>Hi All,>>You think all this is bad, but what would happen if MS>followed SOME suggestions for a total re-write of FS? That>would mean NO backward compatibility, no old tools, no old>files, no old anything! Then we would REALLY hear the P and M!>SOME need to think about what they wish for and the>consequences of their wishes!>>JimYes exactly. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Everyone wants BOTH super-performance AND backward-compatibility. Unfortunately, we cannot have both.RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case

>>I very much doubt you will see an AFCAD-style tool for FSX>released by Microsoft. They have bigger fish to fry.>It's something we'd love to be able to offer. To date, contractual obligations and a severe lack of usable time have prevented it.>>I would love to know exactly what tools Microsoft used to>create their scenery. I find it difficult to believe they>made 1000's of airports by using a text editor and BGLCOMP. >Surely some GUI was needed for ease and speed of production.>You're half correct. We don't use a text editor to author airports. We do, however, use BglComp. Extensively. Every APX, ATX, NVX, OBX, BNX and BRX BGL file we shipped went through BglComp - the same BglComp included in the SDK. And every CVX BGL file we shipped went through Shp2Vec - the same Shp2Vec included in the SDK. And every DEM BGL file we shipped went through the Resampler - the same Resampler included in the SDK.In fact, most of the SDK tools (with all their quirks) are part of our production tool set.So... let's see... we used (not including Art tools):- Importers for 3 flavors of aviation data (Jeppesen, FAA, DAFIF).- Importer for NOAA hazard data.- An in-house developed editing environment called MScenes to author, place and/or spatially reconcile airports, buildings, scenery objects, vector data, etc. The GUI, while somewhat quirky by today's standards, was designed for efficiency in authoring airports. In it's current state you'd need about US$40,000 worth of database hardware and software to use it.- A number of special-purpose command-line tools to process data (i.e. generate 55797 extrusion bridges, smooth shorelines, process roads, generate GUIDs...).- Lots of scripts.- An exporter for aviation and scenery data (generate XMLs which are compiled with BglComp).- An exporter for vector data (generate Shapefiles which are compiled with Shp2Vec).- BglComp (same one as in SDK).- Shp2Vec (same one as in SDK).- Resampler (same one as in SDK).- XtoMdl (same one as in SDK).- Annotator (same one as in SDK).- 3rd party GIS tools (i.e. ESRI ArcGIS).- A large spatial database server.So, Rhett, now you know.-Doug (Developer, ACES Scenery Tools)

Duuuuuuuuuuuudde!! :-eek[hr width=100%" size=1 color="black]http://forefrontgrp.com/MyLogo2.JPGJason | General Aviation Fan

ThanX for the information Doug!BertEHTW

Ah, the burning question of many months at fsdevloper, and here at AVSIM, has now been anwered. My day is now complete. :)RhettAMD 3700+ (@2310 mhz), eVGA 7800GT 256 (Guru3D 93.71), ASUS A8N-E, PC Power 510 SLI, 2 GB Corsair XMS 2.5-3-3-8 (1T), WD 250 gig 7200 rpm SATA2, CoolerMaster Praetorian case