Scenery Conflict Question

[falcon409]

I have a rather strange happening going on with the Spangdahlem AB scenery I'm working on. For some reason, the autogen in the center of the base has decided it will only show up if I load Instant Scenery and then load the Spangdahlem scenery file.

This only happened a few days ago. Prior to that, the autogen was fine. The only things I've done have been to remove some trees that were encroaching on the taxiway and add some small barriers along the taxiway that were showing in the satellite image (I've since removed those barriers thinking that might have caused a problem).

The autogen is placed on the photo via the Annotator and those "agn" files are contained in the texture folder. The annotator doesn't place a bgl file in the scenery folder. This scenery is separate from the FSX Addon Scenery folder. All of my sceneries are on a different drive and each scenery has it's own folder with "texture and scenery" folders included.

Any assistance would be very much appreciated!:salute:

 

[falcon409]

For a good view of what actually doesn't load, pull up the image and then using the "next" and "previous" buttons, flip flop back and forth to see the extent of the "damage". lol.:salute:

 

[NoNewMessages]

Have you uploaded the scenery yet? Or will it email? Curious about the SBuilderX files, so can you attach or email the .SBP files?

I should be able to look later this afternoon/evening.

 

[JoeW]

Remove the instant scenery file and restart FSX. Shut it down and move the instant scenery back in. This happens when you delete something and keep adding. For some reason FSX will ignore the file. Moving it out and back will fix it.

 

[falcon409]

Remove the instant scenery file and restart FSX. Shut it down and move the instant scenery back in. This happens when you delete something and keep adding. For some reason FSX will ignore the file. Moving it out and back will fix it.

No Joy Joe. I moved the scenery out and the autogen returned. I closed the sim, returned the scenery file back to it's location, reloaded the sim and the autogen was gone. I loaded Instant Scenery, then loaded the scenery file and the autogen returned.

Very strange!

 

[falcon409]

Have you uploaded the scenery yet? Or will it email? Curious about the SBuilderX files, so can you attach or email the .SBP files?

I should be able to look later this afternoon/evening.

Lance, I sent the entire SBX file for this scenery (about 67 meg, zipped). The scenery is another matter, as it requires about 7 different object libraries in order for everything to show. That is one of the things I'm mulling over, eliminating all the odd object libraries and relying on just one or two. This base has a huge number of buildings, all shapes and sizes and relying on default proved to be difficult since very little actually fits the desired look of the base. Yes, I need to learn FSDS or GMAX and this wouldn't be a problem, but for now it's default all the way.

 

[Skittles]

Yes, I need to learn FSDS or GMAX and this wouldn't be a problem, but for now it's default all the way.

Learning Gmax wouldn't be a problem for you if you're technologically capable (which you must be given he quality of your scenery).

It's ridiculously difficult at first, but after a few experiments and some familiarity with the program you can knock stuff up in no time. When you do eventually give it a go give me a shout if you want any help.

 

[mal998]

Falcon,
are you saying that you placed all the new vegetation on an Instant Scenery bgl? where is that bgl residing?

 

[falcon409]

Falcon,
are you saying that you placed all the new vegetation on an Instant Scenery bgl? where is that bgl residing?

Nope, that's what's so puzzling, the vegetation is placed with the Autogen Annotator from the SDK, it has no connection to the Instant Scenery file at all. . .or at least none that I was aware of, but it seems that somehow the two have become interconnected.

When you use the annotator, it places the resulting "agn" files inside the texture folder for that scenery. The photoimage is loaded into the annotator and you place the vegetation directly on the photoimage, so placement is about as exact as possible.

 

[NoNewMessages]

Lance, I sent the entire SBX file for this scenery (about 67 meg, zipped).

Just finished downloading, should be able to look at it in a little while.

I'm a little behind (that sounds strange?), anyway do you have the names of the object libraries that you used, just in case I need to look at those? I'm thinking it's an object bounding box issue, where you see things because of the way IS renders in sim, but when you go back to normal FSX the visuals are different. If that's what it turns out to be, it's more a matter of understanding the why, rather than a fault of FSX or IS. We'll see, as I should have the "main computer" free and available in an hour or two.


Edit: Shoot me the IS BGL file, the AFX file and the libraries used, when you get the chance.

