Well, I do enjoy flying SoCal but there are other places I'd like to fly. I just don't have scenery that makes them interesting. North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Caribbean. I'll look at SimSavvy and look at the Annotator.

 

The thing I have to ask: why can't we use the same .agn file on both SimSavvy and BlueSky?

 

So forgive me here as I'm just learning this stuff now too...but it's because the annotation of a scenery is done to the custom ground textures themselves. So, you'd be annotating custom ground textures made by BlueSky, and I'd be annotating custom ground textures made by SimSavvy. At least that's how I understand it so far.

So forgive me here as I'm just learning this stuff now too...but it's because the annotation of a scenery is done to the custom ground textures themselves. So, you'd be annotating custom ground textures made by BlueSky, and I'd be annotating custom ground textures made by SimSavvy. At least that's how I understand it so far.

 

I see. Seems like someone could make a good bit of change out of writing a tool that would extract the info from one scenery to put in another. Ok.

It should make no difference which textures you annotate. As far as I understood this, the resulting .agn files will work with any photoscenery. Photoscenery usually is very exact. So a wood or house in scenery A would match a wood or house in scenery B.

If anyone does an annotation for our sceneries that would be very welcome! If you manage to annotate a whole region (i.e. one download unit), I would be happy to host them on our site, of course.

Good luck!

It should make no difference which textures you annotate. As far as I understood this, the resulting .agn files will work with any photoscenery. Photoscenery usually is very exact. So a wood or house in scenery A would match a wood or house in scenery B.

If anyone does an annotation for our sceneries that would be very welcome!

 

That's good to know. As you can see, we're trying to figure out the most practical (efficient) way to do that. Any guidance is appreciated! I had been looking at Flight1 Instant Scenery 2 as one way to do it but it seems that that creates BGL files...those wouldn't work, right?

 

If you manage to annotate a whole region (i.e. one download unit), I would be happy to host them on our site, of course.

 

Heck, I'd just make it a gift! Maybe I can find a small area to start with.

Where do you get the fsx annotator and tmfviewer?

The Annotator and TMFViewer are included with the SDK. I do a lot of autogen with my scenery and it does take a loooooooooooooooooong time if you try to be reasonably accurate. You can copy and paste autogen, so that helps. When I'm doing a row of houses, I'll try to start by drawing some of the typical sizes. Then I'll copy them and paste the copy at all of the similar houses. That same applies to vegetation. Draw one, copy and paste it as required. It still takes forever to do an area of any size. My Tucson/Pima County scenery took at least a year. There are probably at least 100,000 buildings and who knows how many trees.

The Annotator and TMFViewer are included with the SDK.

 

Heh...where do you get that?

It's included with the FSX Deluxe, Gold or Acceleration versions. I think that's what they're called. If you have one of those versions, take a look at the DVDs and you'll see where the SDK installer is. There are also two service packs you can download.

Ok...I found it. If I install the FSX service packs is that sufficient or does the SDK have it's own service packs? Also, I installed FSX on my D drive and the SDK installed itself on my C drive. Looks like this might be a problem for the SDK.

 

Seems that there's a considerable amount to do just to make it work. Sigh.

It has its own service packs. It shouldn't be a problem if they're installed on different drives.

 

The Annotator is easy to use, but a bit quirky. Make sure you read the tutorial linked above.

FSX service packs for the SDK should be installed one by one. ie you have to download and install each SDK service pack (you can't just download the last one). At least that's how I remember it going.

 

BTW Instant Scenery 2 allows you to place scenery objects (eg like airport buildings etc). These are different from autogen. IS2 doesn't do autogen.

 

Also the .agn files generated by the Annotater have a unqiue special number which tells FSX which part of the world they cover (autogen squares are usually 1.2km x 1.2km squares). An .agn file is generated for each square so if the scenery covers a large area you will have a large number of .agn files.

 

A tip with doing autogen is not to have a vegetation region overlapping the autogen squares. eg. If you are doing a big forest you may be tempted to just draw a big vegetation region to cover the whole forest. If this region covers multiple autogen squares then you will have a problem (ie no autogen showing up).

Right now, it just crashes when I try to start it. I think it's expecting to find FSX in the standard place. I'll install the two service packs when I get a moment and then look at what's going on.

 

A tip with doing autogen is not to have a vegetation region overlapping the autogen squares. eg. If you are doing a big forest you may be tempted to just draw a big vegetation region to cover the whole forest. If this region covers multiple autogen squares then you will have a problem (ie no autogen showing up).

 

So you just put a spot down, try to measure out 1km and make sure you don't go beyond it?

BTW Instant Scenery 2 allows you to place scenery objects (eg like airport buildings etc). These are different from autogen. IS2 doesn't do autogen.

 

 

The goal isn't autogen (and I'm still having trouble telling the difference). It's to be able to populate areas around airports (about 5 miles) and have them useful by at least one of the photoscenery products (BlueSky and SimSavvy) in a practical way. I like what IS2 and Instant Object Studio do...you create scenery objects (IOS) or place objects (IS2) right down while inside of FSX and see it, right where it's going to be (no hunting for the right file) and then, apparently, it saves it as a BGL. The question is, would that work with both of those products or just one? If someone could create a big red goofy object in one or both of the products near KLAX and/or KMRY (I have MegasceneryX Socal and I can get KMRY in BlueSky. Also, there are some people following the thread that have SimSavvy that covers the entire US.) and post the BGL file it would tell us something.

I downloaded IS2 demo to try it out. It's interesting, but I don't have photoscenery up around KSEA (where the demo allows you to create scenery)...so...no new info.

Hi Gregg

 

I think installing the service packs may solve the crashing problem.

 

Annotator will load the PR and draw the squares on it for you so you will know the boundaries.

 

The difference between autogen and scenery object placement can be summed up by their differences.

 

Autogen saves information as .agn files

Autogen can create buildings based on a footprint you define with the annotator (although they are only rectangular)

Autogen randomly selects the particular objects (although you can select from a particular set eg coconut trees, or elm trees)

 

Scenery objects placement is saved as a .bgl (this can be used in any scenery as the bgl simply stores the location of the object and what object to draw so the scenery used is irrelevant)

Each scenery object can be specified exactly as you want it.

Scenery objects can't do the same custom buildings that autogen can create.

 

I'd recommend placing autogen for areas up to 5 miles from the airport. Believe it or not this would actually be quicker to do than using IS2 to place individual objects. With the airports I make I will only place vegetation and objects directly around the airport, any further out and I use autogen.

 

If you want an example of autogenned PR scenery try downloading one of my free sceneries from here:

 

http://www.antsairplanes.com/scenery.html

 

I'd recommend Roadvale or Watts Bridge. These both cover reasonable areas of PR around the airfields with scenery objects around the airfields and autogen filling out the surrounding areas

Use instant scenery 2 to place customized objects in Green River UT made in sketch-up and zmod. I figure the best places for improvement are small towns no ones will make scenery for and airport improvements anyways. Extra two mintues or variety of scenery is worth it to me. Love airport photos to work with as photoshop or paint.net is your friend. Used sbuilderx for placement combo with instant scenery 2. Figure small towns make about 5 to 10 customized items just lack photos of the airports or I would build them. Autogen tempted to learn it, but I know tedious process. FSX is still got open barren space to populate with better items.

 

Just learning this stuff. Plausable Autogen over photoreal love it.