The format here is that one paragraph is one stand-alone piece of information, in few cases one info is spread over to two paragraphs, but its fairly obvious to see. This makes reading everything in one go kind of "all over the place", so remember, one paragraph is one stand-alone piece of knowledge.
Paragraphs are also listed in timeline manner, first is the oldest of them all, last is the newest. Over the years I might have added some snippets in between kind of like where it would fit, but overall my recollection is that new stuff got added to the end.
Please note that while this is FS19 area topic, much of this info, roughly speaking most of it, works just as the same in FS17 or FS22, only few specific things have changed over the years, the more generic the info is then more sure you can be that it will work on any farmsim game version, generally speaking, of course

What I mean here is that just because you are currently editing lets say FS22 or even that trash FS25, doesn't mean FS19 terrain knowledge is not use to you, that is not the case, not even close. I would say almost everything in this topic, in general terms, works still the same in FS25 crap than it did back in 2019 (or well, FS25 terrain engine is destroyed so nothing works there but not going into that topic now, hah).
Plan is to create farming-simulator.org terrain tutorial page out of these, but for now these are released here in PMC Tactical Forum so everyone in the community can benefit from the knowledge.
If you have information or corrections to share, please feel free to reply into this topic, I'd love to hear from you. Now below are FS19 terrain knowledge database (so far 2025-10-10), one paragraph per info snippet, enjoy

Farming Simulator 19 Terrain Knowledge by PMC
Field square corners are bad. Yes making them round requires a lot of work with field definitions, but can be easily done using cultivator_density painting with proper size GIMP pencil.
PMCTODO smooth field edges, GIMP paint cultivator_density smooth field edges and test them in-game, then document the pixel distances like what brush size to use to paint the corner to make it suitable for FS19 vehicles and implements. GIMP painting cultivator_density field corners with 10 pixel pencil is decent result on a "tip of the spear" corner like a needle point difficult to explain, Big Bud 450 pulling Great Plains YP-2425A seeded did okay-ish corner turn there.
GIMP painting cultivator_density in PMC Texas Hereford 16km the uhm jagged corner paintings felt like a nice idea in GIMP using 20 pixel pencil, but in GE when doing field definitions they feel actually quite bad, there is huge overlap around the field definition compared to if the corner would be just the 20 pixel pencil single press spot. Not sure how they are in-game when you field work like Seed Hawk seeder how does it fit to those corners. The corner as its with that jagged edge it turns into TWO corners... I think that was really bad idea to make those, I need to make corners round and smooth instead of jagged like this. Oh well it was a nice try, don't ever do it again. Edit 2025-10-10T21:46:30Z, honestly I have zero clue what the heck am I babbling about there, two corners, huh wha?

Cultivator_density jdunn claimed in his twitch live stream that 255,0,0 work as background color, umm, no? hehe. Quote: Josh/twitch.tv/jdunn1019: soo that red is chopped straw
Cultivator_density FS19 Courseplay detects it, however if there are any "islands" it will plot course right through them. Not sure if you need to activate the islands option then hmm?
PMCTODO add to terrain design must have list; field needs to have smooth edges so vehicles/implements can turn nice and smooth in them. BUT... in real life satellite imagery shows 90 degree corners too

Railroad tracks need light colored gravel texture underneath.
Player farms as placeables: during my game-play testing of PMC Iowa Garden City 8km I quickly came to realize that using placeables to create a farm is a hassle and immediately takes away from the realism as of where buildings and silos are supposed to be in real life. I have not used "place anywhere" mod if that would help me out, but the stock game placeable location finding is horrible, you cant build tightly placed farm bin silos etc as the game just refuses to place anything anywhere except perfectly flat empty spot. Edit 2025-10-10T21:55:00Z, oh wow this is really old info, indeed using placeanywhere there is no problems placing objects where you want them. I leave this bit here for nostalgia sake, hah.
2019-04-24 it is my opinion that for example PMC Iowa Garden City 8km should have buildings HARDCODED in Giants Editor like they are in real life and players farm have the grain bin capacity available to farm ID 1 (farmId="1") and other farm ID's in similar manner when you purchase the land. How its done, as of today I do not know. Real world data terrains cannot have placeable defaultItems.xml farms setups because why make real world data terrain if you allow players to create ridiculous mickey mouse layouts.
The only way around farm yard placeables.xml (explained above) would be to farmland info layer paint the player purchasable land lots specifically without fields, like just absolutely nothing but the farm yard where the buildings are. <- umm yes, how would that change the grain bin capacity XML and realistic building placement? What the fuck, are you stupid?

