PTO and Rhumba's Watemasks

S

stuart277

SOH-CM-2026
Hi All,

I am making a new PTO install from scratch and I have a question about Rhumba's Mesh and Watermasks.

In Rami and DVSlats PTO install guide it says put the watermask files in the SCENEDB\world\scenery folder.

I seem to remember people saying the watermasks are too 'aggressive'? and they should be deactivated.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Stuart
 
Reply...

Stuart,

It's a complicated question. There are certain packages of MaskRider's that are built specifically for Rhunbaflappy's watermasks; some Dutch East Indies airfields, some additional DEI airfields by Onnogras, MaskRider's Marianas, and his Sakishima-Gunto airfield packages. Other than that, it's problematic.
 
Hi Stuart,

If you want to have all the PTO scenery available, download all of Rhumba's files, viz. water masks, mesh, coast and water files. Install as separate layers via the scenery library in either the SCENEDB or ADDON folders. The water masks, coast and water files are one layer each (the water files are a few separate downloads). The LOD5 mesh goes in the SCENEDB/world folder while the LOD 7 and LOD 8 files are separate layers installed via the scenery library.

Once the hierarchy is correct, the complicated part is activating/deactivating layers depending on which part of the PTO you are operating. The mesh can stay active all the time while you may have to switch from Rhumba's older coast and water files to his newer water masks and vice versa depending where you are.

If you go ahead with this I can give you the scenery order plus a few other details.

Cheers,

Kevin
 
stuart277 said:
I seem to remember people saying the watermasks are too 'aggressive'? and they should be deactivated.
Click to expand...

Hiya Stuart,

Yes, I have said this.

What I mean by it is that in creation of these huge watermask bgls, a lot of coastal detail is lost in the process of compiling the water-masking bgls. In the processes of using a program (such as Auto-coast for instance) to expedite the creation of these watermasks, smoothing gets aggressively incorporated into the bgl-creation parameters in order to avoid various visual anomalies. The larger the area of ground that a single mater-mask bgl encompasses the more noticeable will be this loss of coastline detail.

One can never use the coastlines, meaning the un-adorned beach-less shape at the edge of the water mask, straight out of the box as it were, because it doesn't accurately portray the details of what was/is actually there.

I am in no way criticizing Rhumba for this smoothing. It is a necessary fact of life. It is simply what needs to be done in order to achieve the result. But, when zooming in and building scenery at a much more localized location, one needs to go back in and recreate the details.

This is what I was referring to in an earlier post on the other thread when I said "So there is no need to get rid of Rhumbas water masks because I just dump them anyway at whatever location I am building."

I "null-out" Rhumbas too-smooth water masks at those location and recreate them in detail.

MR
 
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I'm actually doing some work on this now. I'm taking some newer 25 meter water masking data, and cleaning it up. Hopefully that will be done in a day or 2. I then need to split it up into smaller chunks, and run it through Slartibartfast to make the assembly files, and translate them to CFS2 BGLs. I'm also trying to translate Slarti's shorelines into something that can be used for CFS2. But that has always been a problem.
 
Marcus Island with Rhumba masks minus water masks (as was recommended for PTO):

What can I do to fix this without screwing up the Rhumbaflappy based scenery packs in this install? Should I use the water masks after all?
 

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Shadow Wolf 07 said:
Marcus Island with Rhumba masks minus water masks (as was recommended for PTO):

What can I do to fix this without screwing up the Rhumbaflappy based scenery packs in this install? Should I use the water masks after all?
Click to expand...

For comparison, here is Maskrider's Guam with Rhumba land and water masks:
 

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Shadow Wolf 07 said:
Marcus Island with Rhumba masks minus water masks (as was recommended for PTO):

What can I do to fix this without screwing up the Rhumbaflappy based scenery packs in this install? Should I use the water masks after all?
Click to expand...

You will have to revert to stock coastlines and deactivate Rhumba's water masks for Marcus Island. See my earlier post in this thread.

I know it's a bit of a pain, but activating and deactivating scenery layers depending where you are in the Pacific is the only way I know of having your cake and eating it too.

Cheers,
Kevin
 
kdriver said:
You will have to revert to stock coastlines and deactivate Rhumba's water masks for Marcus Island. See my earlier post in this thread.

I know it's a bit of a pain, but activating and deactivating scenery layers depending where you are in the Pacific is the only way I know of having your cake and eating it too.

Cheers,
Kevin
Click to expand...

Yes, a titanic pain in the 6 is what it is. I'll have to make notes in the campaign I'm writing to get the players to do this whenever they stray out of the "Rhumba world." Marcus, Roi and Wake are the main culprits early in the campaign. Truk is a maybe - I have to look closer at the islands there - but I understand someone (Talon?) did Truk based on Rhumba mesh.

Thanks Kdriver!
 
Yes!

Thank you UncleTgt. I just got home and was about to download when I saw your post. Funny, I already have the Carolines and never noticed .- or more likely with my CRS, forgot that Truk was in that pack. Thanks again. :wavey:
 
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