Video tutorial: cultivation

    Please take into account, that scenProc is completely dependant on the quality and quantity of OSM data: No buildings, no trees - nothing in aerofly.

    What can be done?

    You can use a GIS system as I did before we had scenProc. Place semiautomatically objects there and export them to TOC file format. But GIS is a topic which requires a lot of knowledge.

    For single trees go to Google Maps, click to the desired point, copy the coordinate and paste it to another set of lines in the TOC. It sounds arduous, but in fact, single trees with a customized size don't look bad.

    Rodeo

    Quote from Rodeo

    For single trees go to Google Maps, click to the desired point, copy the coordinate and paste it to another set of lines in the TOC. It sounds arduous, but in fact, single trees with a customized size don't look bad.

    Arduous, are you kidding? :D

    Thanks for the tip. With patience and a good bottle of red wine I'll try, but the problem thereafter will be the placements!.

    Cheers, Ed

    How large of an area will this work with? Say I want to cover the 30 tile USGS area I just did with buildings? Is that doable?

    One more question. I just looked at OpenStreetMap, and neither of the towns in my area has any houses shown, just a few buildings. I am not clear on if it will populate along the road in areas that do not show houses, or if it uses the "building" data and needs that. No point in trying it if it will not work in my area that I want to do. LOL

    Edited once, last by MrRCSound (November 20, 2017 at 4:19 PM).

    Well, I have watched the tutorial video several times but have yet to be successful in creating a toc file for the scenery area I attempted cultivation with. I get error messages in scenproc saying the file doesn't exist but cannot find the mistake. So, question: does scenproc have to see an exclusion file to work even if one doesn't want one, or do you need to comment out those lines? I'm going to work on this some more later today.

    Ken

    Quote from KenR297

    question: does scenproc have to see an exclusion file to work even if one doesn't want one, or do you need to comment out those lines?

    Ken, for the exclude file you can create an "empty" exclude file by selecting with a polygon (in Google Earth) any area that do not contain anything, for instance, some empty area of land, proceeding exactly as explained in the video. Also, make sure the paths are set correctly for the files in use (map.osm, the scenProc definition file, the exclude file, etc., all of them should be in the same folder, check any typos). It should work.

    Cheers, Ed

    Thx Romeo, that’s sooooo easy !great ! In less than 2 hours, I was able to cultivate a great zone around 4 swiss dlc airport !

    Just 2 questions:

    Is it possible to set the average heights of buildings ? I mean in rural areas, height is ok, but i cities, the default height is a bit low. Is it possible by editing each time your special file for scenpoc ?

    Then, is it possible to reduce the density of default trees ? for example, in Bern, the city is covered by trees.... is it possible to set a lower trees density, and if yes, how please?

    Anyway, thank you very much for your grest tutorial !

    Greetings from Switzerland

    Quote from KenR297

    Ed, can you post a sample klm file I can modify to use with my testing?

    Thanks

    Ken, here you are: exclude.zip

    I have not tested modifying the scenProc definition file submitted by Rodeo, temporarily deleting the lines that correspond to the exclude definition, to make sure scenProc will not look to that exclude.xml file when it's running, and think this should also work.

    Cheers, Ed

    Edited 2 times, last by edpatino (November 21, 2017 at 2:37 AM).

    Hi guys,

    I'm glad you like the tut.

    Please note, that you can modify all parameters in my SPC file.

    It's a good idea by Ed, to use an 'empty exclude.kml, so you don't have to change the exclude parameters.

    As soon as you point to other lines within scenProc, it displays all parameters you can work with.

    So you can easily identify the values for light distances and colors, building levels and so on.

    Instead of doing a large area I'd rather suggest to export single areas from openstreetmap and later combine the TOC files again with notepad++.

    It is not realistic to see all roads in rural areas covered with streetlamps. ;)

    If you do separate exports, you can increase the building levels and light density for a city in opposite to a small village.

    Adn don't forget the possibility to localize the building textures BMP files. I'm curious on your new fassades! 8)

    Rodeo

    I think I am going to stick with just adding the occasional hires scenery area with FSET and a flashing light on a tower at the simple airports I have added for now. Last night I was able to finally get a toc file created by scenproc but when I opened AFS2, the program crashed on me for the first time ever. Don't know the actual cause, it could have been yesterday's update would not work with my video drivers. I had to do an update of my drivers, plus remove the newly added toc file to fix the problem.

