On Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:36:46 -0600 Laurence Vanek wrote: > Chris Metzler wrote: > > Are you speaking of where these things are located (i.e. the river > > isn't where it should be), or the visual appearance of the areas along > > rivers/lake edges/city boundaries? > > I am primarily speaking of visual appearances. Normally river & lake > boundaries are not stretches of straight lines with sharp angles when > they change directions. City boundaries ... same comment. > > We also have issues with runways running out into rivers & lakes in > certains locations.
Right, but that's not because the runways are in the wrong places. It's
because the bodies of water are.
Both of these problems stem from the use of low-resolution datasets for
roads/rails/rivers/lakes/etc. in scenery production. The ground
elevation info used is of fairly high resolution, but the vector data
(anything that follows a line, so roads, rails, coastlines, rivercourses,
city boundaries, etc.) are of fairly low resolution. The most
straightforward solution is to use higher-resolution datasets to make
the scenery -- and indeed, for much (most?) of the world, better datasets
than what's used for the downloadable scenery are available. The problem
is that using these datasets can dramatically increase the polygon count
of the terrain; if you're using an older/slower computer, this can make
fgfs annoying or even impossible to use. Since the downloadable scenery
needs to be usable by a large cross-section of users, you're probably not
going to see this happen unless we have a change in the software that
generates scenery (see below). But that doesn't mean you can't get the
higher-resolution datasets and make your own scenery for FG; some people
with fast machines do just this. See the wiki pages about TerraGear for
more on how to go about making your own scenery.
Another possibility is using FlightGear Scenery Designer, or fgsd, which
in its older versions allowed you to edit scenery tiles directly: raise
or lower the ground, change ground polygon types (water --> urban, etc.).
I don't know what the status of fgsd is at this point, because I've been
away from the project for the last year and a half or so (I bought a
house and moved in with my gf! Woohoo!); maybe someone here can provide
more info.
What would be nice is to find a way to modify TerraGear or replace it
with a new scenery generator which can handle the higher-resolution
datasets a little more gracefully. After all, scenery incorporating
such high-resolution has been generated for other flight simulators and
doesn't result in crushing CPU/GPU loads. But that's not a trivial
project by any means.
-c
--
Chris Metzler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(remove "snip-me." to email)
"As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I
have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
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