We need an default scenery exclude tool for P3DV5

[787flyer 633]

Greg,

Glad you were able to master ADE in a short time. I have also used it for quick one-off edits and adjusting parking IDs where the scenery didn't do what I was expecting it to do.

I like the capabilities of this tool. Jon, the main developer for the tool, has done really god job of keeping it updated as new sim verisons have come to the market. Its a really powerful tool these days.

Regards
Mark

[d.tsakiris 418]

18 hours ago, F737NG said:

This is an issue with the way P3D is designed. Simply setting any type of scenery at a higher priority level is not sufficient to exclude the lower priority ones at the same location.

No doubt the apologists will make the typical claims at how it's a user problem.
I don't understand why they are happy for many thousands of hours to be wasted by us collectively on something that could and should have been addressed at the source by LM a long time ago.
 

I don't think the fault is with LM. And certainly the user should not be left with the problem, that's clear. So, not to point fingers, but I'm thinking the problem is the way some scenery devs design their sceneries: Exclude what is there in the default scenery of the version at hand, and nothing more. But that doesn't take into consideration that the default scenery can change. And I'm not only talking about objects like buildings, which are new in V5, but also auto-gen, which also changes with landclass add-ons.

ORBX, or Pilot's, have done something similar with FTX Vector. It even scans your scenery database and activates only the corrections needed. Of course we're talking about more than "only" correcting the elevation of a number of airports to fit a better mesh here, as the solution we'd need would have to exclude all airports that were updated by LM in V5.

[chapstick 2,762]

Has anyone figured out how to use ADE to remove default taxi signs that pop up in third-party AFCADs originally made for V4? There's specifically one for LVFR's MIA on the AIG forums that the author hasn't updated yet but if it's something I can do myself...

[AnkH 2,282]

1 hour ago, Chapstick said:

Has anyone figured out how to use ADE to remove default taxi signs that pop up in third-party AFCADs originally made for V4? 

Simply open the stock airport of v5, delete everything you can including taxiway signs and compile this stripped down "airport" as .bgl. I call them for example "ymml_stockremoval.bgl". Then you add this to your addon airport scenery folder and all stock components of the airport are gone. Works like a charm.

[micstatic 4,340]

wondering if somebody can help.  I know next to nothing about ADE.  Got 1.79.  Opened an airport.  Selected everything to be excluded.  When I click compile it says that ADE cannot find the Bgl compiler.  Mentions not having the SDK for the sim.  Is that something I need to install also?  If so are their any negatives to installing this i should be aware of?

[JoeFackel 760]

13 minutes ago, micstatic said:

Is that something I need to install also?  If so are their any negatives to installing this i should be aware of?

YES! and NO!

[JRBarrett 3,120]

On 5/26/2020 at 6:56 AM, gregmorin said:

 

4. Rename the save airport to the stock airport's code you want to replace. APX29160.BGL in the case of KBGR.

5. Rename the original airport to .off instead of .bgl

 

The APX.xxxxx.bgl files contain more than one airport! If you do it this way, you might fix the problem at KBGR, but would find many other airports in the state of Maine, (and possibly surrounding states) missing afterwards. Default APX.xxxxx.bgl files should never be deleted, renamed, moved or overwritten.

After modifying a stock airport extracted from an APX file using ADE, best practice would be to to compile it user the airport identifier (KBGR), and layer the resulting bgl at a higher scenery layer than the stock airports, but below the add-on airport where the building bleed-through exists.

As others have pointed out, a payware scenery loaded at a higher layer than the default scenery should take priority, so I’m not sure why buildings or other airport assets from the default airport should be bleeding through. Part of the problem may be that the add-on airport is a port from FSX, rather than being designed specifically for P3D. 

I am by no means an expert with ADE. I have been learning to use it over the past few weeks, and am in the process of modifying my local airport KELM. The version of KELM that came with the new P3DV5 scenery is definitely better than the 2006 FSX version that was in all prior versions of P3D, but several recent changes since 2017 did not “make the cut” for V5, including a substantial realignment of the taxiways, a new terminal and removal of three old hangars that still exist in the V5 scenery.

