X-Plane Scenery Gateway

[Geoff]

So I downloaded the Lizard Geo viewer last night, installed it, and headed over to the USGS to download a GeoTIFF. But the USGS download server was down for a supposed two-hour maintenance. But it's still down now! Gah.

[Geoff]

OK, USGS is back up, and I spent much of the weekend creating scenery for 38CA (Cashen). (I'm glad I waited for the USGS stuff, because it definitively showed me that the runway is currently misplaced.) I'm getting there, but I am stuck on a couple things. I've asked about both on the .org, but no one's responded yet, and while it's been only a couple hours, I'm feeling impatient.

First, I can't figure out how to draw a hold-short line on a taxiway. I create an unmarked taxiway. Then I select the Taxiway Lines ("L") tool. Then I choose hold-short on the Markings menu. But then how many nodes do I need to create? Four? Two? If I create four, I get double hold-short lines. If I create two nodes, I see nothing at all.

Second, when I try to create hold-short lines, this set of lines seems to override neighboring markings, such as single yellow lines. I don't understand why.

Finally, must I create an airport boundary? I don't want grassy areas around this airport. It sits in the dusty California quasi-desert.

Thanks!

[zengei]

First, I can't figure out how to draw a hold-short line on a taxiway. I create an unmarked taxiway. Then I select the Taxiway Lines ("L") tool. Then I choose hold-short on the Markings menu. But then how many nodes do I need to create? Four? Two? If I create four, I get double hold-short lines. If I create two nodes, I see nothing at all.

For a straight line, you just need two nodes.

Second, when I try to create hold-short lines, this set of lines seems to override neighboring markings, such as single yellow lines. I don't understand why.

You mean appear on top of or it somehow hides the other lines?

In both cases the behavior you're describing seems odd. Can you take a screenshot of WED or better yet provide a ZIP of the earth.wed.xml file?

Finally, must I create an airport boundary? I don't want grassy areas around this airport. It sits in the dusty California quasi-desert.

It's recommended to create a boundary because it provides a (slight) hint to the X-Plane terrain system that the terrain within the boundary should be leveled/smoothed. It also changes the ground texture, but the texture should be appropriate to the area the airport is in. If that's not the behavior you're seeing, something odd is going on.

[Geoff]

Many thanks, Zengei! I had been hung up on the idea that you always have to return to the first node to complete a Bezier thing, but that's only true of things like taxiways and textures, not lines. Hitting "enter" after placing my second node is all I need.

OK, I'll add an airport boundary.

I should be ready to upload this airport to the Gateway pretty soon, maybe today. Still fiddling and testing.

[zengei]

I had been hung up on the idea that you always have to return to the first node to complete a Bezier thing, but that's only true of things like taxiways and textures, not lines. Hitting "enter" after placing my second node is all I need.

Ah yes, I could see how that could be confusing. On a related note, fences, despite how they're rendered in WED do not need to be closed path; just a tip.

I should be ready to upload this airport to the Gateway pretty soon, maybe today. Still fiddling and testing.

Great!

[Geoff]

Unfortunately, I've encountered one snag: as at KGCN, I've got a row of trees crossing the runway, and I can't exclude them. In fact, I've got a second row crossing the ramp, too. I've created exclusion zones for "forests" and "objects," but still I see the trees. I used to have "Trees and Farms" scenery installed; deleting it did not fix the issue. I have alpilotx's HD Mesh v3 installed; it's the very bottom item in my scenery_packs.ini file. 38CA is the very first item in that file. My trees are set to "populated" in my Rendering settings. I'm using WED 1.4.

I know I've asked this before here, so I've posted a similar question now over at the Org. I'm pretty much ready to upload this scenery; it's this one issue that's holding me back.

[zengei]

Try making your exclusion zones substantially larger than they currently are. If the trees disappear then scale them down to a reasonable size to properly exclude the trees.

[Geoff]

Thanks for your reply, zengei. I figured it out. World2XPlane was auto-generating unwanted trees. I removed the W2XPlane beta for the US West, and that fixed it.

So, I've just uploaded 38CA! I'll let you know if/when it's approved by the Powers That Be, and I'll provide a download link at that point. I'll certainly be open to suggestions on how to improve it. This is only my second upload, and while I'm getting better at it, lots of things still are a challenge.

I think the thing I struggle with most is how to make my airport blend with its surroundings. Does one add false "roads" to auto-generated roads, etc? In the end, I've decided not to do much of that, since different users have different road settings, but I'm open to suggestions.

Now that I"ve figured out my tree issue, I'm going to make one more pass at KGCN, and then I'll probably upload that, too. As you'll recall, there's already Gateway scenery for it, but it doesn't exclude forests from the runways. I've fixed that, I think. I'll let you know once I've uploaded that airport.

[Geoff]

I've just uploaded a slightly revised version of KGCN. This version eliminates trees from the runway.

[Geoff]

Zengei, I hope you don't mind that I pepper you with questions. I'm really enthusiastic about this project, but I keep hitting roadblocks! My latest relates to GeoTIFF files.

I don't have any problem using Lizard to view .jp2 files. But the .jp2 for Ernst Field seem mis-aligned to me, so I figured I'd try GeoTIFF instead. But I can't seem to open GeoTIFF files properly. Here are the steps I followed.

1. I downloaded a giant 3GB GeoTIFF of Ernst Field (86CL) from USGS.

2. I fire up Lizard's Geoviewer.

3. I hit CTL-O ("Open Local Layer") and navigate to the big 3GB *.tif file in the GeoTIFF folder.

4. GeoViewer loads the file, but it shows me a low-res picture of the entire USA, not Ernst Field or its vicinity.

Am I doing something wrong?