• Just a few questions about the status of a few things.

    Are you working on a version of Geoconvert that automatically eliminates the creation of black areas.? I think that you are, but it has been a while since I have seen it mentioned. I don't really mind the small strips of low res scenery that we get, but the areas of black scenery are a scene ruiner for me.

    And how is that new airport creation tool coming along? The one that will make it easy to create smooth runways and import existing FS 2 buildings using a relatively inexpensive graphics program? I am very eager to get my hands on that!

    Keep up the good work,

    Bill

  • Regarding 'black areas' what are you referring to? If i'm understanding this correctly you mean areas where there is no imagery. These areas are due to the application that you use to capture the aerial images and not the geoconvert tool itself. Some areas, mainly water areas, have no images associated with them so you will have to alpha blend those areas with Gimp or another photo editing application.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • I'm referring to the large areas of black terrain that can exist when tiles overlap. They happen over land areas and have been discussed here many times before. You shared a solution once before, but it looked tedious and anything but automatic.

    And what about the airport creation app? How is that coming along?

  • To be honest, I still can't figure out why some users have a problem with this. The way that I originally explained the process and the way that I always do this I have yet to have any problem like what you are mentioning. I've done around 40 full sceneries so far with no errors or black terrain.

    Have you tried to just make one large scenery?

    I'll see where others are at with this and I'll do some more research on my end.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • I do indeed make one large scenery, but then I get the black areas around some of the edges of that large scenery. In fact the larger the area that I make, the more likely I am to get the black polygonal areas. Typically I make the large sceneries in level three of the FSEarthTiles tool, then use the Geoconvert helper tool using 9, 11, and 12 but not 13 or 14 because it is "flyover" scenery.

    Also, I am not especially stupid. I can be taught. It feels a little bit like you think it must be the user's fault. If it is, then you need to make the process easier to understand. If the fault is in the helper tool, please say so. I know it isn't your product, but many of us are using it.

    Annnnd, you still didn't mention the status of the airport creation tool. :)

  • One more request. It would be ideal if the Geoconvert Tool was able to handle various levels of detail automatically. Thus you could use relatively low res (say level 3 in FSEarthTiles) for "flyover" areas, but imbed higher resolution areas around airports within those areas from which one might want to take off (level one or zero). Currently this seems to always lead to large areas of very low res scenery adjacent to the hi res areas. That is the sort of problem the program out to be able to solve without having to edit anything manually.

    Thanks.

  • Bill,

    this is not the intention at all. It's just difficult to try to resolve a problem if you can't re-create it yourself no matter what you try.

    What I don't use is the geoconvert helper application so I can't comment on it but I do believe there could be bugs in the automation process of that app that may be causing your problem.

    When I geoconvert an area, I make the boundary coordinates exactly what they are noted on the FSET main screen when setting your area. I've yet to have any problem with black lines or areas. Normally I set levels 9-14 (15 if doing a smaller area).

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • Hi Jeff, I think Oldar is talking about the issue with masking. At the border of custom sceneries there is an area of low resolution, rather blurry. In a distance there is again the default texture visible. The blurry section is the same place as the previous stripes in the DLC area, just outside the GeoConvert scenery. It looks less pronounced than the stripes. Rodeo said that it appears where the geoconvert texture does not fully cover an aerofly tile. Geoconvert creates a mask for it and displays the rest of the tile with the lowest level of texture instead of the default level. Rodeo said that Torsten will take care of it. I am also very anxious about the progress and wish it be solved. Please see this post: Geoconvert stripes resolved?

    To be honest, I still can't figure out why some users have a problem with this. The way that I originally explained the process and the way that I always do this I have yet to have any problem like what you are mentioning. I've done around 40 full sceneries so far with no errors or black terrain.

    Have you tried to just make one large scenery?

    I'll see where others are at with this and I'll do some more research on my end.

  • Yes, that i'm aware of as we have discussed it internally.

    The border around the geoconvert scenery was intentionally placed there to blend better into the default scenery, otherwise it looked as if the new scenery area was just sitting on top of the default scenery. It was meant to be blurred out as if it faded into the other sceneries but not any black border or box, so that confused me a bit.

    If Torsten was supposed to change that I'm not aware of it, so my apologies.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • My understanding is that the current blurred border is a way to solve the stripes we are complaining. Yes it works to some extent. It's less pronounced than the stripes. But it is still a pain to see when we are crossing the borders. Really wish it could be solved completely. In other sims there is no such problem where the self made scenery is joining the default scenery.

    Yes, that i'm aware of as we have discussed it internally.

    The border around the geoconvert scenery was intentionally placed there to blend better into the default scenery, otherwise it looked as if the new scenery area was just sitting on top of the default scenery. It was meant to be blurred out as if it faded into the other sceneries but not any black border or box, so that confused me a bit.

    If Torsten was supposed to change that I'm not aware of it, so my apologies.

    Edited once, last by frui (September 6, 2017 at 12:04 PM).

  • It's not the blurred border, it's the black areas around parts of the new scenery that sometimes occur.

    In any case you answered my question. There is no status to report because you can't reproduce the problem! Fair enough.

    But, on the other hand, many of us users do in fact have the black rectangles. I have tried using different tmc defined areas - exactly the same as the defined scenery area, slightly larger and slightly smaller, much larger and much smaller. Nothing has worked, yet.

    I have tried to match lines with accuracy to 6 decimal places, to 2 decimal places, 8 places rounded to 2, slightly overlapped, larger overlaps, and I still have fuzzy areas and random black sharply defined areas. Sometimes they disappear as I fly into or over them, sometimes they just get smaller, sometimes the do not disappear.

    GeoConverter and USGS are indeed a huge benefit for those of us that wish to see what the other 99% of the earth looks like in Aerofly FS2 and the answer is very nice, except for those black area anomalies.

    It is always disappointing to see a runway looking like a roller coaster, or waiting for an area to complete to open it up and be welcomed be the unwanted black boxes. Ugh. But, some areas, like the Dallas/Ft Worth area seems to be especially sharp at dl level 1 and 9 - 14 resolution.

    I am eager to see the Key West scenery area in super high definition so I have not been pushing for anything that would distract from completion.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • I also get black boxes, popping of images when getting closer to an area, contrast colors between old and new scenery.

    I don't mind siting waiting 2 days to gather and render out the scenery for an entire area but the above issue makes it unusable. I would rather a low resolution from google maps then whatever Aerofly is using and allow detail resolution of 1 around points of interest.

    1. Down town Chicago wouldn't render I believe because I own the DLC content.

    2. I couldn't get anything very large below 2 resolution.

    3. I couldn't get anything to tile correctly is small sections.

    4. I could get pretty good result rendering all of Illinois and parts of surrounding states at a resolution of 3 but issue 5. happens.

    5. Still the tiles would pop into resolution in the distance.

  • We never discounted it, we just can't reproduce the problem so it's harder to resolve.

    I'll talk to Torsten about it to see what can be done here as we don't want to fix this and break something else at the same time.

    IPACS Development Team Member

    I'm just a cook, I don't own the restaurant.
    On behalf of Torsten, Marc, and the rest of the IPACS team, we would all like to thank you for your continued support.

    Regards,

    Jeff

  • We never discounted it, we just can't reproduce the problem so it's harder to resolve.

    I'll talk to Torsten about it to see what can be done here as we don't want to fix this and break something else at the same time.

    How about defining a very specific and small test area, with very specific instructions and then have all the folks that are having the black boxes run the test program and see if it has to do with the instructions or the actual program? If we all continue to get the black boxes, then we should know it is the program and not the users.

    Just a thought.

    Regards,

    Ray