max detail. And if I try to land on it, I sink the aircraft.

How do I get the terrain polygon in this picture to render in FSX and be collide-able?
terrain_question.PNG

Here is the XML that ADE created. What should I do with it to get the terrain to appear?
Code: 
<landclassPoly>
   <guid>
      {56143049-b178-480a-9063-92ea8a5db3c9}
   </guid>
   <coordinates>
      -179.689225946357,0.392958997240994,0
      -179.657826989194,0.390889813632793,0
      -179.641094724512,0.372474079904262,0
      -179.660925631208,0.348471551586952,0
      -179.697282145243,0.350540736842814,0
      -179.704925389763,0.383026916141319,0
      -179.689225946357,0.392958997240994,0
   </coordinates>
</landclassPoly>
 
You are trying to create terrain, it's right ?, with Ade, FsxKml, sbuilderx, you can create terrain, with the landclass but you will need to get any kind o mesh, which is difficult. you can model the terrain with Gmax or wilbur if this was the appropiate tool for this.
Anyway I think you are in trobule with the Sdk installation , maybe it's because you are having problems with the tools. fix this issue first. and then your will see what happen. you should be able to see the menu tool inside the fsx game then you will be in the right road.
What version of Fsx you have exactly. ?
 
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I am trying to create terrain, but the terrain poly created with ADE does not render in Flight Simulator. The funny thing is, it renders in the SDK's terrain viewer, with the exact shape and position I determined in ADE.

EDIT: Never heard of FSXKML? SBuilderX I do not know how to operate.
 
FsxKml is a easy tool to manipulate polygons for landclass and lines if you want make freeway traffic, and other things, work with Kml files from google earth but this is another story, first please check your Sdk installation.
 
Could you give me a direct link to this FSX KML? The links in the wiki are confusing. Also, I'll need to create the terrain data from scratch because the terrain is fictional.

EDIT: Wait a minute, is it possible to create fictional terrain in Google Earth?
 
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Tejal Bernardo said:
FsxKml is a easy tool to manipulate polygons for landclass and lines if you want make freeway traffic, and other things, work with Kml files from google earth but this is another story, first please check your Sdk installation.
Click to expand...

FsxKml is a legacy tool in varying states of death... It suffers from a variety of problems for more than a year now since Google changed the format of the KML file. There is some tool that does some data massaging but that doesn't work quite right sometimes.

If you want to do terrain design I suggest you use SBuilderX (FS9 or FSX) which despite some of its GUI oddities it beats FSXKML. With FSXKML you depend on Google Earth to create your terrain polygons and lines but if you want to adjust height and such you have to do it in FSXKML which never gives you the whole picture.

I was an FSXKML user but quite frankly I was loosing a lot of time dealing with its illness that the time spent learning SBUilderX has pretty much paid up, all you need in one tool.
 
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