• 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.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    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.

Disappearing Trees

Messages
116
I've created a library BGL consisting of about 20 different trees. Now I'm making some more BGLs using Object Placer XML, to stamp out multiple copies of them.

There are a few places in the scenery where I get a really weird bug. If I place a tree there using Object Placer, not only will the tree not show up in the scenery after I compile, but all other instances of that tree - including the original one in the library BGL - disappear! I can reproduce the bug consistantly - if I get rid of the offending tree and recompile, all previous instances of it will return. Put a tree back in that area, and it's instances disappear again. There are only a few areas where this happens, and I don't see anything unusual about them.
:banghead:
________
IslandGirl cam
 
Last edited:
Messages
214
Country
australia
I did exactly the same and had the same problem.

Bit short on time so I gave up and went back to
Arno's trees
 

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
32,859
Country
netherlands
Are you maybe mixing placement of trees and the library definition in one BGL file? The problem you describe sounds a lot like what would happen if your object gets geographically locked.

So just make sure you have a library BGL without any placement of the objects and another BGL file that only places the objects as defined in the library.
 
Messages
116
Yes, my library BGL does have placement info in it. Below is the first 2 entries in the library BGL. Could you kindly do a quicky cut and paste job to show me what an entry should look like? From what you're saying, I obviously need to remove some stuff.

Code:
<!-- Tree_A -->

	<SceneryObject lat="40 57.08" lon="-74 11.04" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
		<LibraryObject name="9558C9FE475A5E2386A81F88302255BC" scale="1.0" />
	</SceneryObject>

	<ModelData name="9558C9FE475A5E2386A81F88302255BC" sourceFile="Tree_A.mdl" />



<!-- Tree_B -->

	<SceneryObject lat="40 57.10" lon="-74 11.04" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
		<LibraryObject name="3AE8DD95454BC7435A13ED8F8010EEA5" scale="1.0" />
	</SceneryObject>

	<ModelData name="3AE8DD95454BC7435A13ED8F8010EEA5" sourceFile="Tree_B.mdl" />
________
Live sex webshows
 
Last edited:
Messages
120
Try to move all model definitions to the end of file or to a separate file.

Example:

Code:
<!-- Tree_A -->

<SceneryObject lat="40 57.08" lon="-74 11.04" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject name="9558C9FE475A5E2386A81F88302255BC" scale="1.0" />
</SceneryObject>

<!-- Tree_B -->

<SceneryObject lat="40 57.10" lon="-74 11.04" alt="0" pitch="0" bank="0" heading="0" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject name="3AE8DD95454BC7435A13ED8F8010EEA5" scale="1.0" />
</SceneryObject>


<ModelData name="9558C9FE475A5E2386A81F88302255BC" sourceFile="Tree_A.mdl" />
<ModelData name="3AE8DD95454BC7435A13ED8F8010EEA5" sourceFile="Tree_B.mdl" />
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Messages
214
Country
australia
Do you mean like this one from Arnos trees

Code:
<?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">
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A17" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree01.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A18" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree02.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A19" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree03.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A1A" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree04.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A1B" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree05.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A1C" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree06.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A1D" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree07.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A1E" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree08.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A1F" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree09.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A20" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree10.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A21" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree11.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A22" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree12.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A23" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree13.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A24" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree14.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A25" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree15.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A26" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree16.mdl"/>
	<ModelData name="1111197920180505AD52556C34328A27" sourceFile="..\mdl\ag_tree17.mdl"/>
	
</FSData>

and if so what does
sourceFile="..\mdl \ag_tree17.mdl"/>
mean
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Messages
120
Well, that's an example of separate library definition file. Can be done this way or by moving of all ModelData tags to the end of scenery placement XML similar to an example above.

..\ means one level up in subfolder structure. As seen in your example, MDL files are located in different folder, other than folder where XML resides.

Let's say you have following folder structure:
Code:
MySceneryDesignFolder 
|-SceneryXMLSource
|  |-MyScenery.xml
|
|-MDL
|  |-ag_tree01.mdl
|  |-ag_tree02.mdl
|  |-ag_tree03.mdl
|  |-ag_tree04.mdl
|  |
|  |-ag_treeNN.mdl

In this case, to instuct parser to look in MDL folder for .mdl files while compiling MyScenery.xml you can either give a full path (C:\Whatever\WhateverElse\MySceneryDesignFolder\MDL\ag_tree01.mdl) or use a shortcut (..\MDL\ag_tree01.mdl). The meaning of shortcut is:

1. Go to the parent folder (MySceneryDesignFolder).
2. From there go to MDL folder.
3. Use ag_tree01.mdl file located there.

Note:
To go 2 levels up in subfolder structure you can use ..\..\ shortcut.
To go to the root of current drive you can use .\ shortcut.
 
Last edited:

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
32,859
Country
netherlands
Moving all the ModelData commands to the end of the XML file does not matter. That will not make any difference to this problem, it only makes the XML file easier to read.

If you want to solve the geo-locking problem, you will have to make a library XML that contains no placement at all. All the placement can then be done in a seperate XML file.

The XML file of my tree library, as shown above, is indeed an example of this. In this file I used relative paths. This is because all members of the scenery design team I am with use the same folder structure. And by using relative paths we can compile each others XML files without trouble. But if you have your XML and MDL files in the same folder, you can also just place the MDL filename there.
 
Messages
214
Country
australia
More Questions

Got all that and thanks

Can the plane be rectangular ???

What is the trick in regards to the direction the plane is facing.
I had a bit of trouble initially as the plane seemed back to front.
Nothing to do with normals.

Tas
 

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
32,859
Country
netherlands
Tasmanet said:
Can the plane be rectangular ???

What is the trick in regards to the direction the plane is facing.
I had a bit of trouble initially as the plane seemed back to front.
Nothing to do with normals.

Not really sure what you mean here, but I guess we are going off-topic here :).

If you mean the tree objects, yes the plane can have any shape you wish. If you see the wrong side of the tree you have either designed it wrong or if you are using a library, you have probably placed it with a heading, which is wrong as well.
 
Messages
116
I've been specifying headings in the placement XML, with no problems. Usually, I just slew an aircraft to where I want to place the tree, and use whatever heading it happens to be at. In some early versions this would cause brightness variations - some trees would be ok and others dark, depending on their heading - but that turned out to be due to using bad normal values in the ASM. Since I started using the right values (which, I think, are 0-1-0 - it was discussed here in another thread), I haven't had that problem.
________
Esy ape
 
Last edited:

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
32,859
Country
netherlands
Yes, but if you use trees that also rotate to the user, this will not work. As it could be that you are looking at the side that is rotated away from you. For cross-plane models it is no problem of course.
 
Top