Landclass

[hawkeye52]

I have spent a good deal of time trying to answer my own question, but have drawn a blank. So I am now appealing to the FS Court-of-last-resort!

I am using Ultimate Terrain-USA. My understanding is that apart from urban areas and coastlines, the UT landclass feature does not replace FS9's default.

One of my areas of interest is the south of Arizona, from Tucson to the border. In real life, this area is sparsely populated, but the default scenery has it looking like a metropolis, complete with high-rise buildings.

Can anyone recommend a landclass product that remedies this situation?

Any help will be appreciated!
- H52

[Desert Rat]

sorry mate, no idea.

I do remember a proggy called something like EZ-Landclass or something that was, from what I read, quite easy to use to adjust landclass. Never tried it, so can't comment more, heck the name is probably wrong, lol.

Jamie

[Moses03]

Jamie is right about EZ-Landclass. I have used it myself to fix the area around my local airport and city. Pretty cool program.


FS2004 (ACOF) - Misc. FS2004 EZ-Landclass
[ Download (http://www.flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=66343) | View (http://www.flightsim.com/zview.php?cm=list&fid=66343) ]
Name: ezlc2.zip (http://www.flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=66343) Size: 755,338 Date: 08-05-2003 Downloads: 4,154
http://www.flightsim.com/i/ezlc2.gif FS2004 EZ-Landclass v2.00. EZ-Landclass is a program that allows you to change the placement of landclass and waterclass textures in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 and 2004. You can use it to add small towns that MS left out, for instance, or to correct the type of vegetation or ground cover in a certain area. Easy to use dialog boxes and project oriented scenery files are just two of the highlights of this program. Requires Microsoft Excel 97 or later. Freeware. This new release adds support for FS2004, uses FSConnect rather than FSUIPC, and now supports Waterclass textures. By Russel Dirks.

[hawkeye52]

..... heck the name is probably wrong, lol. Jamie

Actually, the name is correct! Go here » http://www.dirks-software.ca/

This MAY be my last resort, but I'm hoping it is not, 'cause it sounds like it would consume a month of Sundays. Anyhow, D/Lg now. Thanks for the tip, JDB.

- H52

And thanks to you also, Moses03!

- h52

[rich12545]

UTUSA sets urban landclass based on roads. A lot of roads like in a city will look like a city. Few roads like in a town will look like a town. Then you have the fsgenesis landclass program for the US which is very good. I combine the two and that's as good as it gets without spending a lot of time.

I know the area south of Tucson has built up quite a bit. When I was stationed at Ft Huachuca in '67-'68 Sierra Vista had a pizza joint, a drive in movie, a few apartment buildings & trailer courts and that was about it. Now it's like 25-30,000 people.

[hawkeye52]

Then you have the fsgenesis landclass program for the US which is very good. I combine the two and that's as good as it gets without spending a lot of time.

Hey Rich, thanks for the input. I have visited FSgenesis (and a few others!) and they all have mesh, but no landclass. FSgenesis does have a landclass, but it's for the entire US and I'm concerned it may short-change the area in which I'm interested. That's why I am looking for something more localized such as Arizona or the SW US quadrant.

Getting back to UT-USA, you seem to imply that if I eliminate some roads (for example, Residential) the corresponding landclass will unclutter?
- H52

[Brian_Gladden]

The FS Genesis land class was made from the more recent data sets available More recent than what MS used). Also Justin tweaked it with user input (when it was Beta freeware and even after when it went payware) and it really does make a difference. I use it exclusively except for in areas that have their own localized land class.

Finding it is the hard part. Bill Lyon's Silver Wings package had a copy of the last freeware version of the US land class that is about 99% accurate and might fit the bill for you.

I also remember someone doing photo real scenery for southern AZ that stretched from the border all the way to north of Phoenix.

[modelr]

.

I also remember someone doing photo real scenery for southern AZ that stretched from the border all the way to north of Phoenix.

That would be Blue Sky Scenery by Gottfried Razek. Go here, about the middle of the page: http://www.blueskyscenery.com/download.html It is excellent.

[hawkeye52]

Thanks, Brian and modelr. When Brian first mentioned the photo-real scenery I also thought of Gottfried R and I checked my AZ scenery where I have some of his work -- not installed, but D/L'd. From his description in the readme, none of his scenery extends far enough to the South. Nevertheless I am D/L'g his tus08lr.zip to see if it is any different from the one I have.

I've spent quite some time troubleshooting my UT install and have found the following:
1. With UT disabled and only FS9 default scenery, there are absolutely no structures in the strip from Tucson south to Nogales, and the roads are only a double lane I-19 with about a half-dozen offshoots along the entire stretch.
2. With UT activated the entire strip is "paved" with structures and interestingly, I now have UT's version of I-19 running parallel to the default I-19. Additionally, the few offshoot roads from the default scenery are also there along with UT's proliferation of connector and residential roads.
3. The double freeway problem exists all the way north to Phoenix and beyond to the west (I-10). Also, about halfway between TUS & PHX there is a double I-8.

UT is supposed to disable the default BGLs it replaces by changing the BGL extension to XXX, and indeed I see over 2500 such changes when I look. But clearly, something is still not right. I'll be posting this to the Flight One forum to see if they can help.

Just checked GR's tus08lr.zip; it is identical to the one I had. I may go ahead and install it to see how far south it extends.

- h52

[hawkeye52]

"Just checked GR's tus08lr.zip; it is identical to the one I had. I may go ahead and install it to see how far south it extends."

I installed tus08lr. It goes only about 6 miles South of KTUS, so it doesn't fill my need of covering the stretch down to the Mex. border (which is about another 60 miles further south). Additionally, it is "photo-real" which is fine for flyover country, but not very attractive if you roam down-on-the-deck.

- h52

[rich12545]

I've never seen any localized landclass south of Tucson. Landclass is something I'm very interested in and I've done searches in Avsim and FlightSim using the keyword "landclass."

Probably the best you can get is UT + FSGenesis. And that will be pretty close.

[hawkeye52]

Hi, Rich -- Just to finish up this thread...

I installed both the FSGenesis and the UT as well as the patch which allows the FSGenesis rural landclass to display in non-city areas in place of UT's. (The FSG rural is supposed to be less-urban than UT's rural.)

Well, I could not tell the difference 'tween the two "rurals". Either way, the Rio Rico & Nogales areas are 'way, 'way overbuilt. I'm tempted to use EZ Landclass to do it correctly.

- h52