Is everybody happy with your Malta / North Africa scenery?

kelticheart

kelticheart

Charter Member
Thank you very much Rami!

GC's Gladiator campaign was one of those campaign I flew two or three missioin at most, then for some reason or another I had to give up. You yourself said it was inherently flawed and I don't remember what did not work on my pc, but it went in the "one day I'll take a look into it" file and left it there since.

Just like now. I want to thank you for the Hellas campaign as well, but I am in troubles there as well. As I recently discovered in my MTO install, Rhumba's watermasks are doing a lot of nasty jokes to my sceneries.:icon_eek:

For example, both Achim's Greece Thesaloniki airfield and SP base are out in the Aegean Sea, about 200 yards away from the coastline. It's like landing on a carrier, one wheel out of the runway towards a parking spot and... SPLASH! :angryfir: They are listed in the Hellas campaign.

In your readme, you suggest using all of Rhumba's mesh files and watermask and you also suggest using SdC's ETO coastlines, rivers and lakes. What for? They do not cover Greece, at least not the files I downloaded from Sander's site a while ago. The files I have arrive to cover Sicily, Pantelleria and Malta, period. No SdC's coastlines in North Africa, Greece or Crete. Brunosk's Malta scenery is another good one: the files I downloaded give me a chunk of coastline missing from the La Valletta harbour and from the SW coastline plus an old runway from the first Giorgio's Malta pack overlapping Brunosk's Ta Quali, but I installed the updated Malta files included in Brunosk's v2 pack.....:banghead:

Another nice thing that I discovered is that CFS2 is incapable of displaying a depression area, below sea level, as land, but it displays sea texture tiles instead. The Nile delta, between Cairo and Alexandria looks like the Everglades swamp and the Al Quattara depression is painted a nice ocean blue with waves and coral, even if one can land and taxi around with ease, as shown below. The first two show the area between Cairo and Alexandria, the last two are taken at Al Quattara... :barf:

Since I haven't seen anyone reporting scenery problems, am I missing something here, like Greece updates done by Achim to fit Rhumba's watermasks, or updates done by Sander covering a larger area of the southern Mediterranean? :crybaby:

Cheers!
KH :ernae:
 
A good day to everybody! :wiggle:

I know that this topic has been brought up several times, in the meantime my files still had to be installed and I was doing other things instead of keeping up with new sceneries....

Talon's recent statement that he was going to fly CFS2, instead of working CFS2, made me decide to install some materials I had downloaded and then put on indefinite hold.

I tackled my Med that I haven't touched since I installed Sarg Willys first GSL North Africa sceneries, which I still like a lot. That was a while ago.... So I got to Brunosk's Malta v2. It did install real well, I followed Brunosk's install instructions step by step, very carefully. I put SdC's Eurocoasts in the correct scenery order with Giorgio's Malta scenery updated for Brunosk and, the first time I tested it, I was almost surprised to see it without texture tiles missing or continous CTDs as reported by many.

But then display problems surfaced. As shown below, there are what look like a couple of water texture tiles intruding in La Villetta harbour scenery, eating away the coastline; then flying around the island counterclokwise, I found a section of the SW coastline with SdC's Euro coast missing, with a weird looking square chunk cut out of the coastline and replaced by a water texture clearly visible upstream; further up, when I flew over Gozo, again the same above problem with the square chunk cut out of the coastline replaced by a water texture.

Finally, the cherry on the cake came with a very old looking runway, what I think to be a leftover from old Giorgio's Malta scenery (I installed the updated files I found in Brunosk's pack), overlapping Brunosk's Ta Quali airfield.

Framerate is not that great either......but I have in mind to extract layout from the gsl file and reduce the number of objects to help better fps...the endless tweaking story..

Below Brunosk's Malta scenery I have installed all of Rhumba's watermasks and mesh files, plus SdC's Euro coastlines. I tried turning off and on Rhumba's watermasks, since I know they play havoc with sceneries released before his corrected files, but it did not influence this scenery problems at all.

Any idea of what might cause these faulty displays?

Thank you!
KH :ernae:
 
Reply...

Kelti,

That runway on top of Ta'Qali is evidence that you may have a runway from the old Swordfish or Heinkels! campaigns in either your scenedb\afdfiles or scenedb\runways folder.

That's an easy one.

Second, your problem looks similar to mine a while back. There appears to be an extra flatten somewhere in your setup. Looking at your scenery.cfg file may help here.

Here's what my main island looks like...
 
Reply...

Keiti,

Take a step back and breathe. Let's do it together.....inhale.....hold it...exhale.

Feel better? :icon_lol:

Now, I sent you an e-mail response earlier in the week on this. Jean Bomber DID do coastlines for the Mediterranean that work in conjunction with his Gibraltar scenery, providing shorelines from Gibraltar along the North African coastline to Alexandria, Egypt. I told you how to install it to fix the issues you sent me for Tripoli and Alexandria.

