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Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.
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IMPORTANT DOWNLOADING INFORMATION - ALL MEMBERS PLEASE READ
Please see this thread for updates. Update Thread
SOH ADMINISTRATION
MR Marianas Pack b-3
- Thread starter MaskRider
- Start date
kelticheart
Charter Member
GREAT NEWS!!!
Hi MR!
I am reporting back with great news: there's nothing wrong with any of your sceneries and/or replacement textures!
I worked all morning trying different textures combinations but, this time I started with a fresh approach. Jean's missing texture tile theory bothered me so, first of all, I created a new texture folder for my Pacific \scenedb\world\texture.
I noticed the folder with Stiz's FS9 PTO texture files I was using had somewhat less files than all the others for my various theatres. When I decided to use Stiz's files for a change, I just used them thinking to reduce the folder size with unnecessary files which CFS2 would not use in the Pacific.
Since I wanted to re-create exactly the same texture environment you described, I copyied in the folder all stock textures then I overwrote them with PacTex v.1, leaving the stock water files. This brings the total to about 505 files, the same number as in the strictly stock situation.
The result was immediate and great: all new Marianas sceneries show up fine. Obviously your sceneries are using stock texture files which were missing in my previous texture set.
Here's Guam, although the last shot shows at the end of the runway that JB's custom LOD9 mesh is not overriding Rhumba's LOD8, I can live with it............. (next)
Hi MR!
I am reporting back with great news: there's nothing wrong with any of your sceneries and/or replacement textures!
I worked all morning trying different textures combinations but, this time I started with a fresh approach. Jean's missing texture tile theory bothered me so, first of all, I created a new texture folder for my Pacific \scenedb\world\texture.
I noticed the folder with Stiz's FS9 PTO texture files I was using had somewhat less files than all the others for my various theatres. When I decided to use Stiz's files for a change, I just used them thinking to reduce the folder size with unnecessary files which CFS2 would not use in the Pacific.
Since I wanted to re-create exactly the same texture environment you described, I copyied in the folder all stock textures then I overwrote them with PacTex v.1, leaving the stock water files. This brings the total to about 505 files, the same number as in the strictly stock situation.
The result was immediate and great: all new Marianas sceneries show up fine. Obviously your sceneries are using stock texture files which were missing in my previous texture set.
Here's Guam, although the last shot shows at the end of the runway that JB's custom LOD9 mesh is not overriding Rhumba's LOD8, I can live with it............. (next)
kelticheart
Charter Member
GREAT NEWS!!! (continued)
....and now Iwo Jima, which always looked good since the beginning.
Obviously here the scenery does not need any stock texture tile!
....and now Iwo Jima, which always looked good since the beginning.
Obviously here the scenery does not need any stock texture tile!
........(next)
kelticheart
Charter Member
GREAT NEWS!!! (last reply)
Now a couple of shots of Chichi Jima, which looks so beautiful that I can't believe it!
Here the second shot is still done with PacTex 1 and stock water, while the first is done with FSX Pac textures converted for CFS2 and Jimko's updated Pacific Blues water textures with foamy waves.
Although you developed your sceneries with PacTex1, you can see here that the first combo gives stunning results and your work blends flawlessly with these textures. I think I'll keep this combo from now on.
So, I installed your Marianas scenery following your instructions correctly and placed sceneries and mesh in the ScenLib in the right place. Jean was partially right: there were missing texture tiles indeed, although they were not VTP1s but stock textures that are being used by your sceneries. Without them, it was a disaster!
Have a good week-end MR and thank you again for these jewels!
KH :ernae:
Now a couple of shots of Chichi Jima, which looks so beautiful that I can't believe it!
Here the second shot is still done with PacTex 1 and stock water, while the first is done with FSX Pac textures converted for CFS2 and Jimko's updated Pacific Blues water textures with foamy waves.
Although you developed your sceneries with PacTex1, you can see here that the first combo gives stunning results and your work blends flawlessly with these textures. I think I'll keep this combo from now on.
So, I installed your Marianas scenery following your instructions correctly and placed sceneries and mesh in the ScenLib in the right place. Jean was partially right: there were missing texture tiles indeed, although they were not VTP1s but stock textures that are being used by your sceneries. Without them, it was a disaster!
Have a good week-end MR and thank you again for these jewels!
KH :ernae:
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
Hi KH.
I am happy that you got whatever the problem was solved. Sounds like a lot of work. Thank you for sticking with it!
The screen shots you are posting are great! Yes, Chichi Jima is one of the favorite sceneries I have ever made. I like it, too! Haha Jima is very much along the same lines except you can only start there by using the advanced goto/scenery from FS95 and before menu- or fly thereof course.
I noticed in your screen shots that you are using none stock runway texture. That is fine by me, just thought I would point out.