Web HTML: satellite image with field numbers and another with farmland property borders visible. 2021-03-28 this is now done for all PMC terrains, so yeah hmm why even keep this knowledge here anymore?

fruitTypes and sprayerTypes XML config files control how quickly fertilizer/seed is consumed.
Decker_MMIV: You seem to not understand the difference between a TransformGroup and a Shape. Only Shape need to have clipDistance attributes.
2019-08-27 Took a look at I3D for shape clipDistance values, there is so many of them for each object, like vehicle_shop has windows, inside, outside etc... you just cannot EditPadPro (text editor) mass replace all of them to high value, that certainly would mess up your FPS for no reason. Trees however most likely could be done mass replace to: name="LOD1" clipDistance="1500" as I believe that is the lower resolution LOD which would be nice to see from far out. I don't know, needs more knowledge.
Environment.xml savegame resets the rain etc duration to beginning, ie the value that was used. So if you have 10hrs of rain in the XML, you play 5hrs so you should have 5hrs left right? Wrong, if you save and restart game, you have 10hrs rain left.
SinisterSockz "absolutely" likes to see road/street names in PDA (like in FS19 Midwest Horizons. FS19 Hankinson has them as well but they look atrociously bad copy pastes from google/maps image hah).
Fences, gates and utility poles, make them weak so that large enough tractor or combine can knock them down. This solves the issue of super annoying fences ruining your enjoyable game-play, you might end up with bunch of fallen down objects but that is much better than vehicles getting stuck and you getting frustrated.
Arthur Chapman comments on terrain developers about placeable farms https://youtu.be/Kg4f8OPGX0M?t=791 (Mercury Farm is a good example, he claims).
PMC North Dakota Greendale 4km grass looks still quite tall, not really shorter than the previous one I used, but it looks more... sparse KIND OF, not really but just somehow not so thick, almost looks like weeds at the bottom of a lake or even growing wheat crop, just looks wrong. Overall; I don't like this grass type. 2019-05-16T2159 update, this must be because mapDE and mapUS grass are different, mapUS grass looks like shit haha!
Check the grass RGB color from fruit_density AND type name from Giants Editor and document it. While you're at it, paint in GE the other grass types as well and document their RGB color values too.
32.7km x 32.7km terrain using 8192 x 8192 pixel resolution density images have ugly repeating pattern on the fruit (sugar beets in this case). I assume this is because the fruit density image is so low resolution compared to the actual terrain size. This also causes sugar beet lifter to lift like twice as much as its supposed to, same as combine harvester cutting way too much fruit. I'm sorry but 8192 res _density image is just unplayable on 32km terrain, no if's or but's about it...
UTM projection causes FS19 Courseplay and FS19 guidanceSteering (GPS) worked fields look crooked as the work is done 0/90/180/270 degrees exactly but the field itself is not. Hired workers also work on edges of the field somewhat badly, like implement only touching very small part of the field while they drive not even in the field anymore. I guarantee players will b-and-moan about it that "why is the map tilted..." but shit, what can you do with the mercator vs UTM bullshit

