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FSXPlanner public beta

R

rf360m

Messages
961
Hi all,

FSX Planner is now far enough along that I have decided to make it available to anyone who would like to download it.

Please note that this is still a beta and there will be functionality that has not yet been implemented. Even though we have tested it quite a lot there may also be some bugs. There is also no manual, just a simple read me file.

If there are any questions on how something works just ask.

Also, please let me know of any bugs that are found, or any functionality that you think may be useful to add. We may be planning to add it, but you never know!

I'd like to thank everyone who has helped to get FSX Planner to this stage. You've all be a huge help with ideas and testing. :)

You can download it here:
http://www.zbluesoftware.com/clients/FSXPlanner.zip
 
Thank you very much for this beta release.
The general interface loooks very smart and the left panels are very convenient. And now we can see and "speak" with the taxiwaysigns.Because of the perfect rendering of textures, I can notice and correct some errors that I made and were difficult to chase with AFCAD. This is very important about vehicle taxiways (ice).
I give you some remarks, I hope it will help you for future releases.

-Each time we "open Airport XML", we have to browse to the appropriate folder to find the file because of the default popup window that shows "my documents". Is it possible that the program remember where was the last open file, or to include in the file menu some kind of "recently open" to go faster.


-There is a strange way to select the entire aprons simply by clicking on it. It appears that we can mistakenly move it and be unable to correctly reposition after because the "undo" do not work for it. Fortunately the program do not memorize the apron shift.

-About taxiwaySign Data: The slide that we can move do not come back to its original position when we undo. The sign rotates to its original position but the heading read is the last one given by the slide position. So we lose the initial heading.

I hope you will solve the zoom in/out issue soon...

For the time being I'm unable to compile to bgl but I keep trying.
Regards and thanks again.
Xavier
 
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Looking great!!

I could not figure out how to pan or zoom. ??

And yes it kept defaulting back to "My Documents" for .xml files; it would be faster for the user if the program could remember the last dir you loaded from.
 
To pan or zoom you can use the wheel on the mouse. Push it down and drag the mouse to pan around. Scroll it to zoom in or out.

We'll be adding buttons to the toolbar to allow you to zoom and scroll in upcoming releases.
 
as a total noob at this, can someone tell me how to run this?? i have one version of the program that has an exe file but im not sure

again total noob have no idea what to do. thanks for the help!!!
 
how do i open a xml file that was created from the bgl2xml? i converted KPHX and it says .bgl.xml but then when i go to load it in the planner it doenst load

thanks for the help
 
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Nice, crisp display, rf360M. The familiar look coupled with the small taxi nodes is nice.

From a quick look, I observed the following:
1. FS does not draw the surface of pathtype="PATH" taxi links (makes you wonder why we need to specify surface type). I suggest, therefore, they not be drawn full width by the design tool but simply represented by a line.

2. Even a slight, unintentional movement of certain closely-spaced nodes caused the nodes to snap to another taxi link. For a "plumbing-type" airport like CYYJ, this is disasterous.

3. I was unable to open a AFCAD (bgl). I don't understand the use of fs10.Airports.dat which is used by TrafficDatabaseBuilder and contains nothing that I can think of would be of use to this type opf tool.

4. I "second" the earlier comments about remembering the last file accessed.

As well, many of the items under discussion for ADE are equally applicable to this tool.

Thanks for you efforts to give scenery designers a good FSX tool.

Don
 
gadgets said:
1. FS does not draw the surface of pathtype="PATH" taxi links (makes you wonder why we need to specify surface type). I suggest, therefore, they not be drawn full width by the design tool but simply represented by a line.
Click to expand...

Good point. I think I'll make it a user defined preference on how that displays.


gadgets said:
2. Even a slight, unintentional movement of certain closely-spaced nodes caused the nodes to snap to another taxi link. For a "plumbing-type" airport like CYYJ, this is disasterous.
Click to expand...

Do you mean the snap happens within FSX Planner, or within FSX?

gadgets said:
3. I was unable to open a AFCAD (bgl). I don't understand the use of fs10.Airports.dat which is used by TrafficDatabaseBuilder and contains nothing that I can think of would be of use to this type opf tool.
Click to expand...

The ability to open BGL files has not yet been implemented. The fs10Airports.dat file allows you to determine which of the multiple bgl files and folders contains the airport you are searching for.

gadgets said:
4. I "second" the earlier comments about remembering the last file accessed.
Click to expand...

