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FSXA Shorelines gone?

Hangar32

Hangar32

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315
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us-virginia
Greetings,

In 2011 I created and posted scenery of Leros island, Greece.

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?searchid=17167696

A couple of weeks ago I got my dream FSX machine - retirement from the Navy present from my wife. It came with FSX Gold edition installed. Works like a dream except . . .

I down loaded my old Leros scenery and all the shorelines (i.e. the shoreline lines I entered in SBuiderX) have disappeared. I pulled the same BGL files from my old computer (which clearly shows the shorelines - to include the waves) - no difference.

I checked the version of FSX (from the Help->About FSX pulldown menu) and they appear to be the exact same version, albeit a different ID number. I set the scenery settings exactly the same - still no joy. In other, regular FSX and ORBX scenery, the shorelines are there to include the wave action in appropriate places.

Needless to say, I'm baffled. More than that, I am concerned that I've posted some defective scenery and would like to fix it if I can.

Any ideas? :confused:
 
You could drag your cvx containing the shorelines into TMFViewer, right click a shoreline and "identify vector features" which should give you a GUID. Then search your terrain.cfg for that GUID (which you presumably won't find, but you could also search the terrain.cfg from the old machine too). You should also be able to find that GUID in SBuilderX313\Tools\lines.txt.

Not sure what you'll find, but you should be able to suss it out that way. There was an option to install an updated terrain.cfg when you first install SBX, maybe the shoreline GUID you used was only available with that update in place?

Also your link doesn't work, what was the filename?



EDIT: Oops sorry, you won't find the GUID in terrain.cfg after all, you need to find it in lines.txt and then search the terrain.cfg for the texture name or friendly name associated with it. Kind of a PITA since there seems to be no common txt strings between lines.txt and terrain.cfg.

I assume this is your file:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=search&fname=leros.zip

If that's the case I'm seeing a couple different shorelines, it appears you must have used "Shorelines_Ocean_Tan_Sand_No_Surf" (220cdd79-5791-4a04-b182-aaa66e8ef67c) for the visible shorelines and then a couple sections of "Wave Effect No Texture" (abd41838-4644-4d3d-84dc-792f7c24712a) out from shore a ways for the surf effect alone. I can't find the entry for the latter in a default derivative of the terrain.cfg.


EDIT again: Finally found it, it appears it is from the modified terrain.cfg that ships with SBX:

// Wave Effect - No Texture
[Texture.387]
Name=Wave_Effect_No_Texture
Color=FFC0C000
guid={ABD41838-4644-4d3d-84DC-792F7C24712A}
Effect=wavecontroller
LandClassRemapType=none
ExcludeAutogen=Yes
RenderToTexture=No
Water=No


Jim
 
Last edited:
Thanks Jim.

Think you hit the nail on the head - definitely need to ID that GUID for the shorelines I used - compare what's in the terrain.cfg with the old machine, etc. and troubleshoot from there. Will try that. I was off on a completely different tangent - think your line of reasoning is the right course.

Neither new or old PC has SBuilderX installed - that's on my "Development PC" - but who knows what I may have added to the old PC - I've had it since about 2008.

File name is leros.zip and its at Flightsim.com in FSX Scenery. I guess the link is only good for one search. :( Sorry about that.
 
Downloaded the file, bumping for the edits above in case you missed them. Wow I just went through this a week or so ago and don't remember having so much trouble finding what I was looking for, I guess the key word here is "remember", something I'm struggling with a bit recently :o .

Jim
 
Jim,

Thanks for the detective work. I am going to have to go line-by-line through the terrain.cfg that ships with SBX and compare it with what is on my "clean" new PC.

I just retired after 28 years in the Navy so have a little more time on my hands :D and want to get back into scenery building in a serious way. Thus I want a PC that is about the baseline for the average flight-simmer for testing. Thought my old PC fit the bill - as you have discovered, it must have had the SBX terrain.cfg file on it.

There was almost zero time to do any scenery designing these last two years as I was the CO of a shore installation - so I am feeling your pain about remembering stuff - imagine a two year gap! :eek:

I will jump into this following up the work you did - I really owe you on this one. Thanks again. I'll give a post later today when I've got more.

Cheers!
 