 

[AnkH 2,282]

2 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

As others have pointed out, a payware scenery loaded at a higher layer than the default scenery should take priority, so I’m not sure why buildings or other airport assets from the default airport should be bleeding through. Part of the problem may be that the add-on airport is a port from FSX, rather than being designed specifically for P3D. 

As far as I learned over the weekend in a quick and dirty approach is: most current v4.x AFCADs use exclude polygons to get rid of the default stock buildings. However, this method with exclude polygons seems not to work anymore in v5. Or, another possible issue: the exclude polygons define to exclude default buildings that are now either named differently or positioned differently in v5 and as such the exclude is now simply missing those "novel" stock buildings. As I am no expert neither, the deeper details I do not know...

One interesting example though: the Aerosoft sceneries for v5 do not show default buildings even when using an v4.x AFCAD with them. So Aerosoft most probably already included another exclusion file (or approach) in their v5 scenery variants that gets rid of the default stock stuff.

Anyway, the hand-made approach works really well for me, it takes about 2-3 min (max.) per airport, I can easily live with this until those AFCAD gurus release v5 adjusted variants. If you create a fully stripped down stock airport, you do not even have to care about layering, simply put this .bgl next to the AFCAD from the scenery and you will be fine. The only potential bad outcome would be seeing the default runway bleeding through, as I was not able to remove them (as the only visual aspect, also non-removable were ILS etc.).

[micstatic 4,340]

Chris.  Interesting post.  I'm trying to get MKJS fixed up.  But I don't know where to start from now.  So many conflicting pieces of info in this thread makes it hard to follow.  

[Reader 2,034]

23 hours ago, d.tsakiris said:

I don't think the fault is with LM. And certainly the user should not be left with the problem, that's clear. So, not to point fingers, but I'm thinking the problem is the way some scenery devs design their sceneries:

 

There is no "fault" at all.

LM have redesigned and redefined airport buildings in P3D v5 and some airport features. For this reason, there are two problems,

1. that there are now P3D v4 default buildings and objects that no longer exist and so no longer appear in airports made for P3D v4 and before and

2. that excludes made for earlier versions of P3D v4 and before do not exclude the new buildings or objects, because they do not recognise them.

 

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Reader

[Christopher Low 5,380]

Personally, I would call Airport Design Editor an indispensable utility. I have modified literally hundreds of AFD files over the years (both to adjust taxi paths/designations to my satisfaction, add/delete parking spots, adjust airline codes, add/delete associated models where possible etc), and I will probably continue to do so for many years to come. I have the PRO version installed, because I want to be able to use the full range of features available (including the handy GP Editor, which I have used recently to add ground markings to a couple of airports that I desperately wanted to upgrade).

I have never had a problem setting it up after installation, so that it can recognise the location of the BGL compiler/main Prepar3D folder etc. Once that has been done, everything becomes almost automatic once the basics have been learned.

Edited May 27, 2020 by Christopher Low

[gregmorin 199]

40 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

The APX.xxxxx.bgl files contain more than one airport! If you do it this way, you might fix the problem at KBGR, but would find many other airports in the state of Maine, (and possibly surrounding states) missing afterwards. Default APX.xxxxx.bgl files should never be deleted, renamed, moved or overwritten.

After modifying a stock airport extracted from an APX file using ADE, best practice would be to to compile it user the airport identifier (KBGR), and layer the resulting bgl at a higher scenery layer than the stock airports, but below the add-on airport where the building bleed-through exists.

As others have pointed out, a payware scenery loaded at a higher layer than the default scenery should take priority, so I’m not sure why buildings or other airport assets from the default airport should be bleeding through. Part of the problem may be that the add-on airport is a port from FSX, rather than being designed specifically for P3D. 

I am by no means an expert with ADE. I have been learning to use it over the past few weeks, and am in the process of modifying my local airport KELM. The version of KELM that came with the new P3DV5 scenery is definitely better than the 2006 FSX version that was in all prior versions of P3D, but several recent changes since 2017 did not “make the cut” for V5, including a substantial realignment of the taxiways, a new terminal and removal of three old hangars that still exist in the V5 scenery.

 

Interesting Jim. I will have to check the other Maine airports. The scenery I am trying to use was for P3DV4. One of the Orbx Global freeware airports. for the next airport I will try your suggestion. 