    I know improvements are on the way to the scenery development tools currently available, and it is fun working with such tools, but AFS2 is going to need a full blown simple to use airport and scenery design program for the mainstream user in order for most users to enjoy dabbling in scenery creation. Whether this program comes from IPACS (unlikely anytime soon) or a third party, I hope such a program will become a reality at some point. It will be sorely needed in the future and will greatly enhance the popularity of AFS2.

    Ken

    Hello guys,

    Sorry but I would like to change the height of building for urban area.

    Please can someone help me ?

    I use the excellent aerofly_rodeo.spc, and i suppose the height can be set in the last lines :

    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH < 14|1|flat|industrial

    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH >= 14 And FLENGTH < 28|1|gable|residential

    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH >= 28|3|flat|industrial

    But I have no idea about these values (0.7 - 14 1 28 3 ? Which one is the height of buildings ?`

    Thx in advance, best regards

    Hi Herve,

    The numbers in red are the building heights.

    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH < 14|1|flat|industrial

    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH >= 14 And FLENGTH < 28|1|gable|residential

    CreateAF2Building|building="*" And FAREARAT>0.7 And FLENGTH >= 28|3|flat|industrial

    Best, Sylvain

    Thank you Sylvain !

    And is it possible to change the "building models" (like for example in default Switzerland DLC cultivation) ? The building by default look to my opinion too "US" style, mostly grey....It woiuld be great to change for more "alpine" models for Switzerland (like Chalets, and so on).

    Thx for the help !

    Quote from Spit40

    Fantastic. I've just flown over my cultivated house and local village. It's great how easily this works. I suppose the next thing is to tweak the cultivation mappings. I live in a rural area. House are stone or red brick so the default house shape isn't the best fit. The other thing is whether cultivation technique can be used as a quicker way to add objects. For example there's a local monument on top of a hill which is cultivated as a single storey suburban house. I know I could exclude and model individually but if there was a generic monument in a library somewhere could I code up the building as that? I've read about needing to edit things in a GIS. Is there a good open source option? (I'm going to try this: http://www.qgis.org)

    I'm taking a closer look at building textures now. In your scn file I see 3 types of building.

    1:flat (roof):industrial

    3:flat (roof):industrial

    1:gable (roof):residential

    In the building textures txt I see references to res (presumably residential) and com (company or common?) I also see color_00 and color_01 in there.

    Can you tell me please:

    • which bmps correspond to the 3 building types in the TOC
    • are there other building types not currently used in the scn file
    • can I add variations of building types by appropriate use of the naming conventions

    Thanks!

    Currently there are only 2 classes in the TOC:

    residential corresponds to BMP res_

    industrial corresponds to BMP com_ (I suppose it means commercial)

    The 3 lines in the SPC derive from the footprint area and length of one side.

    With the first line I try to separate the garages from of houses.

    (Oh, I see I have to change another value...)

    The 00 and 01 are variations of the buildings automatically done by aerofly.

    Did you notice that the same house may look different when you restart aerofly?

    I don't know yet, but I suppose we can add even more BMP by using ascending numbers 02, 03..

    These have to be included in the building_textures.txt as well before converting into final textures.

    I will clarify this with IPACS.

    Rodeo

    That works great. I see you mix'n'match the roofs and walls/gables a bit. Still it was high time my local roofs were of dark slate rather than red clay. Just a few tweaks now as long "buildings" in the UK are more likely to be a row of terraced houses than garages.

    Pleased to report I solved my issues and have created a new cultivation file for the area I was working on. I don't know how many trees are there, in my run through late last night I had trees set at minimum in my AFS2 settings. I will re- check that today. I most definitely want to see trees in my city area, if my OSM data does not have many forest areas we need a way to produce trees without doing individual trees, that will just be too tedious.

    I know cultivation improvements will be coming; I would like to suggest that one of the first additions be tall buildings for city skyscrapers if that is doable.

    Thanks again for the tutorial Rodeo plus the encouragement, and Ed as well for your support!

    Ken