• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
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    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

BGLViewer for FSX BGL files.

Hello Patrick,

first thanks for your great tool!

But I have one question regarding the magnetic variation shown in your tool from the BGL files:
if I understood that correctly this value is not used by FSX/Prepar3d at all - so it's just ignored completely, right?

Instead of this value the magnetic variation from the "magdec.bgl" file of the "BASE" scenery folder is used.

Therefore it would be very interesting to extract the data of this "magdec.bgl" file, but unfortunately if I try to load this BGL file with your tool, I only get the message "Not a BGL file.".

Is there a chance that we could also extract the data from the "magdec.bgl" file with your tool?
Or do you know another tool to extract the data from this BGL file?

Best regards and again thanks for all your efforts
Andreas
 
ab-tools said:
Hello Patrick,

first thanks for your great tool!

But I have one question regarding the magnetic variation shown in your tool from the BGL files:
if I understood that correctly this value is not used by FSX/Prepar3d at all - so it's just ignored completely, right?

Instead of this value the magnetic variation from the "magdec.bgl" file of the "BASE" scenery folder is used.

Therefore it would be very interesting to extract the data of this "magdec.bgl" file, but unfortunately if I try to load this BGL file with your tool, I only get the message "Not a BGL file.".

Is there a chance that we could also extract the data from the "magdec.bgl" file with your tool?
Or do you know another tool to extract the data from this BGL file?

Best regards and again thanks for all your efforts
Andreas
Click to expand...

Hi Andreas

I do agree that the message "Not a BGL file" is not really appropriate. It should indeed be something like "BGL format not recognized" since it turns out that several BGL files do not follow the "regular" BGL format described in the wiki http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=BGL_File_Format.
Being so, I don't think it is possible to decrypt the magdec.bgl file to extract the variation values.

And thanks for your kind words.

Regards,
Patrick
 
Hello Patrick,

first thanks a lot for taking the time to reply so quickly!

I just saw that updated "magdec.bgl" files are available from this website:
http://www.aero.sors.fr/navaids.html

Do you think they just compiled these files from scratch without extracting the values from the old files first?

You have so much experience on how these BGL files are structured:
maybe you could have a look at this "magdec.bgl" file - perhaps you could find out also the structure of this. At least it should be much easier for you then if I try to start completely from the beginning. ;-)

I think it would be really useful to be able to decode this file as well when - as far as I understood - FSX does not use the magnetic variation from the scenery BGL files, but only from the "magdec.bgl" file.

Best regards and thanks again
Andreas
 
BglViewer updated version 1.0.1.7

- Division of section records into subrecords (when possible)
- Fixed byte alignment for TaxiwaySigns
- Ability to change coordinates (Long/Lat) format.
- Ability to load BGL file from Windows Explorer (when program is associated with .bgl extension)
- Display magnetic variation the international way (not Microsoft's)

(Thanks to Hervé Sors for the suggestions, bug reports and testing)
 
BglViewer update: version 1.1.0.0

- Fixed issue with Nav Ids having only one letter
- Fixed issue when changing coordinates format. Left menu was losing focus
- Ability to have a 3D view of the models (remember : FSX only)
- Alphabetical sort available for some sections (like Airports) instead of QMOD sort.
 
Hi Patrick,
I used BGL Viewer to look at a file I made in Airport Design Editor, and it said, "Invalid Section Type." I tried other BGL's, and I didn't get that message. What could the issue be here? I've had trouble with the BGL I made for over a week now!
Regards,
Kevin Davis
 

Attachments

  • BGL Viewer Error.JPG
    BGL Viewer Error.JPG
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It means that there is a section type in the bgl file which is not recognised by BglViewer. Since the app may be a couple of years old then it is going to depend which compiler was used to create the bgl file.