In the wake of the feedback received on the Marianas pack I thought it would be worthwhile to make an Album here at SOH that shows what I built the scenery to look like. So I did. There is a top down view and an angle view of each airfield so that everyone can see what the airfields were built to look like on my rig. I took all of the shots at 1600 hours so that the mesh elevation is more pronounced and easy to see.
Cheers, KH,
I am sure that many of the problems you experienced were experienced by others too, who have been helped by your input.
Here is the link to that Album
I just noticed that the pictures are not in order so that the angle views and top-down view of each airfield are not squencial- plus the pictures aren't in alphabetical order by name- don't know why- they were up loaded out of a folder where they were.
Have fun!
MR
I am happy that you got whatever the problem was solved. Sounds like a lot of work. Thank you for sticking with it!
The screen shots you are posting are great! Yes, Chichi Jima is one of the favorite sceneries I have ever made. I like it, too! Haha Jima is very much along the same lines except you can only start there by using the advanced goto/scenery from FS95 and before menu- or fly thereof course.
I noticed in your screen shots that you are using none stock runway texture. That is fine by me, just thought I would point out.
In the wake of the feedback received on the Marianas pack I thought it would be worthwhile to make an Album here at SOH that shows what I built the scenery to look like. So I did. There is a top down view and an angle view of each airfield so that everyone can see what the airfields were built to look like on my rig. I took all of the shots at 1600 hours so that the mesh elevation is more pronounced and easy to see.
Cheers, KH,
I am sure that many of the problems you experienced were experienced by others too, who have been helped by your input.
Here is the link to that Album
I just noticed that the pictures are not in order so that the angle views and top-down view of each airfield are not squencial- plus the pictures aren't in alphabetical order by name- don't know why- they were up loaded out of a folder where they were.
Have fun!
MR
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
I painstakingly plot them. I have used Auto Coast before. In fact if you ever go to my version of Christmas Island- that was the last time I ever used it. You can see why I wanted to. Even so I still needed to go in and hand tweak some of the polys generated by AC- at that time it was having a little trouble on shoreline directions of interior lakes inside islands.
I like to do it by hand because that way I get to keep the details. Autocoast can get a little aggressive smoothing out the wrinkles- but that is what it is really good at- large expanses of land. Single islands or relatively short stretches of coastline like I usually deal with are easy enough to do by hand.
You probably know this already but I had to have it pointed out to me by JP. If you do the land mask first. It is easy enough to just save that project as a shoreline. Open up the shoreline project, change the name of the bgl and change the landmask poly to a shoreline and the shoreline fits like a glove- since it is essentially the exact same poly. Using custom meshes can get a bit tricky. Sometimes requires quite a bit a hand tweaking of shorelines/masks to fit the mesh.
FYI Here is a link to a Christmas Island screenie in one of my SOH albums.
MR
I like to do it by hand because that way I get to keep the details. Autocoast can get a little aggressive smoothing out the wrinkles- but that is what it is really good at- large expanses of land. Single islands or relatively short stretches of coastline like I usually deal with are easy enough to do by hand.
You probably know this already but I had to have it pointed out to me by JP. If you do the land mask first. It is easy enough to just save that project as a shoreline. Open up the shoreline project, change the name of the bgl and change the landmask poly to a shoreline and the shoreline fits like a glove- since it is essentially the exact same poly. Using custom meshes can get a bit tricky. Sometimes requires quite a bit a hand tweaking of shorelines/masks to fit the mesh.
FYI Here is a link to a Christmas Island screenie in one of my SOH albums.
MR
All tyour Marianas scenery screenshots are really amazing!! Congratullations. I felt like looking at a master piece of art. You became Leonardo!!
Pips
Charter Member
I've not seen that Album folder of MR's screenshots before. Collectively they are an superb piece a work, quite brilliant in fact! 
Outstanding as those fields are however, seeing them all in one place and being able to scroll though them has brought to mind something that has not occurred to me before. They're empty of planes. Now that may sound obvious but, it's not something I've really noticed up till now.
All those lovingly sculptured bays really do cry out for static aircraft to fill them. It would bring the bases alive. Not every bay has to be filled, but enough to give the base life.
Being one of those sad people who have absolutely no skill in creating anything, indeed just an end-user and willing to praise the work of others, I'm reluctant to make any comments that may be construed as ungrateful or negitive. So please don't take this the wrong way. But is it possible to fill the bay's (some at least) with static aircraft? Perhaps even an area dump of wrecked aircraft -which abounded in the Pacific?
Outstanding as those fields are however, seeing them all in one place and being able to scroll though them has brought to mind something that has not occurred to me before. They're empty of planes. Now that may sound obvious but, it's not something I've really noticed up till now.
All those lovingly sculptured bays really do cry out for static aircraft to fill them. It would bring the bases alive. Not every bay has to be filled, but enough to give the base life.
