Why the f. did this happen?

[Tom Knudsen]

Before installing AlpilotX latest Mesh

 

 

 

After (even in WED and Overlay Editor all buildings are gone! With out a trace.. )

 

 

 

[x-plane 123]

Make sure that the mesh is below your airports in the scenery_pack.ini.

[Tom Knudsen]

I did, but i think the fault might be my own. Afraid I might have accidental pushed the "LOAD DEFAULT SCENERY OBJECTS" button in overlay editor, it must have removed all buildings upon save an exit.. so im screwed. Need to start over, 2 weeks down the drain

[alpilotx]

Make sure that the mesh is below your airports in the scenery_pack.ini.

Which is - usually - the most common reason for problems like this (at least from all the support mails I receive, this is one of the most common "mistakes")

[jettojig]

I did, but i think the fault might be my own. Afraid I might have accidental pushed the "LOAD DEFAULT SCENERY OBJECTS" button in overlay editor, it must have removed all buildings upon save an exit.. so im screwed. Need to start over, 2 weeks down the drain

Doesn't WED usually create a backup DSF from before yaounde save?

[Tom Knudsen]

 

Which is - usually - the most common reason for problems like this (at least from all the support mails I receive, this is one of the most common "mistakes")

 

So I thought too and first it was correct. I moved inside the scenery.ini and things seems to be ok as shown in the first picture.

But next time I started XP it was all gone. Even tried in desperate action a noob effort to restore my computer 24 hours without any result in my favor.

And then it hits me, not knowing what the "load default scenery objects" do in overlay editor I remember pushing it and later saving the scenery.

It must have been that, as I did try to open WED and overlay editor after but in both no buildings where visible, only apron and taxilines.

 

Even tried to restore the earth data.bak without any result. So the fact is now that I need to start from scratch again, luckely this time I have pictures to follow (screenshots)

 

So could I be right, as default scenery objects where non in the first place, so loading them would suspectively removing all others???

Anybody now what this button is actually used for? Why is it even in overlay editor?

 

Frustrated!!!!

[chris k]

1. Don't use WED and OE together.

 

In fact, just use WED.

 

If you want to see "how it will look in X-Plane".... just load X-Plane. Have it running as you have WED open. Use the 'reload scenery' plugin.. poof, 0.5 seconds.. its there.

 

Barbarossa's "Reload Scenery" plugin makes WED export changes show up in 0.5 seconds after commit -- in the actual rendering engine that matters -- which is X-Plane.

 

Take this further:

 

2. Don't use OE.

 

OE DIRECTLY manipulates the "final-product" overlay DSF

no offline editing

no mass attribute change ability

no object or art asset search and replace

no easy layering and group-level sorting of hierarchy

has no object grouping

has no multple-undo/redo (last time I checked)

no easy way to do version control

Cannot add comments or easy-to-read human identifiers to art assets or groupings

suffers from loss of mathematical precision (due to the way DSF stores data),

no ability to 'diff' different copies of the same scenery if you happen to use a distributed person development model

cannot handle large numbers of orthos without falling over or grinding to a complete halt,

cannot do any ATC flow manipulation

....and is not useful for proto-typing different parallel builds and versions of scenery.

 

3. If you need an ortho underlay, use WEDBING or OrthoMagix (Andyroo's tool) to create the ortho first for WED.. and then start building.

Edited July 24, 2015 by chris k

[Tom Knudsen]

First off.

 

OE was used to place objects/facades and default made 3d modellers in real time. Works excellent for that purpose. Found that the polygon system in WED too annoying to use, even better

it does not show a working library, so you would as far as I know need to know the object address?

 

Ortho photos are the devils gift to all horrible things and looks like crap in game (my opinion). Most orthos are either too green or do not fit or blend with default scenery.

Then, when a new OSM is released either default updated or via a third party scenery, it tends to shapeshift the entire ortho photo scenery (again my opinion).

 

So accepting the fact that there is allways an option is to allocate made 3D objects by hand and placing them, not using library objects. The only way I know is using the OE after you are finished

using WED.  WED to make the foundation and OE to object place and add evironmental things.

