Suggestions for Future Version 2011

[scruffyduck]

Hi Jon,

I think it would be a good idea to add a possibility for "multi select" also on the screen, not only in lists. For Example select multiple objects (Lib Objects, Gen Buildings, APRON ...) for moving them a few meters to any direction if they are misplaced for example. I didn't found a possibility to do this in the current version, with the exception of Parking spots.

Thank you,

Matthias

This is in Version 1.5

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

As I was tweaking some aprons... I thought about a great addition.. probably low priority, but would be HUGE.... I think...

A tool to auto create curves when creating polys... Where they could be created, pulled, stretched, etc... Like the ones in Photoshop, etc....

- Greg

 

[scruffyduck]

As I was tweaking some aprons... I thought about a great addition.. probably low priority, but would be HUGE.... I think...

A tool to auto create curves when creating polys... Where they could be created, pulled, stretched, etc... Like the ones in Photoshop, etc....

- Greg

You can create aprons from helper shapes but I guess that is not quite the same thing

 

[FlyingMasterChef]

Yeah...I am sure you know the tool type I am thinking about.. They work like rubberbands a bit.. You can pull them, stretch them, make any type of curved shape with them... Would be great to create a point, then right click and select curve mode...and then select the last point and it would then allow you to shape the curve between the two points.. That's what I envisioned anyway..

- Greg

 

[scruffyduck]

Yeah...I am sure you know the tool type I am thinking about.. They work like rubberbands a bit.. You can pull them, stretch them, make any type of curved shape with them... Would be great to create a point, then right click and select curve mode...and then select the last point and it would then allow you to shape the curve between the two points.. That's what I envisioned anyway..

- Greg

OK - it is on the list.....

 

[littleMax]

Copy and paste of multi selected objects.

Example, i placed papi 01 from the obj-lib and aligned it up with runway papilights, now it would be easyier to just select all 4 objects and copy them. Then i could just past them at the next position.

Of cours then it would be needed to move thes multi selected objects as one

 

[scruffyduck]

OK I will add that. At the moment you can only copy/paste one item at a time.

 

[robystar]

landclass (shades of) color

Hi again,

Well, this thread is 10 pages long, so it could be that I overlooked someone else making the same suggestion.
Here goes anyway:
It would be nice to be able to distinguish various landclasses by their (shades of) color to be able to more clearly distinguish the various landclasses once they have been applied to the scenery.

 

[scruffyduck]

Hi again,

Well, this thread is 10 pages long, so it could be that I overlooked someone else making the same suggestion.
Here goes anyway:
It would be nice to be able to distinguish various landclasses by their (shades of) color to be able to more clearly distinguish the various landclasses once they have been applied to the scenery.

Sounds like a good idea to me

 

[ricktk]

I'll second the idea. It works that way in SBuilder where you can adjust the color and shading. You have the ability to make each shaded area more transparent, so you can see whats underneath.

 

[robystar]

Well, that you can do in ADE, but it would help if the various landclass colors would be a bit different to distinguish one from the other.

 

[art209]

Per your suggestion in another forum Jon, I am entering a request to enable scaling placed objects to thousandths rather than limiting this to hundredths. While I have never had this need, it has been observed that there are objects available in libraries that require this. Why object models are compiled and distributed so large I don't think I understand.

Art

 

[scruffyduck]

Per your suggestion in another forum Jon, I am entering a request to enable scaling placed objects to thousandths rather than limiting this to hundredths. While I have never had this need, it has been observed that there are objects available in libraries that require this. Why object models are compiled and distributed so large I don't think I understand.

Art

Hi Art

Added to the list - although I have to wonder why anyone would create a model that is 1000 times larger than can be used......

 

[rheitzman]

I didn't read all of the above so please forgive repeats...

0 Snap runway to Runway Starts - it is easy to position starts properly to align with FSX when connected - just slew to where you want the start and drag. Getting the runway to conform is harder.

