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Water border around terrain

Bugstomper

Bugstomper

Messages
41
Country
italy
Hello,

i've just started to work on a new scenery using the resample tool in FS9 SDK, and i ran in a strange (for me) behaviour of FS9. I am using a bmp satellite image to replace the standard FS9 ground texture, it's all fine except that i see a water border around the satellite image (see picture). I was thinking abut an alpha channel issue but i cannot figure out how to fix it.

Regards

Enzo
 
Hi Enzo,

This is normal behavior if you image does not fit inside the LOD squares exactly. In fact there is an alpha channel that causes the water. So the only solution would be to make sure you image fits inside the LOD square exactly.
 
Thanks Arno, correct me if i'm wrong...so i should increase the NumOfCellsPerLine and the NumOfLines in the .inf files, right?

Regards
 
Hi Enzo,

Humm, in general not. Probably you will need to use another image that has its borders exactly at the border of the LOD squares. Everything else will cause a distortion of your image.
 
ok, i'll test it out. Can you suggest me some tutorial about terrain texturing or any piece of software i can use to add custom textures to the default scenery?

Thanks again

Enzo
 
The terrain SDK tells most things you need to know.

SBuilder is a nice tool that allows you to place photos (as VTP polygons, so you can also draw VTP roads on it later). There are also some other tools, but these only help you in making the inf file for resample.
 
Custom Terrain Textures

Hello....

I've been reading the Terrain SDK and am stumped. About the only thing I have successfully accomplished is a bit of water texture on one side of my terrain.

As far as I can tell, I have everything needed to create custom texture for FS9, but all that I get when I go to the area in the FS is a great big grey block (with a small sliver of water along the north edge).

The Aerial images I get from the 'net (it's a GIS locator site in my region) have x and y coordinates that change as the mouse pointer skirts over the image. I am assuming these to be UTM coordinates (i.e. x=550186.7, y=4808593.9). There is also a "scaling factor" displayed, which at this time prove to me to be of little use (The images I used had a scaling factor of 4.981099...and so on). Anyway, to get an image large enough for my area, I had to download a bunch then stitch them together in PaintShop Pro. Then I used the GIS to get the NW and SE coordinates of my image. There is a river running through, so I mask it out and save that in to the Alpha channel. In Imagetool, I convert the file to .tga 32 bit, then invert the Alpha channel so that the water is black (0?) and the land is white (255?) ( I have tried it the other way too, with the same over all results.)

So now I have a .tga file at 32 bit, just like the Terrain SDK says to use to have water fx.

I use Microdem to convert the UTM coordinates into Lat/Long WGS84 coordinates to enter to my .inf file.

I read somewhere that to calculate the CellXdimensionDeg and CellYdimensionDeg, is to take the image dimensions in decimal degrees ( I used the UTM coordinates and subtracted the smaller from the larger) divided by (image pixels -1). Upon doing that, I get values that are very close to the "scaling factor" mentioned above". I'm beginning to believe that this area in particular, is the source of my headaches. I can find no where, except the one post that I read it in, which I can't remember where that forum is now either :( , that explains how to arrive at the dimensions in decimal degrees.

So anyway, I enter the data into .inf with UseSourceDimension=1, and resample goes on forever. I close the command prompt window as I suspect there's a problem, then delete the hundreds of .tga files created ( I had 10,000+ created once) for an area about 5km x 10km.

So then I try to force resample into the area I want by defining the NorthLat, SouthLat, WestLon and EastLon. I get only a handful of .tga files, which seems more like it for the area I'm working on. But when I install it into FS9, it's just a grey square.

When I open the .tga files created by resample.exe in Imagetool, to check them, they too, are grey squares. I then convert them anyway, with Imagetool, using "imagetool -terrainphoto", then rename all the .mip files to .bmp and disperse all files to their appropriate folders (C:\Here\Scenery and C:\Here\Texture)

I tried the same thing with a regular 24 bit .bmp, with no Alpha channel ( I just wnted to see a picture in FS9, and wasn't concerned with the water for this one), same result.

I can't get anything to show up at all, except the grey square.

TMFViewer shows me a huge white square with a tiny yellow square in it when I load the resulting .bgl

I'm sorry if this seems rather long winded, and especially sorry if it is very very amateur. I have spent a week solid trying to figure this out.

Any input is very much appreciated...

:banghead: Chris
 
Solved...kind of...

Hi again...

I did some more research and found my CellDimensions were way off....

I was confused by the E-005 at the end of the dimensions in the niagara sample in the tutorial.....

I have since learned what it means and am working on finding the formula to generate the correct dimensions for myself.

I have custom terrain now, and now a big grey block and millions of .tga files...

Thanks anyway...

Chris

p.s. I might have got no responses to my previous thread, but I am grateful these forums exist as they are a great help :)
 
Hi there!

I too have been banging my head on the MS way of placing photoreal textures, but as Arno says above, try out SBuilder (SceneryBuilder, really). Info & download in the forums at PTSim

It´s not dead-on easy to place images in SBuilder either, but at least you get a GUI to do it in. Also, you can do so much more once you´ve placed your images, like drawing roads etc.

/hans
 
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