noted EGCB Manchester City Airport Issue

[david broome]

Hi, I have an issue or two with ECGB scenery and wonder if I can get some help here instead of raising a ticket?

I do not have any other mesh or overlay scenery such as ortho in my custom scenery folder

Old Trafford stadium is a few feet off the ground and the road and rail network are missing that should be close by (Chester road and railway that lead into Manchester.

The rest of scenery seems okay (Airport is great by the way) but there is another dual carriage way near the city centre that has parked cars down the centre and a building or two in the middle of the road!

I will attach screenshot and  Xplane log.txt in the hope it is something obvious I have missed.

In the screenshot you can see the stadium in the air and no railway or road network, just barren land with a building in the middle of it.

Mods please feel free to delete this post and let me know if I should be opening a ticket instead.

Log.txt

[Alex Goff]

Hi David,

 

I split your post into it's own thread in the X-Plane 11 support area so it doesn't get lost in other posts. Our X-Plane devs will be able to assist from here. 

 

Regards,

 

Alex

[Tony Wroblewski]

Thanks David

 

I'm aware of this issue with the stadium and will get this fixed in an update.

 

 

[david broome]

3 hours ago, tonywob said:

Thanks David

 

I'm aware of this issue with the stadium and will get this fixed in an update.

 

 

 

Hi Tony.

Thanks.

Does this include the issue with the road, railway line and whole empty area in the screenshot?

There should be a major dual carriageway and railway line and buildings all the way into Manchester.

Here is the equivalent Google Earth snap shot of the area I posted the screenshot of for reference - not saying it should look like this obviously but the data for the area all the way upto and around Beetham tower seems missing or scrambled as there is another dual carriage I flew over closer to the city centre that has parked cars all the way down the centre and a building or two across the road (Think they are custom buildings not autogen) sorry didn't get a screen grab of that but can get you more if you need more info.

 

Thank you for a fantastic scenery, the airport itself is stunning.

If I could make one suggestion it would be to have a bit more variety in traffic or perhaps have a smaller ratio of coaches as I seem to have an over abundance of of blue buses.

 

https://earth.google.com/web/@53.46265805,-2.2914571,45.31501326a,837.86604489d,35y,75.38595812h,64.96771331t,-0r/data=ClEaTxJHCiUweDQ4N2JhZTcyZTdlNDdmNjk6MHg2YzkzMGU5NmRmNDQ1NWZlGZXPl4NFu0pAIWEbTB6qVALAKgxPbGQgVHJhZmZvcmQYAiABKAI

[Tony Wroblewski]

Thanks for the feedback

 

The scenery actually ends just after old trafford, so it seems the road that should be there in the default scenery is either missing or is cut out. I'll look into why this is the case

[david broome]

6 hours ago, tonywob said:

Thanks for the feedback

 

The scenery actually ends just after old trafford, so it seems the road that should be there in the default scenery is either missing or is cut out. I'll look into why this is the case

 

Many thanks as I am nonplussed.

Filippo Nessi just posted another youtube video showcasing the scenery and it appears the issue is not present for him - at least as far as I can tell at 7:07 in the video.

I will continue to mess about with it myself and see if I can sort it out but as far as I know I have nothing installed that could clash.

I even took all other mesh files out of custom folder even though they weren't for Manchester.

 

In screenshot below you can see just over the dash where the road starts again but it is scrambled, bits of road suddenly ending, building across road.

Event he main road on the other side of OT to my original screenshot just abruptly ends and the cars vanish as they hit the end.

I realise this  may be my personal scenery issue and not ECGB related but the road and railway network functioned normally before installation and any help or suggestion would be greatly appreciated so that I can fully enjoy this great work.

[david broome]

UPDATE. It is the overlay causing the issue.

Hi Tony,

I deleted my entire custom scenery folder and reinstalled just the Xplane default folder then installed ECGB but had the exact same issue.