Being one of those sad people who have absolutely no skill in creating anything, indeed just an end-user and willing to praise the work of others, I'm reluctant to make any comments that may be construed as ungrateful or negitive. So please don't take this the wrong way. But is it possible to fill the bay's (some at least) with static aircraft? Perhaps even an area dump of wrecked aircraft -which abounded in the Pacific?
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
simonu said:
Yeah, any time I do a spot that includes a harbor for example ( such as Apra and ChiChi Jima) or some very complex water front (such as Boela, Ceram) or whatever, where for historical reasons I would like the coastline to look like it did during the war, I split the thing up so that the main part of the shoreline is just the flip side of the landmask but I do a separate landmask and shoreline for the detailed harbor areas. The best reason for doing shorelines in many segments is that it allows you to isolated compilation errors a whole heck of a lot easier- as I am sure you are painfully aware.
I don't know if you are using it, but JP's rocky shorline texture is great shoreline texture. It kinda give the illusion of lots of painstaking by hand detail without actually having to do the painstaking by hand detail!
Pips said:
Totally agree Pips. I don't include them in the scenery because of frame rate considerations. And also, because when some one wants to use the scenery in mission building, static ships and planes kinda throw a monkey wrench into the mix. But you probably meant using static ships and planes for the screen shots? Well, I only have so much time in a week.
BTW, yes, I like the idea of the plane dumps. Every airfield had one.But I get your point. Sometimes the lack of "life" in the screen shots reminds me of the critics of Adolf Hitler's artistic endeavors: there were never any signs of living activity in them. Yes, too extreme a comparison for sure.
Anyway, guys, I appreciate the nice comments and feedback. Thanks.
MR
kelticheart
Charter Member
Hi there!
You are welcome and I am glad if my work might have helped or will help somene else installing your Marianas.
MaskRider said:
....After over 8 years of working on, tweaking, installing improvement addons and such I really lost track of what I installed. I remember for sure installing a different concrete runway texture and Marsten Matting runway textures updated by Psullykeys (rusted). I can't recall changing stock coral and/or dirt runways, but if you are saying so I believe you. Which runway textures are you talking about, Guam, Iwo or Chichi? Runway textures are stored in CFS2 root \TEXTURE folder, are they not?BTW: What do you think about my third Guam shot where it's evident that the small peninsula mesh, where the runway lays, is protruding where only flat water should be? Should I move JB's LOD9 mesh BELOW Rhumba's stuff in my ScenLib?
MaskRider said:
Splendid idea MR! Now we all have a reference in case ours shouldn't look right!
Cheers!
KH :ernae:
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
Hiya KH,
My apologies for not answering your earlier question about that "protruding mesh" at Orote.
Hmmm... that is odd. Yes, I would actually go ahead and deactivate whatever other mesh you have there and see what happens. It definitely should not look like that. Is JP's LOD9 mesh in the same folder as the rest of the Marianas scenery? or is it in its own folder? If it is in its own folder, try putting it into the same folder with the rest of the Marianas scenery pack.
You can try swapping around the scenery priorities- the order in the library.
MR
Jean Bomber
Landscape Gardener
Hi all !
I've not the scenery installed yet ,I'm just landing on the cfs2 world ,the real life took me out of it since two month but seeing the pic I think the lod9 is ok the coastline is ok too but between the both a flatten is needed because this point of the island surely has cliffs falling at 180* in the sea and in this case a flatten is needed for the rendering of these coasts,the mesh often smooths these particular places .perhaps the flatten doesn't work ,perhaps something in the sceneries hierarchy...???
JP
I've not the scenery installed yet ,I'm just landing on the cfs2 world ,the real life took me out of it since two month but seeing the pic I think the lod9 is ok the coastline is ok too but between the both a flatten is needed because this point of the island surely has cliffs falling at 180* in the sea and in this case a flatten is needed for the rendering of these coasts,the mesh often smooths these particular places .perhaps the flatten doesn't work ,perhaps something in the sceneries hierarchy...???
JP
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
Hi Guys,
Here are two screen shot I just took. I took them a a low sun angle so we can see the undulations of the mesh.
The first shows Orote Point with just JPs mesh activated.
View attachment 19335View attachment 19336
The second shows Orote Point with both JP and Rhumba's mesh activated. Not a lot of difference.
I don't know why you are getting that mesh protrusion.
You might try putting JPs LOD9 mesh bgl back into the MR Marianas scenery folder and see if that helps. The A16 flattens are in the MR Marianas scenery folder on my rig along with JPs LOD9 mesh bgl.
At the moment though I just don't know what is going on there. Let me look at your scenery library again...
OK try deactivating that LOD7 mesh.
Keep me posted!
MR
Here are two screen shot I just took. I took them a a low sun angle so we can see the undulations of the mesh.