UTM projection with FS19 Courseplay sometimes results in field work getting odd courses, like they make no sense lets say you have a very long field but FS19 Courseplay decides to generate hundred diagonal up and down passes instead few long ones. This can be fixed by different field work course generation settings but I doubt many people even know how to do that. Edit 2025-10-10T22:16:13Z, well this is no terrain issue, its courseplay problem, always has been.
UTM projection GPS line setting along the titled field edge is a nightmare, don't even bother as you get frustrated. Even if you get it aligned with one edge, it will be most likely few degrees off on the other edge then hah. One cold hearted systematical way of course is to just get standard degrees GPS line and go through your field from top to down or which ever direction suits you, yes you will have narrow strips to work on with those headlands but once you get into the meat and bones of the field then obviously it works as expected.
UTM projection field crookedness one solution would be to always field work headlands yourself, then set off hired worker to the middle parts which don't matter in which order hired guy works them. But even then there is a possibility that if the field is really crooked hired worker makes its own passes there (difficult to explain). Hired workers always work on even degrees like explained above. Edit 2025-10-10T22:19:07Z, good old times when dude is talking about hired workers, haha!
UTM projection is very complicated issue on terrain design, in perfect world I would like to create mercator projected 8192 x 8192 meter terrains, but unfortunately we are not living in a perfect world, are we. Edit 2025-10-10T22:19:38Z, back in 2019 I listened stupid people way too much who had no idea how sphere projection works, man, that brings good memories. For the 2025 record, UTM is legit, use it or go back making "fictional mapz" as that's what you were essentially doing.
GIMP painting farmland image you cant leave property barriers between fields so that when you work on them you constantly get warnings of "you don't have access to this land". Only paint RGB MAX,MAX,MAX channel to roads and vehicle shop, triggers etc special places which you do not want players to enter. Good example of bad land lot barriers are PMC North Dakota Greendale 4km the smallest fields near player farm, you cant buy the fields and cut trees down because you cannot own the land where the trees are, the area between the fields.
Locations must have roads, for example PMC North Dakota Greendale 4km selling point 1 was all grass covered area which looked extremely fake on your fifth truck haul

Terrain heightmap editing is very easy in-game. Use the landscaping tool and adjust your terrain heightmap as you please, then save game and finally copy the savegame dir terrain.heightmap.png over your actual terrain project dir map_dem.png image.
Forest bottom see through fix is not the foliage layer bushes, they disappear long before your trees so the issue still remains. The tallest bushes still leave narrow gap where you can see through, although its fairly narrow. Bushes look fine at close range of forest bottom so no reason not to use them. Edit 2025-10-10T22:26:17Z, its amazing that still today giants or the community have not provided undergrowth objects that could be used like trees, so we are stuck with see through forest/treeline bottoms

Bush01 LOD viewdistance disappearing is very close even on PMC Gaming computer with good graphics settings. Honestly foliage layer bushes suck, get like bush objects for this use.
Bush01 solid color RGB painting (directly in GIMP to fruit_density image), ie spam, looks really bad extremely repetitive. Do not do it, its horror. Place them sporadically randomly, some random jitter thing in GIMP pencil, it cannot be just one solid color line.
Ditches need openings (lowerings? actually its for fields and called "entrances" I believe) for every field, even if google/maps doesn't show there to being one you need to add it so game-play will be enjoyable.
When you create satellite_texture image (referring to PDA map image), download both Terra Incognita ArcGIS (possibly USGS Large Scale too?) and Global Mapper US NAIP, then compare all of them and choose one which you will use. Do not flip flop between them because there might be distortions. For example 2019-05-30 I used PMC Texas Rowena 8km ArcGIS to paint cultivator_density and US NAIP to paint roads, this resulted roads overlapping in few spots (west side edge) with cultivator density due ArcGIS distortion.
16.3km terrain GIMP road painting as 4 pixel pencil is too narrow, the 4096 x 4096 pixel resolution _weight images cause the road on some straight parts (difficult to explain) turn even narrower, basically the road is fine except these sporadic spots that jump to narrow width. Its kind of weird. I would recommend using bare minimum of 6 pixel pencil maybe even as big as 8 pixel when painting the roads, even if it means it overlaps the satellite imagery road quite a bit.
2019-06-10 PMC_Helpers with building template models cause terrain.i3d.shapes file to be saved smaller when PMC_Helpers is deleted. So I assume .shapes is some sort of geometry thing or something? When you load such terrain to FS19 you get all the buildings with broken geometries like "empty shells" difficult to explain and various vertex etc errors. So until you fully learn this shit do not delete PMC_Helpers with building template models.
2019-06-18 PMC Grande Gardens 16km F11 (field number eleven) planted with canola, time acceleration x120 until first growth stage switched, then I send off hired worker with dual wheel tractor fertilizing using bredal. Well after few rows/passes got done... the next growth stage switched! Now if I would have been driving the tractor myself I would have destroyed the crop but luckily hired worker does not do that. The point is that whoah what a incredible lag those growth stages had as the second one came on like that.
2019-06-18 During PMC Grande Gardens 16km multiplayer (MP) testing I realized that without farm grain bin built into the terrain XML config files as placeable you can purchase, its extremely cumbersome to get farm started with the piece of shit giants 200,000 liter farm grain bin. You absolutely need to have your terrain provide giants 3d model using XML config for farm grain bin with capacity of 20 million or so liters. This is a huge size for a farm grain bin but so are the terrains and fields absolutely huge, it is useless to try to work with some ridiculous 200,000 liter kidz stuff. For example on PMC Grande Gardens 16km game-play on F11 with fully fertilized and weeded canola I got more than 300,000 liter yield, that was giants puny "large farm grain bin" and one large extension, full.
16.3km x 16.3km terrain AI harvests are done from east to west direction (no top down as its traditionally done) and they take foooooorever haha!
2019-06-18 PMC Grande Gardens 16km I purchased Rubicon 9000 and started to x120 time accelerate in order to get fertilizing contracts, fields were growing and harvests by AI was going on... this time accelerating took forever as the fields got harvested which seems like one by one and extremely slowly. This must be some 16km terrain issue?
2019-06-19 PMC Grande Gardens 16km has nice night sounds, like crickets or whatever chirping things. Why? does this not use the emptied mapUS sound I3D file? Find out and apply to my other terrains as well.
2019-06-20 Painted all _weight images all black RGB 0,0,0 pixels and then loaded into Giants Editor, ground detail texture turned up (animal?) mud type, I assume its some sort of dark_mud or something. I assume this happened because _weight files provided NO data for GE so it reverted back to default which was first ground detail texture type and that was dark_mud (or something). Once you painted it all grass and saved, _weight image file dates were NOT updated but grass*_weight files got painted in usual manner.
2019-06-10 I was trying to compile PMC Texas Rowena 8km without "googleearth" back sign DDS image which gives error in-game log for raw format DDS, it failed. However at the same time when I tested rowena in zip with the DDS I did not get the error, umm when did that error disappear? is it because ImageMagick vs GIMP DDS conversion? file size? what?