However, I then experimented by taking out the Orbx_EGCB_B_Barton_Overlay folder and the road and rail network were back - see screenshot.

 

As an aside I lose the custom elevated motorway close to the airport but when I include the overlay and it is present one side drops at a very sharp angle and looks very strange but the other side seems to drop away naturally - no a sudden 60 degree angle.

Hope this helps.

 

 

 

 

[styckx]

 

You shouldn't have to delete your overlay folder...  Might not be in the right order

[david broome]

10 hours ago, styckx said:

 

You shouldn't have to delete your overlay folder...  Might not be in the right order

 

It is in the right order (as installed). I tried changing the order just for the sake of it and of course all the scenery disappears.

I am just saying that if I delete the Barton overlay I get the road and rail network back from Old Trafford to Manchester city centre in case it helps Tony track down the issue.

There should be autogen buildings along the main road too but that may be part of the same issue.

[Tony Wroblewski]

Yep, the issue is in the Barton overlay scenery. It has exclusions around the stadium that block out the nearby road from the default scenery. I'm aware of the issue and it's nothing to do with any bugs in the default scenery etc.

[david broome]

4 hours ago, tonywob said:

Yep, the issue is in the Barton overlay scenery. It has exclusions around the stadium that block out the nearby road from the default scenery. I'm aware of the issue and it's nothing to do with any bugs in the default scenery etc.

 

Thank you for the update Tony.

That means I can stop experimenting!

Look forward to an update soon.

[david broome]

Hi.

Any update on a patch for Barton scenery Tony?

Can we expect one this month?

[rogera]

I have also noticed that some banking for waterways is missing travelling south from Barton, leaving some water looking very angular.

[Tony Wroblewski]

@david broome Yes, I'll post an update as soon as I can

 

@rogera There is no mesh with this scenery, so the jagged waterways are actually from the default scenery with the overlayed orthos. You can improve them somewhat if you use HD Mesh v3, but to get a corrected and more detailed mesh you'll need to wait for TrueEarth England I'm afraid.

 

[david broome]

7 hours ago, tonywob said:

@david broome Yes, I'll post an update as soon as I can

 

@rogera There is no mesh with this scenery, so the jagged waterways are actually from the default scenery with the overlayed orthos. You can improve them somewhat if you use HD Mesh v3, but to get a corrected and more detailed mesh you'll need to wait for TrueEarth England I'm afraid.

 

 

Many thanks.

I know you are also busy with other scenery and I'm looking forward to True Earth England for Xplane.

[david broome]

Hi, sorry to ask again, but is there any news on a patch?

Is it proving more of a difficult technical issue than originally foreseen or are just busy working on other projects?

Also, how near to release is Xplane True Earth England? 

[Tony Wroblewski]

Hi David

 

A bit of both. The major issue is that exclusion zones in X-Plane are rectangular regions and trying to get them to shrink to cover exactly the ortho boundary without taking out roads is a challenge. The smaller the rectangular regions are made the worse the loading times.

 

For TrueEarth, well Vegas is coming up and I'm working on that , but after that I'll sit down and fight this issue properly. I have to fix it so that it will also work with TrueEarth England, as it suffers the same problem with that as well, so I will work a way to get it fixed (for this and any future airfields).

 

 

[david broome]

10 hours ago, tonywob said:

Hi David

 

A bit of both. The major issue is that exclusion zones in X-Plane are rectangular regions and trying to get them to shrink to cover exactly the ortho boundary without taking out roads is a challenge. The smaller the rectangular regions are made the worse the loading times.

 

For TrueEarth, well Vegas is coming up and I'm working on that , but after that I'll sit down and fight this issue properly. I have to fix it so that it will also work with TrueEarth England, as it suffers the same problem with that as well, so I will work a way to get it fixed (for this and any future airfields).

 

 

 

Thanks Tony, didn't realise you had posted here during our PM.