0 Any dialog that accepts lat/long - provide context menu item to paste a/c current position.

 

[scruffyduck]

I didn't read all of the above so please forgive repeats...

0 Snap runway to Runway Starts - it is easy to position starts properly to align with FSX when connected - just slew to where you want the start and drag. Getting the runway to conform is harder.

0 Any dialog that accepts lat/long - provide context menu item to paste a/c current position.

Good Ideas. I will add them to the list . In the meantime you can use the Move Object to Aircraft Position function. Select the object and hit F4.

 

[rheitzman]

I've been working with some photo real scenery and I've been adding "airports" over private landing strips. These landing strips do not need most of the runway attributes - just the hardening effect and flattening. These are basically landing sites that would be useful for the bush pilots.

These sites don't need (shouldn't have) IDs but it would be nice if they were discoverable by tools like PlanG that scan the various FSX data files to find objects it wants to present to the user. Perhaps a little used navaid could be the anchor - like a beacon (I think I read somewhere there was a beacon navaid.) I'd guess there will still be unique ID problems... Or a compass locator or intersection if the unique ID issue could be addressed somehow so that the whole community could share these objects w/o conflicts (if that is even an issue.)

I was reading the sloping airstrip tutorial and the complexity to pull off even a level field seems daunting - especially if your interest isn't in scenery/airport design but in the bush flying experience.

The suggestion would be to create a new ADE polygon that when compiled created a usable landing field with as many ADE features as practical w/o being an FSX airport.

For those using photo real these landing fields could be invisible. For others perhaps land class polygons could be supported.

Any way - a bit of a departure from the focus of ADE, but I think it would be a popular feature.

Great tool! Good work!

 

[=Hollywood=]

How about the ability to assign groups of parking spots to "user named" groups, for instance, with the name of an FBO...i.e. "Signature Parking" or "Millionaire Parking" or even "restaurant parking". This way, general aviation traffic could ask ATC to taxi to a specific FBO on the airfield. (Now, it's just a direction, i.e. "east parking" or "northwest parking".) Granted the user would have to be sure the correct sound files were added for ATC to pronounce them.

Not possible, it's an FS hard coded entry and is not customizable...

When adding a generic building, the possibility to select its altitude. It's possible when you create a library object but not for generic building creation{/QUOTE]

No - this is a limitation of FS - Generic buildings are set to ground level and that cannot be changed

Jon I'm wondering if the BiasX, BiasY, BiasZ might work on that. In that case a Z value bias in theory should do the trick?

I was going to post originally saying I think the Generic Building Placement issues might be resolved if users could put in a Bias value to make it easier to move the generic buildings into the correct spot rather than having to guess lat/lon movements...

[B]BiasXYZ[/B]

This element is used to add an X, Y, Z bias in meters to the placement of an object.  The acceptable range of values is unbounded, but it is recommended that biases only be applied for small distances.  If this element is used inside of a SceneryObject it must come before any instances of AttachedObject, Effect, GenericBuilding, LibraryObject, Trigger, or Windsock.  This bias is not affected by pitch, bank, or headings applied to the base scenery object. This element is not allowed to contain other data and must be terminated with ‘/>’.

<BiasXYZ
      biasX="0"
      biasY="0"
      biasZ="0"/> 

Attribute Description Acceptable Values 
biasX Bias along the longitudinal axis in meters Floating point value 
biasY Altitude bias in meters Floating point value 
biasZ Bias along the latitudinal axis in meters Floating point value

Or does Bias not affect generic buildings? I'll have to do a test in the morning...

 

[scruffyduck]

Not possible, it's an FS hard coded entry and is not customizable...

Jon I'm wondering if the BiasX, BiasY, BiasZ might work on that. In that case a Z value bias in theory should do the trick?

I was going to post originally saying I think the Generic Building Placement issues might be resolved if users could put in a Bias value to make it easier to move the generic buildings into the correct spot rather than having to guess lat/lon movements...

