MSFS "Off airport" Buildings only appear in scenery when getting close to them.

[TBryson2]

I've totally reconstructed KOCF in Ocala Florida, every building, hangar, tower, etc. and it all works very well, (Thanks to some on here for answering some questions now and then!) ALL of my LOD's are working extremely well, and I fully understand how to implement them and have them change LODs exactly when I want them to.

BUT I recently made some warehouse buildings OFF airport (across the street) and they will not appear in the scenery until I'm practically a few hundred yards away. Once they appear, they do not disappear. (have not flown away and returned to verify this). Not sure why they are doing this! Is it because they are "off" of the airport "boundary"? (And if so, HOW do I determine the airport boundary and change it?)

For my warehouses I have the LOD's as LOD00 = 150, LOD01 = 90, LOD02 = 0. Once the warehouses appear, they switch LOD's exactly when I expect them to so I know that isn't an issue. After starting the flight, the buildings themselves simply do not appear into the scenery until I'm relatively close to them. I tried fooling with the value for LOD02, but that made no difference.

What am I overlooking?

Thanks in advance!
TB2

 

[mamu]

The airport test radius is defined in the Airport object properties, default is 2000 meters, when clicking on the Airport object is displayed in the editor has a blue circle

It shouldn't anyway affect those buildings
The reason they don't appear is something that needs more investigation, did you try placing there a similar sized building to make sure it is not model related?

 

[rhumbaflappy]

The AirportTestRadius isn't even compiled into scenery. It just provides a compiler warning. Giving us a zip or cloud address of a model and it's xml and textures would help solve the problem.

 

[TBryson2]

The AirportTestRadius isn't even compiled into scenery. It just provides a compiler warning. Giving us a zip or cloud address of a model and it's xml and textures would help solve the problem.

Ok, not sure if this is what you meant, but here are the LOD models, texture and xml file. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yq62...ouse.zip?rlkey=oh23e5rrxerlcasij4n0cqagr&dl=0

If you would rather have the blender file, let me know

Meanwhile, I'll place the warehouse IN the airport property and see how it reacts. (since nothing else seems to do this). I'll keep plugging away at my end.
Thanks,
TB2

 

[rhumbaflappy]

The building compiles and can be placed anywhere. So I'm thinking it must be a problem with your package folder structure or PackageDefinition XML.

 

[Rotornut44]

Try to apply scale in Blender. Select all with A and then do Ctrl-A to apply scale.
If that doesn't make a difference, try lowering your 150 LOD to 100 or less. Sometimes LODs above 100 can act a bit strange.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Try to apply scale in Blender. Select all with A and then do Ctrl-A to apply scale.
If that doesn't make a difference, try lowering your 150 LOD to 100 or less. Sometimes LODs above 100 can act a bit strange.

Nope. The model displays just fine, in or out of the AirportTestRadius (which is worthless as I wrote above).

 

[TBryson2]

I was only thinking "airport boundary" because I don't have an issue with any other object in the entire airport. I'm still hammering away at it and will report back soon I hope. I have NOT tested my warehouse within the airport boundaries, but that's probably a moot point.

TB2

 

[TBryson2]

Ok, I've done a myriad of things this evening, and what I've come up with is there is something whack about my model. Has to be! I can replace the offending warehouse with a known good working model of a hangar, and it works as expected. "Add" another offending warehouse anywhere in the vicinity, and the offending warehouse behaves incorrectly. (won't appear until I'm almost on it). (if anyone's interested, I'm using Blender 3.3.5 and it has worked impeccably for me with other models).

So, I'm either going to have to find out what's going on with the existing model or recreate it. Not a big deal, it's not that complex.

I could go over all of the troubleshooting steps but that would be pointless. Thanks all for the suggestions above, none of them worked by the way, but they were worth the try.

TB2

 

[TBryson2]

Ok, not quite ready to put this to rest yet. I created the simplest model I could, (cube) with material, exported as "warehouse", compiled and it reacts the SAME way, does not appear unless you get close to it. (I MUST mention here that it ONLY behaves like this in the flight sim mode, NOT editor mode. In Project Editor it shows up immediately at any distance.) If I compile the airport, save it to my community folder, launch MSFS and go to that airport, the "warehouse" will NOT appear until you are about 200 yards from it.

The only thing I can find at the moment is within the .xml file (in the "scene" directory) is missing "groupIndex="xx" for the object "warehouse". All of my other objects have "groupIndex="YY" in the body of the object, but not my warehouse. Is this my problem? Is there a way to force it to make a "groupIndex" for my warehouse?

Here's what a typical object looks like,
<!--SceneryObject name: Horse-->
<SceneryObject groupIndex="55" lat="29.17190025804884" lon="-82.21939801195313" alt="0.00000000000000" pitch="0.002684" bank="-0.001544" heading="58.356153" imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" snapToGround="TRUE" snapToNormal="FALSE">
<LibraryObject name="{F6E1645A-535B-4961-B45B-1828FB500110}" scale="1.000000"/>
</SceneryObject>

For my warehouse, this is what I get.
<!--SceneryObject name: Warehouse-->
<SceneryObject lat="29.16198785514893" lon="-82.21749214435954" alt="0.00000000000000" pitch="0.000000" bank="0.000000" heading="-179.999995" imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" snapToGround="TRUE" snapToNormal="FALSE">
<LibraryObject name="{1BC80148-E2BD-48A2-A514-B620D9319661}" scale="1.000000"/>
</SceneryObject>

Thanks for your patience!
TB2

 

[Rotornut44]

I think without seeing the entire project, how it is set up, how it compiles, it's going to be difficult to determine what the issue may be.
You may consider uploading the project for this airport, minus any other models or textures that are not necessary (A stripped-down project). Test it and make sure it behaves the same way for you before uploading.

