Simviation Forum - FSX Scenery Issue

Jun 26^th, 2012 at 11:27am

spitfire boy Offline
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First off.... wow. Long time no see, SimV... Grin

Anyways, I bought the PlaySims VFR Photographic Scenery Volume 5 (Orkney & Shetland) a while back... it's gorgeous scenery, and by far my favourite place to fly now. However, something has niggled me constantly with it, and it seems to be a result of the default scenery not wanting to go away entirely. The problem is thus;

As this shot shows (I hope) there are lines in the sea that correspond to the old default scenery coastline, and they are shifted slightly west of the new coastline. The lines themselves are actually default FSX coastline, and have the 'breaking-waves' effect on them when you get close up. It seems then that the default land has gone with the installation of the new scenery, but not the default coastline. How might I go about getting rid of these coastlines? Do I need to delete a section of the default FSX scenery from within the FSX files (this was one solution I read might work, but I was a little nervous about trying it)? Also, if this is a potential solution, how do I identify the correct bits to delete and how can I be sure I am deleting the correct section(s) of scenery without wrecking anything else?

Any help would be much appreciated, this scenery really is excellent and I would dearly love to enjoy it to the full!

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Reply #1 - Jun 26^th, 2012 at 2:41pm

dave3cu Offline
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This is an image from my FSX-SP2, default scenery...

It appears that the default scenery, including default coast lines, more closely matches your addon than the ghost coast lines that you are seeing. Those 'ghost' lines look like something from the less detailed terrain of an earlier FS versions???

Have you previously installed any other terrain addons for the area that might still be active, or have left files behind in your scenery files?

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation. Igor Sikorsky

I intend to live forever....so far, so good. Steven Wright

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Reply #2 - Jun 26^th, 2012 at 3:42pm

spitfire boy Offline
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That's really fascinating... I hadn't ever added any third party scenery before I added the VFR Photographic Scenery you see in my screenshot. Very odd.

EDIT: Is it possible this coastline is the low-res one that appears first in the loading sequence? My computer is relatively slow so I get to see this scenery a lot, and I notice that gradually the resolution of the terrain increases... is the same true of coastlines?

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Reply #3 - Jun 26^th, 2012 at 6:21pm

dave3cu Offline
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Don't see how they could be any lo-res preliminary draw. Shore lines are (line) objects, like roads, streams, etc. They're either there or they aren't.

What do you see if you disable the VFR Photographic Scenery?

Quote:

I hadn't ever added any third party scenery before I added the VFR Photographic Scenery

Have you added anything since? i.e. have the 'ghost' lines alway been there?

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation. Igor Sikorsky

I intend to live forever....so far, so good. Steven Wright

You know....you can just rip up a to-do list.

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Reply #4 - Jun 27^th, 2012 at 9:02pm

spitfire boy Offline
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dave3cu wrote on Jun 26^th, 2012 at 6:21pm:

Don't see how they could be any lo-res preliminary draw. Shore lines are (line) objects, like roads, streams, etc. They're either there or they aren't.

What do you see if you disable the VFR Photographic Scenery?

Quote:

I hadn't ever added any third party scenery before I added the VFR Photographic Scenery

Have you added anything since? i.e. have the 'ghost' lines alway been there?

The ghost lines have been there ever since I installed the VFR scenery, and I havent added anything else. As far as I can remember they weren't there before that. I have not yet tried disabling the scenery, I will try that and see what happens...

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Reply #5 - Jun 28^th, 2012 at 12:42pm

spitfire boy Offline
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The plot thickens...

I have done some messing around with scenery activation/deactivation... firstly, deactivating the VFR scenery produces an even weirder effect than before. There are portions of coastline resembling that which is evident in my first post, and also bits of more convoluted looking coastline that match the actual line described by the edge between the terrain and the sea, but offset in a similar manner such that they are sitting unaccompanied in the ocean. I'll stuck a picture up on here in a minute.

Secondly, I have found that deactivating the 'Western Europe' scenery option - which is a default piece of scenery I believe - removes all of the offset coastlines. This suggests to me it is not a custom addon problem but something to do with a default scenery file... EDIT; further to this, it seems the deactivation of this portion of the scenery removes all such coastlines from western europe, perhaps unsurprisingly. Interestingly enough, when it is activated, the portions of scenery that are still default conform to a simplified coastline similar to what appears in my original screenshot, whilst when it is deactivated, there is a more complex coastline, but without the coastline texture present at all. Again, I will post images shortly.

Has anyone got any potential answers on this? I am utterly befuddled. Grin

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Reply #6 - Jun 28^th, 2012 at 3:27pm

dave3cu Offline
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We are talking about FSX, right? Not FS2004.

I ask because your results from deactivating/activating 'Western Europe' are similar to what you would see in FS2004 because the files for water/land polys and shorelines are in that area's folder (..\Scenery\EURW\scenery\). In FSX they are in the '0501 Base' scenery area (....\Scenery\0501\scenery\). In FSX the only files in 'Western Europe' (EURW) are custom city scenery.**

**(I'm running FSX-SP2, but I believe the same is true in RTM and SP1.)

**********************************

Jun 29^th, 2012 at 10:06am-I'll assume you are running FSX so based on several clues in your replies I did a test ......

I added FS2004 shorelines for EURW to FSX. Here is the FSX default scenery with the FS2004 shorelines.

Looks familiar!

So it looks to me that somehow FS2004 terrain files got into your FSX.

Open the FSX ..\Scenery\EURW\scenery\ folder. The only FSX default files that should be there are the '<city name>.bgl' files (36 files in my FSX-SP2). Move any other files to a safe location for now. The FS2004 default terrain files that draw the shorelines are 'HL<6 numbers>.bgl'. Other FS2004 default terrain files have similar name formats, i.e.-<2 letters and 6 numbers>.bgl. As I don't have the addon I don't know if there are any legitimate scenery files there from the addon.

I have no clue as to how the files got there. You'll have to figure that out. Cheesy

As there are seperate packages for FS2004 and FSX, do you have the FSX version of the Shetland... photo scenery?
Did you ever do an uninstall of it? Maybe a faulty uninstaller put FS2004 files back there?

Dave

« Last Edit: Jun 29^th, 2012 at 11:23am by dave3cu »

At that time [1909] the chief engineer was almost always the chief test pilot as well. That had the fortunate result of eliminating poor engineering early in aviation. Igor Sikorsky

I intend to live forever....so far, so good. Steven Wright

You know....you can just rip up a to-do list.

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Reply #7 - Jun 30^th, 2012 at 9:16pm

spitfire boy Offline
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Well diagnosed! Certainly not something I could have worked out. The possibility of FS2004 files ending up in FSX sounds like a distinct possibility because I moved up to FSX upon getting a new computer a few years ago and spent a long time trying to get FS2004 to work on that computer... only giving up after it became plain it wouldn't do it. I think Vista had some objection to it. A lot of files did get swapped around in the intervening time though, so its very possible.

As a matter of fact, these lines appear globally. This is only something I have realised in the last couple of days. It's possible the entirety of my default FS2004 scenery has somehow found its way into FSX. I will purge it shortly.

Thanks very much for your help, as I say, certainly not something I could have figured out!

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