Edited July 23, 2015 by Tom Knudsen

[chris k]

1. WED can place 3D objects and you see them "in real time too". (Albeit only from the top-down direction). In WED, you need to say "Toggle Preview". Many people have this off by default and wonder why they can't see any objects in WED. Facades are another matter. I'd much rather have 2D wireframe (fast fast fast) in the editor, then Ctrl-B/Export, hit "reload' In XPlane 10 --  and can see my result in x-plane itself in 0.5 seconds; and thats *actually* how its going to look in-game, because, well.. it's in-game.

 

But - as you say, to each their own then.

 

2. Never said to use orthos in the final product -- just use them for alignment.

 

In WED, it's brilliantly simple to hit the "visible/invisble" button, then export your scenery. The orthos (now marked invisible) never make it into the DSF, but stay inside the WED project. You then can see your scenery all your objects, items, strings, lines, polygons, AGPs, etc.... without the ortho underneath.... again, in the only 3D rendering engine that actually matters. -- the simulator itself. This is the upside of an 'offline' config that is not directly tied to the DSF structure itself--  don't need to delete anything, ever, in WED. Just enable/disable, then commit the DSF to render.

 

3. I don't understand the comment on "default 3d Modellers". You can place default 3d models or custom 3D objects using WED just as easy. WED makes no distinction between 3rd party library objects, default objects, custom objects, etc... when it comes to placing something into the scene. they're all just objects. (caveat: it actually *does* care,but ONLY  if you try to upload your creation to the Laminar Scneey Gateway.. then it does do a version check just before sending.... but not before, and doesn't care two poops about object restrictions for custom scenery)

 

4. WED shows every "working" library on the left hand pane. You can even cheat, and make it show you MORE than just the allowed' libraries and ignore the PRIVATE flag. (pro tip: remove the line
"PRIVATE" from everything in /X-Plane/Resources./....library.txt files you can find, if you really want to access old, and i mean, old objects still in the library, or any part of the XP10 Autogen that Ben doesn't want you playing with =)

 

"so you would as far as I know need to know the object address?"

 

5. Nope. No way. the top left "search" function is why thats there. Partial substring match on any art asset in the entire library. shows partial substring where the name matches a hierarchy (and expands that hierarchy for you) too.

 

6. "So accepting the fact that there is allways an option is to allocate made 3D objects by hand and placing them"

 

See previous point. What OE does and what WED does with any object (being library, custom, in your directory, copied from elsewhere, created?) is precisely identical in nature. Hand placement 1:1 is the same. OE does not magically create sketch up objects out of thin air... and nether does WED. they just let you place them onto an overlay DSF.

 

7. "The only way I know is using the OE after you are finished using WED.  WED to make the foundation and OE to object place and add evironmental things."

 

This is because after YEARS of being in X-Plane, after 200+ posts on Bens blog talking about POLs, Tesselation, and how Laminar should really do feature "X" in the scenery -- I still have this feeling that you haven't really fully understood how the X-Plane scenery system works. I do very much recall giving you tutorials, instruction, and trying to explain so to speak a few times over the past few years on this... i.e. just 1 week ago: "that no, you cannot use OE or WED to edit a river, because thats in the MESH DSF, and not in the OVERLAY DSF.  i.e. the different between DSFs, and what an apt.dat file does.

 

Your first post in this their even highlights this. "I added Andras's HDMesh file, and my buildings disappeared". This shows a lack of understanding of

 

1. Scenery_packs.ini order, and how meshes trump overlays in the load order

 

2. How X-plane re-evaluates every new file in /Custom Scenery/ every time you load

 

3. Even after removing the HDMESH files, somehow concluding that adding a TERRAIN DSF in Andras' directory somehow touched and destroyed your other custom scenery overlay-DSF-which-is-on-a-different part of your-HDD. Thats complete nonsense, There is no spooky magic here; and the two are unrelated, yet, you wanted to blame his file for your loss. Either you were just angry and you needed something to blame, even though you knew it to be untrue; or you genuinely though that adding a text file in one directory on your HDD somehow edited another text file in a different directory by magic.

 

Again -- to each their own.

 

My Summary (and not so humble opinion): WED is the tool of choice for serious scenery development. Ask any of the other devs (bunutaru, MisterX6, ICARUS (next-post below -- thanks ilias), Peter and his Aerobridge boys, etc..) -- none of them use OE for serious work.

