Autogen electricity pylons visible in GenerationX Scotland North?

[flybytes 34]

Loaded Treescapes vol 6 & 8 into FSX Horizon GenX last night.

 

This morning took a micro-light for a flight originating at the Monar Dam - Scotland North (N57 24.45, W5 0.64), heading 086 over the dam & following the stream down the valley until a FSX Power Project (v4.2) electrical sub-station becomes visible. A row of pylons can then be seen heading east down the valley before rising into the hills.

 

At this point I noticed another row of pylons running almost parallel to these, but higher up the valley. De-selecting Power Project removed the lower pylons but not the other row.

 

Turning Autogen Density down to sparse or none removes this 2nd row - as it would with FSX default terrain texture.

 

These autogen pylons were visible for miles until my flight reached the GenX vol.6 scenery border with the yet to be released vol.7.

 

I seem to recall from the GenX version 1 (England/Wales) days that Horizon recommended turning Autogen Density down to 'none' - obviously this is now not an option with Treescapes as the trees will then not be visible!

 

Wonder if anyone else has noticed this effect and if it is confined to GenX vol.6 or also visible in vol.8 (Scotland South) or something unique to my system?

 

Look forward to any feedback,

 

Ray.

 

[mutley 4,487]

I need to take a look Ray but need to re-install Vol6. (I think, I had a major problem over the weekend involving a FSX reinstall)

If no-one else gets back to you soon, PM me and I will gladly give feedback.

 

Cheers,

Joe

[flybytes 34]

Thanks, Joe.

 

Seems to be a lot of Mutley Hangarians' doing FSX re-installs lately!

 

Have had a quick fly around GenX Scotland South (vol.8) with Power Project disabled and Autogen density at max + Treescapes - spotted many autogen pylons here also.

 

Have been flying around GenX vol.1-3 for years (versions 1) & versions 3 more recently without seeing any autogen pylon breakthrough.

 

As things are at the moment (unless no one else sees it), the problem is in GenX vols. 6 & 8 - will it also appear in the soon to be released vol.7?

 

Cheers,

Ray.

 

[dogtrack 345]

- will it also appear in the soon to be released vol.7?......soon to be released, Mmmm, I wonder 

[flybytes 34]

Been doing a bit of experimenting this morning - renamed the Texture folder created by Treescapes in VFRGenx vol6 05mPhoto folder to xTexture, effectively disabling it.

 

As expected, the Treescape scenery disappears, but also so do the autogen pylons.

 

Looks like GenX vols 6 & 8 may not be to blame - the ball appears to be in the Treescapes court!

 

What I now need to do is fly around GenX England/Wales with Power Project disabled, Autogen slider to max + Treescapes and see if any pylons are visible.

 

I still need some confirmation that this is a general effect & not specific to my FSX system.

 

Cheers,

Ray.

[Christopher Low 63]

Ray,

 

I seem to recall a post on the ES forum regarding electricity pylons and TreeScapes. Someone who had purchased TreeScapes stated that it was a nice surprise to see that the package also included pylons! TreeScapes does NOT include pylons, so this would seem to be related to the issue that you have noticed.

 

EDIT: I have just checked the relevant thread, and he has apparently purchased TreeScapes for all of the Horizon volumes. Unfortunately, he doesn't add where he has seen them to date.

[Kevin Firth 114]

Ill have a check on my system tonight if someone could give me some specific co-ordinates to look at pls? k

[flybytes 34]

Kevin, thanks.

 

Try my start of flight plan showing coordinates & heading from the Monar dam described in the opening post at the top of this page.

 

The autogen pylons do clash with Treescapes, whilst the Power Project pylons mostly follow cleared corridors through the woods & copses.

 

Try this coordinate :

 

N57 24.01, W4 52.25 , heading 071

 

Two rows of pylons are visible following an approx' west to east path.

The RH row of pylons originating from the sub-station are Power Project generated.

The LH row higher up the valley are autogen.

 

Cheers,

Ray

 

[flybytes 34]

Have installed Horizon GenX vol.6 onto my laptop FSX, but not installed Treescapes - no pylons can be seen which seems to confirm that it is Treescapes that is somehow allowing them to be seen.

 

Strange that only the autogen pylons show and not other autogen objects such as buildings.

 

Took a flight from Yorkshire to Brighton, Shoreham & Portsmouth which covers all three GenX areas of England Treescapes & Autogen density at max [Power Project disabled] - no pylons were seen. So the problem does seem to be confined to the Genx vol.6 & 7 areas.

 

Ray.

 

[Captain Caveman 0]

Hi guys I just finished doing a fresh OS install (win7) and reinstalled FSX Deluxe had a quick fly around while adjusting my settings and I found pylons in UK and that's without any add-ons what-so-ever hope that helps. Sorry don't know co-ords but somewhere north of EGNJ

Glen

[Kevin Firth 114]

Tested just now, had a few probs with no autogen at all until I realised I hadnt set FTX Central back to default.  With that set I got my treescapes all over Scotland North and yes around the Monar Dam as well, but there were no obvious pylons in sight.  I installed PP v4.2 and looked at those co-ordinates.  I can see the two lines of pylons.  Disabling PP v4.2 leaves me seeing the LH row of pylons while the PP generated ones disappear.  I've opened up autogen annotator and looked there at the photoimagery files for just east of the dam (12_1495_370_05mP.bgl) but I can't see any indication of autogen pylons in the treescapes agn files :s  It must be something else?

k

[flybytes 34]

Thanks again Kevin.

 

You have verified that the additional pylons are not specific to my system here.

 

Time permitting I will continue more investigation - at the very least I may learn a bit more about the inner workings of FSX.

