Scenery help

[Kea]

Not sure if this is the right board to post this on (please move it admins if not)...

Calling all FSX scenery-smiths, especially those with knowledge of ADE:
I've been trying unsuccessfully to build an island base using ADE. I've researched it and other techniques and found that for what I'm trying to do, ADE *should* be the better/easiest system to use. I tried FSXKML but the island doesn't exist so it's kind of hard to judge where it would be, whereas with ADE I can just assign the airport a lat-long and build around that, and the surrounding land is very limited anyhow.

I've followed various tutorials and so far have done the following:
1. excluded the surrounding ocean
2. added the airport background (flatten)
3. added landclass (in this case coral)
4. added shorelines (anticlockwise!)
5. added surrounding ocean back
6. built the actual airport

BUT, this is what it looks like:



No matter what I do, where there should be coral (after the shoreline) there is just raised ocean!
What am I doing wrong?

[toprob]

How exactly did you do step 5 -- adding the water?
Sorry, I've only done this sort of thing with SBuilderX, so not experienced with ADE for adding islands,
But I guess the process is similar.

[Kea]

Hi Rob

I think I fixed the "adding ocean" issue - I read somewhere that at least with ADE the ocean needs to be added in two polygons, each wrapping around half the island. I re-did the ocean-adding bit and voila!


However, now partway down the runway, coinciding with where two vertices meet for the two ocean polygons, is a nice long strip of water cutting the island in half. This is only visible up close, from a distance you won't see it.


I'm pretty certain this strip has something to do with the two polygons meeting, but can't quite figure out what's causing it. I've tried realigning the two polygons in various ways (overlapping, a space between them, etc) but nothing seems to change this strip of water.

Apart from that, I'm pretty happy!

By the way, this is my rendition (prediction) of what the new Chinese base being built on Fiery Cross Reef, Spratly Islands, might look like in a couple of years...

[toprob]

Looking good, glad you got it sorted.
Water polys need to fit QMID15 grids, so I wonder if this is close to a QMID boundary. SBuilderX has the ability to crop (and fill) to QMID15 boundaries, which is really required to make sure that your water polys go only where you want. However, doing this wrong normally results in landclass where water should be, rather than the other way around, so it may be a different issue.

[Kea]

Think I fixed it, thanks Rob. I checked the QMID and it didn't look like it was near a boundary, so I just re-drew the two water polygons but made them merge at the top of the island rather than halfway along. That way if there is still a strip of ocean - it's on top of actual ocean this time, therefore not visible!
Thanks for the prompts on re-laying the ocean polygons and the QMID check.