Moving an object while in the Object Tool UI

[Guest viking77]

I had a frustrating time attempting to move a dock this morning.. In the end I was moving between desktop and FSX editing XML and latitude with a text editor.Dan anyone lay out how to select, grab and move an object step by step, or is there a tutorial somewhere.. preferably with images?

[Guest archtx]

Viking, I do not think you can move it by "grabbing" it. You can edit the coordinates in the properties submenu (or in xml) but then you must save and reload. It is almost easier to delete the original and replace it. Note: The deleted original will still show until you save and reload. I agree it can be frustrating. The interface could be a little better, however, I am so happy to have a mission creation tool that I am not complaining. I hope eventually someone comes up with a better interface, perhaps like EZ-Scenery or AFCAD.

[Guest viking77]

Hmmm.. too bad.. have you tried editing the location properites in the sub-menu.. almost impossible, I have no idea why the numbers respond the way they do..

[P-12C 0]

Sure you can move objects with the mouse in the object placement tool. However there are some issues with the tool when doing it.Sometimes it is difficult to get the object selected by clicking on it, especially if there are a lot of objects in the area. If this is part of the problem selected it from the list and then grab it. As part of the problem with clicking an object to select it, when you go to move it with the left mouse button selection could go away, so we created a work around and you can force the selection to stay with what you selected in the list by pressing and holding the SHIFT key.The left mouse key allows you to move an object laterally and the right mouse button allows you to rotate an object around all three axis (one at a time). The mouse wheel can also be used to raise or lower the object's altitude. If you use the SHIFT key in conjunction with the right mouse button or mouse wheel you can make smaller changes.Lastly, there is a checkbox that locks and unlocks the position of an object. be sure to check it so you can move the object. We had to do this because of problems where you might accidentally move the wrong object, so we defaulted to locking them in place.Hope this helps.

[FlyingsCool 0]

Hi Paul,I'm having a bit of a hard time using the tool. The worst thing is the field editor cursor is offset, which makes it really hard to edit fields textually, and you can't see the last character in many situations.Thanks for the tips on moving objects, I finally figured it out how to move a rectangular area after about 30 minutes of fooling around after I read your hints (an hour of messing around before I found your message).It would be nice if things were in consistent units. Apparently, the dimensions of a rectangular area (volume?) are in meters, but its altitude is in feet. And no units are called out in the description. Agghhh!I keep clicking that OK button to accept an edit, which of course brings up the file save box and confuses the heck out of me.I'm having a devil of a time panning the view when the object menu is up. It seems to be in slew mode all the time. In flying mode, I've assigned the , and . keys to pan left and right (I'm using a laptop). In slew mode, I've assigned the D-pad to pan the view. I've assigned the shift-, and shift-. keys to pan the view in slew mode. I'm using a XBox 360 controller, even with the key assignments made above, instead of panning the view, the plane rotates when I use the D-pad or the assigned view pan keys.There seems to be a problem with edits in the map view don't always update the position of the plane to the changes I make. For instance, if I edit the altitude of the plane, it doesn't always take, and the plane stays where it is. I'm not sure how to reproduce the problem, as occasionally it works. It could be that it works when I am flying, but not when the object placement tool is up.How do you trigger an action to occur at or after the end of another action?Thanks!Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest viking77]

Ditto re: problems with relocating plane.. it doesn't always take. Likewise weather changes sometimes appear to work.. other times are not properly saved. I think you are wrong about the height of a rectangle area.. pretty sure it is also in meters.It's really a pain that saving in the ObjectTools relocates the aircraft in spite of not changing the FLT file. I have to always remember to relocate the plane on the runway and then resave. I wonder if there is a way around this?I use the Actions/ObjectActivationAction to activate a Trigger after another action. Its documented in the Missionbuilder HTM document.

[P-12C 0]

Betweem the last two posts there are several questions.As far as changing the aircraft position or changes to the weather, both are stored in the associated flight file. If all you are doing is saving a mission, there is no reason to save the flight as well. If the flight isn't saved, then the aircraft position shouldn't change.One of the many confusing things about all this is how a spb file is saved when a flight is saved. When designing and building the FSX missions we would keep our working copies of all the mission, flight, WX, and pln files separate from the location where a saved flight goes. When I want to change my aircraft location, adjust the trim, or make some other change to a parameter in the flight file I save the flight with whatever changes have been made, then manually either copy over the saved flight to where my working copy is and adjust the objectfile name so the XML will load or just copy over the parameters that I want from thenew flight file to the working flight file. Same goes for WX files. Save the flight, grab the new WX file and copy it over the old one where my working copy is. It's kind a pain, but at least I didn't blow away something I wanted to keep. Just to keep it as confusing as possible, if you do keep the working files and the save files in separate locations, then once you save a flight from a functioning mission, on subsequent reloads, it will load from the saved flight location and not where your working files are. You would have to exit and reload the working files to see the XML located in the working area (I know it's confusing, sorry I can't explain it better).There are inconsistencies with units which we complained about as well. Apparently the units in the sim aren't consistent and this is an artifact of that.The actions within any given trigger are in a queue and fire in sequence. This is why you may have some bugs where an action doesn't fire when you expect because some dialog action hasn't finished playing yet. So if all you want is to have one action follow another off the same trigger, that will happen. The order of the queue can be changed in the tool (where they are listed in the window near the center of the tool). To activate a new trigger use the ObjectActivationAction as indicated by the other user.

[FlyingsCool 0]

Sorry, mispoke, I meant the altitude of the box is in feet. All dimensions are in meters. The documentation also misrepresents the orientation. I found orientation to be bank, pitch, heading. And the heading is true, while FS reports the heading of the aircraft as magnetic.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest viking77]

P-12C, I've bungled through to roughly the same procedures.. its a pain to be sure. The WX is often the worst of it, not sure what's up with that. I'll save off a flight with weather changes, go back to it later and there are layers I didn't place. Who knows..

[FlyingsCool 0]

Hi Paul,Me again. I completely missed the sentence in the tutorial:"Create a sub-directory of your mission directory called sound, and move all the recordings into this directory."It took me 2 hours of fooling around to figure out that one.I like the idea of segregating files by type, but why force the issue, and why force a particular directory name? What if I wanted to have a common sub-directory with common sounds for all my missions? I almost had it right by accident, and put them in a directory called "Sounds". Obviously that didn't work.Also, default volume for mission voices is awfully low. I have my mic volume maxed with boost, and it sounds fine in Media Player, but in the missions you can barely hear my voice. And I notice the recorded default mission voices are REALLY LOUD. Is there any way to get this normalized or something? Any suggestions of tools to boost the volume of recordings to appropriate levels for FSX?The problem with having a slider is that we'll need different positions for different authors. It would be cool if there were some sort of tool in FS that automatically boosted or quieted to recordings to a particular decibel level or something.Perhaps there is an command for DialogAction to control base volume level?Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest viking77]

I've been processing in SoundForge and increasing volume by 400%... then converting to 8 bit mono.. seems crazy yeh..

[FlyingsCool 0]

If I add the documented RectangularArea callout True to the xml file (although the documentation doesn't say whether it should be inside or outside the AttachedWorldPosition, I assume it should be outside it), my mission no longer shows up in the mission list at startup.Now that I got the DialogAction items working from TimerTriggers, when I add in DialogAction items attached to RectangularAreas attached to Proximity Triggers, my TimerTrigger DialogActions don't play, and so far the proximity triggers aren't working either. Gotta figure this one out, now.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[Guest viking77]

I don't think your rectangle areas are breaking the mission.. more likely you have a trigger that isn't pointing to anything...

[FlyingsCool 0]

Turned out I had a duplicate Landing trigger. Removing it fixed it.Anyone know how to turn on rendering of rectangular area volumes?Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[FlyingsCool 0]

Hmm, has anyone else noticed that if you copy an object, you can't move it graphically? I can move objects I create with issue, but if I copy it, I can't grab it (selected in menu hold shift key) and move it. Even if I quit out of the tool and go back in, I still can't move it. How does it know? I haven't tried quitting FSX and restarting.And funny thing is, suddenly, the cursor in text fields is where it is supposed to be now, instead of two characters behind where the edits its making are. I don't know how that changed.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

[P-12C 0]

The ability to render area volumes was disabled before we shipped as they were causing some issues. I don't know why it wasn't removed from the tool.

[P-12C 0]

I can move objects I've copied. Make sure the checkbox that locks it in position is unchecked.

[Guest cwright]

> We had to do this because of problems where you might>accidentally move the wrong object, so we defaulted to locking>them in place. I find this really, really annoying! After re-loading the scenery all the objects are locked, so if I need to do some major editing I have to waste time unlocking lots of objects. Is there any way of stopping this?Unfortunately there's a far more serious problem for me that makes this tool essentially unusable.When I initially create ,say, 30 buildings it all works fine. But on the next session, when I re-load the mission many of the buildings do not appear. Their boxes do appear but they are empty, so they cannot be edited. Somebody said he had seen a similar problem in an earlier release. Others have reported the same problem with this retail release. I have installed the SDK update.The same occurs when I save and re-load scenery files. The scenery files themselves are fine and when compiled all buildings appear when running FSX normally. The problem appears to be that the tool is incapable of properly loading the scenery file - a bit of a drawback for a scenery creation tool!A similar thing happens when I use COPY. If I select an object and then click COPY, all that appears is the box with no visible object.I really hope there's a fix for this. This is potentially a very useful tool but, unless this problem is fixed, it is useless for creating scenery.Many thanks.Best regards, Chris P4 3.4 Ghz, Windows XP Home, 2 Gb RAM

[Guest cwright]

Here's a sample xml file that illustrates the problem:http:/www.kline.demon.co.uk/test_scenery.zip(I had to put it in a zip as my browser will open the xml file directly)This file was saved by the tool and it compiles and displays correctly in normal FSX mode. But when loaded into the tool many of the buildings do not appear, apart from their boxes. It would be great if you could try it and let me know what you see....Best regards, Chris