Trees missing around certain runaways

[Tarik]

Hey guys, so after some updates I've noticed that around certain specific airports there are no trees anymore or almost no trees, it's like an open field with just houses and other buildings in the distance. I know some of those airports and have visited them many times, it's completely unrealistic when compared to real life scenery and frankly it looks ugly. I have no idea what happened. Before you asked, I did check my settings and they are all set fairly high so it's definitely not a low density issue. What should I do? Would verifying the integrity of game files solve this issue? I hope I don't have to reinstall everything to solve this issue...

[shadowgravy]

First, this is regarding FSX, correct? Just making sure you don't mean the new MSFS.

What "updates" did you apply? If you installed a terrain enhancement product of some kind it might be causing a change to the land class. Land class products tend to be hit-and-miss for accuracy. ORBX does a fair job rendering my local area; GEX puts far too many trees on what should be grasslands; other products have gone as far as no trees but too urban. Airport sceneries sometimes use photo terrains and I think those reduce or eliminate autogen.

[Ken "Hondo" Gardner]

Trees are generated by the autogen system of the simulator, the tree density is governed by the value in the sim's configuration file and the autogen setting in scenery setup. The autogen can be overridden by having an exclude zone for the airport written into an upgraded afcad to prevent trees being generated on the runway.

[Tarik]

Originally posted by shadowgravy:

First, this is regarding FSX, correct? Just making sure you don't mean the new MSFS.

What "updates" did you apply? If you installed a terrain enhancement product of some kind it might be causing a change to the land class. Land class products tend to be hit-and-miss for accuracy. ORBX does a fair job rendering my local area; GEX puts far too many trees on what should be grasslands; other products have gone as far as no trees but too urban. Airport sceneries sometimes use photo terrains and I think those reduce or eliminate autogen.

I mean FSX yes, not MSFS.

I overwrote the original airport files with more up to date versions to make the airport buildings less generic. Though when I did that before, it did not eliminate the tree areas around an airport. The updated versions do not use photo terrain which yes can definitely reduce or eliminate autogen.

[Tarik]

Originally posted by Ken "Hondo" Gardner:

Trees are generated by the autogen system of the simulator, the tree density is governed by the value in the sim's configuration file and the autogen setting in scenery setup. The autogen can be overridden by having an exclude zone for the airport written into an upgraded afcad to prevent trees being generated on the runway.

Maybe it's the autogen then though it's set at max so I don't understand. Trees being generated on the runway was never a problem for me. not before I updated the airport with more accurate depictions of the buildings and not after either.

[JJ FSX]

Depends on the size of the AFCAD and whether or not Trees were designed into it. Autogen trees will not go through a properly designed/leveled AFCAD, (there can be some "bleed through" around the edges). TREE objects are included or not included, in an AFCAD by design.

So if there are no Trees in the AFCAD and it covers a large area of territory it can seem as if their are no trees until you fly out of the zone of the airport AFCAD even if not using photo-real.

As has been pointed out about most photo-real not supporting autogen; I use photoreal a lot with add-on airport AFCADS, its obvious where trees are designed into an AFCAD to match reality (or not). With ADE you can view, add/edit the trees in an AFCAD.

[Tarik]

Is there a manual on how to add and edit trees in an AFCAD using ADE? I'm not familiar with it.

[JJ FSX]

Originally posted by pasictarik10:

Is there a manual on how to add and edit trees in an AFCAD using ADE? I'm not familiar with it.

Online Manual is accessed through HELP, like most programs these days.