Vfr Germany And Nextmap Promesh Compatibility

[Majick 0]

Hi,

I tried to use NextMap Promesh 5m mesh (from FSDreamscapes) with VFR Germany, as I have done this successfully in other areas of the world before. However, it produced some strange effects, such as water plateaus at Edersee, mismatches between ground textures and elevations, and sunken 3d objects.

Do you know if this is fixable, or do I just have to accept that this mesh is no help with VFR Germany? And if the latter, is there another 5m mesh which will work with it?

Regards

Jon

[Sharrow 107]

Hi Jon

Same issues for me with the German 5m ProMesh, to the point of being unflyable really. I also have UTX, FSGlobal2008 and VFR Germany installed so trying to find where the issue is exactly is not an easy task. After some correspondence with the developer I was left with the understanding that this is something which would need to fixed by FSDreamscapes a single issue at a time(!). I easily came across 40 such issues in a couple of days of flying so have uninstalled for now. Signing up on the FSDreamscapes forum here and letting the developer know your problems would be a good place to start. The more people who do so the better the chances of something being done done about it.

btw VFR Germany includes a 35m (or 37m?) mesh which is much better than the default or FSGlobal. FSGenesis also offers mesh as can be seen and compared here, but again no better than 76m for Europe (with 19m for the Alps).

This is a shot over VFR DE West (I forget where exactly) with the 5m ProMesh installed. Looks pretty good to me so hopefully these issues can be addressed.

[Majick 0]

Sharrow,

The Promesh developer suggests Ultimate Terrain might help with the water flattens. I'm assuming when you mentioned UTX this is what you were referring to. Have you found it to help at all?

Regards

Jon

[Sharrow 107]

Yep, that is the same advice I got and no, it did not help. Elevated rivers is one thing but elevated (or sunken) airports was the bigger issue for me.

They're releasing Italy and France next I think whereas in my opinion they need to concentrate on sorting 5m Germany out first. It really should work "out of the box" with both UTX EU and FSGlobal2008/FSGenesis otherwise what's the point/-

I actually posted here about this very issue a few months ago and got no response so looks to me like no one is really using the 5m Germany ProMesh. I guess these posts will not help.

There is a dev on the VFR Germany team who is using this 5m Germany ProMesh but am not sure if he has the same issues.

[=Hollywood= 0]

Guys it's been clearly documented that the airport plateaus are a limitation of MSFS and have been an issue ever since the sim was built.

The NEXTMap ProMesh elevation data is accurate to a RMSE error of +/-1m vertically (with most errors at 60cm) and +/-2m horizontally... It is so accurate that it does show up the flaws and limitations of FSX, but those can be solved with UTX for water and also sloping polygons for airports designed by users (or enhanced airport addons) via ADE...

The airport plateau issues can be fixed with using ADE from Scruffy Duck Software at the user end and the problem with the stock FSX airports are that they can often be several miles off from their real world location (major airports are usually accurate in FSX though)... There is no way apart from manual editing and rebuilding each airport for each airport to be fixed, which is not what NEXTMap ProMesh does, it provides elevation data, it does not redesign airports and does not provide vector data...

Again the issue is not with the ProMesh or VFR Germany, the issue is with FSX limitations and there are solutions to those and we both support and encourage users to share their fixes by uploading them for each AFCAD/ADE/AFX so others can benefit.

The water flatten issues are fixed by UTX as long as you turn your water flatten settings to "SLOPE" across the board...

The problem is not with NEXTMap ProMesh nor is it with Germany VFR, it is stock FSX data and limitations that are causing the problems and we've shared the information on how to solve these problems quickly and easily but both Germany VFR and NEXTMap ProMesh Germany are doing what they are designed to do...

Also we have flown Germany extensively with the two products installed and have not found any texture/elevation mismatches... The only mismatches would be water flatten issues from the stock FSX water data which again is quickly and easily fixed by UTX and turning water flattens to SLOPE...

