instant blended ground textures

[Bortdafarm]

here's a tip i've just belatedly stumbled across for FSSC
i've never used the stock in-built FSSC runways because i feared they might be the same as the roads (which are pretty poor)
but the runways are excellent with transparent edging that blends nicely into the surrounding scenery (no VTL "visable texture lines":iidea: )
all you need to do is place a runway/ grass/ dirt/ concrete /etc then alter the length and width to place it as a ground texture and bingo one click "blended" ground textures ...im sure it must have been mentioned before but it's new to me

here's a quick screenie
grass runway on left concrete runway on right nicely "feathered/blended" edges

http://www.ebort.com/vonbort/bgtex.jpg

[Bortdafarm]

:icon29: :) that explains it ..i must admit i was sat here wondering why on earth i hadn't noticed this before ...then i remembered i'd recently up-dated FSSC so that's why it seemed so new! i never bothered to check if the stock runway set up had been improved..

anyhuw it's great stuff for newbies like "mon self" and certainly helps remove the "living room carpet" effect that so often ruins a nice airport strip etc...i'd just tried an alpha'd ground texture for the area and couldn't get it to work (no transparancy) so was trail and erroring things just to see if anything looked ok...

i'll keep my eye open for any of those glitches ..
it has to be a boon tho for the more casual non expert scenery designer...
a nice surprise...the good thing about it that the bigger/wider you make the "runway" the more pronounced the feathered/blending becomes (as the texture is stretched further) so it's a nice effect for experimenting with..
i had a series of stock FSSC roads underneath the "runway" which showed thru it slightly and were effectively blended by it into the scenery ..sadly my old PC ran out of steam at this point so they had to be trimmed out..but that's handy allso

[MaskRider]

Hi Bort,

I think you must have seen my deleted post. After rereading it, I thought that it sounded a bit "know it all" so I dumped it. Hehe. :D

Anyway, I have a question. Those runway textures that you are using- isn't that grass/dirt texture normally or originally anyway an FS2K2 runway texture? Or is that something new that came with some upgrade to FSSC?

Chris

[Bortdafarm]

he he!! no worries Mask' it sounded ok :icon29:
i'm reckoning that the runway textures must be stock to FS2k2 as FSSC didn't export the textures with the bgl so they must allready be in the game..it's FSSC v 1.5.11 so im not sure which things are new to this version (my previous version was ancient lol)

[MaskRider]

Doh!!

I just noticed that this is a thread in the Landscape forum!

I was clicking into it from the index page and thought it was a post from the CFS2 forum!

Jeez, I was racking my brain trying to figure how in the world you were getting those FS2K2 runways textures to show in CFS2. Its a screenie from FS2K2 not from CFS2!

That splains it.

You have however, inspired me to try once again to figure out how to get those FS2K2 runways texture to work in CFS2.

If anyone browsing this thread already knows that this is an impossible to solve problem, please head me off at the pass before I get too deeply involved!

:D

Cheers,
Chris

[MaskRider]

Been playing around with these this evening.

I think I may permanently swap a couple of them in as substitues- probably for the round end capped coral and dirt runways that I never use anyway.

Also, they might be kind of nice for the Euro Theater guys.

Attached are a couple o' screenies:

I want to play around with the end cap masks a little more then I will upload them for public consumption!

:D

Unfortunately I don't think that CFS2 will let us use anything but the 5 hardwired blended runway codes 64,65,66,67 and 68. I will play around with it a bit more but I don't think that my poor powers are up to the task of a work around.

Nevertheless there will be 18 different textures to choose from.

Cheers,
Chris

[Bortdafarm]

nice one Mask':icon29:

[JDTinballs]

Hey Maskrider,

They could be done as theatre sets, substituting the coral etc, for Med, ETO, etc. Would be very handy for those with Multi install.

Jamie