A simple question, I struggled a while ago building custom roads for sweden using accurate GIS data for X-plane 8.60 in the SK60 projekt. I had to do some tricky programming to be able to cut the roads to follow the edges of the underlying mesh to avoid Z-flimmering.

Would it be possible for you to add a function that takes a set of road vectors and make them follow the underlying mesh correctly?

/Jouni Lindqvist

Lemon

Does this mean we could generate dsf for svalbard (for example) if we can get DEM data for them, and apply the default land use data?

If your imagine is larger than the max texture size* you will have to cut it by hand and place each individual cut orthophoto.

I expect MeshTool to be a support tool for other more user-friendly tools, so hopefully someone else can automate this process.

You will be able to create water either polygonally (by using a water polygon) or via alpha (by having alpha in the orthophoto). Both methods will create “real” reflective X-Plane water that matches the water in the default scenery.

(This isn’t a new capability of X-Plane, it’s just a question of a tool that creates an appropriately formed DSF.)

Of course you have immediately noticed the critical detail I left out: you provide the elevation and coastline data, but what about landuse?

The answer is: we (Laminar Research) will post our landuse and climate data for the entire world in a pre-encoded format, ready for MeshTool. Because this data is so low res, these files will be very small and easy for authors to download, and shouldn’t be a hosting burden.

Now with our initial version, I do not think it will be possible to edit this data. Basically my goal is to make a very simple “just hit go” tool to create the landuse terrain. The actual process of editing landuse is exceedingly complex because the landuse data is pre-processed and run through a very complex rules file (built by Sergio and his team) that takes into account a large number of variables.

So even if we allowed landuse editing, it wouldn’t be as simple as “draw swamp in photoshop, get swamp”.

Our initial goal is simplicity and getting the tool out there fast to serve people trying to make orthophotos. We can look at eventually allowing specific landuse-style polygons (in the first version, only airports, water and orhtos can be specified).

But the goal of meshtool is to make the process of cutting photosceneries easier, not to provide a general GIS tool, even though that is what the global scenery generator more or less is.

(As Austin and Sergio can tell you from having worked with it, working with the actual DSF generator is a real pain and requires a lot of setup.)

Now this mesh tool sounds like a really great idea! But the only point I’m missing is: where does it get it’s land use information (as you don’t really tell it in you Blog)? Yes, it can do something with elevation and the slope, but that can’t be everything it does! So where in this picture comes the land use in (for example if I would consider creating European Mesh using my CORINE data for the land use: which would result in some great scenery)???