Is it allowed...

[Colin S]

Ok. This is an amazing scenery for CYVR Vancouver International for FSX and FS9: http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=gabbert&CatID=root&Go=Search

 

But as everyone (in the scenery development and conversion field) knows, when you convert one of these sceneries, it kills all the ground textures. First question:

 

Does anyone know how to retain the original ground textures and orthophotos from an FSX scenery during conversion?

 

Here is the second one, much more complex:

 

I am a scenery developer (for those of you who are troglodites). I wish to convert this scenery for private, personal and non-distribution use only. However, I'm sure others would like to as well, but they will have the same problem as me: a lack of ground textures and orthophotos. So here is what I propose:

 

Does it break any rules to publish a scenery project which is simply a supplement - in this case ground textures, airport layout and orthophotos - for a scenery file that is converted and lacks those features?

 

Anyways, let me know, because if it is allowed, I will definitely be making this.

 

Cheers

[jettojig]

Not sure what you mean about killing ground textures. Do you mean vanishing ones?

 

I find that most ground textures for airport sceneries like CYVR don't just vanish - a lot of the time they get tiny LOD distances and/or weird DDS alpha channels that means they like to disappear after a short distance, but they're still there, and are quite fixable.

 

Though youhave plenty of experience it seems, for those that don't know (I've been meaning to write a guide on this for ages, I've seen plenty of people throw away good textures! Might as well do it here)...

If the texture only seems to appear when really close to it, best thing to do is find a pattern in how they are named and open them in a text editor. Find a line mentioning LOD (Usually something like ATTR_LOD_DRAPED), and change the number following to a larger value (I usually go for 20000 for orthophoto/runway markings and 5000 for anything else - though you want smaller numbers on weaker systems!).

 

If textures are turning black at medium distances, it's probably a weird Alpha channel in the DDS texture. Open the relevant texture in something that supports DDS editing and save it in a format that does not have alpha channels (no transparency). MAKE SURE TO KEEP THE ORIGINAL. DDS files lose quality every time you edit and re-save.

 

In some conversions - particularly paywares like FlyTampa and Aerosoft - the ground textures just get misplaced by FS2XP and are in impossible shapes. You need to use OE or WED to reposition these as square tiles. This is the most time consuming process as it can't be automated like text editing, but it is easy and 

 

Finally, sometimes the layer groupings are set wrong - as is the case for your CYVR scenery. This means things like taxi lines are drawn UNDER photo textures or vice-versa. This link explains it better than I could.

 

It is worth noting that sometimes ground textures really don't convert at all, though from what I've seen this is by far a minority in terms of sceneries available.

 

Colin, I hope that your first question is answered somewhere within there - if in more detail than you may need. I actually was curious and installed CYVR myself to see how it converted and found that deleting a large grass texture in Overlay Editor uncovered all the orthophotos for the airport - though it seems you'll need to play with layer groups to get the taxi lines to appear - they are there, but below the other textures. See below to see what I mean:

 

lines & Photoscenery visible

 

Lines hidden below photoscenery.

 

As for your second question, I believe that if you are providing your own orthophotos/textures, (or ones you have license to distribute) and all ground layouts are yours, then it should be OK.

Distributing fixed orthophotos from an original FSX scenery without permission is a big no-no, but if you can get the author to allow it then it probably is OK - though at that point you might as well get permission to share the whole airport.

 

Hope I've over-answered your questions enough! I've converted WAY too many FSX sceneries for my own good... I'm a bit of a hoarder!

[Colin S]

Excellent! Thank you so much for your help and I will try this as soon as I return to my PC in Kamloops. From the looks of your second photo, some of the textures may need to be tweaked/replaced (particularly those road outline textures that look seriously skewed), but otherwise your conversion looks perfect. The last time I tried converting it must have hit a wall of errors because objects were missing/in the the wrong place, and there were no ground textures at all.

 

Anyways, thanks for the wealth of information I may finally be able to fly around my hometown! (and also be able to have a good starting point to enjoy the HD Mesh from)

[jettojig]

Excellent! Thank you so much for your help and I will try this as soon as I return to my PC in Kamloops. From the looks of your second photo, some of the textures may need to be tweaked/replaced (particularly those road outline textures that look seriously skewed), but otherwise your conversion looks perfect. The last time I tried converting it must have hit a wall of errors because objects were missing/in the the wrong place, and there were no ground textures at all.

 

Anyways, thanks for the wealth of information I may finally be able to fly around my hometown! (and also be able to have a good starting point to enjoy the HD Mesh from)

 

No problem at all! 

I haven't any local knowledge as I'm from the UK but from eyeballing it then yes, the scenery looks very, VERY good and should be easy to fix once you get the hang of things! I may have a crack at it myself if I ever decide to make an adventure of flying in the US...

I didn't suffer any issues at all... what OS are you using? No idea if that affects anything but I wouldn't be surprised if things went weird on non-windows machines.

Hope you get to enjoy Vancouver eventually!

[Colin S]

No problem at all! 

I haven't any local knowledge as I'm from the UK but from eyeballing it then yes, the scenery looks very, VERY good and should be easy to fix once you get the hang of things! I may have a crack at it myself if I ever decide to make an adventure of flying in the US...

I didn't suffer any issues at all... what OS are you using? No idea if that affects anything but I wouldn't be surprised if things went weird on non-windows machines.

Hope you get to enjoy Vancouver eventually!

 

The last time I tried I was on MacOSX. I'll try it on my PC soon.