answered Question for Nick, re: Tower spacing

[Jack Sawyer]

Hi Nick, I know you're busy but I saw a thread where you mentioned reducing the spacing between the utility power poles.  I fly a lot in ORBX SAK and so I decided to try your terrain.cfg mod.

 

Utilitymask.bmp - change from 17 to 0.1

 

Well, I did and I like it a lot but for some reason it always reverts back to 17.  How can I get it to stay at 0.1?

 

Thanks.

[Jack Sawyer]

Also, for some reason it doesn't work.  Could this be because the thread I found it in was in 2013 and things might have changed?

 

Is there a way to decrease that huge gap under the power towers?

 

Thanks again.  Sorry if I'm being a piano as I know you guys have a lot more important things going on.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Jack,

 

not sure what thread you're referring to but it sounds that it dealt with the width of the clearing not the spacing of the towers. To alter spacing you'd need to find the // utility lines section in terrain.cfg ([Autogen.0.0.0]) and then change the ObjectSize parameter from the default 600 (m) spacing to whatever suits your preference.

 

Note that this only works in the FTX Regions that utilize the default autogen utility lines though I believe SAK is one of them. Other regions place the towers at their real-world locations, using FAA or industry data, in which case the default parameters have no effect.

 

Also, obviously, changing that default parameter has global influence. 

 

Cheers, Holger

[Jack Sawyer]

Hello Holger, before I get to this I want to say I've been spending a LOT of time in your Tongass region and it's stunning.  I'm loving it.

 

Right, I'm going to post a screenshot.  Nick's post is still on the forum somewhere, mayhap I'll have to find it.  He described with screenshots how to narrow the width of the land and not the tower spacing itself.  I like the tower spacing, I'm talking how wide the land itself is to the left and right of the towers, not before and after them.  Width.

I wish I had a chance to make an arrow on the screenshot but I think you can see what I mean.

It's like a large slash that cuts through everything.

Utilitymask.bmp

 

Here's the post…

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/70623-utility-lines-and-how-to-remove-them/#comment-648817

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Jack,

 

thanks for the kind words.

 

I had to dig a little deeper to recall the way we added powerlines and corridors in SAK. Turns out all of the corridors are part of the polygon landclass system and thus can't be altered at all. The good news is that the width of the corridors is accurate (and varies with location) meaning if you look at the same place in Google Earth or Bing you should see that same corridor at approx. the same width.

 

Don't be surprised by the width of the corridors in western forests: trees grow fast and tall and many lines are checked by helicopter so there needs to be a safe distance to the forest edge. We actually worked with a Canadian helicopter company a while back helping them to set up their simulator to practice such powerline patrols. 

 

Cheers, Holger

[Nick Cooper]

Sorry, I have missed this.

I believe that every time you click on Apply Group in FTX Central,

the entries seem to be overwritten to 17.

I don't know how to stop this happening.

[Jack Sawyer]

Thank you Holger and Nick, I appreciate it!

Not a problem  then.  That's an interesting story.  It makes perfect sense they should be that wide then.  I've seen videos of guys doing this in helicopters.  What a cool job that would be.

Where  I live they are constantly trimming the trees next to the power lines for the same reason.  We have towers like that too and there is a huge gap like in FTX.  

So everything is fine.

And Nick, yes, that would make sense as it did seem to do that, reset when I applied group.

Thanks again.

 

Jack