BTW we can't go punching holes in the elevation data that is accurate to provide a fix for inaccurate default FSX data... When airports are so far off from their real locations and users either using photoscenery or default scenery editing and punching data holes in the source data which is highly accurate is not a good approach and if you fix it for one via that approach it will break it for another user...

This is the exact same approach that Horizon has taken with their Photoscenery and 5m elevation data for England and Wales... Only end users can fix their favorite airport plateau issues and re-align airport AFCAD/ADE/AFX files and share them with the community, and it's an approach the FS community has embraced and has worked well as users understand the limitations of FSX and the default FSX data...

We're definitely not going to dumb down highly accurate data to appease and accomodate very inaccurate default FSX data...

[Sharrow 107]

Hi Dean

Thanks for your explanation and clearly you understand the technical issues better than I do. However, your seemingly intentional skirting around the real issues here by way of technical explanations is, in my opinion, meaningless as it does nothing to actually resolve anything for anyone. How about some straight talk on all this?

Raised rivers and big walls of water across lakes is a minor issue, and btw an issue which was NOT solved for me using any slope etc settings in UTX. The REALLY big issue is that just about every airport I came across was either raised on a plateau or sunken a few meters in the ground. The fact that Frankfurt EDDF is raised on a plateau is simply totally unacceptable. How many minutes would it take you to fix this? 10 maybe...?

Buying your 5m mesh for Germany is buying into a beta project Dean which then requires I fix everything I do not like. Where are these supposed updates that folks can post for the 5m Germany mesh? Is there even 1 fix out there somewhere, never mind the hundreds which are most probably needed. There is nothing on your site...

I also have to add that I went through this process with you on your own forums and once we actually got down into the details of how things can be fixed (I recall Google Earth was a possible way of sending you outlines of affected airports) the conversation pretty much ended and I was left with the distinct feeling that I am somehow taking up your valuable time with all my questions. Well, I am no longer using the 5m mesh, and nor will I until it becomes a proper product as opposed to a beta. Just remember that I do not care about how accurate FSX mesh is or is not - I bought your mesh to have the most realistic experience over Germany I can. That is all that interests me.

I hope you can accept this all as constructive criticism. I am not angling for a refund as I actually do intend to use your mesh in the future once it's ready (from my perspective, not yours) for prime time.

[Sasa 921]

The fact that Frankfurt EDDF is raised on a plateau is simply totally unacceptable. How many minutes would it take you to fix this? 10 maybe...?

The fact simply is - as already mentioned by Dean - that FSX can´t display sloped runways. Therefore airports have to be totally flat although that is not the case in let´s say 95% of all airports in the world. Thus the higher the mesh terrain resolution the higher is the risk you will encounter some strange plateaus peaking out of it as long as the airports are flat. X-Plane can do sloped runways but we are talking about FSX here. FSX can indeed display sloped 3D runways like Lukla but without any ATC, AI-Traffic, GPS-Support and about 2-3 weeks of work for each runway.

Another fact is that Dean would cause a total chaos because this is actually an airport dev´s task. Touch the sources of 1200+ airfields alone in Germany just for a mesh scenery just wouldn´t make any sense. Btw. about 2hs of work for every one of them. 10 minutes is far from being realistic, sorry.

Keep in mind that you have the same problem with all other mesh sceneries, too (FS Global, Ultimate Terrain etc...) but the higher the resolution of the mesh the higher the risk you see what this FSX limitation causes.

Bests,

Sascha

[Sharrow 107]

Ok, that puts things in perspective a bit more. First time I am hearing about how complex it may in fact be to solve the elevation mismatches at airports.

I have had FSGlobal and UTX EU for a while now and have both running without any hassles. Much lower res for sure but even with the 19m mesh for the Alps I did not come across any major anomalies.

So then this begs the following question: Why not simply compile the 5m Germany ProMesh at 10m, or 15m? If 5m shows up FSX's deficiencies so much, would 10m (or 15m) show them up less? Or is this too simplistic a view?

[limp 29]

This is a known problem and occurs in Switzeland as well, I think there's no use in blaming the devs... It's an FSX problem...

