gypsymoth wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 4:38am:


When you speak of "grass" are you referring to the color/texture of the ground on the property of a default airport?

Or are you referring to a specific airport which has been enhanced with a new afcad and has some "grass" areas which look odd to you?

If the latter, there are only a few grass options in afcad and none of them look very real. 

If the former, you would likely need to use a program such as SBuilder and create a whole new background polygon using a different texture.

More details would help.  If you are speaking of a specific afcad you have downloaded and installed, a link to it would also help.

gypsymoth wrote on Mar 4^th, 2010 at 7:42am:



SBuilder could be used but it has a rather large "learning curve".

There is another approach ypu might want to consider and you can use Afcad for this.

1. Find a bmp file of a grass texture you think you can live with.

2. Backup the original taxi_planks.bmp which in is your main texture folder.

3. Place that new grass.bmp you found in that folder and rename it as taxi_planks.bmp.

You probably should resize the bmp to it is approx 256 x 256 and also use the free DXTBMP utility to convert it to DXT1 format with 7 layers of mipmaps. (that is what the original one has I believe)

4. In Afcad, open your new airport and draw polygons in the areas where you want the grass to be displayed. Right click on the edge of the polygon and select properties and change the texture to Planks.

The original Planks texture is almost never used so it is doubtful that changing it to your special grass would cause problems eleswhere.

This concept has been done several times by other authors - they relaced a little used default texture with a bmp of a parking lot with cars.  That allowed folks like you and me to draw a polygon at an airport and fill it as if it was a parking lot.

Kind of "sneaky" but it does work.

Hope this idea is useful.

Hi Opa - I'm going to email you.   I'm just getting round to your tip but problems.....!   This does include my non-expertise!!      

David, you've come up with some great tips in your time, but this one goes to the top of the list!
The AFCAD textures have been begging for an update for years.
Why on earth is this not the subject of a whole industry?
I assume one could work your way through the entire texture folder, fixing the bmp's with updated textures.
Here's one I got by slightly tweaking one of the freeware grass textures - that helicopter is sitting on an AFCAD grass surface!

Now I've spent a bit of time looking through the FS texture folder.
I was hoping to identify the various grass and other textures used by AFCAD, and mess with them.
But not much success I'm afraid.
There are things called grass.r8 and so on, but editing them doesn't seem to show up.
Do I have the wrong files, or are these legacy files which can't be altered?
I'd love to be able to match up all the AFCAD texture possibles with their editable filenames.

Thank you David,
I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't manage to think of that!
Interestingly, there are 24 AFCAD texture options, but only 23 taxi_ files.
Can't wait to see what "Unknown3" is
It shouldn't be an issue; I'm going to start by creating a decent set of grass textures for the 5 grass files, no matter what anyone used for their AFCAD, it's still going to be grass, and better than the default (I sincerely hope)

AFAIK Unknown is displayed as Cement in FS9, and Transparent in FSX.  Unknown2 and Unknown3 are AFCAD-only codes (not allowed by BGLComp), and are displayed as Cement in FS9.

BTW this is different from the Unknown taxiway surface, which displays as Concrete in FS9, but does not have a smooth surface (bumpy).

Hope this helps,

Tom is on the money.
I've had a little play...here are the correlations:

Name      / Displays As /      Filename
CONCRETE      CONCRETE      taxi_concrete.bmp
GRASS      GRASS      taxi_grass_su.bmp
WATER      WATER      ?
UNKNOWN      GRASS      taxi_grass_su.bmp
ASPHALT      ASPHALT      taxi_asphalt.bmp
GRASS2      GRASS      taxi_grass_su.bmp
GRASS3      GRASS      taxi_grass_su.bmp
CLAY      GRASS      taxi_grass_su.bmp
SNOW      SNOW      taxi_ice.bmp
ICE      SNOW      taxi_ice.bmp
UNKNOWN2      CONCRETE      taxi_concrete.bmp
UNKNOWN3      GRASS      taxi_grass_su.bmp
DIRT      DIRT      taxi_dirt.bmp
CORAL      CORAL      taxi_coral.bmp
GRAVEL      GRAVEL      taxi_gravel.bmp
OIL TREATED      OIL TREATED      taxi_shale.bmp
STEEL MATS      STEEL MATS      taxi_steel.bmp
BITUMINOUS      BITUMINOUS      taxi_bitu.bmp
BRICK      BRICK      taxi_brick.bmp
MACADAM      MACADAM      taxi_macadam.bmp
PLANKS      PLANKS      taxi_planks.bmp
SAND      SAND      taxi_sand.bmp
SHALE      SHALE      taxi_shale.bmp
TARMAC      TARMAC      taxi_tarmac.bmp
UNKNOWNX      CONCRETE      taxi_concrete.bmp

Sorry my table won't format here.
What I noticed is that some of the texture names, although mapping to the same file, appear to have their own BMP's but don't use them! So there are 25 texture names, but only 17 BMP's used for them.
Examples are Grass, Grass2 and Grass3.
So even if you alter taxi_grass_sp.bmp it has no effect in the sim.

I haven't been able to identify which file maps to "Water"

GM:

be interesting to create a small library of grass with those less-used names.

WingZ wrote on Mar 16^th, 2010 at 8:50pm:

The grass textures are seasonal.

So taxi_grass_sp.bmp displays in the spring, taxi_grass_su.bmp in the summer etc.


Hope this helps.

cheers,
Joe

Nice one WingZ....much clearer.
I hope you got the grass textures alright?

Just to bring the discussion back to where it started, it seems most of the issues have been identified, 
http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=279498&st=0&gopid=1737781&#entry173...

I'll play some more with textures that suit a modern sim install. and release them at some point.
Obviously, this is not meant to replace properly designed scenery, but affords a better texture set to a a casual AFCAD doodler like myself.

Opa wrote on Mar 20^th, 2010 at 4:21pm:

What's this "we"stuff David, gotta mouse in yer pocket.hehehehe

Just kiddin'

Kudos to WingZ, I know you have spent a lot of time on this.

Thanks for the effort.

cheers,
Joe

I've got 2 files to use that I'm playing with - taxi_planks & taxi_shale.   I can swap them around as the scenery dictates.
HOWEVER - I'll be interested to see what you come up with WingZ.  Although I'm editing & testing them in an irregular fashion, I still can't get the exact green I want....