FSX BglComp ExclusionRectangle - Help needed

[Guest UlfB]

Luis,The bgl file didn't work. I'm using MyWorldFSX Landclass and maybe this make a difference. We won't have the same textures on this spot.I've arranged a bigger exclude that works for me. Funny thing that the xml-parsers doesn't work the same. Might this be a factor. I'll continue the testing some other day.Ulf B

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

This is astonishing. It is even frightening.Ulf's coordinates do not fill a LOD 13/quad 15 quadrant. And a BGLComp exclude will not work in such a small area.How did this come about? Was anybody aware of this? Dick, George, you get around to other fora, has this been discussed?Anyway, I don't recall any detailed information concerning this.Ulf, sorry, you were right. Many thanks for bringing it to our attention. It is very important.I made a small vector exclude with Shp2Vec:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161060.zipIt seems to work:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161058.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161059.jpgPlease let me know if it works for you.So, this is what I have found so far.An xml exclude will work correctly on the old-style autogen, including up to the coordinates specified.However, and even if the xml autogen file is not active, any of the new-style autogen trees will not be excluded if the entire quad 15 is not covered.And this applies to all the new autogen if the xml autogen is active.So, the xml BGLComp excludes will mostly be useful for removing non-autogen objects like control towers, VORs, etc.Well, time for everyone to learn how to use Shp2Vec, I guess.Best regards.Luis

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Luis.I think this is about right. We should be using XML excludes to get rid of objects, and Shapefile/Vector excludes to get rid of autogen.I haven't read of anything like the QMID15-sized minimum for autogen XML exclusion anywhere else. But it seems true.Dick

[scruffyduck 4]

Hi LuisThanks for the information on xml exclusion rectangles - looks very interesting. Seems that they do work but you need to be careful how the xml is generated and which attributes are used for different circumstances. Also it seems better to use Shp2Vec to remove autogen.

[Guest UlfB]

Hi Luis,The exclude made with Shp2Vec did work very well. All autogen buildings and trees where removed :-)Ulf B

[edgarone 0]

Hello Luis,could you please tell me again, what is the difference between "normal autogen" and (not normal) "forest trees"?And how do you "turned off the xml autogen file"?I came to the same conclusion about the size of the exclusion rectangle: it must include at least a full area. When 1,5 areas are enclosed, only the autogen of the full area is excluded.Maybe this explains your problem with the not excluded edges.(all other rectangles (for library objects etc) can be smaller and more precise)And I still have the problem, that only the first (FULL) exclusion rectangle is recognized and a second one is ignored.Even putting 2 exclusion bgls with 2 switched rectangles into the same scenery-folder did only exclude one area (see the attached sample).PS: I have the same problem with the double quotes: When I do copy and paste the samples from the SDK, they do not compile until I change the double quote character.It might be a problem with the character sets of international Windows versions?Best regards,Edgar

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Edgar,I wish I knew how FS X autogen works. There has not been any information from the developers on this.I see different types of autogen, however.There is the new xml autogen that can be found in the default.xml file in C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesMicrosoft Flight Simulator XAutogenThis contains a lot more objects than FS 9, a lot more, and of all different sorts.Since this quantity of objects can drag performance down, I have disabled this file by simply changing the name to default_original.xml and I no longer get any of the objects from there.Well, almost. The forest land class does not have an annotation file, just like in FS 9, and the trees appear even with the default.xml disactivated. These are the new-style canopy trees that are defined in the default.xml file.And I still get plenty of houses that are exactly like the old FS 9 houses and that are not included in the new xml autogen file.Now, the FS X ground textures are annotated extensively (and whoever did that - by hand! - deserves a medal, and a year's paid vacation) and have different types of objects.There are the normal building annotations, and also vegetation (new xml canopy-style), and also polyline buildings (the new European-style buildings with courtyards), and xml buildings and landmarks. There should be a list somewhere in all that I have sent you of the contents of the autogen bgls.So, I assume (but do not know) that by disabling the default.xml file, all that can display is the normal houses that are annotated, and on the forest textures, the new trees (and this, even though the default.xml is not active.)Anyway, it is all assumption, I don't know, and no developer has told us yet how it all works.Sorry, I thought that your problem with the exclusion rectangles was due to the difference in flags for each exclude. But, I see that you now have only the flag excludeAllObjects = "TRUE" for both.It is strange and does not make any sense at all. I shall play with it, but probably will have the same result as you. I really don't know.As for the double quotes, it is, as you say, probably dependent on the character set. Perhaps Ulf has a Swedish system and there is no difference in the quotes there. I have a U.S. system and there are straight and curved quotes, each has a different ASCII value and probably leads to problems with BGLComp. But, again, it is all guesswork.Sorry, I shall get back to you, as your problem is quite unsettling and deserves a lot of study. It does not make any sense at first sight, does it?Best regards.Luis