 

[NoNewMessages]

Had the chance to go through things, but I'm still pretty much stumped.

First, it's not an IS thing. IS is just serving as a spotlight on something else. What that something else is, I don't know... yet. Remember IS reads and renders outside of FSX and feeds the information into FSX. That's why when IS is activated it's reading the AGN and displaying it. And the IS display is active until FSX is shut down. Simple test is to deactivate IS from loading, as I did and there's still a dearth of autogen. I *do* see autogen in the area that you're not, Ed. But not at the level of when IS is turned on.

I've looked at the AFX file, nothing in there to cause problems. I've looked at the SBX file and there's nothing that jumps out, as there's just the two polys and the map.

I would consider checking the autogen files, as I don't have that tool setup on my system yet. IS appears to read them OK, but not FSX. If you compile the map without the blendmask, will they show completely? Hum, sounds like I'm grasping for straws! Still stumped in SoCal!!

 

[falcon409]

Thanks Lance,

There does seem to be some level of interference with autogen via the Annotator all of a sudden. I'm doing a small lakeside airport outside of San Antonio and the same thing is happening there. I added a set of small bushes in the infield and that showed relatively well, but when I add the trees. . . .nothing. I even went into the texture folder deleted the agn files, went back to the annotator and saved again and it is saving the files to the folder correctly, but load up the scenery and nothing shows. . .actually, in this case, not even if I load IS.

Something seems to have gone south here for some reason. Thanks for taking the time out of what I know must be a busy schedule and checking into it for me.:salute:

 

[jdhaenens]

Falcon,

It may be the HAS's or other library objects. Remove all of them in an area then look at the area for annotation. If the trees are back, here's the problem:

When you place a custom library object with Instant Scenery, it generally comes with an autogen exclude the size of the model's bounding box(es) nocrash or not. The bounding boxes are the size of the ORIGINAL model's boxes BEFORE you scale it to fit your airport. At a .3 or so scale for the HASes, you've covered an awful lot of territory with agen excludes you knew nothing about.

Give it a try.

Jim

 

[NoNewMessages]

Give it a try.

Jim

Greets Jim!

That was my first thought, so I checked without the IS placement file being active. Still missing most of the autogen. I broke the placement file into five smaller files and activated them one at a time, still no autogen.

I've got a couple of screenies taken from much the same spot as Falcon's pictures. Some autogen does appear, but not anywhere near what's been placed.

I'll poke around a bit more in a bit once the coffee kicks in. But sometimes FSX just does strange things. An example? I redid all the airports in North Carolina for my MeshX work in the state. There are two airports where the runway will not move nor be excluded. 300 other airports worked fine, but these two just are stuck there. Tried all three airport tools, but nothing is moving or removing the runways. Chock one up for FSX, I guess?

 

[jdhaenens]

I'll be darned. I had a similar problem with Barakoma, redid a few models and reduced the problem significantly, but it didn't go away. The second you open up instant scenery, all the placed stuff comes back whether it's visible in game or not.

Bummer.

 

[ananda]

Does your airport flatten have an "exclude autogen" tag?

George

 

[falcon409]

No, I checked that early on since it covered a good portion of the base.:salute:

 

[falcon409]

Well, I'm taking a new direction. I made a new scenery folder, gave it a different name, added new "scenery" and "texture" folders. Next I went back to SBX and recompiled each of the three layers of the scenery (base image, AB_exclude and flatten). I saved those to the new scenery folder. Opened AFX and loaded the AFCAD and saved that to the new folder. I also moved the IS scenery file to the new folder. I know that's taking a chance, especially if the scenery is what's interfering, but you've seen the detail. . .would you like to start over??? lol, lol. Nope, me either.

I loaded the Annotator and started over there as well. All new autogen and using single tree placement rather than groups. . .more precise and thus far, every tree I've placed shows exactly where I put it. Time will tell.

 

[JoeW]

Are you guys placing any birds in this? Birds will remove the AGN. There is a check box in the program to allow the AGN to remain. If you do not check this box ..............

 

[falcon409]

Are you guys placing any birds in this? Birds will remove the AGN. There is a check box in the program to allow the AGN to remain. If you do not check this box ..............

What program are you talking about Joe? As far as I know, Instant Scenery (which is what I use) has no such box.