answered Any way to remove lakes?

[jfwharton]

Hello.  I have ORBX Global Base Pack, Global Vector and openLC North America installed.  I am getting frustrated with the airport elevations in FSX SE.  I have had FS Global 2010 mesh installed and have changed over to Pilot's FS Global Ultimate Next Generation mesh.  With both I have found a lot of airports with elevation issues.  The AEC feature of Vector is pretty worthless and does not really fix the elevation issue.  A utility that came with the FS Global Ultimate mesh does address the issue but has a problem with the lakes created by the ORBX software.  When the Aerodrome Flattening Mesh is applied it adjusts the mesh elevation but the lakes near the airports are not changed.  So they end up either being deep depressions or plateaus.  This is very frustrating.  I was thinking if I could eliminate the textures for lakes in the ORBX software then this could solve the airport elevation issue.

[larryisenor]

ADE will exclude lakes and other water features. S-Builder and most other scenery tools will also do exclusions for water features.

Larry

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

FTX Vector is designed to work with Fs Global 2010 mesh and does so pretty well.

I have no experience of the mesh product that you are now using but you seem to be suggesting that

though both products are made by Pilot's, they are not compatible?

 

The AFM tool works by adjusting the terrain surrounding an airport to remove any cliffs.

It very often leaves the terrain surrounding the airport very different to both how it should be in the simulator

and very different to the real life elevation of the location.

Given that the main purpose of mesh is to more closely replicate real world elevations, this does seem a little

counter-intuitive.

When adjusting the terrain, the AFM tool takes no account of any water bodies and unfortunately, water bodies

will always stay at their fixed elevation, leaving them as you see them, either above or below the surrounding AFM terrain.

 

FTX Vector is very good at placing water in the right place and at the right elevation.

Default simulators, much less so.

I see two ways forwards for you, either follow Larry's suggestion and where you see water at the wrong location, exclude it.

Or, use FTX Vector's AEC tool to correct airport elevations and the water bodies should then have the correct terrain around

them and look as they should.

For the very best results, Vector and Fs Global 2010 mesh would be the ideal choice.

[jfwharton]

Thank you for your reply but even with a clean install of FSX SE and FS Global 2010 I still have the issue.  From what I have seen of AEC it does not adjust the terrain sorrounding an airport.  My observations is that AEC just adjust the airport to a midpoint elevation,  shortening the cliff going down on one side and substituting a cliff going up on the other end.  I have done several clean installs and have seen the same results using both FS Global 2010 and FS Global Ultimate.  So my only option would be to exclude the water but I have no idea how to do that or what to use to exclude the water elevation.  I would appreciate some pointers on where to go to find out how to do this.  Thank you.

[jfwharton]

I love how DLC's and installations work (actually don't work) in steam.  I removed the scenery references for FS Global Ultimate in the hopes I could reinstall FS Global 2010.  But steam will not install it correctly.  Nothing shows up in the scenery library for FS Global 2010 after is says it reinstalled it.  So for now I'm putting FS Global Ultimate back in as I don't feel like wiping everything out and doing a clean install again.  Already did that several times last month and it didn't solve the airport elevation issue.  So I guess I'll live with it as is with FS Global Ultimate installed.  But I would like to know how to edit the elevation of lakes near an airport.  That would solve my issue.  I downloaded and installed S-builder but it doesn't work.  Can't find my FSX folder.  Probably because the last clean install I did with steam it named the folder FSX instead of FSX SE.

[ShawnG]

1 hour ago, jfwharton said:

My observations is that AEC just adjust the airport to a midpoint elevation,  shortening the cliff going down on one side and substituting a cliff going up on the other end.

 

Yes.  This is what it does.   In my many, many years of experience with flight sim scenery, vector with AEC does the best job of dealing with the problem.  That is not to say that it is perfect, or really even a "great" solution, but it is the best available.   The problems are twofold, and unfortunately both at the feet of Microsoft, who left this party about 8-9 years ago, so they aren't going to fix it. In their wisdom, MS decided that airports and bodies of water had to be totally flat and have designated altitudes (if you make an airport that is not flat, AI traffic cannot use it, ORBX has a few airports available that do this, prominently PAKT, and its sloping taxiways).  Also, at the same time, the sim was provided with an inaccurate set of elevation and vector data in which these altitudes are based.  If you stick with the default mesh and data, you will not have issues with plateaus or chasms with the lakes and airports, but you will have an inaccurately depicted earth.  If you then purchase an updated and accurate set of elevation data (FSGlobal), you will have issues.  If you don't upgrade the vector data with something (FTX Vector, UTX) you will have many cliffs where default rivers in the wrong positions cut through accurate mountains that are in the right positions.  lakes and airports will be at odds with the elevations as well, in some cases jutting up out of the terrain, in others in deep gullies.  AEC contains airport elevations for vector that do the best job of blending in, and vector has a vastly more accurate set of water body data, but it is inherently a compromise.  you could probably individually edit the elevations with a scenery design tool if any of them are particularly hateful, but you will find usually the the elevation already provided is the least obtrusive.

 

It is important to realize that the problem is the base structure of how the sim is created, not a program that attempts to fix it, even if the fix can't be perfect.  The sim was meant to be run on a terrible set of data points, and a "flat airport" theory, and at the end of the day, there's only so much that can be done about it.  I wish the sim could accommodate sloping airports, and wild descending rivers,  but it can't.  Vector is an attempt at a solution to the problem, not the problem itself.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

now that it has all been fully explained, do you have a specific airport in mind where this

water elevation is particularly bothersome?

[jfwharton]

Thank you all for the explanations.  I live in Colorado Springs so I like to fly out of that location, KCOS.  I have attached screen shots of the departure end of 35L and a side view of the approach end of 35L.  This is with AEC applied.  The last screen shot is with the aerodrome flattening mesh applied, which fixes the cliffs at both ends of the airfield but leaves the lakes at the northern end elevated (last screen shot).  If this is what everyone is getting for KCOS I will just have to live with it.  I love the ORBX scenery but working on this issue is becoming an obsession that I will need to get over.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

KCOS is a perfect illustration of the problem as described in detail by ShawnG.

 

Because of the decision years ago by the Microsoft developers that all airports 

must be flat and the fact that this airport covers a huge area, introducing a very

detailed mesh simply accentuates the undulations in the surrounding terrain and

creates the cliffs around the edges of the flat airport that are not there in the real world.

 

As I described, using the AFM tool, because it cannot affect the airport itself, distorts the 

surrounding terrain to fit the flat airport edges.

In doing this, it pulls the terrain down around the water body.

The water body cannot move and indeed should not move, because it is at the correct level,

so it appears as you see it, elevated above its surrounding terrain.

 

 

 

 

[jfwharton]

Well then I guess I need to get over this obsession, accept things as they are and move on and enjoy the flying and the scenery.  With KCOS there is also another issue and that is with 5CO5 which is just south of the airport.  So when you try to fix KCOS you affect 5CO5.  So thank you all for your inputs.  Time to move on.

[Nick Cooper]

Just to finish the explanation, here is Freemesh X USA causing the same problem.

Watch for a few moments and you can see in the animation that the water and the airports will not move and the resulting cliffs.

 

[jfwharton]

Thank you for the animated image.  I had to give it a try to see if there was something I was missing that could address what I was seeing in FSX SE.  A shame that it is a balance between having more realistic terrain and having airports that are at the same level as the surround ground.  But it is what it is, so off to flying flight sim and discovering new areas.  Thanks again.