Ground tearing and mountain lakes

[Rafal]

Hello, Justin!

First of all let me tell you I have used your generous 70% discount and bought almost all European mesh.
I have purchased and installed the NEXTMesh DEM19 Europe bundle plus most additional 19m mesh of Europe. I also have your older Europe 76m mesh installed as a standard.
All in all it looks really excellent, congratulations on that! I made a flight LOWW-LOWI-LOWW last night and the Alps looked absolutely gorgeous. Thank you, Justin!

I have two problems though which I would like to ask you about.

1. The first is the so called ground 'tearing'.
I did see it before but now after installing the new detailed mesh it intensified a lot and I can see it almost all the time around me.
Here is a compilation of the problem 'photographed' over southern Poland:



Of course the tearing disappears when coming closer to it.

2. The other problem is mountain lakes which are now roughly cut off the surrounding mesh.
Here is a screenshot taken in the Tatra Mountains to illustrate what I mean:



I fly FS9.1 with all settings maxed (I currently have a very good rig) and here is the TERRAIN part of my fs9.cfg:

[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000
TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21
TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8
TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5
TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.0
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4

The other essential terrain addons I have are:
- Ultimate Terrain Europe (with all existing patches)
- Ground Environment

As for the mesh, I have now three layers of your FSG mesh (76m, 38m, 19m) all in the Sceney\World\Scenery.

Do you have any advice or recommendations on how to solve or at least reduce the problem?

Thank you very much in advance,
Rafal

[JustinFSG]

Hi Rafal,

The tearing is a result of the LOD gap between the higher resolution you have installed and the very low res default terrain.  This is fixed (or greatly minimized) by installing the intermediate LOD products, i.e., 153m/306m/612m products, available at the FSG Store

http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=153m
http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=306m
http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=WRLD
http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=DVD9

The raised lakes are a result of erroneous default lake elevations and can't be addressed by terrain mesh because the lake flattens always override the terrain mesh.  These are addressed by using Flight1s UT Europe product

http://www.flight1.com/products.asp?product=uteurope

Hope this helps

jt.fsg

[Rafal]

Hello, Justin!

Thank you for your prompt response.
Unfortunately I have found more anomalies.
This is my what home airfield EPZR in Poland looks like now:



The grass runways are floating in the air together with the airplane. The lake, again, is cut off the ground.

These are addressed by using Flight1s UT Europe product

As mentioned in the above post, I do have UTE installed and patched if this is what you mean.

This is fixed (or greatly minimized) by installing the intermediate LOD products, i.e., 153m/306m/612m products, available at the FSG Store

I have your 76m, 38m and 19m meshes. TBH I had no idea that is not enough.
So the only choice now would be to purchase the mentioned products? And one of them (then which one?) or all (I fly 90% time in Europe, so I mean the eastern hemisphere)?

Best regards,
Rafal

[JustinFSG]

Hi Rafal

I'm not sure if UT has coverage in Poland?  if not, that is a default lake.  As noted previously, the lakes have a flatten/elevation parameter that always overrides the terrain mesh under it, so it cannot be addressed by fixing anything to do with the terrain mesh.  If UT has coverage of Poland, that lake would have to be addressed by some sort of adjustment to the Lake elevation.

Same with the runway.  The airport property polygons have a flatten/elevation parameter that always overrides the terrain mesh elevation.  But in that case, if the runway is floating, there is something amiss with the flatten parameter of the airport property polygon.

If you did the default install, there may be a layering problem with that airport.

The tearing has always been a problem with FS2004 due to the way the terrain engine displays terrain mesh.  Higher LODs have shorter visual range.  Lower LODs have longer visual range.  The tearing results from 76m terrain having a certain visual range, which then has an abrupt transition jumping all the way up to 1223m with the default terrain.  If you fill in that abrupt gap with intermediate resolution terrain of 153m, 306m, and 612m, the transition between 76m and 1223m becomes much more gradual and the tearing is address.  It's like concentric circles.  You have the 19m, 38m, and 76m close in, then it jumps all the way out to 1223m.  That big gap between is what causes the tearing.

Your best bet is probably the Europe and Africa DVD, which also gets you the free World Buffer Terrain DVD.  This will fill in all those gaps in Europe and Africa.  With the current Half-Off TAKEOFF coupon, and any points you may have accumulated, less than $10.  Be able to download them immediately, plus have the DVDs as an archive.

http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DVD-EU-AF&Category_Code=DVD9

Or, to get the World Buffer DVD only . . .

http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=DVD-BUF

Or, there is this that would help:

http://www.fsgenesis.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=WRLDDEM&Category_Code=WRLD

Justin/FSG

[Rafal]

Hello again, Justin!

I'm not sure if UT has coverage in Poland?

Yes, it does. After many simmers' (including myself) requests Eastern Europe was added as a separate patch.

Thank you for your detailed explanations about tearing and mountain lakes. I have learned a lot from reading them.
I have also contacted Alastair of Ultimate Terrain, who was also very kind to explain the problem with lakes.

I have just bought and installed the downloadable version of the Worldwide Mesh. Not 70% off like yesterday, but 50% is still a great bargain! 
I will test it in a moment or tomorrow (looks like it is 1 am in Europe now) and let you know it the tearing disappeared.

Have a good night!

EDIT:

OK, of course I could not resist and checked the newly installed worldwide mesh.
Well I cannot say the tearing disappeared. I can still see it here and there, also in strange places like on mountain slopes (Babia Gora here):



But I have an impression the tearing is more rare now, so any improvement is worth its price. Thank you!

I have noticed one more strange thing which is occasional pikes which will disappear once I fly closer to them:



I have no idea what it is. When I was compiling a mesh on my own some time ago, there were pikes which I had to eliminate with a special patcher.
But they were not disappearing and these are. 

Once again have a good night and a nice Saturday (a warm one, here it is going to be some -25C)!

[Rafal]

Justin,

Do you think buying your LOD7 and LOD8 for Eastern Hemisphere (North) would remove the tearing completely?
And if the answer is YES, I must say the product maps are so tiny I cannot see if the cover the whole Europe. Do they?

Thanks in advance!
Take care,

[JustinFSG]

HI Rafal,

Check your private messages . . .

jt.fsg

[Rafal]

Justin,

Thank you very much for your help!
Both your products and your support are top notch.

Take care,