PMC Texas Rowena 8km small dirt/gravel roads are too narrow in roughDirt01, it barely fits Ideal combine harvester and some spots it get too narrow even for that which I assume is because of the pixel spread in low resolution weight image.
PMC Minnesota Lowry 8km ("millennial farmers map") I rarely used 4 pixel pencil to paint roads, even the small narrow farm yard roads are done with 6 pixel pencil. If the roads are too fat in-game, now you know why...
Weight images updating, when you create new terrain from sample source data you just make the roughDirt and its done, but when you update existing roughDirt image or others you MUST revert all other weight images to BLACK color (use _run_graphicsmagick_FS19_weight_images_to_all_black_blank.bat) and then copy grass01_weight.png 1 through 4 images to bring in full grass otherwise you get the default ID channel (mud_dark?) painted into the previous areas which are now not used anymore. Yes kind of a mouthful but, well heh.
2019-06-30 PMC Farm Lab, bush01 bug
Should be on any other old pre v1.4 terrain made using mapDE (mapUS uses bushUS01 instead which is error free). There are 2 lines saying BUSH in terrain.i3d and cant think of which other file it might be included? Edit 2025-10-10T23:07:14Z, I assume this means FS19 v1.4 release.
PMC Eternal Sugar Beet Damnation 32km has no bush01 bug, PMC Farm Lab does.
Farmland land lot prices in mapUS and mapDE are way too expensive, you need to adjust farmlands.xml priceperha to lower value. PMC terrains use 9500 price value. pricePerHa="9500" Note that for 16.3km terrains with extremely large farmland ID color areas that price value is still a bit high, for example PMC Grande Gardens 16km F40 costs like 18 million

Field size 20 hectares is very nice compact smallish field for Rubicon 9000 (contract reward $33k), but still large enough to produce some nice amounts of grain if you own it. Probably would take a while to work on with small implements though. For fictional terrains with huge fields you definitely need to sprinkle few of these and smaller ones for the new farmer starter guys. 4ha is ridiculously tiny, 6ha (PMC Rolling Plains 8km testing in 2021) is very nice compromise between tiny and medium size, 10ha is largest small field in little girlie men 2km terrains (like Lone Oak, it has one double digit hectare size field).
2019-07-18 PMC Grande Gardens 16km accepting cultivating contract with Case IH 620 Quadtrac and FlexiCoil ST820 cultivator either by accept or borrow causes FS19 game freeze. CPU state was 13% and memory usage slowly increasing. This lasted for several minutes probably 10 or more. Its weird because previously I did accept fertilizing contract for F40 just fine, wonder whats different with cultivating one?
On savegame load courseplay does field scan, this freezes the game for SEVERAL MINUTES when it scans F40. I am not sure if this is related to the on-going cultivating contract because on a fresh savegame where you do not own the field you get no scan delay.
Plant growth should be set to slow on large and especially very large terrains like 8.1km or 16.3km+ because the larger the terrain the more problems the engine has with field stage switching. Edit 2025-10-10T23:15:58Z, ahh these comments before FS19 Seasons

