Learning Ground2K

[RWILLS]

Managed to install Ground2K on an old laptop (Windows 7) and had my first go at learning how to use it.

Thought I'd start a thread in case anyone else is also thinking of trying Ground2K.

Am following the Sander De Cocq tutorial, which seems fairly clear so far, although a few things took a while to work out.



First attempt was to try to put some sort of simple breakwater at Plymouth - attached, seems successful so far!

I particularly wanted to try to do something about the harbour area at Trincomalee/China Bay so may have a go at that next.

[UncleTgt]

I am thrilled to find somebody else willing to try their hand at creating scenery using G2K!

I've attached some of the tutorials/notes I've acquired over the years. Hope these help a little.

My single piece of advice is to save back up copies OFTEN.

G2K has no ability to undo, & large areas can take a long time to compile (some of the Solomon islands took almost an hour to compile). To then find there's an error with a line somewhere, & your bgl cant be generated is somewhat frustrating - doubly frustrating if your last back up was more than a day ago --- I speak from (bitter) experience here !!!

Back up, make some changes, save a copy, try it for compiling (rinse & repeat frequently!!!)

[Shessi]

Hi RW,
Great stuff! Glad there's someone else taking on some CFS2 challenges, and thank you for the Plymouth breakwater.

As UT says, save and save often....as when a prog throws a wobbly..you don't have a melt down having not saved (...but I will when I've just done this bit) all evening!! lol.

Cheers

Shessi

[RWILLS]

Thanks for that - I'll have a read through.

Attached is my first effort at improving China Bay - Trincomalee.

My understanding, from what I've read so far, is that I can't create water that joins the sea, as this will cut through an existing land polygon (?), so I'm aiming to leave a narrow strip of land (where there is actually a bridge now - Kinnya Bridge).

The conversion of decimal degrees to degrees, minutes, seconds, within Ground2K, doesn't seem quite as expected, so still some experimenting to do.

Somehow I've also managed to produce a _9.bgl file this time as well as the _3.bgl file, - not sure how/why that happened, or what I'm supposed to do with it?

[RWILLS]

I'm not having much success with trying to create an airfield. Have gone through the same process as before but nothing shows in CFS2.
I've not managed to break CFS2 yet though, which is encouraging!
Attached is basic drawing of the correct location for Ngoro airfield in Java where the 17th PS were based in Jan/Feb 1942.

[UncleTgt]

It is possible to create a LWM water poly that joins the sea, using implication (see ground2k_us pdf I attached earlier for how this works), but it's not ideal.

It's better to first draw a water lwm to cover the entire island, then draw in a new land lwm that includes the river inlet. But then you're creating an entire island, & that's a much bigger project than you might want to undertake...

The _9.bgl means you've drawn at least 1 vtp2 line. The tool to use to find it is Jim Keirs LWM Viewer. You can select the _9.bgl to view it, this should give you an idea of where it is in your G2K project.

[UncleTgt]

Unfortunately you'll struggle to create airbases using G2K.

The tool you need is FSSC. This let's you create runways, AFD & A16N flattens.

I think the tutorial by Maskrider is the best starting point regarding blended airfields.

[kdriver]

Thanks for that - I'll have a read through.

Attached is my first effort at improving China Bay - Trincomalee.

My understanding, from what I've read so far, is that I can't create water that joins the sea, as this will cut through an existing land polygon (?), so I'm aiming to leave a narrow strip of land (where there is actually a bridge now - Kinnya Bridge).

The conversion of decimal degrees to degrees, minutes, seconds, within Ground2K, doesn't seem quite as expected, so still some experimenting to do.

Somehow I've also managed to produce a _9.bgl file this time as well as the _3.bgl file, - not sure how/why that happened, or what I'm supposed to do with it?

Hi RW,

As UT mentions, I find LWM Viewer indispensable for redoing coastal scenery. If you navigate to the area you want to modify using LWM Viewer, you can obtain your NW/SE coordinates, the coastline, rivers and roads.

Here is the bitmap I used for modifying Zeebrugge. After excluding the bits I didn't want, the green lines are the new coast, harbour and canals.

[RWILLS]

Hi RW,

As UT mentions, I find LWM Viewer indispensable for redoing coastal scenery. If you navigate to the area you want to modify using LWM Viewer, you can obtain your NW/SE coordinates, the coastline, rivers and roads.

Here is the bitmap I used for modifying Zeebrugge. After excluding the bits I didn't want, the green lines are the new coast, harbour and canals.

That looks useful.
I'm still making no progress with shorelines, - and a couple of other bits in Ground2K such as re-mesh don't seem to work (for me). Will have another go it that.

FSSC seems very user-friendly/robust to use, I've created some basic runways/airfields (attached) , and thinking about trying the MR Blended Scenery tutorial. I also had a thought that the polygon tool could be used to place a masked/blended bitmap, but only if the 4 quadrants of the bitmap could be swapped (diagonally) accurately?

[UncleTgt]

Check the pdfs I attached at post #2.

There's a note in the relevant part of the ground2k_us document that suggests nobody has ever got re-mesh to work - I certainly never have got any results with remesh, having to resort to creative use of A16N flattens instead ...

Are you checking the vtp1 box in the "line" tan in G2K?
Vtp2 lines are something else that just doesn't show up in CFS2.