Flooding issues?

[kennethjkerr]

Hello

 

I am a staff reviewer for AirDailyX, and I'm currently working on a review of the new Open LC NA product. I have Base, Vector, Open LC NA, the latest libraries, and the free North American airports installed (plus more than a few of the FTX regions).  But for this question, it concerns areas not covered by FTX regions.

 

When I installed Open LC and the airports, I began by going though the list of free Canadian airports to quickly check how good they looked and how well the suite of products was doing in terms of capturing the look and feel of Canada. (I am located on the Canadian prairies in real life).

 

First impressions are fantastic, and I hope to convey that in my review. Well done on making me want to fly in Canada again, outside of the FTX regions of PNW and Northern Rockies.

 

However, my experience was not without problems. As I do not yet have an add-on mesh product, I assume some might be related to that, but there are others that I am not sure about. Also, some of the issues were resolved when I ran the auto airport elevation fix within FTX Vector. But others were not.

 

Specifically, I'm still experiencing problems with trees popping up in the middle of rivers. Here is an example.

 

At Hay River (CYHY) when I fly with every option checked as "on" within Vector, I see trees in the water. BUT, if I turn off the option for small rivers and frozen water in the vector configurator, the trees disappear. This is happening in several other locations too.

 

I am not sure if this is a vector issue, an LC issue, or an issue with the airports. I am not using the hybrid mode.

 

Hope you can advise.

 

Regards

Kenneth J Kerr

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Kenneth,

 

thanks for the kind words.

 

 

At Hay River (CYHY) when I fly with every option checked as "on" within Vector, I see trees in the water. BUT, if I turn off the option for small rivers and frozen water in the vector configurator, the trees disappear. This is happening in several other locations too.

I am not sure if this is a vector issue, an LC issue, or an issue with the airports. I am not using the hybrid mode.

 

That's a known issue with Vector and has to do with its method of creating the "automatically freezing" waterbodies. Seasonal changes to rivers and lakes aren't actually part of the standard tools in the SDK but we've discovered a work-around a while back. Unfortunately, that approach is sensitive to local exclude files, which are often used at or near airports and lead to the failure of the required autogen excludes on those water polygons. That's why the issue is most prevalent near airports. As you've discovered, it is reliably fixed by unchecking the "frozen surface" option in the Vector control panel. 

 

In the FTX Regions we have much better control over these kinds of issues than in a global add-on like Vector. Thus, it's possible that future versions of Vector will change to an external control panel switch for changing lakes and rivers from "liquid" to "frozen", similar to what the Flight1 UTX series is using.

 

In any case, it's not an issue with the openLC series as its landclass distribution files have no influence on the location or display of waterbodies.

 

Cheers, Holger

[kennethjkerr]

Hi Holger,

 

Many thanks for the clarification. Also related to water, some people have reported seeing a hill of water in certain areas, or a situation where a lake or river might have a rise in elevation at the shoreline and still use the water texture. Am I right in saying these issues would typically be a function of the default mesh when not using the recommended Pilots product?

 

Regards

Kenneth