Autogen building clustering

[johnfromoz 0]

I've suddenly had an issue I've never seen mentioned before and, what's more, can't find reference to, at least on search terms I used. Given my poor choice of terms, a picture might be a good thing! The issue here is the unnatural clustering of default autogen buildings. Firstly, they are not arranged in the usual halfway logical way, in grids or along lines, but appear to have been flung onto the landscape in random blobs, often with buildings overlapping each other. Secondly, the location shown is outback Australia, and there should be no buildings in sight - I know, I made the landlass and have used it in earlier FS9 installations with no issues. Those chaotic hamlets really ruin the effect of a scenery! It started appearing recently, mainly in Australia. Some was in areas I had landclassed myself, but some not. It's also shown here and there in North America, in places where I have no third-party landclasses. Unfortunately I can't relate it to something recently installed, because it appeared after I had installed sceneries for Europe, South/Central America and Asia as part of an ongoing restoration of my FS9. And I swear I have had reinstallation up to the eyebrows! I'm plumb out of ideas. Has anyone seen this, or got a suggestion?

[Dave Morgan 68]

Hi John, You're right- it doesn't look right at all... The layout of autogen on each terrain texture tile is fixed and my guess is that this poor arrangement appears globally in your installation, wherever that landclass is showing. You can examine (and edit) the arrangement for any tile with the Autogen SDK. It's not 100% intuitive to use but pretty close. I suspect one or other of your recent additions has replaced a few of the earlier terrain textures or autogen files with something that has the bad arrangement of autogen. The change will be global regardless of which geographical areas you have installed recently, the layout being the same for every instance of that texture tile. Sorry to be vague... I'm having a teabreak at work so can't refer to my FS installation. The files that define the placement of autogen as I recall have *.agn suffixes, and pretty well match the texture tiles' *.bgl filenames. Search your installation for *.agn and take a look at the 'Date Modified' column of the folder's window. That may give a pointer to which have been modified or replaced... or possibly incorrectly renamed. Cheers,D

[johnfromoz 0]

Thanks Dave (I remember work! I hear people still do it ;) ) Looked at my AGN files in World/Textures and nothing modified later than 2008. I don't think any live anywhere else. Back that far, I didn't have this problem, it's just appeared over the last few weeks. That does give me an idea, though. Rather than reinstalling I might try to just replace the World/texture .agn (and perhaps texture tiles) from the original disc. Thanks for the inspiration - I am still open to input if anyone happens to have encountered this but that's a place to start, and I didn't have one before!Hope your tea didn't go cold!

[Jim Robinson 122]

It almost looks like the houses are clustered as if they were supposed to be a stand of trees rather than of houses. I don't think it would be possible for an .agn to display houses in place of trees though, because vegetation and buildings are 2 different things in the annotator. Where is the exact location of the screenshot, I'd like to check it out in my own sim? As long as you're restoring the default .agn, you may as well restore the entire Scenery\World folder, and maybe the main FS9\Texture folder + default.xml as well. Doing so will only overwrite default files, leaving any 3rd party scenery/textures intact. Then get VOZ :( Jim

[johnfromoz 0]

It almost looks like the houses are clustered as if they were supposed to be a stand of trees rather than of houses.

Thought crossed my mind, but they are too disordered even for trees.Rhe shot is near Blinman, South Australia, a minute or so west of the airfield (on the racecourse) - unfortunately not a default field so unless VOZ has it, you may not! It happens in a lit of places - Goolwa airfield YGWA has the same all around it. It's occurring over wide areas - for example I flew Hawker, Wilpena Pound and Blinman and these clumps were dotted across the landscape. It should be open country with big empty fields or bushland, roadside trees, and occasional small towns.

Then get VOZ

:) I did try VOZ through a few versions and gave up on it. Its file system was too chaotic for me, I couldn't be bothered sorting it out if I found a better scenery to replace one of theirs. Didn't like fiddling with the control panel either. Wasn't my scene - not to detract from the immense talents of John Venema and the very reputable designers who contributed, but I like more control over installation than it gave me. John V. clearly made good use of the experience in ORBX, which is beautifully constructed. I don't use FSX myself.

[johnfromoz 0]

All fixed, once you guys got me thinking the right way! I had (by some flash of psychic ability, saving me going to the discs) a zipped folder of the default scenery/world/textures and just copied all the agn and their related bmps across - left alone the water textures and others I had replaced with third party stuff. I noticed in the course of it that a handful of agn files were much smaller than the originals, about 1/3 their proper size. How that happened I can only guess. Wear and tear? A dirty trick in some auto installer? Thanks for helping me dust off the FS cells in my brain!

[Jim Robinson 122]

Yep, you must have worn out your .agn :( Hard telling, but there are a lot of apps that overwrite those textures and .agn files, GEPro, Bird's Eye View, FSScene, and VOZ itself to name a few. Something probably placed new .agn files there to match some custom landclass textures at one time, and then those LC textures got overwritten by something else that was intended to use the default autogen so therefore didn't update the .agn files. It's great that you had the backup, I keep one too and it's come in handy more than once. Jim

[johnfromoz 0]

I always suspected bumping against the ground in FS would chip the pixels... But it was remarkable that I fretted over this for a few weeks and in a couple of days after posting here, the bits fell into place! Been away from FS too long, losing my rapport...

[gwillmot 31]

Been away from FS too long, losing my rapport...

I've lost my keys ...... and am in the process of losing my mind ..... but I don't believe that I've ever lost my rapport. Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever owned a rapport. Isn't that a model of a Ford? ..... KIa? ........

[Dave Morgan 68]

I always suspected bumping against the ground in FS would chip the pixels... But it was remarkable that I fretted over this for a few weeks and in a couple of days after posting here, the bits fell into place! Been away from FS too long, losing my rapport...

I'm sure falling bits is never a good thing where flight is concerned. I'm glad the problem's solved. (The back-up is a wonderful thing, isn't it?)

I've lost my keys ...... and am in the process of losing my mind ..... but I don't believe that I've ever lost my rapport. Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever owned a rapport. Isn't that a model of a Ford? ..... KIa? ........

* Chuckle*

[johnfromoz 0]

I park my small Rapport next to my immense Charisma! Is this thread getting out of hand so soon? Then my work here is done!