Where did my mesh go?

[RossL]

I am really looking forward to flying "at home" again after many years O/S. and I have always been disappointed with various freeware addons, but never been able to afford payware to do it.

So I finally bit the bullet and purchased the REALNZ set. But alas I have once again struggled to get any satisfaction from what is essentially quite an expensive plunge.

I am sure it should be better than it is, but I have spent hours working through the forum posts with no luck. I just can't seem to get the detail I was expecting, or feel the love that's obviously out there for this scenery!

I think my problem is my mesh because I see the photo real scenery, but it is almost totally flat for the whole of the inner city area, and south and east past the airport. A good sized blow from the south would wash all the new scenery objects and autogen buildings into the harbour! Where is Mt Victoria? Even the default scenery has a pretty good rendition of it, but I now have no sign of it at all!

So I started looking at my system, all my scenery files were loaded at the top and were enabled. I had the Red Baron NZ Topo mesh installed some time ago, so I moved that right to the top and checked that it contained the gz993470.bgl file I saw mention in a post somewhere, and I checked all my sliders and settings against many posts on the subject, but I still get the tablecloth effect.

Can anyone help?

I run a pretty standard setup of FSX SP2 on a Win7 system. graphics is a 8800 GTS with only 385MB of memory. I don't expect stunning frame rates and AI objects whizzing everywhere, but I would like to see Wellington as it should look from short final on 34, or the view of the city on climb out as you pass the top of Mt Vic.

Cheers
RossL

[toprob]

Hmm, there is very little that can remove the effect of a mesh, except using the Mesh resolution setting in FSX -- which should be set to 10 or 20 metres for Wellington.
Do you use the 20 metre payware mesh? I don't think it will have anything to do with the Topo scenery, but then again I've never installed it in FSX.
Even the default mesh should give a good representation of Wellington. Maybe you could deactivate some scenery addons in your Scenery Library one by one and see if one of those is affecting it. Have you accidentally deactivated any default folders?

[Adamski]

Shouldn't mesh/topo be placed low down in the priority list?

Also, would enabling/disabling the default "Oceania" have any effect? - Or is that objects only?

[RossL]

QUOTE (toprob @ Jan 16 2010, 04:20 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmm, there is very little that can remove the effect of a mesh, except using the Mesh resolution setting in FSX -- which should be set to 10 or 20 metres for Wellington.
Do you use the 20 metre payware mesh? I don't think it will have anything to do with the Topo scenery, but then again I've never installed it in FSX.
Even the default mesh should give a good representation of Wellington. Maybe you could deactivate some scenery addons in your Scenery Library one by one and see if one of those is affecting it. Have you accidentally deactivated any default folders?

That was it!, I had disabled the OCE file. I didn't realise that it must have been part of the base.

It still doesn't answer the question I had about the Red Baron Mesh, but now I see a much better rendition of the area. Unfortunately I still want more! Looks like more bucks have got to be found in the budget for the payware mesh!

Thanks to both respondants for your help, I am now much more satisfied after a quick flit around my old stamping ground in the Roby.

I have had my eye out for the "dimples" people have reported, and not seen any. I was disappointed to see the tunnel at the southern end of the runway has no road running through it, or along the western side of the threshold of 34. Never mind though, there is so much more here than I have ever had before.

Now whats next? I am interested in why we don't see anyone making use of Google Earth resources for Flight Sim. It seems to me that there is a tremendous duplication of effort going into building virtual 3D worlds. It would be tremendous if we could combine resources to benefit everyone on a common system.

Thanks Robyn for your work here, now a much happier customer.

RossL

[toprob]

Glad you got it sorted, I know how frustrating it is when things start misbehaving.

Were you asking about mesh/topo priority in particular? There is a lot of discussion about this on the web, but not a lot of it all that necessary. FSX will always use the best mesh for the area, no matter the priority. Topo is a bit different, in that the highest priority will display, which may or may not be what you want.