[B]BiasXYZ[/B]

This element is used to add an X, Y, Z bias in meters to the placement of an object.  The acceptable range of values is unbounded, but it is recommended that biases only be applied for small distances.  If this element is used inside of a SceneryObject it must come before any instances of AttachedObject, Effect, GenericBuilding, LibraryObject, Trigger, or Windsock.  This bias is not affected by pitch, bank, or headings applied to the base scenery object. This element is not allowed to contain other data and must be terminated with ‘/>’.

<BiasXYZ
      biasX="0"
      biasY="0"
      biasZ="0"/> 

Attribute Description Acceptable Values 
biasX Bias along the longitudinal axis in meters Floating point value 
biasY Altitude bias in meters Floating point value 
biasZ Bias along the latitudinal axis in meters Floating point value

Or does Bias not affect generic buildings? I'll have to do a test in the morning...

I would be very interested in any test done on using Bias values

 

[=Hollywood=]

I would be very interested in any test done on using Bias values

I'll have a look into it first thing in the morning, I used Global Mapper to figure out the offset and then manually dragged the building to it in ADE and almost got it spot on.

There may be a different option that could be implemented in ADE where instead of bias values it takes the heading info and calculating meter offsets from lat/lon co-ordinates. i.e. the user knows the offset distance in meters and inputs it then it calculates the lat/lon offset from that based upon Lat/Lon pixel size. I have a chart that I could give you that might help with calculations.

Another suggestion that would significantly speed up airport scenery design would be:

a) ability to automatically build a runway 'link' based on the actual runway data, i.e. places nodes in the middle of both ends of the runway (or blast pads) etc. This would save having to find the midpoint of both ends of the runway and make it easier to prep for cross taxiway links.

b) if a) were to be implemented then it would also be good to offset the runway links left or right by x.xx meters as you'll notice on real world airports the taxiway lines tend to start just left or right of the centerline.

c) create (x) number of parallel taxiways based off "runway link", as most taxiways are parallel to the runway creating master taxiways with the same heading would be a very rapid way to build an airport.

d) if (c) were implemented, being able to choose a taxiway link and copy it and paste it and rotate it 90 degrees would also be helpful. If (c) and (d) were implemented then all you'd have to do is add nodes at the intersections of the taxiway links.

e) import of shp and kmz/kml line, polygon and point data and generate taxiways/airports from that data. I have a little program that can kinda do that with KML files that Jim Keir wrote a while back but we never polished it up, I could give you that code.

f) manual placement in lat/lon for Slope/DME data in ILS localizer dialog box. can this be accomplished via the pro key and manual XML editing? some airport data has the lat/lon of the glide slope, DME and localizer transmitters. Right now you can manually drag the DME box to it's real location but I'm not sure if this affects it's actual placement in sim?

g) as mentioned in an earlier post by someone reading of .tfw, .jgw, .ecw or .mcf image lat lon data. (.mcf is easiest as it has the extents)

[edit] one more suggestion h) design parking with a top down view of a particular aircraft model shape (i.e. a 727, a 747 etc) it could be a cut out of a standard 3 view top view, and maybe eventually a red dot on that overlay aircraft for where the door should be located. Would help lining up aircraft with Jetways. The other option or co option would be someone figuring out standard T offsets for each type of aircraft and then quickly choosing t offsets based upon aircraft type

okay one more suggestion for a future release. i) a set of vector poly overlays that contain runway markings and numbers (according to FAA, ICAO, Aussie CAA specs) that can be placed on top of the scenery to add custom ground markings at an airport. I'm not sure if the default markings would override a ground texture poly though.

 

[=Hollywood=]

I would be very interested in any test done on using Bias values

That's a big negative on that, bias values won't work with generic buildings...

Fails to compile. Also adding an altitude to a generic building also causes the compile to fail. Off to do some lat/lon->m math...