Time acceleration should not be used with very large terrains if you want to ensure field stages are properly switched and contracts generated for these fields. I know skipping the night is normal, I hate the default XML night configs too, but if any way possible try not to time accelerate on huge terrains. Edit 2025-10-10T23:18:41Z, pre FS19 Seasons comment.
PMC Rolling Hills 8km heightmaps are awesome for fictional terrains, but depending on how elevated they are really bitch to place placeables on in-game. Yes you can landscape adjust terrain but it quickly gets out of hand and you end up with frankenstein elevations. You just have to prepare L3DT generated heightmaps in Giants Editor such way that farms can be nicely build using placeables. This wont apply of course to random location which player chooses to create his farm on, but guess there is nothing can be do about that.
Tip Collision values: painted with 1 (shown as white in the Giants Editor), is collision.
FS19 DDS images are DDS DXT1.
Place placeable buildings in-game in full 4k glory where you can see how they look. Save the game and take items.xml into Giants Editor for coordinates.
Fictional terrain large field problem; if the field is much larger than 1000 hectares you run into problems with FS19 Courseplay not being able to generate courses or that they are just insanely large like 50,000 waypoints. Grain cart driving on a huge field is an issue, it is taking too long to drive back and forth chasing the combines, for example in PMC Grande Gardens 16km F22 which is only 611ha I had to split the field into four sections to ease the harvesting. If you are creating fictional terrains with huge fields, keep this in mind, it would make more playable terrain with only few spectacle megalodon fields but rest should be decent large only like 500 hectares or less, preferably less and also do not forget the small new farmer fields of 20ha or smaller.
Trains and Savegames When you add train to your terrain you basically need a new savegame because merging vehicles.xml with your old non-train version is almost impossible (well nothing is impossible but good luck trying to sort out all the vehicle indexes). Even if you manually merge the XML config files and setup new indexes, in my first attempt my train did not appear in-game, as its placeable from items.xml and now the can of worms multiplies in complexity... no man, just do a new career savegame and restore your money, farmlands and vehicles manually, its the easiest way to port savegame over.
Fictional field definitions; do not copy paste them without slightly adjusting their size. PMC Grande Gardens 16km F34 through F37 looks lame as they are all 55.x ha in size. So don't just copy paste like a lazy bastard, you need to adjust their sizes, hell you need to adjust their SHAPES as well to have game-play more interesting.
Train Performance Loss
Code: Select all
5 trains 40 cars each == 30FPS
5 trains 20 cars each == 60FPS
3 trains 40 cars each = 30FPS
2 trains 40 cars each = 60FPS
Do not place grain bins, railroad depots, sell points etc map marked stuff too close to terrain edges because the icon will not show up in minimap.
I'm thinking the train loading/unloading should still be a bit quicker, it is major logistics operation so it should have that massive feeling to it, but I'm not sure it being slow really works here, I mean its players valuable time in question we (terrain devs) should not waste players time for no reason.
Railroad depot 3d model unloading pipe structure fits just barely two train tracks, no need for special setup to connect two train tracks as they can occupy the same 3d model structure side by side. Its really tight but works just fine.
PMC Grande Gardens 16km 20 grain car train loading from a railroad depot takes way too long, its a time sink, it must be fixed. Terrain developer cannot introduce this kind of game-play time sink, its enough that players spend hours doing field work, the grain transporting using trains needs to be efficient and quick.
PMC Grande Gardens 16km 20 car train loaded with soybeans (2.860 million liters) causes 12FPS performance when you back it 150km/h (from railroad silo 1 to selling point 11). Lag goes away after you have sold about 5-6 cars so they are empty. Really bizarre how can filled up grain car cause lag to the game? Is it the grain models inside the cars being rendered?
How do you keep track of railroad silo contents? How do you know whats in railroad silo 1, how about 4? Where is your fertilizer? Your soybeans?