The way I organise things is to put them in order of extent. So I put all addons which cover the whole of NZ just before Addon Scenery.

The only thing which does make a real difference is the order of Landclass, as this can override photo scenery if you install it afterwards without moving it down the scenery library list.

The tunnel didn't exist when the scenery was developed, it was just getting started, so I really had no idea what it would look like. And I've said before -- if I can't see it, I can't model it:)

Why don't people make more use of Google Earth? I suspect that your perception of Google Earth is incorrect. Google Earth is an online VIEWER for lots of data types, including aerial imagery. It isn't a SUPPLIER of imagery, free or otherwise. Google don't own a lot of this data, they just get the owner to agree to allow them to display it. There is no way that this gives any user the right to use anything from Google Earth without the express permission of the data owner.

You can view your house in Google Earth, but once you extract that to the sim, you are breaching any number of agreements, laws and copyrights.

[RossL]

QUOTE (toprob @ Jan 18 2010, 12:43 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Glad you got it sorted, I know how frustrating it is when things start misbehaving.

Were you asking about mesh/topo priority in particular? There is a lot of discussion about this on the web, but not a lot of it all that necessary. FSX will always use the best mesh for the area, no matter the priority. Topo is a bit different, in that the highest priority will display, which may or may not be what you want.

The way I organise things is to put them in order of extent. So I put all addons which cover the whole of NZ just before Addon Scenery.

The only thing which does make a real difference is the order of Landclass, as this can override photo scenery if you install it afterwards without moving it down the scenery library list.

The tunnel didn't exist when the scenery was developed, it was just getting started, so I really had no idea what it would look like. And I've said before -- if I can't see it, I can't model it:)

Why don't people make more use of Google Earth? I suspect that your perception of Google Earth is incorrect. Google Earth is an online VIEWER for lots of data types, including aerial imagery. It isn't a SUPPLIER of imagery, free or otherwise. Google don't own a lot of this data, they just get the owner to agree to allow them to display it. There is no way that this gives any user the right to use anything from Google Earth without the express permission of the data owner.

You can view your house in Google Earth, but once you extract that to the sim, you are breaching any number of agreements, laws and copyrights.

Yes, misbehaving software is a pet hate of mine, it has to be, I made a career out of building the stuff. I have to care when other people complain, so I gotta expect no less in turn.

Thanks for the heads up on the mesh v texture v topo priority, I have always thought that the highest in the load sequence wins and never realized that it was a little more complicated than that. I am still left wondering what has happened to the Red Baron mesh (70m I think the free one was) as it should have displayed instead of the default OCE one (which is 150m I believe). Mind you, I am not sure that the OCE file I have is standard, it might have come from some other product I installed way back... one day... in the meantime... Never satisfied, thats me.

Thanks for the feedback on Google Earth too, I hadn't thought through that idea at all had I. It just struck me that so much of what we need these days comes to us in a data stream over the internet, why should we all be storing massive files of this stuff ourselves, in all sorts of different devices, like PC's and iPods and mobiles and Satnavs. Of course the software or the bandwidth aren't the problem, the ownership and charging models are the issue. Silly me, I thought it was all free!

Your comment about the tunnel not being there was interesting, I don't know when it was finished myself, I haven't lived there for nearly 30 years, but I can say the tunnel has been there quite a while. And the road too. I remember there used to be a slight rise as you drove south so that at one point you could see aircraft sitting on the end of 34. They had to put up a sign to ensure drivers dipped there lights so that pilots didn't have their night vision ruined by headlights on high beam.

Anyway, I ramble... Thanks again.
RossL

[toprob]

The default NZ mesh is 75 metres, although based on 90 metre data. Since the Red Baron mesh is also 75 metres, I guess it does come down to priority here.

Yes, it would make more sense if I'd said that the tunnel was being upgraded -- it was basically a few slabs of concrete and piles of dirt when I was there in 2006.