 

ps. We TRIED using OE.. once.. for some ISDG scenery. It crashed about 15 seconds into trying to read the complex DSF that WED had no problems creating... Also try loading in about 2000 orthos into OE, and observe how you get about 1 click-per-3-seconds into it's user interface; or try to shift your view in the world.. click.. wait...wait....wait....wait.... oh, there it goes.. click some more over.... wait.....wait....wait.....wait....wait....  

 

I keep trying to give OE a 'good shot", every time marginal improves upon it; but every time it falls over when I need it to do some seriously complicated and/or highly dense sceneries.

 

WED, I know it's limits. It crashes when I load >4 Gb of VRAM into it.... and thats about it.. It remains FAST, very very FAST for moving, aligning, editing, zooming around, in/out, mass changes, batch changes, attribute copying/pasting (yeah, like the actual 000.0.00 LAT/LONG of an object, copy-paste from text directly, and not 'w w w w ww w  ww w r r r rr r r d d d dd d d" like you do in OE to move things, when you know precisely where you need the vertex to aline up) .. plus search, replace, partial match, and being generally useful. Has some awesome mouse/key combinations do do some nifty copy/create functions,  and is very much like working in Visio. (so much, so, you get muscle memory between ctrl-alt, mouse click-drag to extend a bezier curves, fore exams,e. it becomes second nature)  =)

 

Secondly -- There's nothing more annoying than a slow user interface. The slow part of scenery development should be me and my laziness  not "waiting 15 seconds for the screen to update in OE because I moved my camera position 5 feet"

 

/rant

 

- CK

Edited July 25, 2015 by chris k

[ilias.tselios]

I have OE, almost never use it. It is a good app, but for simple sceneries.

 

WED it is almost perfect (.lin preview?) and it is made for serious work. Features like grouping staff, where you can group "things" and then lock them or hide them with a click, or by place exactly at the same coords multiple "things", or select multiple "things" and manipulate them together, are priceless. 

[Tom Knudsen]

1. WED can place 3D objects and you see them "in real time too". (Albeit only from the top-down direction). In WED, you need to say "Toggle Preview". Many people have this off by default and wonder why they can't see any objects in WED. Facades are another matter. I'd much rather have 2D wireframe (fast fast fast) in the editor, then Ctrl-B/Export, hit "reload' In XPlane 10 --  and can see my result in x-plane itself in 0.5 seconds; and thats *actually* how its going to look in-game, because, well.. it's in-game.

 

But - as you say, to each their own then.

 

 

 

Run this by me again Chris, can you have i.e. WED on one screen and XP on the other, then hit CTRL-B to refresh XP (reload) in order to have things update on the fly?

 

 

 

2. Never said to use orthos in the final product -- just use them for alignment.

 

In WED, it's brilliantly simple to hit the "visible/invisble" button, then export your scenery. The orthos (now marked invisible) never make it into the DSF, but stay inside the WED project. You then can see your scenery all your objects, items, strings, lines, polygons, AGPs, etc.... without the ortho underneath.... again, in the only 3D rendering engine that actually matters. -- the simulator itself. This is the upside of an 'offline' config that is not directly tied to the DSF structure itself--  don't need to delete anything, ever, in WED. Just enable/disable, then commit the DSF to render.

 

Ok, understood what you said..

 

3. I don't understand the comment on "default 3d Modellers". You can place default 3d models or custom 3D objects using WED just as easy. WED makes no distinction between 3rd party library objects, default objects, custom objects, etc... when it comes to placing something into the scene. they're all just objects. (caveat: it actually *does* care,but ONLY  if you try to upload your creation to the Laminar Scneey Gateway.. then it does do a version check just before sending.... but not before, and doesn't care two poops about object restrictions for custom scenery)

 

 

My bad, models are the word

 

 

 

4. WED shows every "working" library on the left hand pane. You can even cheat, and make it show you MORE than just the allowed' libraries and ignore the PRIVATE flag. (pro tip: remove the line

"PRIVATE" from everything in /X-Plane/Resources./....library.txt files you can find, if you really want to access old, and i mean, old objects still in the library, or any part of the XP10 Autogen that Ben doesn't want you playing with =)

 

"so you would as far as I know need to know the object address?"