Update: Still no success. :(

Thanks to JRobinson's guidance I focused on the terrain.cfg and offshoots.

Checked my terrain.cfg and the "Shorelines_Ocean_Tan_Sand_No_Surf" is in there - [Texture.29], "Textures=o_whtesand_ns.bmp" Checked for the file - its in Scenery/World/Textures. Checked the file on my development PC with ImageTool - it looks fine. Puzzled. :confused:

The other vector - the "Wave_Effect_No_Texture" is nowhere to be found in the terrain.cfg - [Texture.387] is being used by an FTX (ORBX) texture. No real problem - that was just eye candy - the real problem is the coastline not showing up.

I was thinking it was some kind of Win7 security issue. Tried running FSX as Administrator - no joy. Checked the security settings and FSX should be able to read the file.

Thought it might be a Render Priority [VTPlayerRenderPriorities] issue - higher number = higher priority - set it to 103000 which is above roads - the roads show up - the shoreline doesn't.

In frustration I went back and redid a portion of the shoreline in the Shorelines Generic Ocean - it worked albeit I've got those dang waves everywhere.

So I'll redo the whole thing and put out an update to FlightSim.com.

Still it bugs me - it should have worked! Everything was in its place. :banghead:
 
Last edited:
robystar said:
You may want to install the modified terrain.cfg (again?) by Luis Tirado?
Click to expand...

OK, but that will likely blow away all the pointers to my OBRX scenery - took me 3 days to install via DVD . . . ok there was some "testing" involved - - but still a huge task and something I'd rather not attempt at this point.

I guess I could reinstall and the try to merge in the ORBX additions - I had better make back ups of every thing first.

Thanks for the suggestion.:)
 
You should be able to just go ahead and install the SBX supplied terrain.cfg and then if you cycle FTX Central one time it should append all the Orbx entries back in at the end of the file. I don't think those numbers mean anything (i.e. [Texture.387]), in my active terrain.cfg [Texture.387] is "FTX_AU_Lake_Shoreline" so you could cross-check to make sure, I'm betting yours may be different. I believe it's like scenery layers in your scenery.cfg or [fltsim.X] entries in an aircraft.cfg, I think they just need to be numbered in succession and it doesn't really matter which number is associated with any particular entry.

That said, if you do use those SBX definitions for the shorelines then I believe anyone using your scenery would also need the modified terrain.cfg in order to see the shorelines. Probably be best if you stuck with something that was available in default for your update, although I haven't seen where there's a default "effect only, no texture" version available.

I'll try to get your scenery set up in an active scenery folder this evening and report back what it looks like from my end.

Congrats on your retirement BTW :)

Jim
 
Jim,

Thanks - retirement feels good. :)

OK, got what you are saying. I'll give it a try.

You are correct that I'm trying to keep one PC as basic as possible so it will "represent" the average Flightsimmer's machine in order to test my scenery.

Soooo. . . thinking if I keep a back up of my current terrain.cfg, reload with the SBX "friendly" terrain.cfg as you & robystar have described, and see if that fixes it. If it so, then switch back and figure out how to set up my Scenery Development PC so it uses the "common" terrain.cfg textures.

Or I could just stay away from doing shorelines. ;)

Unfortunately, three of my current projects in various stages of development have lots of shorelines - rivers, harbors, etc.

R/ Will

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
Hi Will, I managed to check out your scenery and indeed there were no shorelines. I dropped in the SBX supplied .cfg and they returned. ...but I'm guessing you know that by now, lol.

Just an FYI, I did a bunch of shorelines myself recently and I wanted to change the type. Like 500+ individual lines, so right clicking each one and doing it manually was out of the question. This worked:

-Hide all lines, select everything else and delete (don't save it that way!).

-Show lines again (or not) and File > Export > SbuilderX SBX

-Open the .sbx in Notepad or whatever, use the replace function to replace the line types with type of your choice (see lines.txt).

-use the replace function to replace all GUIDS (also from lines.txt), save

-Open the project again, select all lines, delete

-Do file > Append > Sbuilder SBX and import the modified shorelines

-Save as "something_else.SBP", don't overwrite your original until you verify the desired result in the sim (it took me a couple tries to get it right :) ).


