RESOLVED FTXG Global and Coastlines & Waves - Questions and Issues?

[fltsimguy]

Just started to explore some Global areas.  So far I am quite pleased by the change from GEX to Global.

 

I am running some UTX products.  I turned off the shorelines and made sure widths were reduced to "0" meters.  Checked the Terrain.cfg and it appears that this was successful.

 

After a couple quick flight, I have noticed that I have wide shore lines around lakes and rivers (in some but not all cases).

 

New to Global but not new to Orbx.

 

Attached is this mornings quick hop to Medicine Hat, with the new freeware Orbx pack installed. Please note the small lake and the river sections and the shorelines.  There are no waves showing with these shorelines.

 

Is this normal?  If not do you have any clues as to what the issue might be?  As mentioned I thought or believe I have deactivated the UTX stuff.

 

Further, Norway.  I notice in this area that I have tons of waves crashing in small and large lakes and coastlines. I supposedly deactivated the UTX stuff again and don't know why I have these big shorelines.  Is this normal.  I also have a suite of Norway freeware airports installed, which btw appear to be very compatible with Orbx Global as you may already know.

 

 

 

 

 

cheers

Bryan

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Bryan,

 

when you say "Global" I assume you're referring to the Global Base textures and not Global Vector? If so then you're looking at either default or UTX shorelines and surf effects because Global Base doesn't touch waterbodies at all, neither shoreline vectors nor waterclass nor surf effects.

 

Cheers, Holger

[fltsimguy]

Yes, Global Base Textures.  Not Vector.  Yes that is exactly what I thought, so I can't understand why I have these shorelines.

 

I understood that UTX was compatible.  That I could use the GUI to shut off shorelines etc and the vector components, roads etc would be displayed as per UTX. 

 

I did adjust the roads.  That is displayed properly.

 

I did adjust the shorelines, ie made them inactive.  But then somehow they are remaining active.  So perhaps the shoreline textures still remain somehow.

 

Any idea on how to shut them off,  IE edit the terrain.cfg?  If the interface isn't working properly for UTX...although it seems to work for other things, and passes the initiation start up tests.

 

Bryan

[fltsimguy]

I see that UTX has scenery bgl's in the Scenery Folder.

Scenery\UtCanStream

Scenery\UtCanWater

 

It also appears that these bgls call the textures in one of several of the subfolders below.

Flight One Software\UTCanFsx\TEXTURE\MED

 

So if the GUI inactivates the bgl's then the textures will not be called.  Since I have many bgls the are XXX'd out I assume that the textures are not being called.  But for some reason they are showing.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Bryan,

 

I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve. Since Global Base doesn't include or alter waterbodies and shorelines your choice is to use either the default FSX versions or those of UTX. The former are much less accurate than UTX so why are you trying to deactivate the UTX shorelines?

 

I believe UTX does something similar like we do in our regions meaning its vector and poly excludes "wipe out" everything in the coverage area and then display the corresponding custom components. In other words, you can choose not to display certain UTX components via its control panel but the overall exclude (the entry "UT exclusions for defult scenery") is still active meaning if you were to deactivate the UtCanWater layer you won't see any waterbodies at all because the defaults remain excluded.

 

Cheers, Holger

[fltsimguy]

Sorry to create some confusion.

 

What I want to achieve.

1.I want to get rid of those ugly wide shorelines in the screenshots.

2. I want to know why I would get waves in lakes and stream in the Norway area?  And how I would shut this off.

 

I assumed that I had in fact shut off the shorelines using the UTX control panel (says inactive for both Europe and Can).  I did not shut off the actually water bodies, just the shorelines. So the vector water bodies are showing as they should but they still show with shorelines.  Or some shorelines are visible as in the screenshots when in fact they should not be showing because I shut them off.

 

I do not necessarily want to shut off the shorelines totally but what is showing should not be showing according to my understanding, and those that are showing in the above screenshots look very ugly in my opinion are grossly large and poor coloured.  I wonder if these are default fsx textures?