Please see my MTO guide for details: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=49&id=2932

As I said in the e-mail, if you place the coastlines in the same folder as the Afnor scenery, it will fix the North African coastline issue, at least up to about Abu Qir.

As far as Thesaloniki, I made an announcement just before the release of Heinkels / Hellas that I updated the JHS_Albania and JHS_Greece packages to include a revised location for Valona and Thesaloniki, that way they are no longer waterlogged.

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=45&id=3346

"NOTE: This package was modified on 05/20/2011 to include the revised airfield at Valona. - SOH Librarian."

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=45&id=3345

"NOTE: This package was modified on 05/20/2011 to include the revised airfield at Thesaloniki. - SOH Librarian."

Some of the other locations (such as the Thesaloniki seaplane base and a few others in Greece / North Africa) are not fixed yet, but Achim is working on them, and I will update the packages in the new library as they come in.

And, I am aware that there are no coastlines on the continent and Crete due to the fact that they are east of Mid-Yugoslavia, it is a limitation of Sander's work, nothing that can be done there.

With regards to the depression / sea level issue, Pen32Win noticed that, and sent me a fix for it which you can also put in that Afnor scenery folder to fix the problem. He hadn't released it yet because he was planning to integrate it with Jean Bomber's Afnor Part II, hopefully released late this summer.

After you get east of the Alexandria harbor area, the Nile Delta does look like that, I thought it was a bit weird.

Feel free to download the fix if you wish...and see my notes in your other post about Malta.

We'll get you straightened out!
 
hi !

first before anything greetings to all, folks! I'm using for the first time on google translator to write in a more fluid. The setting of the Mediterranean (following the installation guide Rami) is my favorite but there are elements to improve it?:icon_lol:
 
Just to clarify some things about the AFNOR Lake Fix and the Al Quattara Depression.

I was able to fix the northern half but there's something about the southern half that I just can't fix. No matter what I do it just won't change the Landclass. There are a couple other "Lakes" like this in North Africa, some above and some below Sea Level that just can't be fixed, so far that is. Some of the areas below Sea Level work just fine, like the Dead Sea Area. All of the landclass areas I worked on there took the new L/C and the Block Lakes and Blocky edges filled in with "Land" Textures. Others, no joy, no matter what Scenery Level or Scenery Folder you put them in works. I think this has something to do with the base MS North/South BGL's.

The AFNOR Lake fix project started out as a small fix to the "Square Block Lakes" you see throughout N/A. It grew into a huge project that spans from Libya to Casablanca several hundred miles deep into N/A. It encompasses Libya, Lebanon, Israel, the Sinai, Egypt including the Nile Delta and follows the northern shore from there at a depth of about 250 miles. I created a Landclass File for every area I could find where the Desert War occurred. Did I get them All? I sure tried but some of them are very hard to detect along the shorelines and we're talking about thousands of square miles of desert. It may not be absolutely perfect but it cut the number of nasty, out of place lakes from several hundred down to about three.... For those that fly the Desert Skies it sure does make thing look a whole lot better....
 
Just like I said.....

Rami said:
Keiti,

Take a step back and breathe. Let's do it together.....inhale.....hold it...exhale.

Feel better? :icon_lol:

Now, I sent you an e-mail response earlier in the week on this. Jean Bomber DID do coastlines for the Mediterranean that work in conjunction with his Gibraltar scenery, providing shorelines from Gibraltar along the North African coastline to Alexandria, Egypt. I told you how to install it to fix the issues you sent me for Tripoli and Alexandria.

Please see my MTO guide for details: http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=49&id=2932

As I said in the e-mail, if you place the coastlines in the same folder as the Afnor scenery, it will fix the North African coastline issue, at least up to about Abu Qir.

As far as Thesaloniki, I made an announcement just before the release of Heinkels / Hellas that I updated the JHS_Albania and JHS_Greece packages to include a revised location for Valona and Thesaloniki, that way they are no longer waterlogged.....
Click to expand...


....it's all my fault for getting sidetracked with the Pearl Harbour stocker repaints and not keeping up with my homework!! (Hey, what's this? No more banghead smiley in this extra-super-duper-fancy new interface? Well, I AM banging me head right now....)

Thank you so much Rami! I have all of the above, all of your scenery install guides, Jean Bomber's Afnor, which I erroneously thought covers only Gilbatrair, and, everytime you uploaded a revised version of your campaigns, I duly downloaded it. To the point I can publish a whole story of all the giant-leap progresses you made over the last years in your campaign/mission overhaul activity! :applause:

Unfortunatley, I d/l them and put them in the install backlog, because I was too busy doing something else. I had forgotten that, when a CFS2 scenery shows bugs and some of our great gurus (Pen and JB, this praise is for you!) steps in with a fix, all other CFS2 tinkering must stop and the development of the fixes must be followed closely and carefully.

I just saved the whole thread, I'll print it out and start from scratch with my Med!

