FSX Autogen Appearance Question

[Guest Mike707]

I thought I would ask this forum for some insight to a question. I have always thought that the appearance of the autogen trees makes them look much larger in scale than what they look like in real life. Therefore, within FSX, is there a way to make the Autogen trees appear smaller, and if so, how might something like this be accomplished? Thanks all.

[meshman 109]

The five tree files are found in the main Texture folder. They are extended BMP files with an alpha channel. These files could be edited to make the size smaller. Any changes would be worldwide.

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Mike,Many people, myself included, think that the trees are too big. But, a thorough study of the autogen entries in the autogendescriptions.xml file has led me to believe that the sizes are completely realistic.Perhaps because most of us are on the ground we do not correctly judge the size of trees when seen from the air.But, I think that the real problem is not the size of the autogen trees, but rather incorrect land class assignments. Very often, the land class is not appropriate and displays larger trees than another land class.So, it is easy enough to modify the land class and choose something with smaller trees.For example, the Deciduous Broadleaf Forest land class seems to give reasonably sized trees compared to others, notably the Rain Forest land class.Best regards.Luis

[Holger 0]

Hi all,there is a third option in addition to editing the textures themselves or changing the land class assignments.FSX has "opened up" its system of autogen annotation (.agn) files. Unlike FS9, any ground texture can have a global or local custom agn file assigned to it, even those -- like most of the vegetation classes -- that don't have separate agn files in default FSX. Moreover, FSX offers a large selection of autogen trees and shrubs in different combinations of height classes and species, which should help with finding suitable replacements. To make your own customizations you'll need the Autogen Annotator tool of the FSX Deluxe SDK, Luis's great tutorial - http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?CatID=fsxsd&DLID=107335 - and a land class table like mine: http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?f=231&t=57245The default land class ground textures are all in SceneryWorldtexture. I suggest pulling copies of the texture sets you want to work on into a separate folder. If you decide to work directly in SceneryWorldtexture make sure to keep backup copies of all .agn files in a safe place should you wish to revert to the originals.There is a caveat: usually, the size of the trees seems most out of place in the mixed classes, those that have both houses and trees. Unfortunately, there seems to be an issue with re-saving default autogen annotations that contain Type 2 buildings. At least on my system, annotator crashes every time I try to select or save one of those types. Maybe someone else knows how to avoid that. There's a work-around involving copying vegetation and Type 1 buildings into a duplicate bitmap but that's fairly tedious and removes any Type 2 autogen from the tiles. Cheers, Holger

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Very interesting behavior, Holger. Could you please indicate an example for testing?I had noticed something strange about the annotations. We can load the xml files and then easily identify the annotations by selecting them - the type then appears in the selection zone, but only if the appropriate xml file is loaded.So, I have selected numerous annotation objects and found that their type is "Unknown"! I suspect that the textures were meticulously annotated by the Art Team with GUIDs that were subsequently eliminated or changed, but the annotations remained.I have even found some carefully detailed textures with hundreds of small vegetation rectangles, all of type "Unknown", and then a large but correctly identified rectangle covering the entire texture. Strange, don't know what to think of that.So, perhaps you are trying to save annotations that have invalid GUIDs - that might explain the crashes.Best regards.Luis

[Holger 0]

Hi Luis,I believe that issue with the crashes may be with my system rather than general. I just noticed that the Library button in Annotator is greyed out and that the window below it contains the line "MSXML error". It seems that I don't have access to default library objects, which could explain the GUID errors and crashes.Are you getting any error messages (GUID not found) when loading a default tile with Type 2 autogen, say 007b2su1.bmp?I checked the .config files in the Annotator folder and they all seem to point correctly to my installation directory of FSX. Maybe Annotator doesn't like being in a non-default location; mine is X:Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDKSDKEnvironment KitAutogen SDKCheers, Holger

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Very strange, Holger. As far as I know, the only reason why the Annotator would not display the list of Library objects is because the default.xml file is not present in the same directory.As for 007b2su1.bmp:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/181767.jpgand here is 032b2su1.bmp:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/181768.jpgNo error messages for me. Sorry that I could not be of help - no idea what is wrong.Best regards.Luis

[Holger 0]

Hello Luis,actually, you did help!Your point about the default.xml made me take a closer look and it turned out that my version was corrupted; probably something that happened while I tinkered with it a while back. Replacing it with the original version did the trick: no more error messages and crashes.Thank you!Cheers, Holger