 

What I want to achieve is either no shorelines or reasonable looking shorelines.

 

I want to remove the waves that are showing in Norway.  Note that I have not yet tested Global across a complete cross section of geography so I don't no if the waves in Norway lakes is found elsewhere.  But, for Canada, I do not appear to be having any waves on lakes.

 

________________________

I just did a test.

I deactivated the UTX textures folder only leaving the UTX scenery.bgls activated and I still have those shorelines as noted in above screenshots.

[fltsimguy]

PARTLY RESOLVED

 

OK, Reread the darn UTX manual, triple checked all settings, I found out that I didn't know how to use the UTX Control Panel properly regarding stream, coastlines, and their associated widths. ...I have gotten rid of those ugly shorelines from small and large lakes.

 

I will double check all the settings in UTX Europe to see if I have some settings not correct. 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Bryan,

 

sorry but I don't know the specifics about UTX shoreline deactivation so it's probably best to take that to the Flight1 UTX forum.

 

Not sure whether by "waves on lakes" you're referring to shoreline surf effects or the overall dynamic wave pattern across the waterbodies. If the former it has to be an UTX issue as none of your current Orbx addons affect shoreline surf effects. If the latter the answer is that there's only one such wave animation "effect" for the entire globe and it's the same (unfortunately) for lakes, rivers, and oceans. Orbx doesn't supply replacements for this wave animation control file but other products like REX do. Personally, I use a "very calm" version of the REX options because I'd rather have unusually small ocean waves than giant waves across all lakes and rivers.

 

Cheers, Holger

[fltsimguy]

I thought originally it was something about Global but obviously not.  Yes I can likely get very specific help over there.

 

Here is a screenie of my waves issue.

I have no waves on lakes in Canada.

 

But I have huge waves in Norway.

 

This is one of those issues where trial and error and searching for answers can be time consuming.

 

Yes so these must be the shoreline surf wave effects not the dynamic ones.  I also have REX Essential HD, It is set for wave animation.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Bryan,

 

yikes, that does look odd! Obviously, those are shoreline surf effects so maybe it's something that got installed with your Norway freeware packages? Either that or something went haywire with the UTX Europe setup; perhaps it has an option to attach custom surf effects to its shorelines? Or your default shoreline wave effect files got replaced by something different; those default files are named "lakewavecontroller.fx" and "fx_lakewaves.fx", in \Effects, and should date from May 2006 if unaltered.

 

Cheers, Holger

[fltsimguy]

Thanks Holger, I just moved around to several locations in Norway, I will try several other locations in Europe to see if the effect is consistent.

 

I will also check the Norway addons stuff to see if there is some landclass or something.

 

In all places in Norway I have the same effect.  I have waves on rivers and small and big lakes alike.  From what I can see, my streams and lakes are surrounded by "coastal rock" which has surf wave effects attached to them.  My UTX is most definitely setup correctly and I have turned off wave effect that are included into the control panel.  I am familiar with how the effect files work, thanks.

 

Suffice to say it is NOT and Orbx issue, but some other issue.

 

I appreciate your help as always.  A reinstall of UTX Europe might be in order, or the Norway addons...I need to continue sleuthing this issue.  FSX always amazes me, somehow I ended up with these coastal rock textures on my waterbodies but it is not worldwide.

 

Just let me work through this some more as it is not an Orbx issue.

 

I am finding FTXG to be a great change in base textues.  I have yet to explore seasons, dawn, evening and night stuff yet...but I will get there.

 

cheers, Bryan

[fltsimguy]

RESOLVED

 

The problem was some landclass files in the Norway freeware addons in case someone else has a similar problem and having them set in higher priority than Orbx.

 

Well - I deactivated all my Norway freeware. Then added things back one by one.

 

All the Norway airports and photo scenery are good.  There are landclass files in on set of addons that includes excludes and other stuff, this is the origin of the problem.  They must be deactivated.

 

Also my Norway freeware was all set in higher priority than Orbx as I was thinking that it was just airports.

 

UTX is back working the way it should.

 

cheers, Bryan