Two Falls Scenery. . .Finally!

[falcon409]

This one was more difficult than I expected, partly because I'm still learning SBX and partly because of it's location. At any rate, the best way to see the improvements is to pull up Two Falls default in FSX and then look at these pics.
The approach over Sebec Lake is pretty nice and a bit tricky considering the orientation of the rwy. I haven't landed from the other direction but that's pretty straight forward.
Replacing the entire Landclass would have been the ideal way to do this, but I'm not there yet, so this is the best alternative for me right now. I still have to add a pond on the property using SBX and a water mask and then it really will be complete. By the way, this airport is about 42nm NW of Miller on a heading of 335 degrees. I'll get it uploaded this evening.

 

[Matt Wynn]

Falcon........ looking fantastic, quite some tool SbuilderX ain't it? oh to make a pond you'll need to make a hole first then add a water poly above that IIRC

 

[Henry]

Looking Great!
H

 

[falcon409]

Falcon........ looking fantastic, quite some tool SbuilderX ain't it? oh to make a pond you'll need to make a hole first then add a water poly above that IIRC

Ahhhh, that kinda makes sense. . .make a hole and fill it, lol. I was just making a water poly and couldn't figure out why it wasn't showing up. Thanks!!

 

[Henry]

Ahhhh, that kinda makes sense. . .make a hole and fill it, lol. I was just making a water poly and couldn't figure out why it wasn't showing up. Thanks!!

just like RL
if ya dont have a hole the water will run away
actually thats a new one on me
thanks for the info
H

 

[bushpilot]

Awesome once again! Now we have three detailed airstrips to travel between

 

[falcon409]

Ok smoothie, maybe this isn't as easy as I thought. I've drawn the poly for the pond, clicked to make a hole, that gives me an arrow cursor with a flag next to it that says "click Parent poly". . .no matter what I click, the flag remains and nothing happens. Can you remember how that should work? There's no references in the program help file and the forum is a difficult place to get a quick answer.
I assumed that for this, the parent poly would be the poly I just drew for the pond. I know there is a hierarchy for the various poly's (I have three right now), but if I click any other than the one for the pond. . . .well, why would I really, that poly is the one I want to fill with water, lol.

 

[Matt Wynn]

whoops my error, need to create a hydro-polygon:

To draw a lake or any other body of water, select the Polygon tool and cover the area desired:

drawing water polygons
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Once you have finished drawing, right-click to stop drawing that polygon.
Then, right-click on the edge of the polygon to bring up the Properties window where you can choose the type of Hydro Polygon (water) desired:

selecting a texture for the water
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You will find different options for Hydro Polygons - lake, ocean, river, bay. Select lake. As before, make the polygon transparent so that you can see the background image beneath it.
Hydro Polygons must have an altitude value that defines their height. Generally, you can determine the height of terrain by slewing in Flight Simulator.
Right-click on the edge of the polygon and select "Set altitude...":

setting an altitude for the water
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In the "Constant altitude" section, indicate the height of 48 meters for the Hydro Polygon, click "OK", then click "Close".

assigning the polygon altitude
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If you do not give your Hydro Polygon an altitude, then SBuilder will assign a default height of 0 meters, and your polygon will most likely display as a depression in the terrain.

 

[JoeW]

This is what I do:
1) Draw a polygon around the island (make a little bit larger than the island) and mark it as Exclude__WaterPolys. This will "erase" the existing water and hence erase the existing island. If you save and compile now you will see a broad expance of trees. This is one QMID 11 grid. Point the plane north and slew to the south-west corner. Zoom out so you can see the whole grid.

2) Make a polygon just outside the corners and mark it as Hydro_Polygons_Generic_Ocean_Perennial. Now you have a new patch of water.

3) Trace the new island shoreline and mark the poly as PolygonHole. This can be done by selecting the poly button in the menu, and clicking on the poly and right click and near the bottom of the selections is the command "Set as hole". Then choose the large water poly as the parent poly. The area that you set as hole should turn white or clear. If it doesn't you didn't select the poly right. you must be in poly mode to set it as a hole. This will make the island.

