Can the Dubai airport polygon/area be reduced?

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:42 am

Hi Martin -

I've been trying to modify the autogen for Dubai to resemble something more like it is now (the extended city areas, the fact that the airport is surrounded by mid-rise buildings villas/housing or industrial areas, and the strip southwards along the coast past the Palms developments - and also get the inland areas looking more like desert and less like those grey/green blotches we get by default). My problem is that to the north and south of the airport, adjacent to the perimeter and out to each side by maybe 2km, no autogen appears. Unfortunately it is these bare areas that I'd most hoped to populate with autogen!

viewtopic.php?t=1680 has a picture of the airport as it is now, and

is the image of how the airport appears. The soil-sand area that covers the airport also seems to have a similar patch to the north and south - a small thread of underlying city textures also seems to show through some gaps in this masking layer.

Is there any way to remove these areas to north and south, and perhaps shrink the exclude to encompass the airport more "tightly"? Anything I can do for myself?

If it is something you might be inclined to do, please note that the eastern boundary is now where the highway cuts across this featureless brown area. Anything towards the airport (but only in line with the runways) can stay that way because it is just building works, and not suburbs. Autogen wouldn't be precise enough to stop buildings coming into the approach zone if the exclude was too far in.

Post by **martin[flytampa]** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:52 pm

Not 100% sure but see what happens when you remove these files:

land_*.bgl

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Wed Aug 22, 2007 6:01 am

Hi Martin -

Apologies for coming back late - summer, holidays, etc!

I did that experiment before I first wrote.

The various land files sure enough remove the large sandy patches, however the airport gets city textures underlying it (slightly faded back by your overall "dust" layer") and the harbor area gets changed completely, the creek to the south gets re-routed away from the bridge, and a couple other adverse changes like that. Also, the autogen stays away from the airport because there's a large square or rectangular exclude (made by Land_ex.bgl) suppressing them. Swapping out that BGL also puts default buildings back onto the airport.

Land3 restores the creek (but not the park/golf course) to its correct position.
Land5 brings in the large flat areas of nothingness (!) and adds some landmarks, including an island in the creek where it curves south. It gives the airport polygon the right color.
Land9 restores the harbor area

Looks like Land5 could lose the textures outside of the airport boundary without too much heartache. I could lose land_ex.bgl too, but for the buildings on the airport. It might be necessary for me to try making my own excludes for the airport area, maybe 4 or 5 large squares along the runway lines (they orientate NS-EW so there'd be sawtooth edges that I'd need to fill in with progressively smaller excludes). Unless there's a way of making odd-shaped excludes?

I assume the flat areas were to keep buildings away from the airport? Maybe help frame rates?

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Thu Aug 23, 2007 2:42 am

Just an update on where I'm at - I left out "land5" to get rid of the barren wastes to north & south and I'm kinda living with the building textures on the airport base for now, and I've managed to put autogen closer to the airport by swapping out your large exclude square and replacing it with about 15 N-S exclude "slices" that cross the airport diagonally (after all, the airport is NW-SE). It means I've managed to wrap the airport more tightly in the excludes. On the ground, the area around the airport now looks somewhat more urbanized.

I may need to re-do the excludes to fine-tune the autogen, and I still need to figure if the default airport polygon (the one visible in TMFViewer, if you've used it) can be shrunk also. The default airport polygon goes out way too far to the north-west and it seems to suppress autogen, it also covers an autogen grid-point (spot where TMFViewer lets me place autogen) on the southern boundary of the airport and seems to suppress a large chunk of a-gen there too.

I know I could always annotate a real photo of Dubai with realistic autogen, but hey, one step at a time!

A version of Land5 that didn't have those large wastelands to north & south of the airport, and just provided the airport base texture, would be useful. Even without autogen buildings the ground textures near the airport would look somewhat better.

When I make some genuine progress with autogen I'll post a screenie.

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 10:26 am

I thought I should write to say where I got with this.

I made a version of Land5 that allowed the city autogen ground textures to fit in, but the autogen didn't appear because the scenery excludes for various bits of the airport suppressed autogen in a square around them. For objects at the edge of the airport this had a big effect on the autogen.

I ended up planting about 500 default buildings using SceneGenX to create the effect I needed (eg warehouses and industrial buildings beneath very short final on the 12s, and the mid-rise to the south). I can't see any way of moving the skyscrapers off the coast to the Sheik Zayed road inland, but that's okay!

Fiddling with autogen made no difference - although I at least got to create a better autogen Dubai than the FS default for the areas further out from the city.

Sylle · Post by **Sylle** » Sun Oct 14, 2007 4:11 am

Sounds interesting!
Please keep us updated

S.

TJC · Post by **TJC** » Sat Jan 19, 2008 3:21 pm

Mage wrote:I thought I should write to say where I got with this.

I made a version of Land5 that allowed the city autogen ground textures to fit in, but the autogen didn't appear because the scenery excludes for various bits of the airport suppressed autogen in a square around them. For objects at the edge of the airport this had a big effect on the autogen.

I ended up planting about 500 default buildings using SceneGenX to create the effect I needed (eg warehouses and industrial buildings beneath very short final on the 12s, and the mid-rise to the south). I can't see any way of moving the skyscrapers off the coast to the Sheik Zayed road inland, but that's okay!

Fiddling with autogen made no difference - although I at least got to create a better autogen Dubai than the FS default for the areas further out from the city.

Any chance of a few pics of how it looks now?

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:33 pm

TJC wrote:
Mage wrote:I thought I should write to say where I got with this.
Any chance of a few pics of how it looks now?