 

 

5. Nope. No way. the top left "search" function is why thats there. Partial substring match on any art asset in the entire library. shows partial substring where the name matches a hierarchy (and expands that hierarchy for you) too.

 

6. "So accepting the fact that there is allways an option is to allocate made 3D objects by hand and placing them"

 

See previous point. What OE does and what WED does with any object (being library, custom, in your directory, copied from elsewhere, created?) is precisely identical in nature. Hand placement 1:1 is the same. OE does not magically create sketch up objects out of thin air... and nether does WED. they just let you place them onto an overlay DSF.

 

7. "The only way I know is using the OE after you are finished using WED.  WED to make the foundation and OE to object place and add evironmental things."

 

This is because after YEARS of being in X-Plane, after 200+ posts on Bens blog talking about POLs, Tesselation, and how Laminar should really do feature "X" in the scenery -- I still have this feeling that you haven't really fully understood how the X-Plane scenery system works. I do very much recall giving you tutorials, instruction, and trying to explain so to speak a few times over the past few years on this... i.e. just 1 week ago: "that no, you cannot use OE or WED to edit a river, because thats in the MESH DSF, and not in the OVERLAY DSF.  i.e. the different between DSFs, and what an apt.dat file does.

 

Your first post in this their even highlights this. "I added Andras's HDMesh file, and my buildings disappeared". This shows a lack of understanding of

 

Your right, and I will still keep coming back asking the same question over and over again, why you ask. Well due the fact the I do not go about remembering every god damn thing I read in this forum, not

even answers to my own question. The good thing about a forum is that you can ask and hopefully get an answer each time. If we didnt there would be a lot of no communication periods in here.

 

So If you are to bored to answer Chris, please refrain from doing so, if not you made me glad at least and I do appreciate every answer you provide for sure.

 

Basically I am following and participating in at least 15 different forums daily. With topics differ from scuba, aviation, x-plane, Linux, Photography, Videography, 3D, Design, Animation, hacking, system administration and IT technology.

So I do appologies if I came accross somewhat a bit of a confused noob. Second I appologies again from any bad spelling, english is not my native language, but trying to be better.

 

I try to be better in X-Plane Dev. But I have been in school for the past 7 years learning and I am now finally getting back to flight simulation.

That said I have more or less not flown in that period so imagine my enjoyment of catching up, learning and finally getting to use plane like the 777, 757, A320NEO, A330 etc. for the very first time.

Third and last thing, I started from basic learning X-Plane Dev (besides minor projects like the RTH and texture desings). I chose to use Overlay Editor and WED to compile a basic plausible scenery

which by the way, now are getting completed.

 

However I did notice that scenery made in OE such as library objects tend to disappear if you re-visit WED after a while. And you get no buildings back too.

So cloud backup is no essential and a keyfactor is to only use WED once (in the beginning) if one are to use OE down the line.

 

Next scenery will be a GA airport, lots smaller at with most hand made 3D models in 3ds Max and AC3D. And for that scenery I will use primary WED to see if this might be better.

And yes, orthos for reference only..

 

 

 

1. Scenery_packs.ini order, and how meshes trump overlays in the load order

 

Checked every time, not amendment has ever been done in the scenery packs ini. Only when installing new scenery for the first time.

Hope that is what you meant Chris.

 

2. How X-plane re-evaluates every new file in /Custom Scenery/ every time you load

 

Did not matter, after the buildings where gone in my case, after using WED, not scenery is loaded with those buildings.

Which means Chris. If I made the base with WED, moved into OE and placed objects, saved and open WED, did some changes and saved..

All objects where gone next time I loaded either X-Plane or OE after that.

 

 

3. Even after removing the HDMESH files, somehow concluding that adding a TERRAIN DSF in Andras' directory somehow touched and destroyed your other custom scenery overlay-DSF-which-is-on-a-different part of your-HDD. Thats complete nonsense, There is no spooky magic here; and the two are unrelated, yet, you wanted to blame his file for your loss. Either you were just angry and you needed something to blame, even though you knew it to be untrue; or you genuinely though that adding a text file in one directory on your HDD somehow edited another text file in a different directory by magic.

 

It was just that objects placed where totally gone after installing Andras' scenery, did not come back after I edited the scenery.ini too.. Talked to him about this, so all is good and no answer explained or compiled the issue correctly.

 

Again -- to each their own.

