gadgets

Terrain Sculptor, a new utility to create realistic terrain profiles around and on your airports and elsewhere for FS9, FSX and P3D has completed it's first week of beta testing. A few "bugs" have been discovered. All have been corrected. Things are looking good! While the functions performed by Terrain Sculptor can also be performed by sBuilder, sBuilderX and ADE, those other applications require that all sloped polys/triangles be specified individually, that you manually determine the elevation where your work is to blend with the existing mesh and specify the blending triangles. Terrain Sculptor, on the other hand, uses individual points to specify terrain elevation and will automatically generate and clip the triangles needed to blend your terrain with the existing mesh. One of my beta testers reported it took him only 40 minutes to accomplish what he estimated would have taken 5-6 hours otherwise. Terrain Sculptor includes a new LWM compiler (FS9) and makes use of existing tools for CVX files(FSX/P3D). Existing "flattens" can be imported from sBuilder and sBuilderX in .sbx format and, if you wish, your Terrain Sculptor-generated files can be exported back. Import/export from ADE is "in the works". Of course, you can also "start from scratch." Please feel free to take Terrain Sculptor for a "test drive". You can download it from my website http://stuff4fs.com . Navigate to the Applications / Terrain Sculptor page and click the Development Release menu item. Should you notice any anomalies or wish to make suggestions, please do so in the Airfield Lights Toolbox (another of my airport-ancillary applications) support forum at http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/forums/airfield-lights-toolbox.142 Don

Recently, my AI at night/dusk/dawn don't show in their "_l" textures. If I start the flightsim at nighttime, the "_l" textures are shown for a short period (<10 sec) and then the AI reverts to the daytime textures. All my AI aircraft switch to their daytime texture simultaneously. I don't have the faintest idea where to start looking for the problem. Any help at all will be appreciated.As well, the same AI running under FSX never (not even for the 10 seconds) show in the "_l" texture. Is that a known issue with FSX or do I have two problems.Thanks in advance,Don

Thanks. With 140,000 polys, that's a lot of eye-candy. Don

I plan to make another release of CYYJ (2007) in the fall with lots of eye-candy. The BC Air Museum at the airport has a Super DC-3 on outside display (the first I've ever seen). The airplane, a stretched version of the base DC-3, sometimes known as C-117 or R4D-8, looks like a big DC-3 with a DC4 tail assembly. It met with only limited commercial success.I've searched the web and many popular flightsim sights looking for a model of a Super DC-3. But, no luck. Does anyone know where I might find one. It's not going to fly, so it could be as early as FS2000.Thanks in advance,Don

Jim, if it's not too late, it would be convenient if either the most recent coordinates entered for "Open by Coords..." were preserved from one pass to the next or if a facility to enter default coordinates was provided.Thanks for an excellent tool.Don

I recently downloaded a couple of AI aircraft that show-through other scenery. For example, if the aircraft taxies behind a hangar, you can still see the aircraft through the hangar. It looks like the aircraft is actually passing in front of the hangar, several feet in the air. The hangars involved are "advanced generic buildings", so there shouldn't be anything unusual about their texture. In any case, this only happens with these two AI.Anyone have an idea what's happening?Don

From previous threads, I'm not the first to report this problem, but I appear to be the first to report it with SBuilder. Basically, at dusk, most of my VTPs (but not all) disappear and I see the underlying landclass. In the case of the airport poly, only parts of it disappear and become night-lighted. Using LWM Viewer, I've examined every file I can find that affects the area. There does not appear to be any apparent explanation for which parts are lighted and which are not. Previous threads have suggested the problem's due to combining night-lighted VTPs (like cities) and non-night-lighted VTPs in the same project. That's not my situation. None of my VTPs - grass, dirt, forest - (are supposed to) have night lighting. I've tried all three ways to set up the VTP. For my airport poly, I first used landclass texture 10 - Grass. I got lights all over the city-side of the airport at dusk. Then I tried the assembled texture 1183 - Grass. It solved the night lighting problem, but some of the underlying landclass "bled through" during the day. Finally, I tried a named texture set which included all seasons and night-time textures. The night-lights were back. Any suggestions?DonEDIT: PS. Some of my UT Canada/Alaska roads are also disappear under the landclass at dusk.

