An idea

[bob5568]

Arno, now that you solved my problem with library tool, I'm having a ton of fun. I don't know if I'm overlooking other approaches, but I find your tools the obvious answer to put library objects in fs2004 scenery with tweaks.

Right now I'm gardening...

mdl tweaker gives my models rotation to the viewer
library_xml makes a library bgl of my models

And now the $64 question...wouldn't it be fun to have an easy way to slew around planting trees?

Clear answer...obplacer!

It was much easier to copy and paste the coordinates from the resulting sca file than any other way I know of to establish the lat long for the xml library object call.

Thanks to your tools, my garden is springing forth. The mdltweak works fine as a library object placed in this way.

So....what would the idea be? Well, what if obplacer would simply write my xml file I need to call the library objects? seems like a simple change to the scripted output...and would save me some good time. The ideal would be to also code into it the ability to read the library file and provide a clickable option to select the model.

Now I don't know anything about coding tools like you do, but wouldn't it be fairly simple to have the obplacer output look like this instead of the oldfashioined sca file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<FSData version="9.0" xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'

xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd">

<SceneryObject lat="47.907476514" lon="-122.102908825" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0"

altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject name="934732D125835341E9D76EFB654E43CA" scale="1.0" />
</SceneryObject>

<SceneryObject lat="47.9075223308587" lon="-122.102898906749" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0"

altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject name="934732D125835341E9D76EFB654E43CA" scale="1.0" />
</SceneryObject>

<SceneryObject lat="47.9075926014422" lon="-122.102883694956" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0"

altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject name="934732D125835341E9D76EFB654E43CA" scale="1.0" />
</SceneryObject>


<SceneryObject lat="47.909540001863" lon="-122.104654574849" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0"

altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject name="934732D125835341E9D76EFB654E43C7" scale="1.0" />
</SceneryObject>

</FSData>



Thanks for all you've done for the scenery design community!

Bob Bernstein

[arno]

Hi Bob,

Yes ObPlacerXML is already on my wishlist, I just need some time to work on it. See also this thread.

What I have in mind is a tool that contains the GUIDs of the default objects and allows you to load your own XML library as well. After selecting these objects you can then place it like the current ObPlacer while slewing around.

And to make my life easier I will not simply change the output, but program a bit more. As there are nice modules that can read and write the XML code for me (makes it a lot easier to work with them). But this requires a bit more recoding of course.

I first want to finish CAT and after that I will work on this idea.

[bob5568]

certainly makes sense, A...CAT will be highly appreciated also!

[rhumbaflappy]

Hi Arno.

In addition to what's been said, an object placer for XML should sort the objects by a latitudinal banding method, similar to what MS has done in the past. MS warned in the SDK that we need to provide our own object sorting.

All objects in the northern most LOD8-sized ( for example ) latitudinal band first in order ( going West to East ). Then, proceed south to the next band, ordering them West to East. Then, the next....

Dick