It annoys me as well that Geneva is on a plateau, especially when you live there and you know exactly how it looks and how from one end of the runway, you can't see the other end.

But I had to deal with that idea... Let's call Bill

[Sasa 921]

So then this begs the following question: Why not simply compile the 5m Germany ProMesh at 10m, or 15m? If 5m shows up FSX's deficiencies so much, would 10m (or 15m) show them up less? Or is this too simplistic a view?

No reason to do that actually. There is a nice slider in your scenery settings tab that will do the lower res for you if you set it lower.

[Sharrow 107]

Nice one Sascha! Took a bit of a round about way of getting there but better late than never.

Will give it go at 10m and see how things fare. 5m to 10m of resolution I do not mind loosing if I can make the airport elevation mismatches go away.

While I have you "on the line" can I just confirm with you if EMDA will be a part of GA11 for FSX?

[darem 106]

I have had FSGlobal and UTX EU for a while now and have both running without any hassles. Much lower res for sure but even with the 19m mesh for the Alps I did not come across any major anomalies.

Why should you? FSGlobal dopesn't improve the european mesh a bit (except the alps), and it even worsens the NA mesh in some places.

[Sharrow 107]

True, but I was responding to the dev saying other mesh products could have similar issues. I also mentioned the Alps for this exact reason (76 vs 19m mesh). My understanding is that FSGlobal does not install any mesh for North America anyway, it is there on the DVD if you want it, but is not installed by default.

[Hiflyer 129]

Srry for bumping such an old thread, but I have been recently interested in this problem as well (Plus Fsdreamscapes is doing a huge sale right now!) and I noticed that FSDreamTeam kind of avoided this problem (I believe) by providing a 5m Mesh around its recent Honolulu airport which would override any lower resolution meshes and hopefully negate the plateau issue.

I think this is a pretty neat workaround for the issue, and it would be very cool if it became standard practice for airport designers to do something similar, with all other meshes respecting the 10m limit.......

If that became a generally recognized guideline in the community, perhaps this issue could begin to sort itself out naturally?

[Sharrow 107]

Wow, this is a blast from the past!

In my opinion there is absolutely no way that any serious developer who has more than just a couple of airports is ever going to entertain such an idea for the simple reason that they really do have better things to do in life. The only FSDreamscapes mesh I have is the German 5m one which has been uninstalled for a very long time now due to the literally uncountable amount of issues it introduced into my sim.

Mathijs asked that we do not diss other developers here so I will not (ok, just a little!) but one has to wonder why FSDreamscapes are having such a massive (and it seems permanent) sale. For interest sake I just popped in to their support forum and I see that absolutely nothing has changed, at least as far as European meshes are concerned i.e. Dean is still very busy making the exact same excuses and promises I heard a long time ago - ad infinitum, ad nauseum... To this day not a single fix has ever been supplied for the German mesh and it came out a looooong time ago.

[Hiflyer 129]

Wow, this is a blast from the past!

In my opinion there is absolutely no way that any serious developer who has more than just a couple of airports is ever going to entertain such an idea for the simple reason that they really do have better things to do in life. The only FSDreamscapes mesh I have is the German 5m one which has been uninstalled for a very long time now due to the literally uncountable amount of issues it introduced into my sim.

So it seems we are left with three choices.

1) Certain developers randomly take a whack at the problem.

2) Certain developers go whole hog and do it all themselves: Scenery and mesh and the whole shebang as a single unit.

3) Most developers continue to ignore the problem, cause' its just too much bother...... (status quo)

Bleah!

Mathijs asked that we do not diss other developers here so I will not (ok, just a little!) but one has to wonder why FSDreamscapes are having such a massive (and it seems permanent) sale. For interest sake I just popped in to their support forum and I see that absolutely nothing has changed, at least as far as European meshes are concerned i.e. Dean is still very busy making the exact same excuses and promises I heard a long time ago - ad infinitum, ad nauseum... To this day not a single fix has ever been supplied for the German mesh and it came out a looooong time ago.

There is always hope.........

