Short answer is yes, there is. Long answer is the way you do it. You basically have to redo the Land Classification for the area. There are various ways on doing that, but I'm not sure what would be the best way for FSX.
I managed to get the Landclass Map function to work for me in SBuilder9, but I'm not sure if the same method will work for SBuilderX. Here's how I do mine, so you might be able to do the same for FSX.
Sorry for the length ahead of time, but here goes.
1. First get a map. I've been using the ones from here for the United States:
https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
The ones there are good since they're already geo-referenced. Click on "Get Maps" to go to the selection area.
2. Once there, I'll use St Louis as an example since that area for Scott AFB was brought up already. Just zoom into the area of St Louis in the central US.
3. Once you're fairly close in click on the top right where there is a circle with the number "250K" in it. These are 1:250,000 scale maps (1 inch = 250,000 inches). These are the same scale as Terminal Area Charts (FAA) or Joint Operational Graphics (JOG = DoD). The screen color should change. Now click on the area that says "Bellville" and you should have another color change.
4. Zoom out now until you can see the lines that separate the different charts. Your selected one should be red or something similar.
5. On the right you should see the location as well as different years in the dialog. The big number is the year for the series, while the smaller one in the parenthesis is the year of publication. Sometimes you'll see one for 1950 with 1965 in parenthesis. For our exercise we'll take the lowest one on the list which is 1962 (and the oldest one at this scale.) Click on the circle and then on the square map. This will open a window that will let you preview the map before downloading.
6. When you want to download, close the preview and then click on the "kmz" option. This should give you the option of downloading a file called:
"IL_Belleville_310148_1962_250000_geo_kmz.zip" Save it where ever you want since you're going to extract the kmz file from it.
7. Once extracted, you are going to change the extention from "kmz" to "zip". You'll get a warning, but that's fine. Once done, extract the "doc" file and the "jpg" file within it. You can now delete the kmz/zip file you changed and place the zip file you downloaded somewhere safe just in case.
8. Okay, now the fun part. First, let's name the jpg file to something useful. I put mine as "belleville_lc_map.jpg" This lets you know it's the map for the landclass work.
Next, create a simple text file and NAME IT THE SAME as the map image. This is essential to getting the map calibrated in SBuilder9, but it SHOULD be the same for SBuilderX. I don't know.
9. Open the text file and add the following:
[GEOGRAPHIC]
North=
South=
West=
East=
... then save. For now you're done with that.
10. Next open the "doc.kml" file with Notepad or whatever you used for the txt file. Notepad is fine. Inside you'll see a bunch of info. The only section we're concerned with is this one:
<LatLonAltBox>
<north>39.00004601527837900</north>
<south>38.00004564666505000</south>
<east>-88.00003051222194000</east>
<west>-90.00011058277550500</west>
</LatLonAltBox>
These are the coordinates you're going to copy over to the txt file you just created with the [GEOGRAPHIC] tag. Once done it should look like this:
[GEOGRAPHIC]
North=39.00004601527837900
South=38.00004564666505000
West=-90.00011058277550500 <<====Note these are FLIPPED/SWAPPED in the txt file.
East=-88.00003051222194000 <<====Note these are FLIPPED/SWAPPED in the txt file.
Once you've made sure to place EAST and WEST in their appropriate slots in the txt file (trust me, you WILL mess this up every now and then) go ahead and save it. You can now delete the kml file.
11. Now you almost have everything set. Now you need to take the jpg file and open it in your image editor. I use gimp, but even windows paint is fine. All you are going to do now is save it as a bmp file WITH THE SAME NAME. When done you should have two image files (one bmp and one jpg) and the txt file). You can delete the jpg if you want since - for the landclass at least - you won't need it. If you were using this for ADE to do airport skirting, for example, you would be better off to use the jpg file with the geographic info since it's smaller and just leave the bmp for the landclass.
12. Almost there. Now you're going to need an imaging program that can deal with layers to make life easier. If not, you can still use paint with the understanding that you won't be able to have layers. What you're going to do now is look at the areas in the map that are urban and compare them with the areas that are not. Urban areas are generally yellow. Using the pencil or paintbrush, go ahead and paint over those areas that are urban. Generally I use red for urban, orange for medium, and yellow for small urban areas.
13. Once that is done you should have a bunch of colored areas where the urban areas are. This will be used in SBuilder9 to tell the program where the towns, cities, etc are.
14. The next step is to color the rest of the map in colors that represent the vegitation. Generally I don't go too crazy on this. I just use a single shade of green, sometimes two. It just depends.
15. Once done, save your work. In order to continue you need to have a copy of Imagetool from the SDK. This is because you now MUST convert the image to 32-bit format in order for SBuilder9 to read it as a Lanclass Map. It won't work in any other format, and it MUST be the one that can be read by FS for some reason. When I saved a 32-bit straight from GIMP it just didn't work at all. Even the 24-bit wasn't recognized.
16. Once your map is saved as a 32-bit image you're basically done with the preparation. Now for the SBuilder9 setup and use.
17. Once you start SBuilder9 click on "New" at the top. This will bring up the dialogue for your new project. I'm calling mine the same as the map ("belleville_lc_map") just to keep it simple.