Thanks. I just assumed I was making a copy of the file with 1280x960 already setup. But, I just checked the new file and, sure enough, the display resolution is 800x600.EDIT: This seems strange, since FS9 Configurator indicated I was saving a copy of the open FS9.cfg (which was set up for 1280x960 and other changes fromm the base) but, instead, saved a copy of the base FS9.cfg. Now that I know, I can work around the issue, but it would be nice if FS9 Configurator saved the file currently being operated upon.Don

Just downloaded and installed "fs9cfg16.zip". After creating a second fs9.cfg file, I tried starting FS9 from FS9 Configurator using the new file. FS9 started, but the display switched to 600x800 mode. (I normally run at 1280x960.) Same thing happend when I tried starting using the Windows Run feature (fs9.exe /cfg:secondcfgfile)Starting from FS9 Configurator in default mode, or just running fs9.exe leaves the display setting as is.Any thoughts?Don

Does nyone know if there is documented in one place an explanation for all/most/many of the parameters in FS9.cfg? If so, where?Also, can anyone point me to details about FS9 startup parameters. There's a recent tutorial on www.scenery.org that indicates that one can have a variety of xxx.cfg files (copies of FS9.cfg with variations) and select which of those files gets used at startup by adding a startup parameter (eg. FS9.exe /CFG:xxx) - thus allowing for multiple settings of, say, TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL to accommodate the specific requirements of different scenery packages. (I've tried e-mailing the author of that tutorial, but his e-mail address keeps being rejected.) I'm curious if this capability also extends to the scenery.cfg file (eg. /SCENERY:yyy), thus allowing minimization of the number of scenery library entries (and startup time) when flying in a localized area.Don

Jim's right; taxiway signs in a separate XML must be enclosed in an XML Airport header. Within that header must also be included an appropriate "DeleteAirport" statement. I'm not at my home computer so I can't be more specific, but I'll update this post as soon as I get back home in a few days. (Reference to the BGLComp SDK should be helpful, though.)I have not experienced any problems from placing the airport signs in the Addon Scenery folder as noted in my earlier post. I chose this method specifically to avoid editing the default file - which can be problematic if you load any addons that also modify default files - and many do. But, if you choose to modify the default BGL as Jim suggests, you can directly edit the taxiway sign(s) of interest - which is somewhat simpler that creating another file.Incidentally, I found that when I used NewBGLAnalyse to decompile the default BGL, the orientation of the taxiway signs were reversed after re-compiling. (Perhaps I don't have the latest version.) BGL-XML seems to be OK.Sorry for the oversight,Don

I too have d/led and used the new EZ Scenery package. Generally, it works very well - seeing the result without having to recompile is a great feature. But the program seems to have problems coping with multiple objects in very close promimity. In my case, I was trying to build a jetway from the components contained in the newly-released library called "tj_jetway_collect" or something similar (I'm not at my home computer, so I'm not certain of the name). EZ Scenery really got "confused", the cursor disappeared and, at one point, it even overwrote the wrong file - and I lost most of a day's work. I've advised Abacus of my experience and, hopefully, they'll produce an update soon. I completed the jetway by hand, coding an XML file and tweaking the result until everything was where it should be! But then, maybe I am expecting too much from a $30 piece of software. Don

You cannot delete a single taxiway sign with an exclude rectangle. An exclude can only delete all taxiway signs at a specific airport. To delete a single taxiway sign without modifying the default scenery file, decompile the default scenery file and note the lat/lon of the first taxiway sign at the airport of interest. (You must have the location of the first sign for that airport!) Then, create a new XML file, enter an exclude rectangle over the location of the noted sign, copy all the taxiway signs to the new XML file, make whatever changes/deletions are necessary and recompile. Place the resulting BGL in your Addon Sceneryscenery directory (which, of course, must be active in your scenery library to have any effect). The exclude gets rid of all the default signs and what you see will be controlled by the new BGL.Hope this helps,Don