[cbd80 258]

A couple of quotes from Deans Feb newsletter:

'Our new NEXTMap ProMesh Europe releases also incorporate our new rendering technique for our Version 2.0 specification, which uses customized LOD model calculations which are a lot more accurate than the FSX SDK calculations.'

'We have plans to upgrade all datasets to a Version 3.0 specification which will fix the airport plateau issues once Version 2.0 coverage is complete. Version 3.0 data will be released once the manual work to correct the plateaus is completed.'

As far as I'm aware Dean has outsourced the airport plateau issues work. He's been away for the past month on personal business and is planning an office move to Guam. I guess this has slowed things up a little. But there's hope!

Chris

[Sharrow 107]

Version 3.0 data will be released once the manual work to correct the plateaus is completed.'

And there, in my opinion, lies the catch. How many hundreds, if not thousands, of airports are there in Germany alone? Who exactly is going to sit and do all this manually I would like to know? Outsourcing is fine but whoever this may be will need to be paid no doubt. Sascha suggests above that this could take up to 2 hours per airport to do! Not to mention that there are reports of just about every other European, and some USA, meshes having the exact same issues.

Oh, and this does not even talk about the rivers raised meters above the ground, lakes with big "dams" across them and other such anomolies. The supposed fix for this is to buy Ultimate Terrain X but what kind of a fix is that - having to buy another addon just to fix errors with the first?

FSX is not ready for 5m mesh and neither will it ever be, it is just too inaccurate, too primitive and has too many limitations in too many places. Don't get me wrong, when the 5m works it works very well but at the cost of so many anomolies it just does not seem to be worth it.

[cbd80 258]

I guess as well it comes down to what you find acceptable. I can live with the airport plateau's and as I fly alot of IFR I haven't noticed the effect on rivers.

For me I'm interested in seeing rolling hills and peaks on mountains. I've found the Nextmap series has had a big impact for me in the UK, and especially in Innsbruck around Austria, and Switzerland.

I agree it seems an impossible task to fix the mesh for all airports, rivers etc. Well see...

[darem 106]

Dean's mesh for Germany and VFR Germany are a perfect match. Areal photography and mesh match perfectly, so when you see sand diggings on the photo scenery, the mesh will reflect that. There ARE problems with airport plateaus, but you will find them with EVERY mesh that is better than the FSX default mesh. And yes, some rivers have wrong elevations, but these are minor annoyances compared to the added realism by the FSDreamscapes mesh. Same goes for Austria, Italy and France. If you KNOW a region from real life (let's say in Bavaria), and you compare how it looks like with the 5m mesh and the standard mesh, you will never go back to the standard mesh again.

[Shaun Fletcher 571]

I guess as well it comes down to what you find acceptable. I can live with the airport plateau's and as I fly alot of IFR I haven't noticed the effect on rivers.

I have to agree with that statement wholeheartedly, each individual has a point of where they will ignore/not ignore a certain issue.

Example, it doesn't worry me to much to find I have to wait a few seconds for a grey VC to load its textures after being in various other views.

I dont mind lots of things in FS as to me nice jaggy mountains are nice to fly around but if this means the odd lake is in a bowl then so be it, again thats just me

[=Hollywood= 0]

Konrad continues to spread disinformation. We have told him how to fix the river issues but he refused to follow our advice and blames our product for his non adherence on how to fix the river issues.

As for the sales right now, as mentioned there's a lot of personal things happening right now in my life first with getting engaged and second with a move to Guam in order to finalize my citizenship. With so much on my plate I wanted to keep things moving so we can finalize the rest of the USA and European coverage by mid 2010. Also I'm concerned about getting datasets into customers hands and with a 50% off sale I basically make $0 on each sale. On a personal note, I haven't been able to respond the last few days as first I was in a remote location in the Philippines with no electricity, charcoal pottery style stove tops and hand pumped water. That was followed by a trip back up to the office of 10 hours on a bus on dangerous roads only to come down sick due to a guy coughing all over my food just before I traveled. I've been bedridden for the last 3 days...

