Malborough wierdness...

[HardCorePawn]

So i just loaded up Malborough... and went for a cruise from NZWB... turned 180 to the right and saw this:



So I decided to have a better look... slewed up to 46000' and got this overhead:



any ideas?

Approximate location was at: S41* 43.09' E173* 47.07'

regards,
Jared

[toprob]

What date do you think was set in the sim?
I can't reproduce this, but I do have an idea that it might be missing hard winter textures. I have no idea why hard winter would be required around Marlborough, but there does seem to be a large amount of snow in your screenshot.

[HardCorePawn]

ummm it should have been the system date... (which would make it like tomorrow, which is actually now today )...

the only thing i changed was to click 'day' so it set the time from 6pm-ish to around 12pm-ish (how this is system time I have no idea... it was 1am! [1])... but the date would have been 19th June 2007.

Also, from slewing all the way up to 99999', you can see that this is in the 'bottom' lefthand corner of the scenary... so its the very edge of the photoreal area.

Not sure if this happened before or after I put the NZ Landclass class[2] in... I had tried a previous flight from NZWN, but killed it coz the sounds were all brown!!?! so I didnt see if there was a big gray patch then...

regards,
Jared

[1] I think it uses the system time and sets this as at Seattle (the default airport)
[2] From www.redbarent.com

[HardCorePawn]

Update:

I just went through some various dates:

Jan 5th 2007 (Summer): Textures OK
Feb 5th 2007 (Summer): Textures OK
Mar 5th 2007 (Summer): Textures OK
Apr 5th 2007 (Fall): Textures OK
May 5th 2007 (Fall): Textures OK
Jun 5th 2007 (Fall): Grey Blocks
Jul 5th 2007 (Winter): Grey Blocks
Aug 5th 2007 (Winter): Grey Blocks
Sep 5th 2007 (Winter): Textures OK
Oct 5th 2007 (Spring): Textures OK

So it would appear to be a seasonal thing... BUT as you can see, it occurs during some of Fall... and some of winter!?!?

So I went hunting for the exact days and found this:

Jan 1st 2007 May 18th 2007: Textures OK
May 19th 2007 August 19th 2007: Grey Blocks
August 20th 2007 December 31st 2007: Textures OK

This is the flight:



In case it helps... these are my current settings:

Scenery Tab


Aircraft Tab


Weather Tab


Hardware Tab


Library Settings

[toprob]

Ok, I've been looking at this for a while now, but not making much progress:)
It does seem like the missing textures follow a pattern -- the river valley and the high bits. The likely reason is still missing Hard Winter textures, but there is no landclass/setting combo which reproduces this for me.
Even in areaswhich use hard winter textures -- such as Tekapo -- I've never seen this number of textures used.
Have you ever installed anything designed to give more snow coverage?
How about Christian Stock's season fix?
If not, could you try it?!! There's a link later on here. Be aware of what this does though.
One alternative is to actually create Hard Winter textures and see if that helps.
I've uploaded a small batch file which would do this. It needs to go in the RealNZmarlborough\texture folder, then run it.
(It's zipped up to allow for upload here.)
Let me know if this helps.
Season Fix

[HardCorePawn]

Hi Robin,

Ok, I've been looking at this for a while now, but not making much progress

Apologies for being difficult... there is always one isnt there?

Have you ever installed anything designed to give more snow coverage?

This is a clean install of FS9. I re-installed WinXP on Sunday, then re-installed FS9, the 9.1 upgrade... put on RealNZ Wellington, RealNZ Malborough and then the RBE 75m mesh and the NZ Landclass.

How about Christian Stock's season fix?

Apparently the season fix is included in Christian's Landclass download... I went to drop the fix in and it said did I want to overwrite the existing files... I chose no, and double checked the nzlc.zip file and saw the 2 .bgl's in there. So, then I created some CRC values for the existing files and compared to the CRC values for the fix files... they are identical.