What are you looking for? I think this may relate to the issue you have with ADE created airport files. Have you tried loading your airport bgl back into ADE and see if it loads. ADE uses a decompiler which should understand all airport bgl code from FS9 to P3Dv4. I can't recall if you have ever posted the bgl file itself - I know you have with the ade project file. If you send it to me - jon AT scruffyduck DOT org then I can test it using my tools; or Patrick may respond
 
kevinmdavis2010 said:
Hi Patrick,
I used BGL Viewer to look at a file I made in Airport Design Editor, and it said, "Invalid Section Type." I tried other BGL's, and I didn't get that message. What could the issue be here? I've had trouble with the BGL I made for over a week now!
Regards,
Kevin Davis
Click to expand...
That reminds me that this is one of the things I wanted to fix in BglViewer: if the app does not recognize a section type, it should just skip it and not abort.
Kevin, can you please post the BGL file so I can work on it ?
Thanks
 
Hello,

Patrick Germain said:
That reminds me that this is one of the things I wanted to fix in BglViewer: if the app does not recognize a section type, it should just skip it and not abort.
Click to expand...

Old thread but still looking for an updated version of BglViewer for use with P3DV4 bgl - it is so usefull to understand what's going on sometimes !

Thanks for a link to download the lattest realease...

Gérard
 
gaabne said:
Hello,



Old thread but still looking for an updated version of BglViewer for use with P3DV4 bgl - it is so usefull to understand what's going on sometimes !

Thanks for a link to download the lattest realease...

Gérard
Click to expand...
Hi Gérard,
I don't have P3D so no files to work on nor to test. For now, BglViewer is restricted to FSX .
I'm also looking forward the next version of FS in 2020 and see what's changed.
Regards
 
Hi Patrick:

Long time no see !

Good to see you continue to have an ongoing interest in FS SDK BGL file format info.

Although I also do not (yet) have P3D, if you tell us what example files you need to examine to further your in-depth understanding of the P3D changes to the prior FS2Kx and FSX SDK file formats, one of my very kind and generous beta testers who has P3D v4.5x may be able to help. ;)

Your work with BGLViewer and CvxExtractor has made things possible for the FS Development Community that we had dreamed of for years.

Many, many thanks for what you have already done, and hopefully may still do in the future. :)

GaryGB
 
Last edited:
GaryGB said:
Hi Patrick:

Long time no see !

Good to see you continue to have an ongoing interest in FS SDK BGL file format info.

Although I also do not (yet) have P3D, if you tell us what example files you need to examine to further your in-depth understanding of the P3D changes to the prior FS2Kx and FSX SDK file formats, one of my very kind and generous beta testers who has P3D v4.5x may be able to help. ;)

Your work with BGLViewer and CvxExtractor has made things possible for the FS Development Community that we had dreamed of for years.

Many, many thanks for what you have already done, and hopefully may still do in the future. :)

GaryGB
Click to expand...
Hi Gary
Thanks for your kind words!
I never lost interest in the BGL format, although in the last months I worked on other topics of interest.
But if you have some typical P3D files (say airports, nav and cvx) that cause an issue with the BGLViewer, I'll be more than happy to give them a look.
Cheers!
 
Hi Patrick,

Thanks to show up.

I was only modifying a simple airport altitude (thanks(!) to the new "hidden feature" of P3DV4.5 HF2, which suddenly decided to retain the last altitude of an airport and not the first one, it suddenly was sunk into the ground ...).
With BglViewer I was able to quickly diagnose it :) - altitude 0
The recompiled airport is 400 bytes longuer - looks like an added section ???

Would be great if you could implement
if the app does not recognize a section type, it should just skip it and not abort.
Click to expand...

Regards

Gérard
 

Attachments

  • MYCI.zip
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Several elements have different lengths in recent P3D builds including taxiways and runways. This relates to texture sets
 
Hi Jon,

I presume you're referring to P3Dv4.5. Would you accept to share the changes you identified (record lengths and additional information added to the runway and taxiway records). I also do not have any P3Dv4.5 BGL file to test and I'm sure it will allow Patrick as well as me to make our software suitable for all P3D versions.
 
Of course - please email me jon AT scruffyduck DOT co DOT uk
 
Is this available as a library to integrate into my own program(s)? I'm trying to read scenery to determine if a user is at a gate, etc, but maintaining my own local database (similar to what Little Navmap does)
 
Hey all, I have a fill named encn-lib.BGL. I notice that the extension BGL is capitalized in this file but not in other such as "encn_apx.bgl". I would like to open the file and see it as an object and change it to my liking, but for whatever reason in ModelconverterX, I get that it reads all objects and then says: "no objects found in file". I tried your application but it gives no preview of the object, just a few numbers that I can't be bothered with. How can I fix this issue and see what my file looks like?
 
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