LPPR Issue in V5.1?

[HenrikIsaksen]

I'm having this issue with Tropicalsim LPPR in P3Dv5.1
Problem persist with the scenery fix, anyone got any clue what might be the issue and how to fix it? Or if the Porto fix simply doesn't work?

From a height it looks fine (image link)

And as I move lower, the ground textures disappear (image link)

Until it's just the base with no custom textures (image link)

 

[HenrikIsaksen]

Update: I fixed it. Turns out I had to set scenery complexity to max ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[HenrikIsaksen]

Correction (can't edit my previous post?) had to set texture and mesh resolution to max, not the complexity

[Kevin B]

hellov HenrikIsaksen,

Thanks for reporting the problem, glad you found the solution.

Thank you for sharing.

Good flights, and have a pleasant holiday

[HenrikIsaksen]

Thanks. Seems like I've got the issue again. I'm out of ideas of what the issue could be 😞

image link

[drobinho]

Hi Henrik - I might be able to help, but I'm still learning scenery development & only own v4, so I think the best I can do here is provide some insight/guidance and hopefully steer you in the right direction.

I have been working to make old FSX sceneries work, and have encountered a few texture bleed issues that I was able to fix by adjusting the elevation data of the airport in Airport Design Editor. Are you familiar with this program?

Here are two examples (I think #2 may be closest to your issue), and you may not consider these as perfect fixes - and I'll explain why - but they make the airports usable for me, which is the objective of course!

1. Aerosoft KSMF fixed by lifting the airport up 1.001m (from 8.000m to 9.001m), adding a big flatten poly (CVX) around the perimeter of the airport, and rebuilding the ADE file properties (disabled "Draw Surface" on aprons and taxiways). (BEFORE: https://imgur.com/a/1fj2Hwn || AFTER: https://imgur.com/a/LzIlbzr)
2. LatinVFR TTPP fixed by lowering the airport down by 0.018m (from 17.698m to 17.680m), adding a big flatten poly around the perimiter of the airport, and adjusting the ADE file properties (disabled "Draw Surface" on aprons and taxiways). (BEFORE: https://imgur.com/a/Cfh840y || AFTER: https://imgur.com/a/QECG1Zv)

Some important details about these fixes:

• If you don't already have this, some proficiency with Airport Design Editor is required, and a basic understanding of the SDK tools will only help more
• They might not be considered perfect because I've found one small side effect is the 'platform effect' these tweaks create. You may be familiar with this effect, it has been around since the FSX days. You can mitigate the effects with some creative and precise drawing of the boundary
  • Here is where I tried to mask the platform as a river bank:  https://imgur.com/a/ZvFKE8G
  • ...and here is where I gave up and became super lazy (if you're wondering, yeah.. that's on my own to-do list) : https://imgur.com/a/DH94kIj
• While the KSMF fix above might not be directly relevant to your pursuit of fixing LPPR, I included it to emphasize that many of the solutions to these texture bleed problems will be unique to each airport. Given the large spectrum of dev platforms (FSX, P3D1, P3D2...), developer methods/standards, each ported-over airport will likely present elevation quirks specific to the scenery. However, rigorous tweaking and testing has given me a lot of success.

 

All that said, if you're up for trying to fix it yourself, I'd be happy to try and answer any questions you have along the way. Once you have the hang of modifying these files, it really doesn't take much time at all (launching the sim for testing is the annoying part). In the interest of post length, I'm not going to detail the exact step-by-steps right now, but am willing to try and help you see this as far as you're interested. Hope this helps!

Edited December 29, 2020 by drobinho
Numerical correction

[drobinho]

Important disclaimer that I forgot, apologies if it's obvious. Never delete the original files you're replacing; just move them to a different location or add ".off" to the end of the filename so the sim doesn't load them. That way you can always get the original files back - or reference the data in them - if you need. The last thing I want to do is encourage you to accidentally break your sim!

[HenrikIsaksen]

58 minutes ago, drobinho said:

All that said, if you're up for trying to fix it yourself, I'd be happy to try and answer any questions you have along the way.

I will give it a go. I've used ADE to fix default buildings shining through add-on scenery but not changed airport elevation or anything else.
I'd be happy to give it a try myself, but I would definetly need some sort of guide or tutorial on how to do it. 🙂

[drobinho]

Great, if you have ADE installed then that takes care of a lot of the pre-work.