Greg

[AnkH 2,282]

23 minutes ago, micstatic said:

Chris.  Interesting post.  I'm trying to get MKJS fixed up.  But I don't know where to start from now.  So many conflicting pieces of info in this thread makes it hard to follow.  

Do you have ADE v1.79 or newer installed, configured and ready to use? If yes, it is really rather simple:

1. Open ADE, navigate to "open stock airport" and then select MKJS. It opens the default stock airport with all facilities etc.

2. Open "lists" and click through all possible lists. Delete everything you can (some stuff like runways and ILS designators can not be deleted)

3. you will end up basically with a fully stripped down airport just showing the runways and the ILS designators. This stripped down airport you now compile into a .bgl

4. Rename this newly compiled .bgl to something recognizable, for example "MKJS_stock_removal.bgl". Now, if you have an MKJS addon, simply put this .bgl in the same folder your addon ADE resides (usually the "scenery" folder of the addon).

Done. This should now eliminitate everything from the stock airport. As written, I have not seen the remaining runways bleeding through, but my testing was not so deep. This is a rather quick and dirty approach, but so far it does the job.

If you do not use an addon airport but just a modified v4 AFCAD for the otherwise stock airport, it gets more tricky. You would then need to layer those .bgl correctly and as others explained above, you will probably miss several things nevertheless, because the v4 AFCAD tries to call stuff that is not there anymore or named differently in v5.

[ywg256 75]

43 minutes ago, micstatic said:

Chris.  Interesting post.  I'm trying to get MKJS fixed up.  But I don't know where to start from now.  So many conflicting pieces of info in this thread makes it hard to follow.  

mic, I am trying to also get that one to work and will circle back if I can get it fixed up.

[JRBarrett 3,120]

1 hour ago, AnkH said:

As far as I learned over the weekend in a quick and dirty approach is: most current v4.x AFCADs use exclude polygons to get rid of the default stock buildings. However, this method with exclude polygons seems not to work anymore in v5. Or, another possible issue: the exclude polygons define to exclude default buildings that are now either named differently or positioned differently in v5 and as such the exclude is now simply missing those "novel" stock buildings. As I am no expert neither, the deeper details I do not know...

One interesting example though: the Aerosoft sceneries for v5 do not show default buildings even when using an v4.x AFCAD with them. So Aerosoft most probably already included another exclusion file (or approach) in their v5 scenery variants that gets rid of the default stock stuff.

Anyway, the hand-made approach works really well for me, it takes about 2-3 min (max.) per airport, I can easily live with this until those AFCAD gurus release v5 adjusted variants. If you create a fully stripped down stock airport, you do not even have to care about layering, simply put this .bgl next to the AFCAD from the scenery and you will be fine. The only potential bad outcome would be seeing the default runway bleeding through, as I was not able to remove them (as the only visual aspect, also non-removable were ILS etc.).

In looking at the default P3DV5 KELM airport scenery in ADE, I found that the various buildings were a mixture of generic and autogen objects. The generic hangars are built in to the stock object library of ADE, and probably go back to FSX. The terminal itself was an autogen building.

It took me a while to find it. As I said, I am new to ADE. The stock airport is in Prepar3D V5/Scenery/0302/APX27170.bgl.

I found that all of the autogen objects in the scenery were in a corresponding OBX file in the same folder - in this case OBX27170.bgl. Once I imported that OBX into ADE using the library object manager. I was able to find all of the referenced autogen GUIDs. Some have thumbnails, some do not. (I'm using the "Big Thumbnail Pack" with ADE, which I downloaded from the ADE web site.)

Now, in the library OBX27160.bgl I found an autogen terminal building that looks more like the actual terminal. I had no problem importing that OBX library into ADE, and I was able to place the object into the scenery with no problem, but...  when I compiled the airport and loaded it into the sim, the imported building was not present. The conclusion I draw is that any default airport autogen obects have to come from the OBX file that has the same number as the airport's APX file.

This is probably old news to those with a lot of ADE experience, but I found it interesting. I have not ventured into scenery modification prior to P3DV5, so am not sure if this has always been the case.