I'll try to put some time in to create a few images of what's there in my setup. I was trying to create the island projects (the 3 Palm developments plus "The World") using Google Maps to give me approximate placings, but for some reason nothing shows up (I'd even be happy just superimposing the GMaps image onto the sea!). For the time being I've abandoned that idea because I was wasting too much time on it. The "planted" buildings plus the revised autogen look okay, but the skyscrapers on the coast kinda bug me and I just don't have the skills or the time to figure how to shift them. I also made a version of the Burj Tower but got it all wrong (only 2000ft tall, not 2500ft - http://ssqq.com/archive/vinlin23dubai.htm). There's more to do with Dubai than I have the time for, to be honest. I'll post up some images in the week, time permitting.

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:01 am

Okay - the description for images is above the image(s) in question.

First 3 shots are the area to the south of the airport. The Burj tower (my cheesy mockup of it) is where the Sheik Zayed Road developments should be, rather than on the coast.

This is the industrial area to the end of the 12s (NW of the field) - predominantly lo-rise and warehouses. The road uses smaller buildings for a more "hotch potch" kind of look. Beyond the placed buildings is autogen (my revised version using a home-made landclass). I've wrapped the airport in about 12 exclusion strips that wrap tight around the boundary so that autogen gets as close in as it can.

Next - the industrial lo-rise as it might look for an airplane approaching the 12s.

The area to the north of the airport - this is a series of square developments that I've made somewhat overscale. If I could make photo-scenery there'd be enough terrain interest to allow me to make the buildings smaller than they are here.

The industrial road that runs beneath short final for the 12s. Home-made VTP line.

The industrial road beneath the 12s, as seen from the NW taxiway at the airport.

I hope these describe it well enough. I also got autogen closer in at the other end of the runways also, but at that end is where the runway extension work is going on, and the real airport is considerably different to the FT rendering now (especially in the Royal and airshow/executive area). Autogen is only very approximate anyway, there's only so much control anybody can exert over it, which is why the closer-in buildings are placed.

The airplane, BTW, is the Carenado Mentor.

TJC · Post by **TJC** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:22 pm

Looking good so far.
Are you planning to continue or is this as far as you're going with this project?

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:30 am

I planned to come back to it and I assembled a photo for the Dubai coastline because I wanted to create the palms (Jumeira - smallest, Jebel Ali and the Deira one - largest, but on which the work has halted at least for now) and "The World". However I looked at what I was attempting and thought I'd probably avoid it because of the sheer amount of work involved. I've never designed a scenery and I have too little time or inclination to learn the process in any depth.

This is how things go for me. I decide "let's put a picture down" and after some struggling I will prevail. But things don't end there. I see the flat images of buildings and I see that autogen has been suppressed. So I start planting buildings one by one, and then the problem becomes one of where to stop. I can't do just the Sheik Zayed Road - it'd look stupid all by itself, so I populate more and then the palms start looking flat and I start building there too. Plus, Dubai is full of individualistic architecture (the joys of slave labor, captives no longer to masters but to bits of paper!) so a jumble of autogen or planted MS default monoliths is really a joke.

I know myself well enough to figure when to stop!

I'd hoped to lay down the photo and then use autogen annotation to make an approximation of the structures (ending up with a bunch of photo tiles and a corresponding set of AGN files) but then I could never release it due to copyrights on the images and its way too much work simply for my own benefit. The photo started out designed simply to be a spatial reference for placing the palms, so the idea of turning it into the ground textures and annotating autogen is evidence that my ambitions had already started to creep forwards and threaten to make a fun project into a long slog.

I can see why Martin stopped with the city at the place he did.

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:23 pm

Well, I did the Palms and The World after all. I can also bring up Martin's City2.gmax file and I've moved that group of buildings inland to where the Sheikh Zayed Road really is. I posted an image of the Palms etc in a new thread. Unfortunately one of the land files that the Dubai scenery uses creates a coastal glitch in the region of the Jebel Ali palm (just south of the Jebel Ali port) which I'm at a loss to correct, at least for now.

So I lied, and persisted with it anyway. It might even be released sometime.

TJC · Post by **TJC** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 3:10 pm

Mage wrote:Well, I did the Palms and The World after all. I can also bring up Martin's City2.gmax file and I've moved that group of buildings inland to where the Sheikh Zayed Road really is. I posted an image of the Palms etc in a new thread. Unfortunately one of the land files that the Dubai scenery uses creates a coastal glitch in the region of the Jebel Ali palm (just south of the Jebel Ali port) which I'm at a loss to correct, at least for now.

So I lied, and persisted with it anyway. It might even be released sometime.

Glad to hear it Mage.

Id be happy to help you test it if you need it.

Mage · Post by **Mage** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 4:21 am

TJC wrote: Glad to hear it Mage.

Id be happy to help you test it if you need it.

I might take you up on that. Martin gave me the files to help reduce the airport polygon and I've identified the coastal glitch at Jebel Ali and might be able to correct it today (presently I'm just making things worse). The versions I've created are quite different, but based on Martin's work, so he must have a say on the landclassing and VTP stuff that I did. I've added more roads, reduced some "parks" (that use the golf course texture) and of course took away the sandy areas north and south of the airport.

The question is as always, where to stop. A few people might enjoy flying over the Palms, but is it worth all the time & effort to put buildings there when all I'll ever do is approach into Dubai itself, and perhaps glance over at the Sheikh Zayed road on short final.

What I may end up doing is just the hi-rise on SZR and also over at Dubai Marina - unless sometime I get really incredibly bored.