Unloading trigger like railroad silo unloading to trucks, make sure the terrain elevation is not causing truck not to fit under the unloading trigger, ie PMC Grande Gardens 16km RRS 5 (well almost) hah.
2019-11-22 PMC Grande Gardens 16km logistics flow. When hauling SEVEN POINT FIVE MILLION liters of corn with trucks I came to realize, I'm crazy. Oh sorry I meant to write "we need a better logistics network" haha!
Okay in all seriousness yes I need a logistics network so that I don't have to haul millions liters of grain with trucks as the overall capacity for each semi-truck trailer is just way too low. The grain flow would be: field -> farm bin silo -> ANY point in the railroad network -> selling point with train access. That is how its done smart, its just insane to even try to haul such massive amounts of grain like what PMC Grande Gardens 16km produces in one season.
Better yet if you can get the grain from the field directly to the railroad network bin silos all the better, the farm as a middle point is just convenience as farmers have gotten used to such thinking, its very rare that a truck off the field would take the grain into foreign person/company's storage point. Players in farmsim would be fine with field to railroad grain bin method.
As I'm writing this and playing PMC Grande Gardens 16km v0.1.4 latest updates, I'm using three trucks with two BsM semi-tipper 70,000 liter trailers to haul corn from F39 NE farm 1 into selling point 1. That is extremely long haul farmsim wise and while its rolling on nicely no problem... It is quite crazy to say the least, I mean this thing will drag on for hours.
2020-03-09 When you add trees to your terrain they will not show up on existing savegames.
Heightmap cannot be too rough on fields, if you run harvesters with wide enough headers then the headers start to skip cutting the crop because heightmap elevations are so rough some parts of the header or complete header will rise above the crop cutting level. Interesting elevations/details on heightmap are good but do not put them into fields, use common sense, farmers in real life do not have roller coaster elevations in their fields either. Good example is FS19 Midwest Horizon v1.3.1 F12 which has several locations where Midwest Durus 18.2m header skips cutting the whole width.
2020-04-21 PMC Texas Rowena 8km and other texan terrains need mapUS texture layer painting: GRASS_DRY and foliage layer painting: grass -> green small. This gives them that dry brownish texas look.
2020-04-15 deleting mapUS.i3d.terrain.nmap.cache or mapUS.i3d.terrain.weights.cache causes no changes no errors, odd.
Deleting mapUS.i3d.terrain.lod.type.cache causes ground texture painting to turn into (pig) mud, no error in the log.
mapUS cultivator_density starter fields are 129,0,0 umm what is that?
_weight images cannot be blacked out in GraphicsMagick because 01-04 images work together, so if ALL of them are black then the engine chooses first ground texture type and for example in mapUS it is "MUD_DARK". Lets assume you want plain simple green grass texture everywhere, then you need to Giants Editor paint this in, save and then several files is written: mapUS.i3d.terrain.lod.type.cache, mapUS.i3d.terrain.nmap.cache and grass0*_weight 01-04 images. It looks nasty, but default MUD_DARK all blacked images is "correct" technically, all black, but GE/in-game human eye looks like "oh your textures are broken!?" hah.
_weight images can be copied from one terrain to another if _weight images are fully working in the first place (and obviously from mapUS to mapUS sourced terrain projects). When you copy, you need to delete lod.type.cache and nmap.cache files (or at least one of them), otherwise the copied _weight images do not take effect.
Warning: DensityMapVisualizationOverlay is being reset, because a DensityMap it refers to was deleted. <- create ground collision map, simple