As for airport plateau fixes, there's a little thing called outsourcing and as has been repeatedly mentioned before is a manual process that takes time. The plateaus fixes are not the highest priority right now, finishing up coverage is the highest priority. More users are interested in actually flying than airports and as mentioned most airports have only minor plateau issues.

Also as has been mentioned before, many FS airports are not in their real world locations, and without photoscenery to match it all there is absolutely no point providing fixes for airports that are not in their real world location. Once data is available then fixes can be properly made.

Unfortunately there are those in the Flight Simulator community who have completely unrealistic expectations... To put things in context again, there's over 24,000+ airports worldwide in FSX, with the majority being in Europe and the United States... Each airport plateau blend has to be made by hand and takes about 30 mins each at a minimum. No multiply this by ten thousand airports and that equals 208 24 hour days, i.e. 625 8hr work days...

Now doing that math, what makes more sense? A) Doing manual work for years while no-one gets their own country covered with 5m elevation data, in the meantime a better sim comes out that supports sloping runways or Completing 5m coverage first while outsourcing the manual airport traces that need to be done and then upgrading the data for free in future once the data is completed

The fact is that every other mesh product out there does have plateau issues, even Justin at FSG is only doing major airports and that process involves just cutting out a big circle around each airport and allowing the underlying inaccurate FSX mesh to show through to 'pretend' there's no problem in FSX... The problem with that approach is it won't work for airports when they're correctly aligned to photoscenery...

We are very open to working with other developers and the community to solving any major issues that need fixing but at the same time we can't spend 95% of our time and energy on a 5% problem. The rivers are NOT an issue when water flattens are turned off either through the terrain.cfg file or through UTX's menus... With the 5m elevation data water flattens are no longer needed as the water is already flattened within the elevation dataset...

As for Konrad, he has flat out refused to follow our advice and hence he continues to spread lies and misinformation.

[Sharrow 107]

Hi Dean

You seem to be under the impression that your explanations for all the myriad of problems a 5m mesh exposes in FSX is something I care about. I do not, why would I? I did not buy into a beta project. If you perhaps mentioned any of these potential problems on your product purchase pages to begin with then things might be different but clearly that is never gonna happen.

Furthermore you also seem to be under the impression that your personal issues are some sort of excuse to help explain why I bought the German 5m mesh in Jan 2009 and since then not a single thing has been done about a single airport plateau even though you assured me back then that it would be. I do not care about your personal issues, just like you do not care about mine.

For me the many airport plateau's are a showstopper as they ruin the immersion factor and again what you may or may not think about this is completely irrelevant to me.

Concerning the problems with raised rivers and various other water anomolies - I did indeed try your suggestions using UTX at the time and for whatever reason (perhaps due to FSGlobal or some other setting, who knows) the problems were not solved in my case. But again, I did not buy your product to then have to try and troubleshoot my system for hours.

Finally may I (strongly) suggest that you do not attempt to make this personal by calling me a liar and suggesting I am spreading misinformation. I am just offering my opinion and if you do not like it I suggest (again strongly) that you find a more mature approach to dealing with it. I have no reason or desire for that matter to offer my opinions with regards to your products in any other place outside of this one thread - let's keep it that way shall we.

[Hiflyer 129]

Yikes!

No testosterone geysers allowed guys, so wipe that up or I am calling the cops!

I just was asking a hypothetical question, and had no idea that the little pimple I picked at was the cork on mount Krakatoa! The original point was that there seemed a possible easy band-aid solution for some popular airports. Nothing worth all this.

Besides, there is absolutely no possible way that this apparently old argument is going to be resolved here. At all.

None.

[Sharrow 107]

Devon, you get my vote for mod!

Yes this is an old argument and one I have not thought about until yesterday. I just really dislike the approach of some developers who sell products which have a lot of pitfalls without the merest mention of it anywhere relevant. It's called being economical with the truth. I have of course since learned to check the support forums before I buy anything so in that respect I am partially to blame.

Dean and myself are both big boys and we'll get over it no doubt.