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Edgar,It seems that there are 2 different things here.In the excludes of Friday, you had 2 examples that did not work, and one that did. The 2 that did not work both had the flags as such: exclude 1 excludeAllObjects = "FALSE" excludeLibraryObjects = "TRUE"/> exclude 2 excludeAllObjects = "FALSE" excludeGenericBuildingObjects = "TRUE" excludeLibraryObjects = "TRUE"/>As i pointed out, we had found in that thread to which I linked, that exclude flags must all be the same for all excludes in the same bgl, or only the first would work.However, in your final example, you changed the order of the flags to this: exclude 1 excludeAllObjects = "FALSE" excludeGenericBuildingObjects = "TRUE" excludeLibraryObjects = "TRUE"/> exclude 2 excludeAllObjects = "FALSE" excludeLibraryObjects = "TRUE"/>and it worked for you.So, it would seem that we were wrong and that somehow it is necessary to declare all the flags that will appear in the code in the first exclude only. If any subsequent exclude does not declare a flag that was in the first exclude, then it is ignored. Since your second exclude has a flag that appeared in the first, then it works. Just a guess, but it seems as if this is what happened for you here.However, your example of today is quite different.Here, both of your files use the same flag throughout, the comprehensive excludeAllObjects = "TRUE"so that this would no longer be the cause of a problem.But, you have now changed the size of your excludes, reflecting our new knowledge that an exclude must cover an entire Area in order to remove all of the autogen. In addition, your 2 excludes now overlap and slightly cover each other towards the center on the Spree.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161101.jpgThere are 2 things.First, just curious, why are you trying to exclude all the autogen in those 2 Areas? Berlin will look very stark and empty there! Before you were eliminating the Handelszentrum with a small exclude and I could understand that, but with these large excludes, you will remove so much more.Secondly, perhaps because your excludes overlap each other, they are somehow interfering. Maybe that is why you get a problem with ordering. This is just a wild guess on my part, because I really don't see anything wrong with your code that could explain a problem.I don't really see how one could do any differently, though. Perhaps you could try declaring the precise Area boundaries for Lat-Lon as such: They don't overlap with these coordinates, but perhaps they are too precise. Anyway, it is worth trying.Best regards.Luis

[edgarone 0]

Hello Luis,thanks for your answer! In my first testfiles sent to you on Friday I just wanted to exclude one single building in Berlin, which is not a library object, but a generic building. This is displayed in the scenery, even when the autogen slider is at 0, but has no unique ID.I stumbled over the problem, that this "excludeGenericBuildingObjects" rectangle must be the first in the list of rectangles.The second testfiles (here in the forum) are used to test the autogen-exclude-problem ("ALL") from Lars. I do not want to exclude 2 whole areas in Berlin - they are just a test sample. I just want to exlude autogen in one small rectangle in (13206,31413), but this doesn't seem possible with BGLcomp code now.But what I find quite strange, is that using both exclude bgls in the addon-scenery folder didn't work either and excluded only one rectangle. However, I didn't test 2 bgls with just a single rectangle each.What I want, is a chirurgical knife to exclude objects in a small polygon, not a wooden hammer to flatten whole countries.Looking forward to a small description, how to create excludes with shape2vec... :DBest regards,Edgar

