Tauranga Issues

[ardypilot]

Just wondering how come there is a random tree off the beach:



Also, is there a .BGL I can remove to get rid of the boats in Taurnaga harbour (like there was with REALNZ Auckland) as they seem to be eating up my FPS?

Cheers!

[toprob]

Mmm, the trees were part of the beta-testing clean-up, but it looks like a couple still managed to get through. I'll let you have an updated AGN file for that.
One of the issues I had with Auckland was that people attempted to decompile the scenery in an attempt to make it work with their other Auckland scenery, and this caused a huge number of problems.
The scenery file structure with Tauranga was an attempt to stop that happening, so there aren't a lot of individual scenery files which people can damage or lose:)
However you can turn down the scenery complexity setting to Normal to remove the boats. It'll also remove a few other frame-rate-unfriendly objects too, such as fences, but you should get a good increase in performance.

By the way, the default FS9 boat library objects are not that well designed, and do tend to affect performance. I've not had time to design my own boats, so they have been a necessary evil. If I include them in Wellington, it'll be possible to turn them off by reducing the scenery complexity just below full, though.

[Snowman]

Gudday Robin. Just wondering, is there any particular reason the ground textures around Tauranga Airport, and a few other parts of the City are red and purple at night ?? All good during the day.

[toprob]

Gudday Robin. Just wondering, is there any particular reason the ground textures around Tauranga Airport, and a few other parts of the City are red and purple at night ?? All good during the day.

The Tauranga photoreal textures were derived from colourised black and white images. The colourisation was done algorithmically, but the areas around the Mount and the city were touched-up using full-colour images.
The night textures are again derived algorithmically, as there is no night aerial photo available. The algorithm works in single passes -- it can't adjust for different base colours in the original -- so these touched-up areas, plus the manually lightened area around the airport, have a different colour cast.

This can be more or less of a problem depending on the gamma of your display.

[Snowman]

Thanks for the explanation of the patchy red and purple tinged ground textures at night. I understand. And, thanks for all the help you gave me via e-mail with the bizzare Wanaka problem. (the thing that fixed it was bizzare as well).

Regards,

Lawrie.

[creator2003]

moved sorry...
cheers mike

[ronindanbo]

Robin I noticed that there was a square peice of land South East of Tauranga in the sea (almost looks like an incorrect land class, is there a fix for this as well?

[toprob]

Robin I noticed that there was a square peice of land South East of Tauranga in the sea (almost looks like an incorrect land class, is there a fix for this as well?

If this is within the rectangular area which defines the photoreal, then it is possible that you have a damaged texture file. If its outside that area, then I don't know what it is -- I've flown a recon mission around there and it all looks ok here.
There's no landclass definitions added by the Tauranga scenery -- or any of my sceneries. Maybe a screenshot showing the location (top down) would help.

[Snowman]

I used to have the same square peice of Land in the sea off Tauranga after installing the 75m Geographx mesh. (and off Invercargill, and off Great Barrier Island as well). They dissapeared after installing the 20m Mesh and Topo Scenery from Geographx.

Lawrie.

[ronindanbo]

Its probably that then lawrie, did you also notice lake Rotorua was a bit of a mess?

[Snowman]

Hi ronondanbo. When you say lake rotorua was a mess, do you mean the level of the lake ?? If so, thats Microsofts erronous level data. The Topo scenery from Geographx fixes that well and truly, and if your not using the topo scenery, theres a lake level fix in Heath Wells and Trevor Goldings 'rotorua.zip'. The file name that you need is "Lake Rotorua Flatten For Non Topo Install.bgl" . Instructions on where to place it are in the read-me file if you dont want to use the scenery (i.e. if you have Robin Corn's RealNZ Rotorua for instance).

Lawrie.

