• 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.

Generic building construction tool

JonPatch

JonPatch

Resource contributor
Messages
443
Country
ca-britishcolumbia
Hi Folks,

Is there a tool that makes creating generic buildings a little easier? With previews of available textures, and preview of the resulting building?

Jon
 
Hi Jon,

Have you tried a tool like SceneGenX? I think it contains some preview pictures, etc.

And it is also something that is on the feature request list for ObPlacer XML. But I guess I will not be able to implement it really soon.
 
Hmmm, it's been a while since I tried SceneGenX, it's true. I remember I wasn't very happy with it, but I don't recall why!!

Perhaps I'll give it another try . . . meantime anyone else know of any program that does this?

Jon
 
I must say that I am not really a big fan of the SGX interface either. But the choice in tool that generate XML scenery is not that big. So I can't think of many other tools that allow generic buildings.
 
So I dusted off my copy of SGX, and it does have a generic building "construction" screen, and it has a little bit of advantage over hand coding: you can see a schematic layout of the relative positions of the buildings, and there is a cool preview of the textures. But the glitchy UI is a problem, and regardless SGX doesn't show the result so there is no preview. So I may just go back to hand coding; I think it'll be quicker and less error prone to just code the XML, copying and pasting as needed.

(By glitchy UI: no undo (OMG), clicking on an object to select it may unintentially move it (sometimes), every time a parameter screen is opened settings go to the same default parameters and must be adjusted each time, and a myriad of other challenges.)

<rant>In general, I've found that many tool developers emphasize functionality ahead of a standardized glitch-free UI. A great example of professional quality software is AFCAD2. </rant>

Hmmm: That statement sounds ungracious by itself: I do appreciate and acknowledge the effort that's gone into tools like SGX, and how useful it may be to many people. My request is that developers spend just a bit more time on the UI; it will save users much effort.

Jon
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top