Interested !!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOWWWWWW

This is fantastic. People have been trying to decode the object library for some time. Now ALL is revealed. Do you know what this means folks?

EVERY LIBRARY OBJECT IN FS9 CAN NOW BE USED BY SCENERY DESIGNERS!!!

That includes buildings, bridges, vehicles, a/c carriers - you name it. Look at this



I quickly dropped a cruise liner and the little 57 ft powerboat you can see in the middle into my fs9 Kai Tak scenery. Look how much better they are than the 'old' objects I used originally!

BUT this also means that pretty soon the design progs like FSSC and Airport will be updated to use the new XML standard - and it's my guess the next thing will be that some very clever guy out there will work out how to make the objects dynamic - shouldn't be too hard

That means things like MOVING LANDABLE CARRIERS

This is a BIG, IMPORTANT development I think

Thanks for the news Felix

Roger

PS

Anyone who wants to experiment like I did MUST download and install XML4 from the M$ website in order to create the bgl files

Hi Bird

This is how AFCAD is gonna become a full design prog. Now all of the objects have been catalogued it won't be difficult to start manipulating them within a prog like AFCAD2.

Airport and FSSC will need big revamps I think as they use the old bgl opcodes so I can't see them being able to interface with library objects directly for a while yet. I think AFCAD2 will get there first (any bets? 8) )

But FSSC and Airport both handle 'autogen' OK for now and we are mainly talking about 'feature' objects here ie a bridge, an aircraft carrier, a supertanker, a sailboat, a powerboat, the Tower of Pisa, the London Eye, the Eiffel Tower, a terminal building etc. That being so, it's easy for now to do what I did ie drop single items into a scenery by hand.

My next experiment will be to combine several objects in a single XML file ie a single bgl which will make things a lot more convenient.

Remember - it's still early days!

Roger

Quote:

Do you have a link Roller? I searched on the main microsoft website for it but nothing came up - where do I go?

I think my old computer will finished being mended by today so Ill be back in the sky and able to experiment. I might need some help though figuring out what to do  But perhaps the SDK will tell me.

Those ships look great - I can see everyone will be busy placing these things everywhere!

Hi Rollerball.

"The library objects include EVERYTHING including all of the CFS stuff as well - vehicles, shell holes you name it!"  

This is not true, as far as I can tell.

I believe the "FS9 LibraryObjects.xls" is just a list of all the objects MS ever made back to FS98. It is not representative of the current FS9 objects alone.

The CFS2 objects are not present. You can add those BGL libraries to FS9, but those objects must be placed by the old BGLC ( or SCASM ) code.


In addition the "FS9 LibraryObjects.xls" doesn't contain scale info.. or info regarding bounds limits of some objects ( for example, the Statue of Liberty cannot be shown in Wisconsin... it's outside the bounds ). The bounds were also true of FS2002, but we did have the info on them... the old XLS file covering FS2002 might help here ( from the FS2002 SDK ).

Also, the BiasXYZ of bglcomp doesn't seem to work right with Scenery Objects... and may not work at all with attachments ( which is the whole point, I would think ). there is a hack floating around that is supposed to help with providing BiasXYZ to objects, but nothing has been done with attachments to objects.

I personally don't think the design team used the XML process or bglcomp, but had a more advanced tool that may have needed a GIS program to place objects.

Microsoft is aware of these problems, but I doubt they will correct them ( they still have the bogus copy of BGLC that won't compile to the southern hemisphere at their website ).

Once the MakeMDL SDK is released, and if it if complete and accurate, we might be able to dechipher what the problems and limits of the bglcomp are.

The really good news is that perhaps Lee Swordy will be able to incorporate some of this info into AFCAD, and then we will have a good object placement compiler.

Currently, there are 2 formats of BGLs that can be used for objects and effects, and the new format is very limited as MS gave it to us... we can't display our FS2002 libraries or objects with it.

All terrain features are still using either resample or BGLC. We actually have a pretty good understanding of the new watermasking... all else is essentially unchanged from FS2002... the additions of the vector objects to VTP roads, bridges, and the flattens of roads and stream is also understood, adn controlled by the terrain.cfg file. So there is no rush for the Terrain SDK, we already essentially know what's in it.



Dick

Hi Roger.

Right now, there is little reason for scenery designers to use the new bglcomp.

The default objects ( including the "ag_ " autogen can still be placed by SCASM or BGLC code.  This also allows us to use our own object libraries. Dynamic scenery remains the same as before.

Airports are another matter, and Lee Swordy has already mastered most of the code, so we still don't need bglcomp.

Something we do need is a MakeMDL SDK with the proper files included to help get more people designing scenery objects with GMax, and we can also get ready for FS10, which may not support the old BGLC commands.

Arno Gerretsen has been fooling around with an object placer program:

http://www.scenerydesign.org/modules.php?name=Sections&op=viewarticle&artid=28

and that may be better to use than bglcomp.

Dick