Rami said:
That runway on top of Ta'Qali is evidence that you may have a runway from the old Swordfish or Heinkels! campaigns in either your scenedb\afdfiles or scenedb\runways folder.
Click to expand...

Yep! Found the buggers! They are in scenedb\runways, because my scenedb\afdfiles folder is empty for any non-Pacific theatre like ETO or MTO.

Voilà! Yessir: my Ta' Quali is cleaned up now! :jump:

This would be a nice CC-like utility to develop for CFS2: one that would clear out all autoinstalled or manually installed files for a clean step-by-step new install afterwords. We cannot remember all scenery files added over a ten-year time span!

Thank you again Rami for your help! And many many thanks to Pen as well, I read what you are doing to cleanup Afnor CFS2 bugs and I am deeply impressed! Here's to you.... :icon29:

Cheers!
KH :ernae:
 
Reporting Afnor install progress...

.. for the last two days.

I installed all of Jean Bomber's materials I downloaded in the last six months, it's a lot of work, specially extracting gobs from Achim's GSL files where they overlap JB's sceneries, like Pantelleria.

Now I have in place coastlines and LOD9 mesh for Tunisia, Lybia and Egypt, plus Gibraltar, Pelagic Islands and Baleares.

All of the above stunningly beautiful, Jean truly did an astonishing job on those sceneries!!!
:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:
​

Jean's Afnor watermasks too care of all North African coastline imperfections, including the beautiful Alexandria GSL harbour made by Rami and the lagoon behind Alexandria. The blue (Meanies) squares are gone!

I know I still have things to do to complete my Med scenery cleanup, but I haven't seen the blue squares taken away from BSK's Malta shoreline just yet. I'll keep installing and correcting until I'll get everything straightened out.

I am in the process of downloading JHS updated Albania and Greece, I'll install them next and get rid of the old ones.

One question:

I am using PacTex v.2 sand and dunes textures for the desert areas, consequently Malta and the rest of the Med looks like the Sahara. Is it possible putting different textures in each scenery dedicated folder to have greener Malta, Greece or Pelagic Islands?

Until next report, cheers!
KH :ernae:
 
I started doing all this on a clean install at the beginning of the year, but then, major work around the house has seen it stall (stop), and, hoping to get a new box, I thought I'll just wait until then. I was having troubles installing Gibraltar, but, thanks to Kelti's reports, I think I may have found the problem.
Thank you KH
 
kelticheart said:
I am using PacTex v.2 sand and dunes textures for the desert areas, consequently Malta and the rest of the Med looks like the Sahara. Is it possible putting different textures in each scenery dedicated folder to have greener Malta, Greece or Pelagic Islands?
Click to expand...

Hi Kelticheart,

I think this would only work if there were landclass files in the corresponding scenery files, e.g. UncleTgt's Aleutian and Andaman scenery. In the case of Malta and the Pelargic Islands there are, so it is worth a try.

I find Captain Kurt's Spanish terrain textures for the SCW look quite realistic for the MTO.

Regarding the flooded appearance of the Nile delta and the Quattara Depression, the two offending files in Rhumbaflappy's watermasking are:
cst4610d and cst4710a.
Another option would be to revert to his older Africa/S Asia water files.

Cheers,
Kevin
 
One question:

I am using PacTex v.2 sand and dunes textures for the desert areas, consequently Malta and the rest of the Med looks like the Sahara. Is it possible putting different textures in each scenery dedicated folder to have greener Malta, Greece or Pelagic Islands?
Click to expand...

Hi to all :salute:!

Kelti ,it's better to install and set up in cfs2 the Desert_scen scenery and Afnor_scen separatly, in the same hierarchy level in the scenery cfg,they are distinct sceneries and have their own texture folder,perfectible but it's the idea, it's not good to put all the bgls in a same scenery folder and make a mix of the both sceneries that could give the Med as the sahara....
With Afnor Pelagic Islands there are texture folders ,the main folders are named Afnor_scen and afnor_bases, it's the suite of afnorI(Gibraltar-Ceuta-Oran) and the bgls can be added in the first install and the texture bmps in the Afnor_scen/texture will give this part of the med more green ,it's a mix of pactex2 sdc'c and seasonal rhumba's sets .
Desert_scen scenery have also a texture with some dune and desert textures ,but it's just the idea and everybody could replace them and perfect it ,the landclass need to be done the goal was in first to have coastlines fitting with the mesh,and with the afnor LKfix that Pen32Win has done the cfs2 landclass errors are corrected,I've tried to cover these blue squares with polys but I was not happy myself by this way ....thanks Pen32Win for the fix.:salute:
The main issue to work correctly these med sceneries in the boundaries of the SDC's Euro are the flattens ,there are some SDC's Euro a16n bgls replaced in the pelagic scenery upload that erase the euro flattens around the pelagics islands, Pantelleria and Malta.
in this thread the issues we've had
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?47991-Pantelleria-and-the-Pelagic-Islands
It's a work in progress :running:


JP
 
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