 

My Summary (and not so humble opinion): WED is the tool of choice for serious scenery development. Ask any of the other devs (bunutaru, MisterX6, ICARUS (next-post below -- thanks ilias), Peter and his Aerobridge boys, etc..) -- none of them use OE for serious work.

 

ps. We TRIED using OE.. once.. for some ISDG scenery. It crashed about 15 seconds into trying to read the complex DSF that WED had no problems creating... Also try loading in about 2000 orthos into OE, and observe how you get about 1 click-per-3-seconds into it's user interface; or try to shift your view in the world.. click.. wait...wait....wait....wait.... oh, there it goes.. click some more over.... wait.....wait....wait.....wait....wait....  

 

I keep trying to give OE a 'good shot", every time marginal improves upon it; but every time it falls over when I need it to do some seriously complicated and/or highly dense sceneries.

 

I hear ya, will look for a new approach next time, but for this plausible scenery I would see how it goes, soon finished and released.

 

 

WED, I know it's limits. It crashes when I load >4 Gb of VRAM into it.... and thats about it.. It remains FAST, very very FAST for moving, aligning, editing, zooming around, in/out, mass changes, batch changes, attribute copying/pasting (yeah, like the actual 000.0.00 LAT/LONG of an object, copy-paste from text directly, and not 'w w w w ww w  ww w r r r rr r r d d d dd d d" like you do in OE to move things, when you know precisely where you need the vertex to aline up) .. plus search, replace, partial match, and being generally useful. Has some awesome mouse/key combinations do do some nifty copy/create functions,  and is very much like working in Visio. (so much, so, you get muscle memory between ctrl-alt, mouse click-drag to extend a bezier curves, fore exams,e. it becomes second nature)  =)

 

Secondly -- There's nothing more annoying than a slow user interface. The slow part of scenery development should be me and my laziness  not "waiting 15 seconds for the screen to update in OE because I moved my camera position 5 feet"

 

/rant

 

- CK

 

Thanks for the rant option Chris, always learning and yes you got it, always asking again he he..  No I promise I will do better in the future.

 

PS.. The red font is not an angry font, but a more visible one. And of course a much more good looking one to reflect the writer

[Ben Russell]

"Juggle too many balls and one ends up looking like a clown."

 

[ilias.tselios]

Couple basic things.

 

 

I'm running WED and X-Plane, together...most of the time. You export in WED (Ctrl+B, and then you go to X-Plane and reload the scenery (with Xreloaded plugin).

 

 

OE saves directly to the DSF. When you load the scenery, reads it directly from DSF.

 

WED saves to "earth.wed.xml". WED exports to DSF. WED loads from "earth.wed.xml". 

 

So, if you save/export in WED, then load in OE, save in OE, and then try to load it in WED... changes made in OE will disappear. But, you can load it in WED, by "importing DSF"... and ending up with a lot of duplicated stuff. Thanks WED... the new import is in it's own group...

 

This mean that moving back and forth, WED -> OE, is possible, but highly NOT RECOMMENDED. WED uses more accurate (more decimals) placement from OE. So doing that thing couple of times and you'll end up with things shifted around.

 

Use WED...only! Learn one tool the better you can. I think that's the meaning of Ben Russell's reply! 

Edited July 26, 2015 by airfighter

[Tom Knudsen]

 

OE saves directly to the DSF. When you load the scenery, reads it directly from DSF.

 

WED saves to "earth.wed.xml". WED exports to DSF. WED loads from "earth.wed.xml". 

 

So, if you save/export in WED, then load in OE, save in OE, and then try to load it in WED... changes made in OE will disappear. But, you can load it in WED, by "importing DSF"... and ending up with a lot of duplicated stuff. Thanks WED... the new import is in it's own group...

 

Got it, thanks for this...

 

Even Ben's response made sens this time

 

From now on, only WED for me..  PS.. Not sure if I remember, but does WED have a preview pane such as OE do? Thinking it if one are to use library objects, one would need to know what they look like.

Know there is a object viewer out there, but found it to be very annoying in such sense that you would need to open and close each objects. If you are using own models, well then it might be aok.

 

PS.. Ilias

Thanks to you I now know why my river got messed up. Keeping this in mind for sure.    