Before getting crazy with elevation tweaks - which may or may not be necessary - I encourage you to go through your LPPR ADE file and disable ALL 'draw' features for ALL surfaces. For runways, that means to CHECK the "Transparent" checkbox. For aprons, pathways, and taxiways, that means to UNCHECK the "Draw Surface" and "Draw Detail" checkboxes. (Like this: https://imgur.com/a/AcuflU0).

This will take some time to do across the whole airport (at least LPPR isn't KATL or anything!), but P3D reads these data values explicitly, so there is no reason to tell your simulator to draw aprons and taxiways when TropicalSim (or other) has already provided better textures. I'm hoping this fixes your issue so you can move on to enjoying the scenery without further fiddling. Let me know how it goes. Fingers crossed here. If you still get annoying texture bleeds then we can try some edits to the elevation data.

Just a personal observation, but I have found various developers to have a range of standards when it comes to the level of detail included in ADE files. If you swim around enough in this, you'll eventually find some sceneries with duplicative/incomplete ADE settings. I can understand that, though, as some of this work is frankly laborious.

Edited December 29, 2020 by drobinho
Grammar mistakes

[HenrikIsaksen]

accidental post

Edited December 31, 2020 by HenrikIsaksen
accidental post

[HenrikIsaksen]

On 12/29/2020 at 11:15 PM, drobinho said:

Let me know how it goes. Fingers crossed here. If you still get annoying texture bleeds then we can try some edits to the elevation data.

Hey, thanks for the help! Sadly, it didn't work. It removed the base P3D stuff but there is still some sort of ground photoscenery that overlaps the actual airport. Same bleeding as before. From the sky it looks fine, but the closer I get to the ground it gets replaced by the photoscenery
Here are some pics:
Pic 1

pic 2

[HenrikIsaksen]

Update, seems that LOWERING the airport altitude did the trick interestingly enough! I lowered it a bit too much but still seems to work like a charm now!

Image of how it's currently

Pic number 2

Edited December 31, 2020 by HenrikIsaksen

[drobinho]

Glad you managed to experiment and see its effect... looks like a good improvement! Finding that perfect balance between no texture bleeds and tire sinking can certainly be tricky, with all the compiling and testing.

Friendly reminder - I'm just another flight simmer who still has a lot to learn around scenery development, so please consider this a 'trick' - at best - and not any kind of official, sponsored solution. I encourage keeping the adjustments conservative for now, because I haven't yet tested how this could impact things like PMDG/FSL/etc altitude callouts on landing. The texture bleed issue *seems* to be a matter of inches/centimeters so screwing up altitude callouts is probably an extreme case, but it's worth keeping in mind until you are more familiar with the total range of impacts.

[HenrikIsaksen]

On 1/1/2021 at 9:00 AM, drobinho said:

Glad you managed to experiment and see its effect

Hi again mate. Having a new issue on another scenery. Was wondering if you had any idea of fixing this.

Here is a picture of the issue:

Thanks in advance
 

[bobr]

Found this thread in an attempt to fix ground clipping issues with VABB (Mumbai). Adjusting elevation in ADE does the job.

Kind of off-topic, but relevant to TropicalSim's LPPR: how did you get the autogen to show up around the airport? I just get bare terrain with a few trees here and there. Are you using ACM? I have the latest version of LPPR (for v4) available on Simmarket and told it not to install ACM during installation. I instead downloaded the latest ACM (for P3Dv5) from SceneryDesign.org, but having it installed doesn't seem to get me any autogen at LPPR. Would love to get it sorted out.

[bobr]

Disregard my question about autogen. Turns out all I had to do was switch the add-on method from xml to scenery.cfg and now it all shows up. No need for ACM as it appears.

[drobinho]

Apologies on the slow response, and good to hear. Yeah my understanding is that some autogen doesn't always play well with the XML method, but I'm still wrapping my head around autogen functionality/customization. This will be a helpful insight I'm sure, so I appreciate your own follow up.

----

This is unrelated to your issue specifically, however I'm obliged to follow up on my earlier comments about updating the Draw Flags in ADE files, in case this thread continues to be referenced.

The "Reset All Draw Flags" tool in Airport Design Editor can save significant time for anyone looking to prevent default airport textures from conflicting with custom ground scenery. Of course, always create a back-up! To access, select Lists from the dropdown of ADE and select "Taxi Links." From the pop-up, select "Reset All Draw Flags" and let ADE to its thing (which may take some time depending on how many taxiways there are). No need to foolishly de-select each draw flag by hand, like I was doing for a bit!
https://i.imgur.com/qV949LM.png