Here's a strange one! (Help!)

[Guest wildberry]

I have written a number of scenery files quite successfully, but have come across an unusual problem.1. I created the AF2*.bgl file with AFCAD (runway only) & saved it to the addon scenery/scenery folder for a location in Western Australia.2. Started FS9 & use Go To airport & the sim loads OK but there is no sign of the runway?I haven't had this problem before - can anyone suggest where I have goofed?Peter

[Guest Hugo]

My guess. A wrong altitude entry for the airport/runway and/or Starting locations. Year's end or New Year common fault ;-) Have it good!Hugo

[Guest wildberry]

Thanks Hugo but that was the first thing I checked.I have now tried various combinations of flatten & exclude utilities, FSSC & AFCAD & EVERY time I can happily create a runway at the correct location, but whenever I add an exclude switch with any utility or via a line in the scenery.cfg file, the runway disappears.I know that is what an exclude switch does(!)but it has never overwritten one of my AFCAD airports before?Arno - you are a whiz - have you come caross this before?Peter

[Guest JohnC]

I just spotted this post in a search because I have the same problem...I want to exclude the default buildings at my airport which are crowded in among my GMAX custom buildings, so I used an exclude (SCASM from FSSC) in another scenery at a lower priority in the library stack. The result is that I have no AFCAD runways, taxiways,etc. even though I have Addon scenery at the top of my library stack. Repairing small errors in a stock airport seems easy, but if everything disappears if there is an exclude below it, its usefulness is severly limited. I will try an exclude using Ground2k next but I am not optimistic. Anyone? Arno? Luis? Britney Spears? See? I'm desperate.

[scott967 62]

Recommend installing SceneGenX and importing the default airport. SGX can read all the objects and you can use that to create XML excludes (Exclusion Rectangle) for any or all XML scenery objects or taxisigns. I have never had a problem with XML excludes interfering with XML airport (aka AFCAD2) data. Mixing in SCASM scenery does affect things, though.scott s..

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello John,This is a strange problem. As far as I know, your exclude should work and should not eliminate the airport. You could check the airport reference point in AFCAD and see if your exclude surrounds it. But, still you should not have this problem. So, perhaps there is something else.No point in creating a Ground2k exclude, as this program only handles terrain, not objects.I have not used SCASM excludes in a long time (although there is no reason why they should not work), but you may want to try ExcBuilder. The only problem is that you must also have BGLComp installed as well as version 4 of Microsoft's XML module (MSXML), so it all gets a little complicated. But, once you have all the necessary elements, it is quite simple to generate an XML exclude, and one of those will definitely eliminate anything.You could try SceneGenX, as Scott recommends, but I find that much too complicated and unstable. LWMViewer2 by Jim Keir will easily and quickly load your airport, all terrain scenery, plus all default object files, and then you can either move the buildings (by just dragging them somewhere else) or you can delete them. LWMViewer2 generates an XML file containing these modifications; just drop that file on top of BGLComp to get an exclude/new placement bgl. Pretty neat.Let us know how it turns out for you (and give my regards to Britney).Best regards.Luis

[Guest JohnC]

Hi Luis....the AFCAD documentation alludes to the fact that there is some unknown issue regarding excludes and flattens, so I was not surprised to experience it myself.I like AFCAD because it is ideal for repair-fitting runways and taxiways accurately over photorealistic ground textures.Here is what happens....I have the (modified with AFCAD) airport, and a flattening LWM bgl in the highest priority scenery in the library. In the scenery below, I have GMAX buildings and photoreal textures. Under that I have a scenery which has only SCASM excludes to throw out stock visible buildings rising up from FS9 standard scenery below. This works fine...EXCEPT that the FS9 bgl with the stock airports in my area (AP 928160) MUST be removed. I can do this easily by removing the entire local group of BGLs (928160)vfrom my world scenery and putting them in a scenery folder in the library underneath the three sceneries outlined above. This makes it easy to swap stuff in and out. AP928160 must be swapped out...if not I get no mod taxiways or runways. Why modified runways will not appear if the stock runways are in the world scenery is the real mystery, IMOP.I supply a block diagram for a visual description.....the LHS side works....the RHS results in NO runways or taxiways.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello John,Thanks very much, this is a lot clearer, and helps to understand what you are doing.This still remains very strange -I think that it is a first as I have never seen anything like this before. Maybe you deserve some kind of award and we should get Britney to give it to you (and maybe she would do to you what Madonna did to her!)Anyway, it could be that your exclude rectangle surrounds the airport reference point. If so, it will eliminate the entire airport! All of it! So, the question remains, how large is your exclude? If this is the problem, then you should ensure that it only encloses the buildings you do not want.What is new to me is that by excluding the reference point of the default (AP) airport, you are preventing an AFCAD-created airport from displaying. It might be necessary to have that initial default airport in there for many of the things that AFCAD does not do, but I am not sure of this.So, this is something for you to try, or perhaps it is not your problem at all. Please keep us informed.Best regards (and a big wet one for Britney!)Luis

[Guest wildberry]

I started this thread some time ago & am interested to read some others have the same problem. Discussing this with a number of people over the past few months, it appears that there may be some 'black holes' in FS9 where this seems to occur.I have had no problems in most scenery, but have had a huge problem in some part of south western Australia & some parts of New Zealand.John, have you successfully written similar files in other parts of the world using exactly the same technique? Perhaps your area is also caught up in this dilemma rather than anyhting you are doing.Peter

[Guest JohnC]

Hi Luis...what I may not have made clear is that the excludes are superfluous on the LHS of my block diagram, because I removed all the ap928160 airports from the library so there is "nothing" to exclude. The simulator doesn't even know the stock airport exists. I conclude from this that the AFCAD modified airport can and does exist on its own, and that something the excludes do to the stock airport somehow carry thru (and up) to the AFCAD mod airport. Mystifying.

[Guest JohnC]

I only have experience in New England, USA, so I cannot say.

[Guest JohnC]

OK..I managed to find out what I (and possibly wildberry) was doing wrong here.....your point about excludes was absolutely right on (no surprise there), and so I went back to FSSC, and discovered that for some reason, erasing the excludes still allowed FSSC to generate the old exclude bgl's....I had to go back and build a new FSSC file from scratch and carefully target each of the building areas with carefully drawn excludes. That works.Getting rid of (large area) excludes in FSSC by erasing them and recompiling did not work for me...they persisted for reasons I can't explain.Problem solved. If wildberry reads this, perhaps you (he) could go back and redo the excludes in FSSC without building an exclude that takes in unnecessary areas. In other words, sneak up on the buildings.Interestingly, the polygon texturing over photoreal in AFCAD is slightly transparent. I may need some more counselling here, because they are not very realistic. Thanks, LFT.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Glad you got it, John. Very strange about FSSC - it would be interesting to understand why it was still generating those excludes.Best regards.Luis

[scott967 62]

IIRC FSSC will create GenExcl or Exclude excludes, which I don't think are the best to use in conjunction with XML scenery.scott s..

[Guest wildberry]

Fantastic work guys! I will get the original files out during the next few days & start again using your suggestion.CheersPeter(wildberry)