Land is nothing without water!

[Jaxon]

I had asked for help last week regarding Sander`s CFS2autocoast:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?t=3047

And rhumbaflappy was so kind to help me, getting what I needed.

I was able to follow Sander`s track on his ambitious tour to bring Europe to CFS2-Pacific-Level some steps further.

Here is my result so far:

The Hamburg scenery you see is for FS2002. I have still all objects installed incl. all the newer postwar buildings.

I have no idea yet, how I will make it available for all - I think of a guideline for everyone to download the original and delete/split the parts not needed. Is that OK?

Whatever, at the moment, the newer items are a good guide to place the water, where it should belong.
I found out, the buildings were all at the right position!
I made a fault at first in thinking GOOGLE EARTH and CFS2 Lat/Long positions should be the same.
Well, they are to a certain part, but the smaller figures are in 60degrees at google and in 100degrees in CFS2. When I found that out, it was easy to calculate one type into the other.

Especially Hamburg Harbour has nice details. So going the easy way in just painting water-areas on a bmp blue and turning them into a Landwater-mask is not very accurate.
I have testflown and manually repositioned polygons half of the weekend!

I bet Sander did the same at his Amsterdam LWM.

[Jaxon]

Further I have added the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal (Ex. Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal).
It was build before WW1 out of tactical purposes only: To have the fleet faster in the Northern Sea, if needed.

This is a major landmark here in the north and I really missed it before.

The Channel was reconstructed at least two times, making it wider and deeper. Because of that, the bridges you see on old pics, aren`t there anymore. Most were replaced by modern ones.
After WW2 it was renamed officially N.-O.-K. and opened to commercial shipping. It is the waterway with the heaviest traffic in the world today and internationally known just as "Kiel-Kanal".

First pic is the entry at Brunsbuettel, second is in Kiel. Still some work to do!
In the Kiel pic, you can also see how the scenery of the Airport still does not match the coastline -one of the reasons, why I put it all down last time!

I am very happy to be able to move on now!

:wiggle:

[Jaxon]

Here I want to show, how I did that:
I used the texture extraced from the FS9 LWM-data and added details from other maps.

The first one is a downsized pic of the BMP I work with (that one is 8000x8000pixels)
The harbor is a realsize extract of the bitmap. Easy to see, small details can`t be done this way.

Next are the sources of the harbour and NOK map.

The Kiel one is not included yet.

[Jagdflieger]

Wow! Now that's one heck of a project.

[Jaxon]

Ooh, I forgot: There are no coastlines yet.
It does not make sense to create them, as long as I fiddle with the water to put it at the right position.
The roads and (textured) rivers are still the straight ones of Sanders first and only attemp of that area.

[Ravenna]

Jaxon,
Yor pics are making me drool. Such detail and such precision!!:applause::applause::applause::applause :

[blohmundvoss]

Jaxon, this is fabulous and a great encouragement to those of us who have toyed with the idea of similar projects.

At one point I looked at all the files that Rainer Duda has made for FS9 that recreate the main canals (including the Kiel canal, I remember) and river systems in Germany and thought about a private conversion into CFS2 using SdC's methods - but I've never been brave enough to try it.

Please keep up the good work and keep us updated on your progress. Who knows what it might inspire!

Cheers
BuV

[Jaxon]

Kiel has less canals (none?) than Hamburg, but interesting scenery as well.
Today I show the same area as in the second pic some posts above
(November 10th, 2008, 17:45)

The Marine(Navy)-Hafen in Kiel, Headquater of the German Navy for years.

All just 2D yet. But the airfield has another altitude as the lower harbor scenery.

On the other side of the harbor is the shipyard, which is HDW today.
There was the carrier Graf Spee built and later the famous U-Boot-Bunker Kilian stood there.

:jump:

[miamieagle]

It looking Fantastic Jaxon!:applause:

[Jagdflieger]

Fantastisch sage ich auch!

Is this something that could be done to the Panama Canal too? I almost built a "What if" campaign centered on the Panama Canal, but it doesn't go through on the south (Pacific Ocean) side.

[Jaxon]

Jagd, actually this could be done.

Please note, the water is true water not just a texture.

With Ground2K and Sanders Autocoast, it is very handy to build scenery like this, but it still requires a lot of time.

The benefit is, the water is flattened automatically, because the programs calculate fitting A16N flatten files for these aereas.

For Kiel-Canal, it has the same level over the whole distance.
The locks are only to keep the tidal range of the Northern Sea (some meters) out, while on the Baltic Sea you have a range from roughly within one meter only.

For the Panamal Canal, there are several locks on each side, their purpose is to bring the ships climbing up and down the hills.

Much more effort to built, I guess. But interesting, too!

It might be done someday also for CFS2.

----
BTW: On many of your little atmospheric preview pics, you have used berthed ships laying still around without smoke etc.

I tried to place a few in a quick mission as well, but my ones tend to flee. Also they are always under steam.
What is the trick to "put the engines out and the crew on land" for a ship laying in harbor?

[Jagdflieger]

Wolfi,

There are two ways to place ships into scenery.

1. As a moving object. I sometimes use this with two very close way points set to 0 knots. This way smoke comes from the ship, but it will not flee.

2. As a static object (ship). This is the usual way to install scenery ships and there will be no smoke from the ship.

Examples:

[Jean Bomber]

Nice ,Jaxon
the enhancement of the sceneries in cfs2 stay a unexploited big project that the Sander's work had greatly make possible .thank to him again .
I've tested autocoast last winter in the Gibraltar scenery but due to the R2v trial limitation ,I'd not be able to go at the end of his possibilities ,his setting ,using some strm and swdb bmp as background bitmap in g2k ,instead of the use of the fs9 map(that as we know is not accurate)
I stay today at the old handle method to draw that consume time but stay efficient,today I should be curious to test again the tool with some real world maps.I think the both method can be mixed in the scenery build.
Happy to see your work in progress :jump:
JP

[Jaxon]

At Jagdflieger:

Ah! I see - I used method one so far.

At Jean: Yes, it is timeconsuming but worth the effort.
The problem is: Even for the split up files, a very large area is covered - or we have to live with a bunch of sceneries patched on top of each other.
I do not like this idea, though. So I work me through the 950120 square right now.

[Jean Bomber]

Yes,Jax
I said with "mixed the both method" that it's possible ,for exemple ,in the 950120 square to make all subproject you want with more level of detail with a background image that cover a smallest area a port , an estuary or a island etc...,dealing with the exclude in G2K .
The world is so huge that all the method that work are good to use .
:ernae:
JP