Object placement tool not loading previously defined missions/scenery

[Funky]

Has anybody had this problem with the object placement tool (OPT)?

After creating a mission with approx. 20 scenery objects, many of the objects do not show anymore in the OPT. Instead, large empty boxes are shown. If you load the same file a second time, different objects are not shown, while other appear that were previously not shown. The "invisble" objects are no longer accessible by drag and drop anymore. Text editing seems to work, however is aömost useless because there is no visual feedback on the result.

Saving the scenery part, and compiling it with bglcomp works, as well as loading the xml-file as object file.

Cheers,
Peter

[Horst18519]

Hi Peter,

this seems to be a bug - I use to get this too from time to time. Not sure if somebody found a workaround yet.

[Funky]

Hi Horst,

thank you for the comment, that prevents me from wasting time to search for the error.

It came up when designing an EDKV model, based on stock objects, a satellite image initally collected with FSEarthTiles, and then brushed up a bit, and Autogen annotations. Meanwhile ikt looks already quite decent. Unfortunately, because of the OPT bug, I don't have a chance to re-edit the building placement ans scaling (hangars and hotels are really not optimal).

Unfortunately I cannot offer the aerial photograph because of copyright, but you may get it yourself and process it with some prepared inf-files.

best regards,
Peter

Edit: image links removed for legal reasons

[Horst18519]

Peter, that definitely looks nice!

If you don't have too much objects in the XML try to redo it. Sometimes it seems to work this way.
In most cases I was able to get a "stable" xml if I replaced the corrupt objects.

Your airfield really looks nice! Very well done!

[Funky]

I got a tip from fsxmission.com, that worked. I rebooted the machine and then reloaded the mission/scenery file, and it was ok again.

If you choose "Save Scenery" you get an ordinary XML for BGLCOMP anyway (waht is the advantage of Scenery Shortcut of Abacus, btw?). I'm not yet familiar with Arno's tools. Formerly I did the EDKV scenery with FS Scenery creator from Derek Leung and SCASM, but unfortunately this results into massive building crashes. Only advantage was, that the included models of the tower, hotel and hangars were more similar to the real ones.

Thank your for your advice, and best regards,
Peter

[arno]

Hi Peter,

Originally Posted by Funky

I got a tip from fsxmission.com, that worked. I rebooted the machine and then reloaded the mission/scenery file, and it was ok again.

That is interesting, I did not try that yet to see if all objects appear again then. This bug is quite annoying when you want to edit your work again and unfortunately it seems MS could not fix it in SP1A.

Originally Posted by Funky

(waht is the advantage of Scenery Shortcut of Abacus, btw?)

None if you ask me. Simple saving as scenery XML and compiling with BGLComp also works perfectly.

[Funky]

Originally Posted by arno

if all objects appear again then

Ehem, almost all appear again, to my findings (1 was still missing). And you have only one attempt. The second time you have to reboot again, tsts. It seems, that with a bit of luck, you can reload the xml, until the desired object appears.

Did some web mining but could not find something relevant for this, so initially I thought it must be special for me. Interesting, that obviously more people have the same problem and still it's not treated by MS, or in the service pack.

Another thing that I found extremely annoying is the lack of vertical air control, that was possible in ACOF. I was involved some time ago in the development of thermal utilities (Cumulus!, JCSDAT) and contributed to Eric Cardens CCS2004, which brought an extrem lot of fun for virtual gliding. Now we're back in the stone age. If I could, I would promote this one as my top #1 priority for a next bug-fix.

Cheers,
Peter

[Timmo]

Ill just add a couple of things ive noticed in my usage of it

* On some objects, if you change the scale of the object, it will no longer be able to moved interactively- Changing the scale back to 1.00 usually makes it movable again

* Reopening XML scenery files also means many/most objects cant be moved interactively....you can sometimes get this functionality back by unclicking the 'Lock Position' check box a few times, clicking the 'align' and just generally trying buttons....quite random

Ive been meaning to write a tutorial for using this for www.flightsim.co.nz but havent got around to it yet

Cheers

[Jed]

I find that I end up editing the XML file & reloading. I agree it would make scenery creation a lot easier & faster if it were fixed!