Build and have a look in FSX. You should see your new island. If you see nothing but water, the hole step didn't go right. If you see all trees the Hydro_Polygons_Generic_Ocean_Perenial poly wasn't done right.

You don't need to worry about the exclusions affecting any mesh. It won't.

When you do the shore lines, Go clockwise for lakes and counter-clockwise for Islands. Don't worry too much about this as you can reverse the direction of the line.

Regards, MatthewS
Edited by Joe Watson

I edited Matthew's instructions on the lake and corrected as I did mine and they work. Tern Island. For lakes you just do it the other way. It's easier, really to do lakes. The shore lines are the major difference.

 

[falcon409]

Ok, Smoothie, excellent tutorial there man. . .I think that was the first method I tried and I probably didn't assign the correct altitude and that's why it never showed. Back to the drawing board, lol.

Joe, thanks for that, but I wasn't doing an Island, just a small pond on the airport property, but I will keep that info for future use. Thanks.

 

[falcon409]

Ok, well, must be a newbie problem here. The airport/rwy altitude is set at 118.670, the flatten_maskclassmap_excludeautogen poly is set at 111.52632 and incrementally I have moved the hydro_poly up from that level to 124.623 and it still isn't showing.

 

[Matt Wynn]

i'll take a look falcon have opened the photo of the place, and will try placing yer lake/pond

 

[JoeW]

Have you clicked on select and then select all (Ctrl+A) before you saved. Thats what you MUST do before you compile. If your changes are not saved with all they wont go into effect.

 

[falcon409]

Have you clicked on select and then select all (Ctrl+A) before you saved. Thats what you MUST do before you compile. If your changes are not saved with all they wont go into effect.

That's doesn't appear to be the case Joe, the small Hydro poly is the only thing that isn't working. The Airport Boundary Exclude works and the classmap works just fine, it's the water poly that isn't. I'm gonna lay off this stuff for a bit and do some flying.

I'm working on Bald Mountain (ME14) which has a sloping rwy, actually more than a slope really, it sits on the crown of the mountain so it has a rise on each end then levels out at the middle, lol. My plan now (I've already dropped plans A,B & C) is plan D which is to eliminate the rwy and just land on the mountain just as this guy does every day.

 

[Matt Wynn]

use the line tool and place a road for the runway....

 

[JoeW]

Doing a lake is the same as a island...... only easier.
Same steps... but you don't do a big water poly .... it's a small poly in the shape of the lake.

 

[PRB]

I saw the Two_Falls.zip file uploaded yesterday - is this the one being discussed here? I ask because I downloaded and installed it, and it seems to have installed with no issues, but I see no buildings at the airport. Do I need another something installed to get the buildings?

 

[falcon409]

Right now, the one thing that seems to elude me is elevation settings. The one I'm doing right now is a prime example:
Stonington Municiple_93B
I did an AB_exclude file to knock out the rectangular default boundary
I did a replacement boundary, compiled and loaded into the scenery folder
I checked the elevation all along the area by the rwy (not on top, but the terrain on either side (in meters). While not consistent, it is basically 11.0m, so I set the rwy and airport elevations at 11.0m
I go back to the airport and on one end, the rwy drops in and out of the terrain for about a third of the rwy.
Now I can go back into AFX and set the elevations to 5 meters higher than it should be and go back into FSX and nothing has changed.
Soooooooooooooo, using SBuilderX and the only two "shapes" I have done are an exclude poly and as airport boundary poly, both of which are set to "0" elevation. So what is holding the rwy? If nothing I do in AFX affects that, what does?

 

[falcon409]

I saw the Two_Falls.zip file uploaded yesterday - is this the one being discussed here? I ask because I downloaded and installed it, and it seems to have installed with no issues, but I see no buildings at the airport. Do I need another something installed to get the buildings?

You say it installed with no issues? What do you see PRB? Also, some of the objects are FSX default. . .you should see those at least.

 

[PRB]

Well, I see the new airport, and the lake is gone, but no buildings or other objects. I just installed your other two Maine airports, Miller's Field and Isleboro, and they are fine (and look great, btw, thanks!) But this one - no objects. I placed the files into separate folders in FSX's Addon Scenery folder, with separate scenery and texture folders.