The first shows Orote Point with just JPs mesh activated.
View attachment 19335View attachment 19336
The second shows Orote Point with both JP and Rhumba's mesh activated. Not a lot of difference.
I don't know why you are getting that mesh protrusion.
You might try putting JPs LOD9 mesh bgl back into the MR Marianas scenery folder and see if that helps. The A16 flattens are in the MR Marianas scenery folder on my rig along with JPs LOD9 mesh bgl.
At the moment though I just don't know what is going on there. Let me look at your scenery library again...
OK try deactivating that LOD7 mesh.
Keep me posted!
MR
For Us Less-Than-Sighted Folk...
... I took the liberty of lightening these up in PSP so people with darker-reading monitors could SEE them ! lol
SC
View attachment 19334View attachment 19333
... I took the liberty of lightening these up in PSP so people with darker-reading monitors could SEE them ! lol
SC
View attachment 19334View attachment 19333
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
... I took the liberty of lightening these up in PSP so people with darker-reading monitors could SEE them ! lol
SC
View attachment 19334View attachment 19333
Why, whatever do you mean? Are you suggesting they were too dark?
You're right, they were. Thanks!
(I went back and lightened the images in the original post, too
)MR
MaskRider
Tiller of Soil
Saipan just about in the can
Hi guys, just a small update about Saipan. All 4 airfields are finished, all of the roads are laid in. I am currently putting the finishing touches on a very abbreviated version of Garapan-Tanapag Harbor area. Gotta drop down the coast a little and make likewise abbreviated version of the Charan Kanoa Sugar Jetty area and then Saipan will be ready to go. Another 2 -3 days or so.
I will release it then.
After that West Field, Tinian will finish up the Marianas and then on to a real quickie B-29 version of Iwo Jima.
Light at the end of the tunnel on this project!
The following is a gratuitous screen shot of the Garapan-Tanapag Harbor area:
View attachment 19488
Hi guys, just a small update about Saipan. All 4 airfields are finished, all of the roads are laid in. I am currently putting the finishing touches on a very abbreviated version of Garapan-Tanapag Harbor area. Gotta drop down the coast a little and make likewise abbreviated version of the Charan Kanoa Sugar Jetty area and then Saipan will be ready to go. Another 2 -3 days or so.
I will release it then.
After that West Field, Tinian will finish up the Marianas and then on to a real quickie B-29 version of Iwo Jima.
Light at the end of the tunnel on this project!
The following is a gratuitous screen shot of the Garapan-Tanapag Harbor area:
View attachment 19488
kelticheart
Charter Member
Found it!!
Hi MR and Jean B!
I found the problem and now everything looks fine, just like the shot posted above.
When I followed Rhumba's install suggestions to track down and take out of \scenedb\world\scenery all of stock LOD9 mesh files, I had missed Guam. When I went back checking all files and I saw "Guam9.bgl" sitting there, I wondered how I managed to overlook it.
I also did another experiment. MR, remember when I suggested you an early-war version of your sceneries?
Well, this time you did a wonderful job in separating and naming exactly all your scenery files. It's very easy telling which files contain just land, rivers, shorelines and watermasks.
I did another scenery folder with just those, I left out the excludes and installed just Iwo GSL objects, and voilá! Early-war Marianas with just the stock runways, Japanese-held Iwo Jima, all appearing on beautifully shaped land!
Your full install now shows up in my late-war PTO, I only wish the Pacific wouldn't be such a huge theater so that other talented scenery makers could correct CFS2 with Rhumba's mesh and watermasks. I kinda miss shorelines around all Pacific islands........
...and Saipan looks just as mouth watering as the other Marianas!
Cheers!
KH :ernae:
Hi MR and Jean B!
I found the problem and now everything looks fine, just like the shot posted above.
When I followed Rhumba's install suggestions to track down and take out of \scenedb\world\scenery all of stock LOD9 mesh files, I had missed Guam. When I went back checking all files and I saw "Guam9.bgl" sitting there, I wondered how I managed to overlook it.
I also did another experiment. MR, remember when I suggested you an early-war version of your sceneries?
Well, this time you did a wonderful job in separating and naming exactly all your scenery files. It's very easy telling which files contain just land, rivers, shorelines and watermasks.
I did another scenery folder with just those, I left out the excludes and installed just Iwo GSL objects, and voilá! Early-war Marianas with just the stock runways, Japanese-held Iwo Jima, all appearing on beautifully shaped land!
Your full install now shows up in my late-war PTO, I only wish the Pacific wouldn't be such a huge theater so that other talented scenery makers could correct CFS2 with Rhumba's mesh and watermasks. I kinda miss shorelines around all Pacific islands........
...and Saipan looks just as mouth watering as the other Marianas!Cheers!
KH :ernae: