This thing shouldnt be hard.. This is driving me crazy.. I am wanting to edit existing airports.. I have read the WED manual and it mentions "Current Airport" and "Airport Shown in Map View" i see the world and there is NOTHING.. I zoom in and there is NOTHING.. I attempt to Import DSF files.. i browse to the Earth Nave Data folder and i just see the +xx-xxx folers and if i try to import a DSF file in there nothing happens.. How do i find what DSF file the airport i want to modify is in?? And how to i open it so i can edit it?? These tutorials seem to have a fuzzy area when they mention importinging an existing airport..

 

PLEASE HELP

Hello. What is your name btw?

 

What you are seeing with WED is indeed a problem...or at least it WAS until a few days ago. It took very specialized knowledge to begin editing airports, but right after the x-plane conference a few weeks ago, we implemented some very rapid changes to address the very problem you are seeing and make it easy for folks to develop quickly. We still have new features to implement...convenience features, but this latest version released a few days ago is WAY better than the 1.1 series. First, a bit of outline about how the system works. A custom scenery package consists of a single folder in the custom scenery folder. Inside that folder needs to be a 'Earth nav data' folder and also a text file called "apt.dat". The GOOD NEWS is that with the release of WED 1.2b, WED handles most everything for you. So forget about the WED documentation as far as "getting an airport into WED" is concerned and here is what you do now. NOTE: We are discussing writing a few tutorials to be published in PC Pilot in the ensuing months....so more information and instructions are forthcoming.

 

1.) Get WED 1.2b

2.) Open WED and if it is not already listing the folders in your custom scenery, use the "choose xplane folder" option and it will bring up a list of all the custom scenery folder packages.

3.) IF you have not already created a folder manually and your custom scenery package folder is not in the list of scenery package, then click the "new scenery package" from the WED and give it a name. All this does is create an empty folder in the custom scenery folder location. If you have already created a custom scenery folder manually, simply select it. I would suggest you make sure the folder is empty though as WED creates everything you need and you do not want WED getting confused with any files you may put in there manually.

4.) NOW....you have a world with nothing in it. This is the "old way". The new way is to go to the menu "FILE > Import apt.dat". When you do this, you will see a file navigation dialog......then navigate to the file: XP10 > Resources > Default Scenery > default apt.dat > Earth nav data > apt.dat. Select 'apt.dat' and hit the "import" button. It will take a good while (10sec on my machine) to bring up a new dialog...because the importer is literally reading a huge file with over 10,000 airports in it.

5.) After a short while a new dialog will pop up listing every airport within X-Plane. At the top is a text field that is a filter...type in the ICAO code of the airport and the list will auto filter. When you find the airport you want, then highlight it and hit 'IMPORT'

6.) X-Plane will then import the airport file BUT you probably won't see it onscreen. This is because you are zoomed in to some random area of the world. I have an open request to "auto zoom" to recently imported airports and expect to see that in the future. For now, after the airport is imported, you can look in the "heirarcy pane" on the right and you should now see and entry for your airport where none existed before. Highlight the top level name of the airport, then go to a menu and select "VIEW > ZOOM SELECTION" and WED should then zoom into the airport and it should be in your Map view. Now is a good time to do a "FILE > SAVE".

7. You can now beging editing the airport layout OR begin adding 3D objects. editing the airport layout will cause changes to the file, "apt.dat" and editing 3D objects and a few other things will cause changes to a DSF file.

8. After editing in WED, simply select "FILE > EXPORT SCENERY PAK" and then open x-plane and your scenery should be there.

 

NOTE that WED will create everything you need. It will create the custom scenery folder whenever you elect to create a new scenery pak. Whenever you export the scenery pak, WED automatically creates the apt.dat and DSF in your custom scenery pak...along with the proper folder names, i.e. +xx.-xxx. So to recap for creating new scenery.

 

1.) Open WED, select "new scenery package" button and give folder a name.

2.) Select folder you just created from the list of scenery paks and hit the "open scenery package button

3.) Select "file > import apt.dat and navigate to the "primary" apt.dat file in the resources folder.

4.) Wait for airport selection dialog, then type in airport code. Highlight airport and select import. WED will import the airport layout

5.) Select airport entry in the heirarchy pane and use menu > "view > zoom selection". WED map pane will zoom to the airport layout

6.) Save your file....this creates a XML file that WED uses for editing only.

7.) Make changes, add 3D objects, whatever

8.) To export work, select "File > export scenery package"

9.) Open X-Plane, go to new airport and fly.

 

There are some caveats here....but this is enough to get you started. The good stuff....the library lego bricks can be found in the browser to the left in WED under the section, "lib > airport > ....." Let us know if you have success.

 

Tom Kyler

Laminar / IXEG

Step number 4 is what i was missing.. Man i appreciate it.. Now just having to learn how to make it all work.. I think after a few hours of playing it won't be so difficult, figuring out what is what and how it all goes together.. What if i was interested in putting buildings in a city as opposed to just at the airport?? I am sure it is simular but some differences also..

 

Thank You for your help..

Jeff

Jeff, step number 4 is totally new and only been available for a week or so, so don't feel bad! When you place an object via WED, it's lat/long position and it's rotation relative to north is recorded in a DSF file. A DSF as you may know, is a 1degree x 1degree square. The airpot layout itself...the tarmac runways, lines, asphalt, runway lights.....all that "flat stuff", resides in the apt.dat file and is totally separate from the DSF file even though both entities are getting edited at the same time in WED. When you "export scenery", WED writes both the apt.dat and the DSF file at the same time.

 

Airport objects are no different from any other object....they just happen to reside at a lat/long that is on the airport property. So if you can somehow figure out in WED where a building should be lat/long wise, then placing it is the same as placing any other object. There are a couple of ways to do this in the absence of a graphical reference like a orthophoto or the airport layout. One way is to simply note the lat/long of the object from Google Earth and then click to place your building at some random point...and in the property editor in WED, you can type in the lat/long values manually and it will move to that point.

 

A word of warning though ...and an annoying feature that needs to be put in WED quick...is that when you place a single object, it is, technically a "point" in space, that is a lat/long value.....and WED will not zoom into a point because it does not know how big the item is and the zoom algorithm is based on a bounding box size. I have told Ben Supnik, the WED programmer, to just assume it's 100m and zoom in because zooming in to the center of an object is better than not being able to zoom into an object at all.

 

There are a couple of other methods of getting images into WED to use as references for placing buildings and other things, but those are a bit beyond casual posts here. As mentioned, training for using WED is in the planning stages and we'd like to get some tutorial videos and how-tos up in the next few months...even as we grow the library lego set.

 

Tom Kyler

Laminar/IXEG

Funny i hear all the mentioning of "Lego" i am an avid lego collector.. I have built signs out of bricks professionally in fact.. I have a lego collection with sets dating back as far as 1979..

 

One thing i do with WED had the ability to do is zoom in and out using the mouse wheel..

We are discussing writing a few tutorials to be published in PC Pilot in the ensuing months....so more information and instructions are forthcoming.

 

Excellent news Tom,

 

As a new subscriber to PC Pilot I look forward to those articles. Also thanks for the short course in WED above, it is very much appreciated.

 

 

Chuck

Most excellent. I'm starting to read up on this stuff myself. I would like to give it a try.

OMG I just edited my local Airport using WED 1.2 and Google Earth. Took a minute to figure out how to create plots, but I managed to create a close representation of what it looks like. Still playing with the Openscenery library and still don't have a clue about ground textures or the whole Terraserver, etc workings, but I figured the lego portion out.

Quick question,

 

I want to modify a payware scenery package to add some static planes. Do I still open the main apt.dat, or do I open the apt.dat that came with the payware scenery?

 

Rob

Rob,

 

You would use the apt.dat file that came with the custom scenery package.

 

Tom Kyler

Laminar / IXEG

Ok, just had a breakthrough using wed and was able to add some static planes to Aerosoft Lugano (My test scenery)

Its really easy once you get the hang of it. I had more trouble finding good areail phots of the real airport to see where the planes park, than to actually place them.

This is the best I good figure out so far.

 

Next, Im going to add some Static aircraft to Aerosoft Zurich.

 

Rob

 

 

I'm getting started again with WED after a two week vacation in Tunisia, I think all that I had learned which wasn't much has probably left my poor addled brain. So reading this post has given me encourgaement to have a nother go. I did try to convert gary Summons EGFF extreme but found that much of the scenery was elevated to different heights than the terrain.

 

It actually looked a mess and even after editing it became so spares as to be alomost unrecognisable.

 

Question?

 

How does one edit the taxi tracks and ai aircraft spawn points, to see a 747 appear and taxi from south side ga parking at EGFF is just so wrong. lol

 

Wycliffe

Question; how do i add terminals to the airport layout after i have imported the apt.dat file?

You really should have started a new topic, but here is a quick answer:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/374942-library-objects-lego-bricks/?p=2376792