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

The saga continues.Edgar found that a BGLComp exclude would not exclude autogen unless an entire LOD 13 Area (quad 15) was covered.In addition, he found that, of multiple excludes, only the first would exclude autogen.Whenever multiple excludes were in the same bgl, the effect was the same, and only the first exclude removed autogen.I have now verified this behavior. It does not matter if the exclude rectangles overlap or not, whether they are touching each other or separate - only the first will exclude autogen.So, it would seem that BGLComp excludes are not altogether reliable as far as autogen is concerned.I wondered about the other flags though.I have some other things to exclude in an airport - default library objects, triggers, generic buildings.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161148.jpgHere is the exclude code:I did not bother to specify different flags since we had determined a year and a half ago that there were complications with the mixing of the different exclude flags. And excludeAllObjects should remove everything.And it does.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161149.jpgSo, BGLComp excludes still seem to be reliable for everything except autogen. And they will work for autogen, but only with one single exclude area - any others will be ignored. As Doug said, "broken!"I agree with you about the hammer, Edgar. Too bad.Best regards.Luis

[DougMatthews 0]

THE ONLY SUPPORTED AND DOCUMENTED WAY OF EXCLUDING AUTOGEN AT FSX IS THROUGH THE USE OF SHP2VEC COMPILED "FLATTENS". PERIOD.Any effect you may be experiencing regarding XML ExclusionRectangles and autogen should NOT be relied on. It is not documented, not supported and subject to change. Don't do it.The only thing broken with regard to this topic, to my knowledge, is that autogen exclusions currently don't work on autogen created by photo annotations.-Doug>Edgar found that a BGLComp exclude would not exclude autogen>unless an entire LOD 13 Area (quad 15) was covered.>>In addition, he found that, of multiple excludes, only the>first would exclude autogen.>>Whenever multiple excludes were in the same bgl, the effect>was the same, and only the first exclude removed autogen.>>I have now verified this behavior. It does not matter if the>exclude rectangles overlap or not, whether they are touching>each other or separate - only the first will exclude autogen.>>So, it would seem that BGLComp excludes are not altogether>reliable as far as autogen is concerned....>So, BGLComp excludes still seem to be reliable for everything>except autogen. And they will work for autogen, but only with>one single exclude area - any others will be ignored. As Doug>said, "broken!"

[Guest UlfB]

>THE ONLY SUPPORTED AND DOCUMENTED WAY OF EXCLUDING AUTOGEN AT>FSX IS THROUGH THE USE OF SHP2VEC COMPILED "FLATTENS".>PERIOD.>Well, Doug. Have a look in the file 'the bgl compiler.html' found in the folder '...Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDKSDKEnvironment KitBGL Compiler SDK'. The following passage is copied from the SDK documentation for FSX:"This element is used to create an exclusion region for scenery. Exclusion rectangles are used to remove scenery objects from the specified region. Flags can be used to exclude a subset of objects in the specified region. This element is not allowed to contain other data and must be terminated with

[DougMatthews 0]

>>THE ONLY SUPPORTED AND DOCUMENTED WAY OF EXCLUDING AUTOGEN>AT>>FSX IS THROUGH THE USE OF SHP2VEC COMPILED "FLATTENS".>>PERIOD.>>>>Well, Doug. Have a look in the file 'the bgl compiler.html'>found in the folder '...Microsoft Flight Simulator X>SDKSDKEnvironment KitBGL Compiler SDK'. The following>passage is copied from the SDK documentation for FSX:>>"This element is used to create an exclusion region for>scenery. Exclusion rectangles are used to remove scenery>objects from the specified region. Flags can be used to>exclude a subset of objects in the specified region. This>element is not allowed to contain other data and must be>terminated with

[Guest UlfB]

Well,That sure made me look :+ I didn't realize that you're a member of ACES. But it's sure good to end this neverending testing of exclusion rectangles ;-)Let's hope that Luis may come up with a tutorial on how to use Shp2Vec.Ulf B

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Thank you for the confirmation, Doug, it is good to know.I have received messages from people wondering why the documentation says one thing when excludes don't in fact work on autogen. So, there has been confusion, to say the least.In the absence of communication, the only recourse that we have is to test and establish the limits ourselves. Which is what I, and others, have been doing.By the way, you were the one who said that this was broken and that you were looking into it, in this very thread, as a matter of fact. I was only echoing your comment.Best regards.Luis