This feature will be added.
 
bkircher said:
as a total noob at this, can someone tell me how to run this?? i have one version of the program that has an exe file but im not sure

again total noob have no idea what to do. thanks for the help!!!
Click to expand...

There isn't an exe file at the moment. After downloading the zipfile and unzipping it there should be three files, a text read me file; a sample xml file of La Guardia airport, and an FSXPlanner.jar file. As this is a beta you need to have java installed on your machine for it to work. If you do then you can just double click the FSXPlanner.jar file to run the app. Once it's running you can then open the xml file through the file->open airport xml command.

I hope that helps!
 
thanks for the help!!!! i got it working!

now how can i edit KPHX cause its bgl file has more than one airport in it. its bgl name is APX18200.bgl

how would i go about opening just kphx?

thanks again for the help!!! this is an amazing tool!!! ur making FSX history here!
 
bkircher said:
thanks for the help!!!! i got it working!

now how can i edit KPHX cause its bgl file has more than one airport in it. its bgl name is APX18200.bgl

how would i go about opening just kphx?

thanks again for the help!!! this is an amazing tool!!! ur making FSX history here!
Click to expand...

thanks for the kind words. :)

At the moment to edit KPHXyou'd have to use Jon's great SDE tool to convert the bgl to xml. Just save the xml of KPHX, and then you'll be able to open it within FSX Planner.

FSX Planner will open BGL files, I just haven't implemented that bit yet. :)
 
ok thanks for the help. forgive me for being a complete noob at all of this, but which of jons tools do i need? the bgl2xml gui?

and how do i "Just save the xml of KPHX"?

thanks so much again!
 
but which of jons tools do i need? the bgl2xml gui?

and how do i "Just save the xml of KPHX"?
Click to expand...

If you want to get the xml for a single airport then you need to use SDE. Use the Open Airport function to find the airport you want (See the instructions on how to use it). Then save it as XML making sure that you have the top node (one with the airport node) displayed in the tree first. The xml file will be in SDE's work folder using the ICAO as the file name.
 
thank you very much for the help


here is what i get now when i try to compile the editied airport to a bgl

Parsing document: KPHX.xml

INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2430: Unrecoverable error parsing XML!
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2006: Parse failed (0x80004005)
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2003: Failed to process file: KPHX.xml
Can't copy BGL file into the destination folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\BGL Compiler SDK\KPHX.BGL (The system cannot find the file specified)


also what do i put in the bglcomp.exe output?
 
bkircher said:
thank you very much for the help


here is what i get now when i try to compile the editied airport to a bgl

Parsing document: KPHX.xml

INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2430: Unrecoverable error parsing XML!
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2006: Parse failed (0x80004005)
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR: #C2003: Failed to process file: KPHX.xml
Can't copy BGL file into the destination folder:
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\BGL Compiler SDK\KPHX.BGL (The system cannot find the file specified)


also what do i put in the bglcomp.exe output?
Click to expand...


Do you have the latest build? I put one up last night which should have fixed this problem.

To make sure I would suggest downloading the files again.
 
Re my earlier post and your response, rf360m:

The snap occurs in FSX Planner.

Your version of fs10.Airports.dat from the SDK must be different from mine. On my system, it is a text file in the format output by the "Dump Airport List" function of Traffic Toolbox, i.e., very limited information about the runways and parking spots at each airport. It does not appear to contain any reference to the individual bgls files used in its generation. Perhaps your "default" lookup folder is erroneous?

I'll D/L the new version and try it later.

Don
 
gadgets said:
Re my earlier post and your response, rf360m:

The snap occurs in FSX Planner.

Your version of fs10.Airports.dat from the SDK must be different from mine. On my system, it is a text file in the format output by the "Dump Airport List" function of Traffic Toolbox, i.e., very limited information about the runways and parking spots at each airport. It does not appear to contain any reference to the individual bgls files used in its generation. Perhaps your "default" lookup folder is erroneous?

I'll D/L the new version and try it later.

Don
Click to expand...

The fs10.Airports.dat file doesn't contain any direct references to blg files for me either. However, it does contain the lat/lon coordinates for all the airports. You can use those to find the folder and then the bgl file with that folder that contains the airport you are looking for.

That's the idea behind that function. To help you determine which folder and bgl file contains your airport.
 
Others folders for airports

Hi,

If you are speaking of the default airports, it is ok. But the user's airports go to another folder, normally ADD ON\Scenery.

Kind regards,

José
 
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