Changing default colours for FSX NZ?

[Jimmah]

Alright then. Next few days off I'll get into it.

[gokanru]

Then that will make six, surely there must be more than that.It must be the textures and/or the mesh that is putting others off FSX

[Timmo]

Give me a yell if you want a hand with this....ive been meaning to change things too.

[HardCorePawn]

QUOTE(gokanru @ Aug 20 2007, 01:40 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Then that will make six, surely there must be more than that.It must be the textures and/or the mesh that is putting others off FSX

amongst other things

I could list them all, but I dont want to suck up ALL of NZFF's server space

[Timmo]

What is wrong with the mesh?? Default seems ok to me.....(I presume you are referring to mesh as the 3d terrain model?)

I notice that Google earth now has a 10m grid/mesh in it!....I want I want!

[Christian]

QUOTE(Jimmah @ Aug 23 2007, 06:00 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Alright. I realise this thread has been dead for a while, but the problem still exists!

I've been digging around the FSX SDK, trying to figure out how this all works.

Is it just me or is the documentation not quite up to date/correct? It lists all the regions, but does not mention region Z (New Zealand) which IS built in. The problem, however, seems to be that there are NO textures for this region, so everything reverts back to region B textures. The SDK also mentions a naming nomenclature for the textures that doesn't quite add up to the textures I'm looking at (the spreadsheet mentioned below seems to help with finding the right files).

There's a pretty good spreadsheet with screenshots over here, I'm thinking that if I at least change some of the nz landclass type (i.e find a type that has better looking textures in region B), things should improve.

Ideally we need to find out if we can get FSX to look up region Z textures, then create a whole set of these (possibly renamed textures from other regions). I've only just started delving into this, thus I am unsure as to whether this is possible. As I said, what the SDK talks about and what I see in the files/textures etc doesn't quite seem to match up.

Anyhow, just curious to see if anyone else is still working on this and what, if anything, they have found out.

Would be great if that would be as easy as that wouldn't it? Unfortunately, MS made things more complicated. Textures are hardcoded in the lclookup. So even if you create Z textures, they need to be hooked into the lclookup otherwise they don't show. The only reason Z exists is for the autogen.

Christian

[Jimmah]

Yep. It seems the way to do this is to put textures into the relevant texture folder under addon scenery (i.e. it would only work if you have custom n.z. landclass files - such as yours Christian). If I take the textures I want, and rename them as if they're region B textures, FSX will apparently display these instead of the ones in the root texture folder. So I'll have to trawl through the textures, find appropriate ones, copy them to the right addon folder, and rename them so they get called.

This is just based on what I currently understand FSX does, I'll run a test this afternoon. If it works I'll start tabulating it all and create a batch file/program to do all the hard work.

[Jimmah]

Alright. Can't remember where I read that... but it don't work

[HardCorePawn]

Does this mean that unless someone does a photoreal scenery addon for the whole of NZ that we are doomed to crappy brown desert like surroundings for all eternity?

or

does it just mean that we are unable to just replace the default texture files?

or

does it just mean you have no idea what you're doing?

[Charl]

I do hope for the sake of the FSX fans out there that the answer is not "yes".
I'd have thought that someone like Ground Environment Pro would've come up with the goods by now, though...

[Christian]

QUOTE(Charl @ Aug 26 2007, 08:20 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I do hope for the sake of the FSX fans out there that the answer is not "yes".
I'd have thought that someone like Ground Environment Pro would've come up with the goods by now, though...

As I said, Z textures DO NOT work. The lclookup doesn't know about them. The only way to do this is by either overwriting the default B textures (like VOZ does) or having a seperate landclass folder and have your B textures in there, but then you need every single texture called by the landclass otherwise you get a memory leak.

[Timmo]

QUOTE(Christian @ Jul 9 2007, 06:20 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The textures. The landclass system in FSX hasn't changed, so my old FS9 landclass file works just fine in FSX. I did a closer investigation and indeed there is little point changing the landclass file, it's as accurate as it can be. In FSX, it's the textures themselves that cause the problems.

Hmm...I had another look at this and it could use some tweaking....the major error I could see was that Kiangaroa forest (a HUGE area of plantation pine) is defined as mixed forest...

How easy is it to convert to a .BIL file? (I think that is a required format for EasyLC?)

[Christian]

QUOTE(Timmo @ Aug 27 2007, 11:08 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmm...I had another look at this and it could use some tweaking....the major error I could see was that Kiangaroa forest (a HUGE area of plantation pine) is defined as mixed forest...

How easy is it to convert to a .BIL file? (I think that is a required format for EasyLC?)

I didn't have any info on tree species. What I've done is define all native as tropical and all exotic as mixed forest (the mapping data only distingues between native and exotic). I now have a better data set that classifies exotic into plantations and non-plantations, so I could produce a new lc set. What I'd really like to do is get rid of landclass completely and use the actual polygons. I may be able to create a much better set. Having said that the coniferous textures in FSX are not really great as they include conifers which go brown in autumn and winter, what we really want is a pine texture set which FSX doesn't supply.

Anyway, back to your question, I never used EasyLC, so no idea. However, you could create a little forest yourself in a seperate lc to overwrite my one.

Cheers,
Christian

[NZCoffee]

Hey guys!

What's the status of this? I'm really curious to see what comes out of this.

Thanks
Coffee!!