[toprob]

Hi ronondanbo. When you say lake rotorua was a mess, do you mean the level of the lake ?? If so, thats Microsofts erronous level data. The Topo scenery from Geographx fixes that well and truly, and if your not using the topo scenery, theres a lake level fix in Heath Wells and Trevor Goldings 'rotorua.zip'. The file name that you need is "Lake Rotorua Flatten For Non Topo Install.bgl" . Instructions on where to place it are in the read-me file if you dont want to use the scenery (i.e. if you have Robin Corn's RealNZ Rotorua for instance).
Lawrie.

This is really a bit of an issue, especially now that I'm attempting to 'market' these sceneries overseas. I've always made it obvious that as far as I'm concerned, the default water level problems are a non-issue since the release of the Red Baron Topo scenery. However, overseas simmers who buy a Rotorua download may not have the same need or desire to buy the topo scenery, so they don't really get the full benefit of the Rotorua scenery.
This is kind of a catch-22 (I'm into 70s movies at the moment, so I've just watched this again...) -- I can point out that you really should have the topo scenery, but people don't realise the implications until they have bought Rotorua and see the incorrect lake level as a bug. They see the topo scenery as one expensive bug-fix, even though it does a lot more for NZ scenery that any other release -- including the mesh.
Heath's lake level fix is one solution, but I don't know how he'd feel about that:) In fairness to Heath, I certainly can't promote it as a solution.
I've thinking of going back on my decision not to reinvent the wheel, and redo the lake level myself. The implications are wider, though. Do I do the same for Wellington harbour? I would have thought that most people who bought Rotorua also own the topo scenery, but I guess I can't just assume this.

[creator2003]

im one of these people that have this lake thing ,to me if i wanted a lake with all the detail etc id buy topo im still and have been only on 75meter as this has been good enough for me ,Rotorua is great i have photo real landclass and a airport better than the default area so this is good enough for me ,,the lake im not worryed about this is really not your problem i would think this is where other designers come in with fixes etc ... as the 75 is not what you built rotorua on you where using topo20 and im sure you have said this somewhere to get the best results is to use rb mesh20 meter ,,but as designers we do our best and i know this to be the case with all your scenerys and you cant be fixing everything ..

as a fan of all the realNZ scenerys im happy with what ive got and if i want something else ill learn how to do it myself
mike

[Charl]

Being RealNZ I'd think the the scenery has to conform with the most realistic base available ie 20m mesh + topo.
Where you bound it is a hard choice sure, but you might consider a standalone option which works right up to the point where you can see how bad the default adjacent is, and then the choice would be yours to upgrade the entire neighbourhood or not.
I mean, Wellington doesn't need to include the entire bottom of the North Island, right?

[toprob]

Being RealNZ I'd think the the scenery has to conform with the most realistic base available ie 20m mesh + topo.
Where you bound it is a hard choice sure, but you might consider a standalone option which works right up to the point where you can see how bad the default adjacent is, and then the choice would be yours to upgrade the entire neighbourhood or not.
I mean, Wellington doesn't need to include the entire bottom of the North Island, right?

That's a good point, I may need to think in terms of what works best, rather than what I'd like to see. I can nag NZers to buy the topo at least, but casual overseas customers are a different matter, and as I hope to break into the overseas market with Wellington, it should perhaps be stand-alone complete.
With the original freeware Wellington photoreal I included a local 75m mesh, but the mesh isn't really the problem, its more that the harbour needs to be better defined.

[ronindanbo]

I agree you should really work the local meshes in you scenery if not just to promote the scenery overseas, I think it is standardly expected that meshes are part of scenery packages at least on the local level.

I havent the money to spend on the red baron stuff so I just go with what I have and be thankfull for it. The standard of your scenery is terrific I cant wait for the Wellington stuff, and I appreciate how hard it must be to develop (especially with the pressures of payware), but it would be cool if the meshes around the effected scenery area are worked to look a bit better(I know this is especially true of places like Rotorua as the wonkey lake detracts from the great scenery ).

Thanks for listening Robin, as always I am a fan.