NY City??

[stoney]

Horrors! For some reason my FS9GW3 NYC is now doing this! I find no scenery interference with other scenery. The whole NYC area is thus. I know there are some pretty smart guys here, so I hope someone can help. Thanks.

[hurricane91]

Hi Stoney, I've got a couple of smaller problems like that in my GW3, but I don't know what causes it. The only thing I can suggest is to put in a flatten switch in the scenery cfg.

[stoney]

Thanks hurricane91. I have disabled ALL addon scenery, but the problem remains!? I even re-placed the entire main scenery folder, (temporarily, after back up) with my modern install, where NYC appears fine, still the same problem in GW3. No other scenery area in the world has this issue! I am completely stumped. As I have spent years building my GW install I am loath to start over. My "Aeromarine NY 1932" scenery was one of my favorite water bases, but no more. I would like to try the flatten switch thing but have no idea how to do it. Could you suggest one I might try? Thanks again.

[hurricane91]

Hi Stoney, I love my GW3 also and have a lot of add on sceneries and time invested in it. I do not have an extensive knowledge of the simulator, just some experience trying to keep my installs running and fix problem sceneries. A flatten switch would be a band-aid fix until the problem's cause is found. Hopefully someone will come along that knows what the cause is and how to fix it correctly.

In regards to the anomaly in the screenshot, is there a scenery or sceneries covering that specific area? If so, have you tried installing from a fresh download of the sceneries in that area?

From your first post you stated that the whole NYC area is affected, are there other elevation anomalies in addition to the one in the picture?
The problem could be a corrupted bgl file in the main scenery folder but I am not sure how to identify the files for specific areas. 

I have a similar anomaly at Cardington, England. I'll try a flatten there to see if it works. Back later.


John      

[hurricane91]

Went to Cardington and the anomaly has vanished! That's the kind of fix I like.  

Now for New York. I strongly suggest that you do a search for flattens on the web to get an idea what is involved and how others do this. Also there are some scenery utilities that make flattens and excludes, but I can't get them to work on my system so I make them manually. Here's how I do it;

As always, back up the scenery cfg file first.
Below is an example of a stand alone edit I made to the scenery cfg to flatten an area near a lake in Kansas. Here, the switch is in bold characters. A flatten switch can also be added at the end of existing scenery entries. Up to ten flattens, numbered 0 through 9, can be added per scenery layer. Here, the number 915.9 is the elevation in feet. The rest of the numbers are four sets of coordinates defining the area to be flattened.

To get the data, I place the default C 172 at the northwest corner of the area using skew mode. Note the location coordinates exactly including all spaces comas and periods. I exit skew and note the elevation. This is because in skew mode, the aircraft assumes the static cg height listed in the contact points section of the aircraft cfg file instead of the normal aircraft height at rest. At sea level the C172's altimeter (and ctrl+z alt) will read 3.8 feet at rest. Subtract 3.8 from the altitude readings to get the actual ground elevation.  Enter skew mode again and move to the northeast corner of the area. Record the data as before then move to the southeast corner and repeat the recording sequence, then the southwest corner.

Looking at the screenshot, you might be able to get by with one flatten that brings the area to sea level (Flatten.0=0,...) if the land areas are only a few feet in elevation. That would also work better for any seaplanes or boats running through the channel. However, that could cause a problem with a some land scenery element or transitions such as a seaplane ramp. If sea level won't work, look at you four elevations and see if one appears to fit best. You could also take an average, weighted up or down, depending on the terrain. In any event, there will be a "step" around the perimeter of the flatten except where the terrain happens to match the flatten elevation. Another option might be to make two separate flattens for the land areas and one for the channel.

Once the elevation is set, string your four coordinates together as shown and make sure all the numbers, spaces, and punctuation marks are in the correct position. No comma or period at the end. When everything looks good, save and start the sim. Go to New York and see how it looks.

The sim will tell you if there is a syntax error, hit OK then check the flatten coordinates carefully, that's usually where the error is.

On my install the sim will sometimes CTD after it rebuilds the scenery files, but it starts OK on the second attempt. The same happens with some add on sceneries.  


I will be happy to help in any way I can, but one final caveat to keep in mind, I have only done this on my system and sim.

Example;

[Area.762]
Title=Hillsdale Flatten Switch
Active=True
required=False
Layer=84
Local=Scenery
Remote=
Flatten.0=915.9,N38 42.10,W94 53.05,N38 42.10,W94 52.90,N38 40.23,W94 54.30,N38 40.32,W94 54.36

[stoney]

Wow! That's some great information hurricane91. I had no idea how to do that, thanks I'll give it a try. But I'm kind of wondering now if it IS a mesh issue after all. If I stand off the city the problem is not there. As I close into the area it pops up like a wall. The "wall" will then follow my around as I fly. It will disappear behind me, then pop up in front of my flight. In other words, it moves to where I am at that time. What do you think?

[stoney]

Here are some shores of the shore line problems.

[hurricane91]

Hi Stoney, yeah that looks like a mesh issue. I had the opposite problem awhile back with a mountainous area sinking to sea level. Here's a link to a thread here at the Hangar. Also follow the link in that thread to another one at Cal-Classics. I know your issue is different but reading these two threads might give you a lead on where to start looking. Also do some web searching for mesh spikes in FS2004.

mainescenery.proboards.com/thread/10895/localized-mesh-collapse-silver-wings

P.S. The mesh collapse issue had the same "localizing" symptoms that you described.

[beana51]

Old Pilots Never Die,They Just Buzz Off!..I used in FS9 and still do in my FSX..this...NYC_Objects...along with ..1 WTC..Ihave a great NYC....Good Luck!!

[stoney]

Well, I found that if I take off from a airfield outside of the city, say 4N1, then fly south, down the Hudson into the city, this problem does not appear at all. I can land at the 82nd Street docks, taxi over and shut down with no problems. The shore lines and water are still odd though. What do you think?

[hurricane91]

Do you have any sceneries in the area that required replacing stock bgl files in the main scenery folder? I've had cases where I missed replacing some of the stock bgls and had duplicate shorelines.

[stoney]

Let me check, I may be on to the problem.

[stoney]

I have FINALLY have isolated the main problem. I had installed "Long Lake / Helms Seaplane Base NY9 Long Lake / Helms Seaplane Base NY9". That caused the scenery conflict for some reason. So I can now resume flying from the Aeromarine 82nd Street ramp with no problems! The shore line issue above remains a mystery to me. Not perfect, but I'll take it!