LWMViewer2, a Loaded Weapon

[desertwind 0]

Thanks to Luis, I've discovered the LWMViewer2 utility. It's great for moving buildings off roads and zapping unwanted buildings. This would have saved me a lot of time in clearing out the Punchbowl in Hononlulu. Why diddle around with exclusion zones when you can remove objects directly.Fresh from my success in rearranging half of Honolulu, I decided to tackle the Santa Monica, CA vicinity. I first got all the buildings within a ten mile radius off the roads. Then I decided to recreate Century City, since its distinctive twin towers was often used as a call out by ATC. Here's where I messed up, I think. With the HNL area, I made multiple changes but didn't create the bgl file. So each time I was ready to make additional changes, I loaded the previous object xml file, exported to that same file when done making changes and repeated until all changes were completed. Then I created the bgl. No problem.However, with the SMO changes, I created the bgl after the first round of changes. Then I subsequently imported the object xml file as before. Since the bgl already contains these objects, does this cause replication of objects? It dawned on me this might be the case, although I could have sworn that LWMV gave a warning message along the lines of 'objects already exist, do you want to continue' or something like that when I was doing the HNL area. I received no such message for SMO. Now I notice that there are 'ghosts' of where buildings used to be that don't allow another building to be placed there, or rather they 'hide' the other building as if they (the ghost buildings) were still there. It's as if the graphics routine is still recognizing the ghost buildings as still being solid. Also, I've noticed that when I go to move some buildings, there's another identical building 'inside' of it, i.e., two buildings occupying the same spot. Additionally, there's a visual anomaly with the twin towers. It seems as if there are five towers all bunched together as one and they only appear within fs9. They do NOT appear from within LWMV, so I can't modify nor delete them. Also, the bunched towers will disappear when the aircraft comes within about 100 feet of them. Is there some way to remedy this? There's a good chance the towers are library objects, since they are uniquely triangle shaped as are the actual towers.TawniA powerful utility can be hazardous in the hands of an amateur...:( http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/177721.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/177722.jpg

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

You have made very good progress, Tawni, congratulations. And isn't Jim's tool exceptional?The strange building is, of course, a custom library object, but you can delete that instance and place it somewhere else if you want.The ghost buildings are LWMViewer2's way of telling you that there is an exclude for them in the imported xml file.If you have doubles, then just open the xml file in Notepad and delete them, then when you load the file in LWMViewer2, it should all be fine.By the way, the purple ballish objects are library objects, but they won't display correctly until the library is loaded. You can double click on them and LWMViewer2 should load the library and display the objects. Or just load the Generic, Landmark, and Vehicles bgls.Keep at it!Best regards.Luis

[desertwind 0]

Hi, Luis~Thank you so much for all your help! I love that LWMV utility. Thanks for pointing out the cute little purple critters as library objects. Now I now where that clustered building came from. I didn't know what they were so I just grouped them all neatly together. Oopsie!So here's a question regarding the exclusion created when moving a default object placed by fs9 to another location. What if this default object is sitting on some prime real estate that you like to use for another object? Is it just a matter of placing the object that you want to replace the default object with in a higher priority scenery directory?And why is fiddling with scenery so addictive? It's almost like its own little hobby! Next thing you know, I'll be trying to learn gmax or some other madness. Must...resist... :-lol Tawni

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

I call it the "God complex", an occupational disorder common to scenery designers. We want to re-create the world down to the smallest detail. Welcome to the ranks!As to the exclusion, don't worry too much about it or about priorities. If the exclusion is in the same file (bgl), then you should not have any problems.Best regards.Luis