Lack of accuracy or simple errors?

General discussion about Scenery Design. Questions about SBuilder for Flight Simulator FS2004.
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Mick
Posts: 59
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:42 pm
Location: Germany

Lack of accuracy or simple errors?

Post by Mick » Fri Oct 12, 2007 11:34 am

Hello everybody,

still I'm somehow stumbling through my first little scenery, getting forward with a lot of reading manuals and the surely well-known trial-and-error principle. Maybe I can get some specific advice from someone here to speed up my learning?

My goal is to enhance a little village in Goa (India) with photo tiles and more for FS9. As you can see in the screenshot, I've come quite far for a newbie... but I'd really appreciate some expertise since I have the feeling I've been going a pretty long and tough way!?? Still I have an encouraging intermediate result:

[img]uploaded/mick/2007101243415_Intermediate.jpg[/img]

These steps finally lead to the above goal:
1) Photo source was Google Earth. I saved a pic to see the standard jpg size, measured the width of that screen in m and calculated the right (?) size for 1.2 m/pix. It resulted in a hight of 796m to have the perfect resolution. From that hight I saved a series of pics (6 rows / 4 columns), which I fit together with Photoshop and saved it as bmp, which I put into SBuilder as map and calibrated it using the Google Earth lin/lat data.
2) I appended the releant HL967260.bgl for the default coastline and the HP967260.bgl for the waters. Unfortunately, everything was a little more Southwest, so that I had to shift every single line to cover the map.
3) Selected the coastline and used the "Make Poly" command, changed the poly(s) to cover the holes that the shifted coastline had left.
4) Created a lake on top of the map (LWM Water Mask, Alt 0) and some objects with SBuilder, more or less for orientation, but also for satisfaction reasons in a state eager to see any proper result...
5) Finally the steps for making the bgls with SBuilder.

I wonder if there are any expert hints how to make it a bit easier. E.g. I'm not sure if everybody doing a coastal scenery is shifting lines and polys from the default at all...

But I also have got some particular questions:
a) Although I used the built-in "Make Poly" command, I have a slight shift of the coastline resulting in dark pixels (I could call it algae) on the beach and along the rocky coast (could be called unwanted rocks in the water). Why might that have happened here? Is SBuilder lacking accuracy in this or where is my error?

[img]uploaded/mick/2007101241915_Beach%20Effects.jpg[/img]

b) I created a lake (LWM Watermask, Alt 9m) with a shoreline (cmd "make line" to be accurate), which shows the above effect, too.

c) I created two small rivers as VTP2 lines (assembled, 1099) on layer 9. In FS they're almost invisible, despite covering the rivers properly when in SB design.

[img]uploaded/mick/2007101242057_Edges%20and%20rivers.jpg[/img]

d) Also, the photo tiles are straight cut at their edges. Is there any way to blend the edges into the default scenery?

Finally a question for Luis: After seeing it and playing around a bit, I intend to anotate autogen to the tiles with "AGenT" (free within the UKVFR pack http://vfraddons.co.uk/ukautogen_view.php). Do you have experience with that or would you suggest another program for that?

Thank you in advance for every advice,
regards
Mick

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Luis Sa
Posts: 1736
Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 11:17 am
Location: Portugal
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Post by Luis Sa » Sat Oct 13, 2007 12:04 am

Hello,

You seem quite experient with SBuilder [:)].

There is no imprecision in SBuilder, but please see the VTP shifts when appending and compiling BGL files.

Yes you can use a blend mask to reduce the sharp transition between the photo and the default. Please read the Help file.

I am afraid but I never used an anotater tool.

Kind Regards,

Luis

Mick
Posts: 59
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:42 pm
Location: Germany

Post by Mick » Sun Oct 14, 2007 12:40 am

Hello Luis,

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">citação:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">You seem quite experient with SBuilder <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
thank you for the (I guess) compliment... but to be honest I'm almost giving it up when I see the amount of browsing and studying effort and then compare the results. Somehow I guess I've been completely on the wrong way.

[img]uploaded/Mick/20071013173931_comparison.jpg[/img]

How do others do that? The left pic is from your forum and they also used SBuilder. Could you please briefly explain why my (as I think / see procedure above) 1.2 m/px "photoreal" comes out so ugly in FS? It's obviously neither a limitation of FS nor of SBuilder but more of my brains [B)]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">citação:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">please see the VTP shifts when appending and compiling BGL files<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Despite browsing through manuals and forums like mad, I don't know what exactly you mean (i.e. issue is just not understood). Do you have any link with detailed information?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">citação:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Yes you can use a blend mask to reduce the sharp transition between the photo and the default. Please read the Help file.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Unfortunately the help file doesn't say anything. I tried alpha masks (all different kinds of 8-bit, RLE-compressed and not) for that reason as well as for the reason that you somewhere here mentioned a semi-transparent mask (gray value) would enable autogen... no result at all (is this one [:(] the smiley with the tears here?) for neither issue.

PLEASE, if anyone here gan help with a bit of how-to information in close-to user's language... I'd be so thankful! [:X]

From everything I saw meanwhile, I really wonder why nobody makes a detailed A-Z tutorial for the work with your wonderful tool. If I survive this [;)] I might wanna do it and then face the fact that FS9 is obviously getting outdated...

Still, I'm using FS9 and SBuilder 2.05 rev6, assuming from some posts that SBuilderX will not be suitable for FS9 scenery.

Thank you for some advice,
kind regards
Mick

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