2020-04-15 When creating farmland image, think about new farmer game-mode, small vehicles, basic setup to get started. What very small field could new farmer own with his limited money. Use 256 farmland ID channels and paint every single field, if you have more than 256 fields then you have to paint some larger land chunks.
2020-04-19 Way to disable contracts on fields. Add a bool: fieldMissionAllowed. This can be set per field.
2020-04-29 Road ditch elevation script does need manual terrain sculpting smoothing. This is the script from some summer of 2019 updated scripts download (cant remember what the dir is called). Basically the road comes up "OK" in Giants Editor but in-game its just unnatural, jagged, feels very stupid like that when tractors bounce off from the sudden ditch, it just have to be smoothed out.
2020-04-29 Vehicle shop triggers. storePlace1Start transformgroups gizmo BLUE arrow is the direction where purchased vehicle is pointing/heading.
2020-03-10 PMC North Dakota Greendale 4km has many farm grain bins in farm-manager game-mode, these have $108 property maintenance cost. If I need to time accelerate many days waiting for lucrative fertilizing contracts... those nightly costs start to take their toll.
2020-05-06 If you resize weight images larger they lose some of the random 01-04 details, so its a very good idea to paint these images for 2048 and 4096 resolutions, save them into some directory and then just file copy them over from that directory when needed. No need to paint that stuff individually for every new terrain in Giants Editor as its painful, once is enough, remaining times just copy 01-04 PNG's.
2020-08-17 In Giants Editor when you create field definitions on top of cultivator_density don't be too accurate on the edges because if you are zoomed out to "black dirt" view the cultivator_density is not drawn accurate enough, when you zoom into the LOD circle then you see the real cultivator_density and often times field definition created very close to the edge ... goes beyond the edge which is annoying in-game (when you know what to look for). This is low priority bug fixing issue, just good to be aware of it.
2020-12-11 Precision Farming paUncoverAll dev console command take soil samples from whole terrain. This only works on field definitions, if you have lacking or completely missing field definitions nothing will be shown in soil types etc tab. FS19-Nebraska-Lands-v2-0-2020-12-11-2013.jpg image link not working, sorry, will try to recover this later.
2021-01-05 Keep a good distance to terrain edges for placeables like selling points (that has mapview icon) because if its too close to mapview edge, it will not render, its literally invisible. Edit 2025-10-11T00:05:41Z, I believe this is duplicate entry, same stuff was said above, right?
2021-01-08 Players farm placeable defaultItems.xml objects, make sure heightmap alignment is properly done, for example CBJ small sheds can be set to so low against heightmap that some taller vehicles cannot be driven through the door. Even as small as KUHN sprayer is too high today for PMC North Dakota Greendale 4km players farm yard one of the CBJ small sheds.
2021-01-10 Fictional terrains like PMC Grande Gardens 16km and PMC Rolling Plains 8km absolutely must have ground detail texture painted roads STRAIGHT to avoid the jagged edges. Obviously this applies to N/S and E/W direction roads, ie straight roads, you cant avoid the jagged edges on curves obviously and other direction heading roads. Edit 2025-10-11T00:06:56Z, hmm yes in perfect world, but what can you do if roads/fields are not aligned perfectly 0/180 etc degrees.
Its not clear if PMC Grande Gardens 16km roads can be remade because the utility poles, are they too close to the road and if roads are re-drawn are the poles then offset too much on each end of the road.
Tree groups between field edges is a bad idea, for example PMC Grande Gardens 16km F45 and F44 the tree group basically cuts off route between these fields, even simple as grain cart has difficulties getting through there. This is stupid. Edit 2025-10-11T00:08:35Z, agreed, don't place vehicle access blocking objects for cosmetic reasons, game-play must come first, never frustrate your players (including yourself).
2021-02-14 PMC Montana Shelby 8km got many of its fields so close together that in ESC mapview they merge together. Tested using FS19 Courseplay course generation and no issues detected, its simply a giants engine limitation that fields very close together will be drawn in map as one. All we can do is to hope this will be fixed in the next game engine. Edit 2025-10-11T00:10:48Z, haha your pathetic hopes were crushed by FS22