Then we can go over it, looking for anything abnormal.

As for the group index, if that object is not sorted into a folder in the scenery editor window hierarchy it may not have one assigned, but I'm not sure that this would cause the issue you are seeing. Though, there is always room for a new quirk when dealing with this sim... All of my entries have it, but I also know all of mine are sorted into folders in the hierarchy.

If the model itself is behaving correctly for Dick, as he had stated above, it could be something random with the project configuration or I could go as far to say a LOD slider setting in the sim's settings, but I would think more buildings would be affected if this is the case.

 

[=rk=]

Is there a way to force it to make a "groupIndex" for my warehouse?

Yes, in DevMode with the scenery Project open, within the placed object list, click drag the unindexed item onto any other item, or into an already indexed group of items and it will be indexed into the group of whatever you dropped it on. Alternatively, you could edit the scenery placement XML to reflect whatever group you want to place the item in. This is an organizational tool to prevent confusion, not cause it!

Is this my problem?

No. Just throwing guesses at the wall to see whatever sticks, I'd offer the idea that the problem is likely software related, my guess is a mismatch between Blender and Blender to MSFS exporter versions. I do not use Blender, but in watching conversations about modelling issues, it seems very easy for self taught developers to encounter this dilemma, as there is an evolution of exporter development, there are at least two sources of Blender plugins and there is no clear, defined path of which is appropriate, without following the relevant conversations, imo.

A solution to this uncertainty would be to include as much relevant information as possible when starting a thread about an issue. Titles of the related software used, the versions, the procedure taken and a link to the project, or a sample project containing the same errors, are all relevant. I'd look into the exporter mismatch, or post your details here as the Blender users probably know exactly which goes with which.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

It appears you need to Select All (a), Apply (CRTL-a),and select All Transforms. The scale is the problem. scale should always be 1.0

 

[TBryson2]

I think without seeing the entire project, how it is set up, how it compiles, it's going to be difficult to determine what the issue may be.
You may consider uploading the project for this airport, minus any other models or textures that are not necessary (A stripped-down project). Test it and make sure it behaves the same way for you before uploading.

Then we can go over it, looking for anything abnormal.

As for the group index, if that object is not sorted into a folder in the scenery editor window hierarchy it may not have one assigned, but I'm not sure that this would cause the issue you are seeing. Though, there is always room for a new quirk when dealing with this sim... All of my entries have it, but I also know all of mine are sorted into folders in the hierarchy.

If the model itself is behaving correctly for Dick, as he had stated above, it could be something random with the project configuration or I could go as far to say a LOD slider setting in the sim's settings, but I would think more buildings would be affected if this is the case.

Thanks, Rotormutt. It may come down to that, but I want to hammer away at if for awhile longer.

The "groupIndex", I'm grasping at straws and hoping to find something.

Perhaps "Dick" will answer,(?), but I have NO issues displaying it in editor mode, not sure if he saved it, compiled it into the scenery, placed it in Community and verified it that way.

TB2

 

[TBryson2]

Yes, in DevMode with the scenery Project open, within the placed object list, click drag the unindexed item onto any other item, or into an already indexed group of items and it will be indexed into the group of whatever you dropped it on. Alternatively, you could edit the scenery placement XML to reflect whatever group you want to place the item in. This is an organizational tool to prevent confusion, not cause it!

No. Just throwing guesses at the wall to see whatever sticks, I'd offer the idea that the problem is likely software related, my guess is a mismatch between Blender and Blender to MSFS exporter versions. I do not use Blender, but in watching conversations about modelling issues, it seems very easy for self taught developers to encounter this dilemma, as there is an evolution of exporter development, there are at least two sources of Blender plugins and there is no clear, defined path of which is appropriate, without following the relevant conversations, imo.

A solution to this uncertainty would be to include as much relevant information as possible when starting a thread about an issue. Titles of the related software used, the versions, the procedure taken and a link to the project, or a sample project containing the same errors, are all relevant. I'd look into the exporter mismatch, or post your details here as the Blender users probably know exactly which goes with which.

I thought I was including as much as possible. There's always something overlooked though.

TB2

 

[TBryson2]

View attachment 89570
It appears you need to Select All (a), Apply (CRTL-a),and select All Transforms. The scale is the problem. scale should always be 1.0

DICK!!! Winner, Winner! Chicken Dinner!
This is the ONE(?) thing I forgot to do! You hit the nail on the head! Strange that it gave the symptoms it did!
Thank you for your diligence!
TB2

 

[rhumbaflappy]

The minsize of the LOD was reading the unscaled dimensions, so the sim thought the object was tiny.

 

[TBryson2]

The minsize of the LOD was reading the unscaled dimensions, so the sim thought the object was tiny.

Sorry I called you Bob! 😂😂. Had a very senior moment and was running late! Won’t happen again. 😂😂

 

[Pyscen]

Always, I repeat, always apply transforms! Thus isn't a MSFS 2020 thing in Blender. This should be applied In all flight sims, 3d modeling.of all kinds and flavors.

This should be a recording at the end of ALL Blender sessions.

 

[Rotornut44]

Try to apply scale in Blender. Select all with A and then do Ctrl-A to apply scale.
If that doesn't make a difference, try lowering your 150 LOD to 100 or less. Sometimes LODs above 100 can act a bit strange.

Right under your nose the whole time, but I dismissed it and didn't press further as I thought you said you had tried it.
Glad it was so simple, though!