Cultivation template file for scenProc

  • crispy136,

    Thanks much for your hard efforts!!

    One improvement would simply be to add more comments for the lights and plants for the different fields including units of measure. Since we are downloading your newest versions, if we add documentation to a given version, it will have to be added again. Whatever you can do will be welcome. We really do appreciate your time spent on all this!

    Dave W.

  • I downloaded your ver 5 and started a small area in SE Florida around Ft. Meyers. I went out for an early lunch, then went shopping and just got home - the green bar is still moving at 3 1/2 + hours so this might be an overnighter edition. :) I will let you know the outcome.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • I went out for an early lunch, then went shopping and just got home - the green bar is still moving at 3 1/2 + hours so this might be an overnighter edition.

    What size area is in your source file? It may be too big if it is running that long. Some users have reported missing cultivation when the source area is too big. I use a level 10 sized area and use the "Image tile co-ordinates" utility created by Qwerty42 to give me the area for the OpenStreetMap co-ordinates. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zv3c…gridcoords_v1.6.xlsm?dl=1

  • What size area is in your source file? It may be too big if it is running that long. Some users have reported missing cultivation when the source area is too big. I use a level 10 sized area and use the "Image tile co-ordinates" utility created by Qwerty42 to give me the area for the OpenStreetMap co-ordinates. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zv3c…gridcoords_v1.6.xlsm?dl=1

    Hello Chris,

    That is probably correct - my selected area is most likely too large. The ScenPro completed the calculations in 5 1/2 hours and generated a 2.5 GB toc file. The scenery was processed using FSET 1 dl at 9 - 14 using Google from a couple a months ago - not the latest edition that we got 2 weeks ago.

    Here are 3 screenshots taken when overflying a golf course near Cape Coral, Florida. See attachments for map coverage area and ScenPro numbers. The osm map file size is 615 MB and the toc is 2.5 GB.

    I took screenshots of the ScenPro output and processing data. I can send that to you in a conversation if you would like to see it.

    Regards,

    Ray

    Chris,

    Maybe you can overlay the suggested level 10 grid size on the map coverage screenshot that I attached above and I can use that as a guide for future map areas.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • That is probably correct - my selected area is most likely too large.

    Some users have reported that cultivation can go missing if the source area is too large and other threads indicate that IPACS use level 10 sized area themselves.

    Its pretty easy to select a level 10 size area using a spreadsheet utility created by Qwerty42 for the FSET process of scenery creation.

    Image tile coordinates

    The screen shots below show how to use this spreadsheet for cultivation source extracts. I used the New Orleans area you were interested in as an example. Why don't you give it a go for New Orleans.

    1. Get the co-ordinates to use in OpenStreetMap. Note - you have to tab off the field after you have entered the values to get the spreadsheet to update the coordinates.

    2. Extract the data in OpenStreetMap, just use 4 decimal places of the 6 available from the spreadsheet.

    Thanks, Chris

    Win 10 64-bit, 24GB RAM, i5-9400F @ 3.9, 6GB Nvidia RTX-2060

  • OK Thanks. I am in the middle of doing a smaller area in Florida right now but, I will try the New Orleans. Do you think the .0001 vs .0025 may be a factor in the long crunch time?

    Regards,

    Ray

  • OK Thanks. I am in the middle of doing a smaller area in Florida right now but, I will try the New Orleans. Do you think the .0001 vs .0025 may be a factor in the long crunch time?

    Yes, increased tree density does increase processing time, but in my testing only from 1 minute to 3 minutes, for a city and suburban area with some forested areas around. But it will be longer for areas with more plants areas. Ver 5 of the template runs a little quicker but pulls in more data than before, so it is swings and roundabouts for processing time.

    It may have something to do with your computer specs perhaps. When you try New Orleans, compare it with my results which was a total running time of 580 seconds and of that 471 seconds was for plants. The New Orleans area seems to have a lot of wetland areas which are a new inclusion in the latest template, and I notice scenProc spends some time on these areas for New Orleans, creating 650,000 wetland plants. Areas designated as wetlands in my neck of the woods are full of Mangrove forests, so I use a high density here. Wetlands in different parts of the world may require a lesser density. As I used the shrub tree type, they are only visible at low altitudes, so you could reduce the density for wetlands without much impact. Wetland areas may be the same with Florida.

    I'll experiment with plant densities and see if I can find a sweet spot for density vs processing time, and include that in a later release. At present the values are set to give the best visual effect.