New farmer game-mode vehicles, wear and tear maintenance, hours used. I like my vehicles with 0 hours on them so when I drive them its my hours in them. However at some unique terrains it might be nice touch to have very run down vehicles with hundreds if not thousands of hours in them. Cant think of which PMC terrain would need such vehicles but still.
2021-02-23 Field definition corner pieces; on PMC Iowa Garden City 8km I've learned that for contract game-play there is just no excuse to have simple not to mention SINGLE corner piece field definitions. Do not use SINGLE corner pieces, simple is fine but SINGLE is NOT. Don't be lazy.
2021-02-28 Multiplayer (MP) Farm-manager game-mode defaultItems.xml farmId="1" when you join server without a farm created you cannot see grain storage info or possible farm location hotspots like farm silo large, farm house etc. Once you join farm 1, you can see all placeables from defaultItems.xml farmId="1". In MP when you create second farm and join that, then farmId="2" items become available to you, farmhouse sleep trigger and CBJ building door animations work.
2021-03-06 Field stages change according to field definition CORNER PIECES. This means that if you have tons of corner pieces you can actually see and follow the field stages as its changing, by switching to mapview and back (or growth and crop type etc). Edit 2025-10-11T00:12:56Z, do not create excessive amount of field definition corner pieces, never use some crap scripts to auto-create field definitions.
2021-03-28 Farmland image GIMP painting; you don't have to be virgin teenager Vaseline tight with the edges, leave some breathing room when you work with large implements that you wont constantly get that annoying "you don't have access to this land" warning when passing around corners and edges.
From PMC Montana Shelby 8km dev diary: 4096 weight image resolution and 4 pixel pencil is too small for 8.1 kilometer terrain size. Looks like 6px is the good average size, needs more testing.
2022
2021-11-22 Farming Simulator 22 was released, here are few terrain design and knowledge info bits from it. Please remember that most of this stuff works across game engine versions.
2022-04-21T09:21:10Z Do not put selling points into roads leading out of the terrain edge, semi-trucks have to make a u-turn in usually narrow road as there is no round-trip road network to follow. Always put selling points to the inner "circular" roads where you can just drive through a loop to get back. Err dunno how to explain it hah.
2022-05-10T15:25:00Z Field grass baling contracts are very nice, you should add plenty of grass fields, at least bare minimum of few of them. They really do spice up the contracts list with baling. Don't forget fieldGrassMission property, you need to add grass fields to all of your terrains.
2022-05-10T17:22:00Z PMC Undefined Farms 20km Start From Zero experiences: fields without numbers are extremely bad, how do you describe to someone which field it is, you cant. Consider adding field numbers to all fields but not necessarily corner pieces for AI to use as contracts, or perhaps you could disable contracts on specific (most) fields? Editing wise though the workload are more or less the same if you copy paste fieldMapIndicator transformgroup for 300 times, it makes little difference if you actually add single shape there. Anyways; fields without numbers are bad.
2022-05-10T17:31:00Z PMC Undefined Farms 20km Start From Zero experiences: once you buy land lot with fields without IDs on them, you have absolutely no clue where they are, meaning which fields do you own. Only way to check what you own is from the buy land menu and that is extremely cumbersome in the long run.
GIMP design doc created FS22 terrains show like PMC RedWhiteBlue 10km that when maximum field size is 32ha the overall farming experience is quite boring because there are no "end boss!" fields to make silly money with contracts, its just hundreds of 32ha max size fields. Key takeaway here is that there is nothing wrong with keeping field sizes compact and perhaps small-medium range, BUT... you should always leave few very large fields just for those special occasions

2023-02-17T08:35:00Z Don't paint farmland ID channels inside other ID channels, meaning you have a huge blob area but then a small farm yard or even a field inside this blob area, it does work in-game just fine but future proofing for FS22 you get to see the ID numbers in-game so those can overlap badly if there is "one inside another" type stacking. Always paint farmland images next to each other, never surrounding a small one.
2023-08-24T00:55:00Z Landscape. Ohio and Indiana (quick examples comes to mind) has country roads peppered with houses and other structures, there are no point where you cannot see any houses, its house after house on regular intervals, houses are not like city suburbs, but they are maybe... dunno, at least 500m or maybe even 1000m apart, but they are constant, they are everywhere. On some farmhand mike drone shots when he does wild 360 degree camera turn its just houses peppered across the landscape. So for example PMC terrains both FS19 and FS22, feel free to add single houses, grain bin or two, few trees not too many... to sparsely but within viewing (farmsim view distance) distance of each other so that the place looks busy, like actual human beings live there to avoid that bizarre "empty 32.7km terrain" look what PMC Cereal Region 32km currently has without any objects. In short; don't be afraid to add single residential homes + some lightweight structure decor to accompany them.
2025-09-21T23:37:12Z Farm yard placeables for liquid and solid fertilizer, plus others of course, don't put the last in the line tank/container right next to farm yard edge because when you do autodrive drive through target point... this target point must be AFTER the last trigger and if the last placeable is right at the edge of the yard, well then you're screwed

When you put down farm yard placeables, imagine recording autodrive network waypoint routes and target points to them, where would the target point go. Hey, you could actually create splines for the farm yard so autodrive would detect those automatically, right!?

Farming Simulator 19. FS19. Farmsim. Terrain Editing FS19. HOWTO Edit Terrains for Farming Simulator 19?