I guess it is fortunate in a way that you made an early release of EGCB using same methods as True Earth so that such issues were recognised as early as possible.

It sounds like a tricky issue, a shame that exclusion zones cannot be made polygonal without having to make many overlapping zones which as you say takes up performance.

 

I have no real knowledge of how custom scenery and Xplane autogen interacts but is there no way around it with custom dsf files that rewrite the vectors used for road/rail network and object data to bridge the gap and avoid exclusion zones in these areas?

Sorry if my ignorance makes that an impossible or nonsensical suggestion, just trying to think outside the box.

[Tony Wroblewski]

Yes, the roads could be added manually but the problem here is that the roads cannot link up to the existing roads so there will be a gap and traffic disappears. This is a limitation of X-Plane and nothing can be done about this. The best way is to try and minimise the exclusions as much as possible whilst making the zones smaller.

 

[david broome]

For Tony.

 

As per PM tree issue and OT floating + stanchion LOD issue.

 

 

[david broome]

For Tony.

Screenshots as described in PM.

The first 2 are OT comparisons.

The 3rd is the road issue. The traffic vanishes as it hits where the arrow is pointing and does not reappear.

The road is paced close to Old Trafford stadium and just before it if you are flying directly from the city centre.

 

[Tony Wroblewski]

Thanks David

 

Both problems are sadly very hard to fix. In order to get Old Trafford to sit completely flat, I'd have to flatten the mesh, which in X-Plane would mean providing an entire mesh for the 1x1 degree tile just for this. In TrueEarth, the mesh is a little smoother, so things do improve with that.

 

As for the roads, this issue is simply because X-Plane can't join up roads between two different sceneries, so there is very little I can do about this gap. The other problem you'll see is that the traffic swaps sides of the road when it hits the default scenery as well, so it will look quite odd 

[david broome]

14 hours ago, tonywob said:

Thanks David

 

Both problems are sadly very hard to fix. In order to get Old Trafford to sit completely flat, I'd have to flatten the mesh, which in X-Plane would mean providing an entire mesh for the 1x1 degree tile just for this. In TrueEarth, the mesh is a little smoother, so things do improve with that.

 

As for the roads, this issue is simply because X-Plane can't join up roads between two different sceneries, so there is very little I can do about this gap. The other problem you'll see is that the traffic swaps sides of the road when it hits the default scenery as well, so it will look quite odd 

 

Thanks for the explanation Tony.

With the stadium I was thinking more that the low side of the stadium looks too low compared to the actual stadium regardless of any mesh issue.

If there is an easy way of making that higher, something like the equivalent of 10 foot, I think it would look better - it just looks a little flat from the air.

The stadium and the buildings in the scenery are all excellent - it is a fantastic scenery and extremely high standard so perhaps you are victim of making everything so good I want perfection.

 

PS

Do you have Beetham Tower show up in your patched version?

[Tony Wroblewski]

22 hours ago, david broome said:

Do you have Beetham Tower show up in your patched version?

 

No, I removed it because it was conflicting with the better one in TrueEarth. It will be back in the patch

 

The stadium I can probably raise 1 or 2 metres from the ground, but I'll have to check it doesn't begin floating again. I wish editing the mesh was easy, but where's the fun without a challenge

[david broome]

4 hours ago, tonywob said:

 

No, I removed it because it was conflicting with the better one in TrueEarth. It will be back in the patch

 

The stadium I can probably raise 1 or 2 metres from the ground, but I'll have to check it doesn't begin floating again. I wish editing the mesh was easy, but where's the fun without a challenge

 

Hi Tony, I don't mean raise that side of the the stadium, not unless a lot is buried in the mesh, just make that lower wall bigger than now.

It just looks a little flat and too low from the air.

Would that not be easier to do anyway?

Or just leave it. 

 

Okay cool on Beetham Tower, I will be getting True Earth anyway. I just wondered if the issue was my end.