    Since we are downloading your newest versions, if we add documentation to a given version, it will have to be added again

    Thanks for your comments Dave. Unfortunately any end user added detail will always be lost and replaced with mine after you download a new template. Not sure I could get around that with my limited knowledge. My comments are limited to areas I have learned and tested. Haven't had much to do with lights yet so no comments and they seem to work pretty well without me changing them.

    I usually test my script in Australia (City, suburban & rural), UK (near Heathrow) and US (New Orleans & Hawaii) but I may be missing features that you have found and tested. Perhaps you might like to share the comments and updates you are adding in each time, and I'll see if they could be included in a future release. No promises though as too much detail can be counter productive.

    I had also thought of offering users varying levels of detail so they could either pick high detail (longer processing time) or lower detail (quicker processing time). Combined with my plans for temperate and tropical plants, they then just need to uncomment the lines with the level of detail and zone they require before running scenProc. Similar to what I have done for European houses in the current script.

    I would encourage anyone to share scripts of there own (or just individual lines of code) as mine are not the definitive answer to cultivation, just a reflection of what I have managed to learn and test so far. There are forum members with far greater knowledge and skills than mine.

    Thanks, Chris

    Win 10 64-bit, 24GB RAM, i5-9400F @ 3.9, 6GB Nvidia RTX-2060

    Edited once, last by crispy136 (September 19, 2018 at 2:57 AM).

  • The processing time was more like 12 minutes with the smaller map area. It was mostly metro areas so not much wetlands and forests.

    Now I have to make the scenery for the area.

    Regards,

    Ray

    btw I have an i7-8700 - 3.7 16 GB win 10 all SSDs with 1080 Ti

  • I woke up in the middle of the night and completed the FSET scenery for the St. Petersbugh/Tampa area. A quick look at the cultivation showed practically 100% red roof tops.

    This begs the question. Do we have various texture folders for different parts of the world, or maybe just different parts of the country?

    Regards,

    Ray

    I copied the textures folder from the South Florida DLC over and replaced the textures that arrived with the fsCloudPort airport file (mostly bright red roofs). The new roof colors are now a very pleasing mix of whiteish, grayish, pinkish and light orangeish colors. Nice and easy fix.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • I was also wondering if house types can be restricted in the same manner as plant varieties. This might be a solution for those without the Florida DLC. I'll have a look at the scenProc instructions.

    Thanks, Chris

    Win 10 64-bit, 24GB RAM, i5-9400F @ 3.9, 6GB Nvidia RTX-2060

  • I think the only way you can control the house types is by which houses are in the BUILDING TEXTURES folder that is under the airport folder. If you can figure out which ttx file represents the roof color you want, you may be able to just remove the others or if that doesn't work, replace the others with copies of the ones you like so the same file names are still there but the files are just copies of the same roof.

  • Chris,

    I am working in the central Florida area this week for building scenery and cultivation. I started on the west coast with the St. Petersburg/Tampa area, and am currently building the central area - Orlando - from Sanford in the north to Lake Wales south and between 81 deg and 82 deg. This will be a heavy concentration of metro area mixed with water. The water is the shallow small lakes throughout this area. Locals call them "sinkholes" but some a rather large lakes. There will also be a good bit of wetlands and specialized forests - acres and acres of orange and grapefruit trees planted in organized rows. Maybe we can come up with an new tree for these.

    The next physical step will be the east coast from Daytona to Melbourne including the Space Center.

    I noticed the amount of cultivation houses varies greatly between some of the built-up metro areas and the remote farm land as should be expected. Maybe there is just not much input to OpenStreetMaps for the less dense areas. The commercial buildings all seem to be present though.

    One thing we need to work on is large individual trees are being placed in these lakes or sinkholes and this looks rather odd and out of place.

    Otherwise, the cultivation process using your ver5 adds tremendous value to this new FSET scenery and is super easy to use. Thanks again for all your efforts.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • One thing we need to work on is large individual trees are being placed in these lakes or sinkholes and this looks rather odd and out of place.

    Hi Ray,

    My next template has additional coding that uses polygons within the source file to exclude objects from areas. So it will no longer be necessary to manually create an exclude for airport areas. The script will identify the airport area, then exclude any buildings it was going to create within that area. I did a quick check around the globe (Australia, USA, UK, South Africa, Germany, Havana) and they all (but only some airports in Havana) use the same logic for airports in OpenStreetMaps. So this change should work for almost everywhere.