[ilias.tselios]

Yes WE'D has one on the left lower corner, which is zoomable and rotatable.

[Tom Knudsen]

Ok so I've started using WED only now for my second scenery. Whilst there are some improvments there are also some things I find better to be in OE.

But that is preferences and not that important but sharing my toughts anyway.

 

1. Cannot seem to find any roads in WED, any ideas?

2. Seems when I place out autogen it does not show in XP, are one to use ags or fac or obj?

3. Anyway to rotate exclusion zones or fit them easier.

 

In OE there were two icons I miss in WED, these are "insert vertex point" and "insert bezier vertex point"

How do this work in WED.. I believe I figured out the ALT+drag to create a bezier curve, but not adding extra points.

 

Last but at least, I find the xreload to be very buggy, it crashes very easy due to memory, and the loading time is a bit longer than actually quit and start XP again.

Could be the UHD mesh that makes this?

[JGregory]

In OE there were two icons I miss in WED, these are "insert vertex point" and "insert bezier vertex point"

This is clearly explained in the WED manual... have you tried reading it?

[Tom Knudsen]

Only girls read the manual..

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[ilias.tselios]

Ok so I've started using WED only now for my second scenery. Whilst there are some improvments there are also some things I find better to be in OE.

But that is preferences and not that important but sharing my toughts anyway.

 

1. Cannot seem to find any roads in WED, any ideas?

2. Seems when I place out autogen it does not show in XP, are one to use ags or fac or obj?

3. Anyway to rotate exclusion zones or fit them easier.

 

In OE there were two icons I miss in WED, these are "insert vertex point" and "insert bezier vertex point"

How do this work in WED.. I believe I figured out the ALT+drag to create a bezier curve, but not adding extra points.

 

Last but at least, I find the xreload to be very buggy, it crashes very easy due to memory, and the loading time is a bit longer than actually quit and start XP again.

Could be the UHD mesh that makes this?

1. No roads in WED. Probably in a future release.

2. Not something I tried...rendering setting might play a role?

3. No rotation. Add as many need it. Group them and lock them.

 

Select 2 points and press Ctrl+E (or Cmd+E in Mac).

 

X-Reloaded is definitely faster and yes UHD might play a role. 

 

Only girls read the manual..

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

Sure not. As a pilot I had to read a LOT of manuals. There were no way to operate an AH-64 with a manual!

[Tom Knudsen]

1. No roads in WED. Probably in a future release.

2. Not something I tried...rendering setting might play a role?

3. No rotation. Add as many need it. Group them and lock them.

Select 2 points and press Ctrl+E (or Cmd+E in Mac).

X-Reloaded is definitely faster and yes UHD might play a role.

Sure not. As a pilot I had to read a LOT of manuals. There were no way to operate an AH-64 with a manual!

Ok thanks a lot.. Seems i need to make every building myself too..

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

[JGregory]

Seems i need to make every building myself too.

Ummm... were you expecting someone to do it for you ?

[Ben Russell]

Only girls read the manual..

Sent from my SM-N9005 using Tapatalk

 

Congratulations on self identifying as being dumber than half the people on this planet.

[Andyrooc]

@Ben, I sure the "only girls" comment was tongue-in-cheek. I usually go by the adage "when all else fails, read the manual" - not something I would recommend to pilots however

 

X-Plane libraries have deprecated autogen objects that exist as placeholders, so if you use those, you will see nothing. Make sure you choose from the non-deprecated libraries.

Exclusion zones cannot be rotated. X-Plane only handles rectangular exclusion zones oriented north-south, so there is little point in rotating them.

 

The good thing about WED (besides all the point Chris mentioned) is that you get a project file you can backup and restore whenever you wish. The WED project file contains all the info need to reproduce the DSF and apt.dat files whenever needed. You can also share the project file with others, meaning a scenery dev team have a way to share data - which can include stuff like ground routes (for GroundTraffic), as well as organisation of the project elements in various groups.

 

OE is perfect for those who want to add a couple of objects to existing  scenery, or perhaps edit something in their local airport, but if you want to create scenery as a project, WED is really the only way to go.

[Ben Russell]

As the father of a young daughter. "Fuck your jokes."

 

They're a pathetic luddite legacy of a human race that really needs to grow the fuck up.

[Jim Kallinen]

Really need to take this to PMs