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Why would water follow an aircraft around an airport

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238
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unitedstates
Hi all,

I bought KMYR recently and it looks like the guys that made it, The Airport Guys, have "left the building". It's a really nice airport but, I have a problem where, when I'm flying over landclass around the airport, there's aabout a 1000' circle of water that follows my aircraft around it. Here's a top down view and the water the arrow is pointing to stays around my aircraft no matter which way I go (only over the landclass, not over the photoreal).

W6fSD4c.jpg


Any ideas?

Gregg
 
Hi Greg:

IMHO, that "clipped rectangle" water shape is definitely the "Visual Display Radius" for terrain tiles which surrounds the user aircraft.

There are a number of possible causes for a failure to render default or 3rd party land class textures within the LOD-13 Area beneath the aircraft (LOD-13 quad land class texture tiles within the MSFS quad matrix grid are approximately 1023 Meters each on the terrain N-S and E-W MSFS X-Y 3D world axes).

Do you have OrbX FTX Global / Vector / Region packs and/or or GEX installed ? :scratchch

Also, what is your LOD visibility Radius and terrain mesh slider settings in the FSX scenery configuration options dialog ?


Other possibilities (and potential solutions) may be more efficiently explored pending your reply. :)


PS: It's only 3 days since you posted your inquiry in the Airport Guys support forum; perhaps they only have "left the building" early for an extended week of vacation over the 4th of July holiday ?

http://www.theairportguys.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10498

GaryGB
 
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Hi Gary,

I had the same problem just a couple of days ago after I installed and then uninstalled the OrbX Iceland demo.
I was working on a way off airport in Croatia when I noticed the same as shown by Gregg and the land class in the region was garbled as well. For my airport (LDZD) and its surroundings I had to make an exclude everything with ADE before I got things more or less straightened out and I then had, of course, to put in new land class to make it acceptable again.
My question therefore is:
- is there another way to get rid of these water artifacts?
 
Hi Greg:

Do you have OrbX FTX Global / Vector / Region packs and/or or GEX installed ? :scratchch

Also, what is your LOD visibility Radius and terrain mesh slider settings in the FSX scenery configuration options dialog ?


Other possibilities (and potential solutions) may be more efficiently explored pending your reply. :)


PS: It's only 3 days since you posted your inquiry in the Airport Guys support forum; perhaps they are out on an extended week of vacation for the 4th of July holiday ?

http://www.theairportguys.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=10498

GaryGB

Hi Gary,

Thanks for the reply.

I sincerely *hope* that they're on vacation because this really is a nice airport that got missed by the community, I think. There've been other posts that were never answered from a while back, though. I'm trying to make a tour for folks but the blasted water!....grrrrr.

Yes, I have Global and Vector. LOD Radius is 4.5. Global texture resolution is Very High (max). Level of detail radius is Large. Note that, as far as I've seen, this is the ONLY place this is happening for me.

Gregg
 
[EDITED]

Hi Gary,

I had the same problem just a couple of days ago after I installed and then uninstalled the OrbX Iceland demo.
I was working on a way off airport in Croatia when I noticed the same as shown by Gregg and the land class in the region was garbled as well. For my airport (LDZD) and its surroundings I had to make an exclude everything with ADE before I got things more or less straightened out and I then had, of course, to put in new land class to make it acceptable again.

My question therefore is:
- is there another way to get rid of these water artifacts?

Hi Roby:

I found your thread describing the personal experience you had above at:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?271218-Something-I-haven-t-seen-before-Strange-textures

That discussion suggests an "out-of-synch" OrbX FTX Global / Vector configuration, which might require toggling the new FTX Central version-2 utility on-and-off repeatedly to re-set the intended scenery configuration.


Regarding Greg's scenario above, my initial impression is that this is possibly a complex terrain land class and/or vector textured polygon layering issue as a result of how the above KMYR Myrtle Beach airport scenery was developed, more-so than a "scenery content overload of the rendering engine at run time" issue. :twocents:


The cited "Exclude All" polygon is, IIUC, a "park"-type polygon type which has the ability to exclude from display, all terrain and 3D object scenery content which precedes and follows it in the load order sequence of the MSFS rendering engine.