I tried re-naming the 2 .bgl's and it seems to remove the grey blocks, but makes the scenery very brown, and you lose all the snow :



I put the 2 .bgl's back and sure enough the grey blocks were back:



So I tried the HardWinter batch file and it looks like you were right... the Hard Winter Textures seem to fix the ugly grey blocks:



but using the Summer (I assume su.bmp = summer), means that the snow is kinda cut off at the photoreal border... would it make any difference if I used the wi.bmp's (i assume wi=winter?) to make the hardwinter textures? or is this just a fact of life where photoreal meets default?

regards,
Jared

[toprob]

Yes, the photo is summer only. This becomes more of an issue the further south you go.

[HardCorePawn]

I figured as much... I actually tried modifying the batch file to copy the wi textures to hw ones... and it looked pretty much the same... then I vaguely remembered reading something saying that the scenery only had summer textures anyway

The positive thing is that the grey blocks are gone

What confuses me is that no-one else has this issue? I would have thought that lots of people are using Christian's landclass (incl. season fix), and that it would cause the same issues...

Oh well, maybe one day it'll annoy me enough that I go and create a whole bunch of actual winter textures etc. but I dont see that ever happening

Thanks again for you help Robin... much appreciated.

[toprob]

What confuses me is that no-one else has this issue? I would have thought that lots of people are using Christian's landclass (incl. season fix), and that it would cause the same issues...

Uh, yeah, me too.
The only scenery I've ever created seasonal textures for is Tekapo. It's not that easy, you really need a way to visualise the area in 3D as you paint the snow on. The only way I could do this was to have the sim running while I painted, but this overtaxed my system, editing a 200MB image while running the sim:)
It is a limitation of aerial images (There are really only a couple of months in the year suitable for taking aerial photos, and they are high summer) and I don't see a solution in the short term.
The problem with winterising the images is that any alteration to the image lowers the quality. Since you need all the quality you can get from the 2.5m/px imagery (especially when it is reduced to 4.8m/px for FS2004), I try not to alter them too much. The benefits of snow at Tekapo outweighed the compromised photo imagery, but for less snowy areas the time and effort would not be worth the result.
One idea with FSX is using blends around the higher areas to show through the default snow. Haven't tried this yet, and may not get around to it real soon, but it should work. However this doesn't help FS2004.

[ZK-LGD]

Howdy Jared,

Nope, you're not alone. I'm experiencing the same issue as well. Am also running Christian's 20m Mesh, NZ Topo and NZ LandClass (with the Season adjustment activated).

Will try the .bat file and see what happens.

Edit: Yep, .bat file fixed the "problem".

[ardypilot]

Yep, fixed the issue for me too.

Thanks Robin and Jarred

[HardCorePawn]

Phew... thought it was just my comp with the funny grey blocks! Was beginning to think I may need to get deane's fletcher out and load it up with green paint!

I am guessing that earlier versions of Christian's Landclass did not come with the season fix built in, so that only those people who have downloaded it recently(last couple of months?) may be experiencing the issues...

and people who always set their sim to high summer wont see it either...

Still, all nicely solved... and something useful to add to a FAQ on windowlight I would think

[AlisterC]

Hi Robin, I'm having the grey scenery patches problem as well. Any chance you could reupload that file?
Thanks

[toprob]

QUOTE(Albatross @ Aug 4 2007, 08:08 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi Robin, I'm having the grey scenery patches problem as well. Any chance you could reupload that file?
Thanks

Here you go...

As robin said:

QUOTE(toprob)

It needs to go in the RealNZmarlborough\texture folder, then run it.[/quote]

Last edited by HardCorePawn on Sat Aug 04, 2007 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[toprob]

Thanks for that, HCP. I have now updated the Marlborough FAQ page with a permanent link.

[AlisterC]

Thanks very much guys

[AlisterC]

Edit: Nevermind, I had accidentally disabled something *blush