    I also used similar logic to solve a tree problem. The problem caused by sporting fields being located within the boundaries of parks, which is common in Australia, USA and the UK. As the script adds trees to parks, the trees were appearing in the middle of baseball diamonds, hockey fields, cricket fields etc. So I used the same logic as used for airport areas to get scenProc to automatically exclude those trees for me, using the areas of the sporting fields as defined by OSM. If you look at the larger image of the screenshot below you'll see the park on the left where the sporting fields are covered with trees. Then with the new coding, the sporting fields are visible in the image at the right while the trees in the rest of the park area are unaffected. The tree density was turned way up to allow me to test the scenario, so the final tree density for parks is much lower and more realistic. Europe doesn't seem to classify areas containing sporting fields as parks so wasn't a problem for them.

    The only downside of this process to exclude trees is that there is a time penalty that increases proportionally with higher tree densities. I have parks set at 0.00025 and get only a 2 minute penalty. However using the same area with parks set to 0.0001, as in the screen shot, the time penalty was 10 minutes. Automatically excluding buildings from airport areas has a negligible time penalty.

    Perhaps we could use a variation of this same coding to automatically exclude your trees from the sinkholes or lakes. It would just depend on how the area containing the trees is recorded in OSM. Send me a screenshot of OSM for an area with this problem and I'll investigate. Just make sure you are in an export screen with an area selected so I can use the coordinates to find the area.

    Thanks, Chris

    Win 10 64-bit, 24GB RAM, i5-9400F @ 3.9, 6GB Nvidia RTX-2060

  • Chris,

    Wow, I would never imagined that the coding couls get so specific. This sounds very encouraging. I am in the middle of some geoconverter processing now so it will be tomorrow am before I can locate the trees in the lakes and get the screenshot and coordinates for you. Thanks for the offer to look at it.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • Chris,

    I am wondering if we can direct our cpu allocation to favor ScenPro processing. I see my cpu is using less than 10% of available computer power.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • I am missing most of the residential houses in the cultivation here. I am currently rerunning the ScenPro with a very small map area to see if I may have bit off too much the first time. Any ideas? using your ver5.

    Titusville is a small town just outside the Kennedy Space Center in east central Florida.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • I am wondering if we can direct our cpu allocation to favor ScenPro processing

    .Using the SplitGrid command already allows scenProc to process the multiple grids simultaneously. This is already enabled in my template. I also noticed a low CPU and memory usage with scenProc even when it is working hard, unlike GeoConvert. This is probably something you should ask Arno the creator of scenProc.

    I am missing most of the residential houses in the cultivation here.

    The lines you have indicated are only for large residential buildings, which usually means residential high rise. Further up your screen shot I see that you have created 2364 single level houses and 918 double level houses. So it seems to be working as expected.

    Thanks, Chris

    Win 10 64-bit, 24GB RAM, i5-9400F @ 3.9, 6GB Nvidia RTX-2060

  • .Using the SplitGrid command already allows scenProc to process the multiple grids simultaneously. This is already enabled in my template. I also noticed a low CPU and memory usage with scenProc even when it is working hard, unlike GeoConvert. This is probably something you should ask Arno the creator of scenProc.

    The lines you have indicated are only for large residential buildings, which usually means residential high rise. Further up your screen shot I see that you have created 2364 single level houses and 918 double level houses. So it seems to be working as expected.

    Chris,

    Thanks for taking a look at this. but, tke a look at the screenshots. 98% of the houses are not cultivated. The first two areas that I made around Ft. Meyers and Tampa are absolutely loaded with houses. Here there are bare any at all. I have something not working correctly someplace.

    Regards,

    Ray

  • 98% of the houses are not cultivated.

    I did see comments in other threads that too much cultivation can result in stuff disappearing. Perhaps the area you are selecting in OSM is too large, level 10 is the recommended size. Also are there any houses in OSM for the missing areas? I have found that whole suburbs are just missing in my home city, while in other areas every house is recorded. ScenProc is limited to what is recorded in OSM. Send me details of the OSM area where there is a problem with missing houses and I'll look at the source data to see if something needs tweaking. You can also try using one of the older templates (ver4) that uses the building length to cultivate buildings. I changed it to building area in ver5. Don't forget this will disable any features introduced in ver5 and is just for troubleshooting. The attached file is ver4 but with the SplitGRid and MergeGrid enhancements included.