I have to study this more to better understand it, and I may be mistaken about this thus far, but I also have an initial hunch this type of "exclude" object may be the FSX equivalent of using a "Assembled" legacy format VTP texture to exclude display of land class texture and 3D scenery objects as cited here:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/decompiling-a-bgl-file.434183/page-3#post-714510


FYI: A few other discussions of a coastal water scenario ...from different causes:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/reclaim-expand-land-problem.432532/

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/whats-this-semi-flooded-area.288876/


...and a 'reverse' of the scenario reported above by the OP:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/land-tiles-in-middle-of-ocean.14310/

[END_EDIT]


AFAIK, there is more to sort out with regard to this ...pending further analysis of this scenario after review of the OP's reply above. :scratchch

GaryGB
 
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BTW, I tried Medium and Low for texture resolution and got the same thing. (Though, when I reopen the dialog, it shows Very High again...weird.)

Gregg

EDIT: Hmmm...that must be a bug in the dialog or something. I exited FSX and manually set it to 22 and restarted FSX. Didn't get the problem (though the textures looked really mushy at that setting.)
 
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Hi Greg:

I've also seen this type of scenario of either water or 'continent-level' lower-resolution LOD terrain textures appearing on 'LAND' area terrain tiles (nearby to, but not 'underneath' the aircraft) in the past while flying within OrbX FTX PNW ...before I bought my current very high-powered video card.


So, if we were to assume this was the periodically reported FSX computer performance issue rendering complex and demanding add-on scenery, wherein one occasionally sees water on top of inland terrain tiles , I'd be compelled to ask: how powerful is your computer (specs please) ? :scratchch


BTW
: Are you describing a FSX GUI terrain mesh resolution of "22" on the slider ?

Again, I shall await your reply. :)


NOTE: FSX automatically sets the FS GUI terrain mesh resolution slider to 10 Meters when we set the texture resolution slider to 7 cm; if one manually changes this after FSX makes this initial setting, "blurries" may result in 'some' scenery content which is intended to be displayed at higher resolutions (...and for which there may not be appropriate LOD-related MIPMAPs in mapped textures ?).

PS
: Regarding the blurries (applicable to FSX):

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/555738


GaryGB
 
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I've got a pretty high end system:

i7 overclocked to 4.5 8 gig ram
GTX970 4 gig video ram
2 SSD drives

It doesn't seem that the area is straining my system at all. Framerates are in the high 40s and VAS is around 2.2 Gig.

I used SimStarter to set the value to 22 with its slider. Not a big deal. These numbers probably correspond to what the word values actually mean. I didn't get any blurries. It just looked blurry with the setting that low.
 
Considering your system specs above, FSX computer performance certainly would not seem to be a basis for this scenery display anomaly, then. :scratchch

Could you further clarify what parameter value, and in what dialog is the "22" being used on your system ?


GaryGB
 
In fsx.cfg...see below...

[TERRAIN]
LOD_RADIUS=4.500000
MESH_Complexity=50
MESH_Resolution=21
Texture_Resolution=27 ;setting this to 22 made the scenery blurry
Autogen_Density=4
Detail_Texture=0
Water_Effects=2
xxTERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=1376
xxTERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=907
 
I just tried setting Texture_Resolution to 26 and the problem didn't happen...60cm. So, it seems to affect settings higher than that.
 
Hi Greg:

Interesting results with the variable display of land class versus "water" at differing FSX system-wide texture resolution settings. :scratchch


Assuming the local land class in the area of the terrain rendering "water anomaly" was custom and used a texture in the DXT5 file format with Alpha to represent "swamp land", there could be intermittent rendering problems according to Holger in this discussion thread: :idea:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/new-textures-for-region-d.11223/



If the rendering anomaly persists in other areas nearby where you fly despite the texture resolution changes you implemented above, I suggest that you may wish to continue pursuing a reply to this issue with the developer. :pushpin:


Hope this helps ! :)

GaryGB
 
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I posted the workaround at their forum. Hopefully, it'll help some folks until a better solution is found.
 
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