18. Next click on the "Class Scenery" tab on the top. With this map I'm just going to use the halfway point on the coordinates which comes out to 38.5 and -89.0 for the coordinate window. Just to the right there is an option to restrict the view to the area centered on the coordinates you just provided. Go ahead and click on that to make sure it's selected if it's not. Now click "Okay" and you are now in the project window.
19. Now is a good time to save the thing. Click on the top "File" then "Save As" and save it where you think would be best for the project. I'm putting mine in the same folder as the bmp image with the same name for simplicity, but you can save it where ever you wish.
20. Once saved you can begin. First, hit "F3" on your keyboard. You'll now have a red grid (default settings) depicting the LOD13 boxes that will represent the landclass areas. Alternatively, you can go to the "View" then "Display Grid" on the dropdown and do it that way.
21. Now click on the "Map" button on the top. You're cursur will now have the word "map" to let you know you're in map mode. Now click anywhere on the screen and you should get a popup asking you for the map. Navigate to the place where you have the bmp file you saved and then converted to 32-bit. Click on the bmp file and then "Open".
22. There should be a popup now with a message telling you that you need to calibrate the image. Guess what? You did that already when you created the txt file with the geographic data a the beginning! Just hit "OK" and you now have a dialogue with a bunch of info. If everything in the txt file is correct, you should have the information you placed in there already filled in. As a bonus, you will also have the cell dimension information at the bottom left. You can now copy that somewhere if you plan on using resample for whatever reason since that's the info that would go into the "inf" files. The column and row information are the pixels for the image. In our case it should be 5300x5300. Since you don't have to do anything here, just click "OK" and you're done.
23. Now zoom out and you should see your map in the rectangular shape it should be covering the area that you are going to work on.
24. For the next step make sure you are still in the "map" button on top. Certain actions require you to be in the "mode" that you're going to be working in. Right click on the map itself and select the "properties" option at the bottom. In the dialogue that opens up click on the "class map" option. In the window that comes up click on the "add" option at the bottom right. This is where you tell SBuilder9 what landclass the colors will correspond to. The instructions are self-explanitory, but I will point out that the numbers they are referring to are those used in the SDK. Grass, for example is 128. One urban one is 103, etc. The distribution is 60%, 25%, and 15% for the three. If all you want is grass, for example, then you would write "128, 128, 128" and you're going to get grass 100% fo the time. If you want 50-50, the best you can do is "103, 128, 128" and you're going to have city for 60% of the time and grass the rest. How you break it up is up to you. My only recommendation is that you give it a name that makes sense to you after the numbers. Once done, click okay.
25. You'll now see what you wrote in a yellow box up top. This is the default. Since you want the color to be from the map, you follow the instructions above the colored box and double left click on the yellow default color. The box will now go away and you are free to click on the map ON THE COLOR YOU WANT TO ASSIGN. If you used red for urban, for example, then click on the red color. The background for the box should now be red when it pops up again. Go ahead and repeat again for the different areas you have, making sure you have the three numbers and a name. Remember, even if you just want one landclass instead of a mix, you MUST have three numbers.
26. Once you're happy with what you have selected, you can save it and then proceed to make the scenery files.
27. Before we make this, let me clarify something. In SBuilder9 you pan by holding down the "P" key and zoom in and out with the scroll on the mouse. I should have said that before. Sorry about that. Anyway, go ahead and click on the "land" button up top. This should bring up a window for landlcass editing. One of the options you'll see is within a lined box called "land use map". One of the buttons is "make". Go ahead and click on this. It will use the informatoin you entered in the prior dialogue we did and create a bunch of landclass tiles all over the screen - to the best of it's ability - at all the areas with the colors you specified in the percentages you specified (again, within the limitations programed such as 60-25-15 percent).
28. If everything went well, you should have a screen full of landclass files. You can now create scenery.
29. Switch to "point" mode first. Then make sure you are able to view everything. Go to the "view" dropdown and select "view all". If everything disappears don't worry. Just click on that one again in the dropdown and everything will come back up. Next, in the "select" dropdown "select all". Everything should be highlighted now. Click on save, then the "bgl" button on the right. Everything will go to the folder that's specified in the preferences. For simplicity's sake, I always keep the default "Work" folder - or something like that - where everything goes to inside the SBuilder9 folder. You can then copy the bgl files and everything else over to the project folder, and then copy the bgl files once again to flight sim, activate, and enjoy the new scenery!
30. I'm not sure how SBuilderX works, but it should be something similar since it's a follow-on to SBuilder9. If not, maybe landclass files from FS9 work in FSX?
31. By the way, the bmp/map editing stuff above works with any bmp file as long as it's 32-bit and you have the calibration txt file with the same name. I've used maps of 1:24000 from the USGS website for airports before - mainly for the outline of the skirting. I also used the maps in ADE by entering the corner coordinates from the txt file manually using the corner option when you add a map. That way everything is the same in the sim. For FSX you can generate the terrain in ADE since it does the CVX files, so you can just use the coordinate info from the doc.kml file to calibrate the map in ADE using the corners. That may be easier for smaller areas, but for something large the map seems to be the better option.
32. There is a program called LWMViewer with a tutorial at CalClassics by Tom that can be used as well for areas. It works from within the sim and I believe - I'm not certain - that it can be used for FSX as well.
Sorry for taking so much time, but it's my day off today and didn't want to leave you guessing how I was making some of the work I've been doing for the PW expansion. At least the scenery, anyway.
Regards,
Jorge
Miami, FL
LOL!