Help needed - New Zealand - North Island Elevation scenery

  • Hi all,

    I've recently purchased the game on Steam after using FSX for many years. I'm learning how addons work, and have successfully loaded the Northern Territory/Darwin scenery, however I'm struggling with the New Zealand - North Island Elevation scenery. I've downloaded all of these and placed the corresponding folders into the "elevation folder", however there are no texture changes.

    I note the description says, "Elevation files only". Does this mean I require additional files in order to get the textures that are visible in the preview photos?

    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. :)

  • Hi all,

    I've recently purchased the game on Steam after using FSX for many years. I'm learning how addons work, and have successfully loaded the Northern Territory/Darwin scenery, however I'm struggling with the New Zealand - North Island Elevation scenery. I've downloaded all of these and placed the corresponding folders into the "elevation folder", however there are no texture changes.

    I note the description says, "Elevation files only". Does this mean I require additional files in order to get the textures that are visible in the preview photos?

    Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. :)

    Hi, The files of NZ are ONLY elevation ie. terrain levels and not photo scenery and or cultivation (buildings trees etc) Hope this helps? PS Welcome to the mad house. Here is a link to the photo scenery for NZ https://flight-sim.org/filebase/index…p-09-f880-5b80/

    Best wishes, Michael :)

  • Hi, The files of NZ are ONLY elevation ie. terrain levels and not photo scenery and or cultivation (buildings trees etc) Hope this helps? PS Welcome to the mad house.

    Indeed it does! Thanks for the clarification (and thanks for the effort you put into addons as well). Is there any photo scenery available to download for NZ/North Island, or has Geoffkiwi created his own files for personal use?

    P.S Queensland would be a great future addition to Australia's scenery collection. :)

  • Its only the south island in photo scenery that's available. I just checked NZ North Island and its 58 tiles that's a lot of work to do for photo scenery at 2 M/Pix resolution. Let me conquer Australia NT first and it all depends on the quality of satellite images.

    PS. Just had a look at Bing and ArcGIS and loads of cloud coverage. :(

    Best wishes, Michael :)

    Edited once, last by IZ0JUB (June 27, 2021 at 5:07 PM).

  • Its only the south island in photo scenery that's available. I just checked NZ North Island and its 58 tiles that's a lot of work to do for photo scenery at 2 M/Pix resolution. Let me conquer Australia NT first and it all depends on the quality of satellite images.

    PS. Just had a look at Bing and ArcGIS and loads of cloud coverage. :(

    To confirm, are the files by perokee the ones that contain the South Island scenery? If so, I might give those a go for now.

    No worries at all. I guess it's luck of the draw how much cloud coverage there was when the images were taken (not surprising for New Zealand to have lots of it :().

  • I have been working on scenery for NZ, and it looks well draped on GeoffKiwi's mesh. I also have perokee's work which covers the southern part of the South Island. What I have done is WIP, not fit for general release. The biggest problem is that my preferred source of orthophotos creates a zig-zag of tile edges at coastlines, with no colour blending at all for the water. I found more or less by accident that ArcGisS orthophotos do not seem to have that problem, although they do create huge areas of little grey tiles with "No data available" written on them. That is easier to fix, but still very time-consuming, and better than hand-painting thousands of tiles in GIMP to make a good blend. So I am now redoing my stuff using ArcGiS ortho for the coastal areas. That means all the coast of SI from Cape Campbell round to Hokitika, by way of Cape Farewell.

    The same applies to the area around Wellington and up to Kapiti Island, and another area around Auckland. It all takes time and a great deal of patience. I did some cultivation for the Auckland area, but the OSM data is pretty sparse and Auckland City needs some 3Dmodels of distinctive structures. It is not something which can be done overnight :(

    MikeW

    PS - Why are so many scenery devs called Michael? :D

  • I'm currently working on my last part of the NT in Australia using ArcGIS and will then take a look at NZ. I made both NZ islands for FSX many years ago, I think at the time I used Bing for the images?

    To MikeW the coastlines are always hard work and very time consuming, I use Paint.Net and colour the missing water by hand to blend with the FS2 default colour. What resolution are you using for your NZ scenery?

    Kindest regards to all, Michael. :)

    Best wishes, Michael :)

  • Michael, thanks for your interest. Using crispy136's Guide, after experimenting I standardised on the following:

    Base - tile size 9, zoom 16 AFS levels 9, 11, and 12

    Top - tile size 9, zoom 17, AFS level 13

    Urban - If necessary, I use 13 -18 - 14 for general developed areas, and 14 -19 -15 for airfields.

    I like to land 'on the photo', so I use Cloudport airfields with the runway object disabled. Otherwise I use the NZ AIP charts to place a location marker and parking spot(s) so that I can select those fields as starting points.

    I left an ArcGIS-based Auckland area scenery cooking overnight. If you like, I will privately send you links to both versions. At the moment none of my work is available for general distribution. Sad to say, there are too many uninformed critics in the forum. ;)

    ATB, MikeW

  • THANK YOU that's a very interesting way of making the scenery, I have not done it that way before. I just select size 9 tile and let it download levels 9, 11, 12 and 13 then hand edit water, clouds shadows etc using Paint.Net, yes its hard work. I would appreciate a look at your work please. PM and I will send my email unless you already have it? Cheers Michael. ;)

    Best wishes, Michael :)

  • just a few pics to let folk see the sort of things we have to fix. My old source has some faults, especially in coastal waters. ArcGIS is much better on coastlines, but it is not perfect either.

    https://i.postimg.cc/nzZYhFKc/aerof…0630-122855.jpg

    https://i.postimg.cc/mgvyKNt9/aerof…0628-153221.jpg

    https://i.postimg.cc/VNXWwrCV/aerof…0630-123257.jpg

    https://i.postimg.cc/5035Hhp5/aerof…0629-153125.jpg

    Creating scenery is not a simple matter of going to the Play Store and downloading some app which will do it all for you.

    MikeW

    Edited once, last by emfrat (June 30, 2021 at 11:54 PM).