 

Have already learnt that setting a scenery object to height above sea-level rather than the more usual height above terrain can prevent hiding any autogen scenery within the boundary box of the scenery object. Had me worried for a few seconds as I had to reference the height of the Monar dam to sea-level to prevent it bouncing around as the terrain mesh settles into position. Of course the extra pylons are well away from its boundary box and they still show when Power Proj is disabled.

 

Sent an error report to Earth Simulations and received an acknowledgment e-mail, so hopefully they will look into it.

 

I do have a gut feeling that this is some sort of interactive effect between GenX & Treescapes where the probable cause is not completely the fault of either.

 

Cheers,

Ray.

 

 

[Christopher Low 63]

Ray,

 

I have just noticed that there are huge pylons directly on top of yours near Strathaven airstrip. I do not know how far these go, but they are roughly twice the size of yours. I noticed them when I was checking the windfarms in Scotland, and there is a big one close to this airfield. Since I have Scotflight, I realised that my wind turbines were also "doubled up", so I have removed the Scotflight ones (these were also twice the size of yours, but the animation of the turbine blades was not as smooth).

 

EDIT: I will have to try and work out if these "rogue" pylons are Scotflight models, or generic MS ones. They are positioned almost exactly with respect to yours, so I suspect that they are probably Scotflight.....

[Christopher Low 63]

Further investigation has revealed that there is a second line of pylons (identical models to yours) slightly further up the hill that do not appear to correlate with any obvious ground markings. The "huge" pylons only extend a short distance either side of Strathaven airstrip, so these are almost certainly Scotflight models.

[Christopher Low 63]

I can confirm that the "huge" pylons are Scotflight models. I have identified the file that contained them, and successfully removed them.

[Christopher Low 63]

Same problem at Broomhill Farm, so I removed the "huge" pylons from the relevant file there aswell. With respect to the "double line" of pylons, it looks to me like this problem exists throughout a large part (if not all) of the VFR Scotland photoscenery with TreeScapes installed.

 

By the way, the "normal" pylons (presumably yours) are larger here than at Strathaven Airstrip. They appear to be different models, and virtually the same size as the Scotflight pylons (roughly twice as large as the other pylons that I have seen). Is this correct?

 

[flybytes 34]

Christopher,

 

The pylon model used in FSX Power Project is the default model found in the FSX model library which is also used for autogen pylons.

 

Most pylons use its default scale of 1 or smaller 0.8, but a small minority have been scaled to 0.7 or, usually where power lines cross rivers/valleys, they have been scaled up to 1.5. The scale of any particular pylon is sadly only a 'best guess' on my part.

 

I don't have any Scotflight scenery which contains power pylons or wind turbines so cannot comment on them, although I do recall reading that Scotflight had designed custom pylon models for some of their scenery.

 

The scaling accuracy of my wind turbines have often been updated with each software version when their true real-world dimensions become known - but some of the wind farm marketing organisations do seem rather shy at publishing the data!

 

As an aside to your comments, but talking of pylons I have recently installed X-Plane 10 which has pylons & connecting cables. I have succeeded in porting fsxpp v4.2 to it, the bad news is that the rotors & blades of the wind turbines have all been transformed horizontally and don't rotate, also parts of the cooling towers are missing. For copyright reasons I am not able to port over the FSX electricity pylon model, therefore no pylon network.

 

It should be said that compared to FSX, X-Plane 10's frame-rates are amazing but at the expense of my gpu core temperatures. I did discover that two fans in my PC case were not rotating. Just goes to show that FSX really does not stress the gpu which worked flawlessly until switching to X-Plane.

Reseated a fan cable connector and all is now well.

 

Cheers,

Ray.

 

 

[Kevin Firth 114]

Here's a thought? I remember there is a vector scenery folder included with the Scotland titles which I don't think is there for the English volumes..perhaps this contains the pylon data? Just a thought while I'm cooking a curry!

Cheers

K

[flybytes 34]

Kevin,

Looked at the Vectors folders a while back - presumably we are both talking about those within the Horizon GenX vol6&8 scenery - they seem to contain a few 3-d objects such as bridges, notable landmark objects etc. The England/Wales volumes 1 & 3 version 3 also have Vector folders which contain cvx_vfrgxfixes bgl files and no 3-d scenery objects, but 3-d objects have their own 3-d object folder - interesting that Genx vol 2 does not have a vector folder, neither does Genx vol 1-3 version 1 scenery.

 

I should say that I spotted the extra 'autogen' power pylons within 30 minutes of loading the Treescapes onto the GenX Scotland North scenery and  looked for and found the same with GenX Scotland South - repeated efforts to find 'autogen' pylons in the GenX vols 1-3 (version 3) have been negative. The problem certainly seems to be with Treescapes Scotland.

 

The other obvious difference between GenX England/Wales & GenX Scotland is their respective resolution levels of 1.2 & 0.5/0.6 metres/pixel which made me look at one of the limited 0.6 metre/pixel areas in GenX vol.3 (ver.3, North England), but even here I did not see any autogen pylons.

 

Cheers,

Ray

 

p.s. hope you enjoyed your curry!

 

[Christopher Low 63]

I have sent a message to Darren via the ES Help Desk regarding this, Ray. I would like to know his thoughts about this, and any possible solutions.

[Kevin Firth 114]

Ha! The curry was great just don't think my deductive skills are up to Holmsian standards..

[flybytes 34]

Kevin,

Nothing like a vindaloo to sharpen the mind! These days I'm more at the korma end of the spice spectrum .

 

Think this pylon problem will now only be solved by the guys with with access to the source codes - the best we can do is steer them in the right direction.

 

Cheers,

Ray.

 

[Christopher Low 63]

No reply from Earth Simulations so far, which is hardly a great surprise these days......