Suggestions for setting up scenery priority

GeoConverter is great, and it can be made better.

Now that we are going to see more and more sceneries, I think we really should have an option to set the priority of different scenery to be shown. It can solve a lot problems.

This is especially important if we made a high resolution scenery which overlaps the existing DLC or default scenery. If we can set the priority, we can choose which scenery to be shown in the overlapping area. This might even solve the current abnormal stripes showing around the GeoConverter scenery.

This is also handy for scenery management. If we made a high resolution scenery within the existing DLC or default scenery, we can easily decide whether to let it be shown or not.

All other mainstream flight sims have this scenery priority setting. For FSX it is scenery.cfg. For X-plane, it is scenery_packs.ini. It's a simple txt file with some lines like:

user_scenery1

user_scenery2

commercial_dlc

default_scenery

And users can easily adjust the order of these sceneries. The more on top, the more first to be shown. If you delete the line, the scenery will not be shown.

I think that setting priority of scenery to be shown can lead to the solution to the the current abnormal stripes showing around the GeoConverter scenery. It will disable the scenery you don't want to see, and eliminate the potential conflict.

I am most eager to see this feature also because I'd like to redo the existing DLC areas such as San Francisco. Good as it is, its color is bland, and its resolution is not enough. I just pulled the VE map of San Francisco area. Its color is much more vibrant, even though not so consistent, and the resolution is much higher. Just imagine the beautiful trees and buildings on top of the beautiful 50cm ground textures I made myself!

You have a very clear description of the potential chaotic situation we are destined to encounter if there is no clear set of rule of scenery priority. What a mess it would be!

That's all the more reason why we users need to have the choice to control the scenery priority. I still suggest something like an .ini file which has all the names of the GeoConverter scenery folders whose order can be adjusted to determine the scenery priority, while all DLCs can be represented with just a universal name. Thus we don't need to know the name of all the DLC scenery folders, and this can make things much easier.

Quote from Trespassers

Unfortunately not. Beyond the fact that hidding a bug is no fix, for the stripes not to show up you need a neighbouring scenery to show up instead. And as you noticed, the stripes are systematically "made" of neighbouring sceneries.

If you don't want stripes to show up, you'll need to replace them with another scenery, but then you just move the problem to the next border...

A kind of natural priority is driven by compilation level : a tile compiled in level 14 will show on top, instead of a tile compiled in level 13 at the same place, as soon as the tile level 14 is being loaded of course.

As you noticed, if you only compile your scenery in level 14, it doesn't show up until you fly close enough from the ground for level 14 to get loaded. Then it will probably keep displaying as long as that local tile of level 14 remains in memory.

That's why we have to compile in several levels, for the scenery to show up properly in all LOD levels.

When you overlap an existing DLC, you never know exactly in which levels it was compiled. Your tiles with higher compilation level will technically show up above the DLC, but there's no obvious rule for same levels.

For instance, if I create a scenery overlapping the Swiss DLC and compile it in the recommended levels 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14, usually it first displays instead of the Swiss DLC when I launch an in-flight situation (i.e. my scenery has obviously some priority).

When I fly towards my scenery zone, ground textures next to my aircraft get loaded in higher level and I can see tiles of the Swiss DLC pop up instead of my scenery. Either the Swiss DLC is compiled up to level 15 and the last level gets priority when loaded, or the lack of clear priority causes tough competition between two overlapping level 14 compilations, with unpredictable result.

The problem with the Swiss DLC is, the ground photo textures beyond the border in places like Geneva are artificially blurred, but compiled in the same levels as the rest of the DLC.

In other words, if we make a neighbouring French scenery to fit the Swiss DLC, the artificially blurred textures will always show up above.

The ideal solution would be IPACS to locally provide replacement ground textures without these patches of artificially blurred textures (they have the original orthophotos).

Otherwise, we need a way to force priority to the neighbouring scenery and overlap it in a way to hide those blurry patches of ground.

Cheers

Antoine

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I made a small area over San Francisco airport. It still has stripes outside it.

It's downloaded from VE, 0.5cm, level 11, 12, 13, 14. I have also attached the FSET coordinates:

Quote from drhotwing1

I have actually tested overlaying geoconvert scenery directly over San Francisco DLC scenery and it worked perfectly, even over an airport. This isn't to say that there will be issues unforeseen. My advice is to just test a small area over an airport and see if it works for you.