Nice scenery BTW. I'm seeing some boats just west of the runway that are on dry land, are these dry-docked? I think they must be as there's a fence around them, I'm using FTXGlobal, I was wondering if I was supposed to be seeing water under them? (Can't remember the terrain.cfg mode I was in when I checked this, I think it was the same either way)

I've got Leros installed now, let me know if you need anything tested out.

Jim
 
JRobinson said:
Hi Will, . . . I dropped in the SBX supplied .cfg and they returned. ...but I'm guessing you know that by now, lol.
Click to expand...

Yep - I just did the same about two minutes before I read you post. LOL.

It's only about a dozen or so lines so doing them by hand is "do-able" - but no fun - I'm going to use your method. Thanks.

I've also got a project with a huge shore line - rivers, ponds, lots of squiggly stuff - took me months to build (albeit I had a day job at the time) - Just checked it out under the "standard terrain.cfg" and they are all gone. Your method is the only practical way of redoing that. It's strange that the roads stay although I think its turned them all to asphalt - half of the ones on Leros were gravel. The dirt roads look the same.

I figure that the best way to do things is to make scenery that will work for all FSX users - not just us "hot shot scenery developers" :D

The challenge will be to run SBX so using just the standard terrain.cfg I tried just switching out the terrain.cfg on my development PC and after giving me a couple of "Are you sure you want to do this?" warnings it went ahead. However, none of the changes I made with an existing project showed up. Maybe with a new project? In any event I'm reloading SBX - can't hurt.

Yes, those boats are supposed to be on dry land - its a boat yard and the sailboat masts make for a small navigation hazard. In the real world they have this big, weird-looking vehicle with stilt legs that drives over the boat, picks it up, and moves it to the water. I ran out of steam before I got to building it . . . maybe now since I am redoing it . . .:)

Thanks again for helping me solve this thing.

All the best,
 
Update:

Jim - followed your plan and it worked - saving me a lot of time - especially on one of my bigger, unfinished projects - 60 plus lines, mostly coastlines, one with 123 points.

The only down side is that the 6 FSX shorelines tat have GUIDs in the texture.cfg file (and thus are the only ones that can be used) have a fixed width - and in the Leros scenery at least I was a little sloppy on kine placement. OK where it is just Ocean shore line which is nice and thick -- but inside bays & harbors - where you don't want waves and do want a different look - there are plenty of spots where the shoreline is either "up the beach" or down off shore. I'm at least going to have to adjust a bit.

So this is fixed and this thread is done - but I'm thinking of starting another thread to see if there is a way to "unlock" all the other different shorelines without replacing the terrain.cfg file.

I noticed in the SBX terrain.cfg file header that these shorelines are FS9 legacy. Then why the heck did they include all of them--with all of their bmp texture files--in FSX to begin with? :confused:

Thanks again.:cool:
 
I did all my shorelines by right clicking my hydro polys and then "make line" which creates a line precisely superimposed vertex by vertex around the hydro poly. In that situation it wouldn't matter how wide the shoreline is, half of it will always be on the wet side and half of it on land.

Before you spend a lot of time adjusting shorelines it may almost be simpler to delete and re-do them using the above approach, you may try it and see what you think anyway.

I do know that you can change the texture by supplying a modified texture using the same filename called out in the terrain.cfg in the texture folder of your scenery, apparently FSX reads the CVX from your scenery folder and checks the accompanying texture folder first before defaulting to the Scenery\World\Texture folder. If it finds what it's looking for there it will use it. That doesn't do anything for the width though as far as what's called out in the terrain.cfg, but possibly if you changed the alpha to widen the texture strips somewhat it might have an effect, I've never tried that but it seems plausible.

Jim
 
Wow - what a clever way of doing shore lines. I will certainly use it in the future! Leros island itself had 1500 points.

See what you mean about stashing the textures in the the "local" texture folder so they get read before FSX looks i the default location.

The width issue is frustrating - as I understand it, the number of lanes determines width - which means that the smallest you can get is 1 lane and why I seem to have a super highway (2 lane asphalt no median) running around Leros - frustrating because I used imagery views in SBX to set the widths.

I'm going to experiment based on your suggestions and see what I come up with.

Thanks.:D
 
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