• 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.

Suggestions for Future Versions 2010

Status
Not open for further replies.
Right. I'm not a programmer, so the following perspective may be worthless:

I think that the best scenario would be for ADE to automatically load the Stock Navaids and Waypoints into the "working" project whenever the user opens an airport file, whether they load it from Stock, BGL, XML or AD2 file. And if it did this when loading an AD2 file, then there is no need for the project file to store this data anymore (after all, it is identical and therefore a needless duplication of the stock data). Only user-created navaids and terminal_waypoints would need to be in the project file.

From a user perspective there are two advantages I can think of:

1. It would remove the need for the user to import this stock data manually. (There is never a need to remove this data from the project, so having it present in the first place is more efficient.)

2. It would remove the need for the user to understand the subtleties of why some navaids and waypoints are in some files and not in others (ie. BGLs versus AD2s versus Stock Airports etc). By removing this layer of complexity it makes it easier for the user to understand ADE, because the user will no longer need to have a grasp on these issues, or be confused by the apparent "corruption" of approaches every time they load a bgl or xml.
 
Last edited:
All very good points Dan. There will still be a need to have import stock for other options such as scenery objects, signs, approaches and so on. This is because the user can interact with these and edit them - therefore they do need to be present in the project file.
 
Exactly - and because they are things that the users can edit, the users will better appreciate how and why these other stock import functions work, without the need for "esoteric" knowledge.
 
Jon: Just to add an additional thought or two to this discussion above and one we had a couple of weeks ago -- It would be helpful for the user to have the ability to cross-check DP/STAR waypoints/Navaids prior to their recreation. Two scenarios come to mind:

First, ADE v1.47.7 currently does not have the ability to cross-check existing route waypoints (pink) against a user/ADE created T_Waypoint (named) to prevent duplication. In the USA FSX route waypoints are often associated with DPs/STARs and having the ability to cross-check while updating these points would be helpful.

This "cross-check" function only seems to work with what ADE/FSX defines as a T_Waypoint.

So if there is a stock T_Waypoint somewhere in the visual zone and the user attempts to "re-create" the same T-Waypoint then ADE provides a warning and forces the user to rename the user defined T-Waypoint. We need this same function for route waypoints.

The second thought is regarding waypoints that are currently outside of the visual zone (60 nm) range. If ADE can provide the same "cross-check" function against a known FSX database or to a user specified distance out (e.g., 108 nm) it would provide the designer the ability to fully update DPs/STARs without worrying whether points outside of the 60 nm visual zone are being duplicated.

It may be that the above discussions make this point moot, but I thought I'd mention nonetheless.
 
Thanks Kambiz. I will take a look at all this once I get to the Approach Designer in the new version. ADE holds a database of all fixes (waypoints and navaids) in FS. I can't recall if this includes stock Terminal fixes. If not it should be easy enough to include that. As I recall (without checking the code) they are stored in an indexed dictionary so finding dupes shoud be easy. I suppose it might also be possible to provide a window onto the database but I would have to think about that some.
 
Ability to turn OFF the message, when compiling, that there are runways too far away (when using the star technique.) While I know the warnings are just that, when you compile many times, they get old and if you already KNOW that it will warn of that, there is no reason to KEEP seeing it. So, an option to suppress that particular warning would be nice. Would make other warnings that may actually mean something be more noticeable.

- Greg
 
There are some great ideas here, should keep you busy for a while.

Having the ability to export the lists as .csv files is real handy.

Would it be possible to have the ability to edit the .csv then import it back into ADE?

There are times when I think it would be faster to make edits with Excel than making changes one item at a time in ADE.

Thanks for your consideration.

Lane
 
SpectroPro said:
Ability to turn OFF the message, when compiling, that there are runways too far away (when using the star technique.) While I know the warnings are just that, when you compile many times, they get old and if you already KNOW that it will warn of that, there is no reason to KEEP seeing it. So, an option to suppress that particular warning would be nice. Would make other warnings that may actually mean something be more noticeable.

- Greg
Click to expand...

They come from the Microsoft Compiler but I will take a look and see if I can strip them out.
 
Lane Street said:
There are some great ideas here, should keep you busy for a while.

Having the ability to export the lists as .csv files is real handy.

Would it be possible to have the ability to edit the .csv then import it back into ADE?

There are times when I think it would be faster to make edits with Excel than making changes one item at a time in ADE.

Thanks for your consideration.

Lane
Click to expand...

I'll add that to the list. What sort of things to you mean? The next version of ADE will have a more extensive multi edit facility.
 
I had the original thought while changing a bunch of parking codes for an airport, so the parking list at least.

Maybe the taxi link list might be handy from time to time.

In lieu of exporting/importing a .csv maybe if we could edit right in the list box itself without having to open the property box for each item?

Or to be able to multiple select items in the list for editing by Shift-clicking or Ctrl-clicking.

Does that make sense?

Lane
 
That would be a great idea... Like for taxi signs...if you did 300+ (like I have so far) and realize you made a mistake (forgot a space or something stupid like that...) you could make the edit in the list view.. Say, for example, I have d<D2 but want it to have a space before and after the <D2.. I could edit it in the list. I understand that you can just click it and center on the sign and make the edit, but yeah, working in the list would be really nice.


Jon, I get they come from the compiler, but (and I know saying is always way easier than doing...hehe) seems like with a switch to turn that one instance off, then catch them before they are displayed would be an easy (again, yeah, I know..hehe) thing to do.

- Greg

I guess the option could be something along the lines of:

[ ] Turn off rwy warnings if you use x-wind rwy technique. (WARNING: IF you turn this off, you will not receive warnings that you MAY need about bad runway positions.)

or something like that..
 
Lane Street said:
I had the original thought while changing a bunch of parking codes for an airport, so the parking list at least.

Maybe the taxi link list might be handy from time to time.

In lieu of exporting/importing a .csv maybe if we could edit right in the list box itself without having to open the property box for each item?

Or to be able to multiple select items in the list for editing by Shift-clicking or Ctrl-clicking.

Does that make sense?

Lane
Click to expand...

You can multi select and edit parking spots in the current version. Just Select spots with the shift key down and then hit Enter. However the next version wil have better multi select and edit capabilities. The new version uses a property grid rather than a dialog so you do not need to action and open to get to the properties. Hopefully what is coming in version 2.0 will cover most of this :)
 
SpectroPro said:
That would be a great idea... Like for taxi signs...if you did 300+ (like I have so far) and realize you made a mistake (forgot a space or something stupid like that...) you could make the edit in the list view.. Say, for example, I have d<D2 but want it to have a space before and after the <D2.. I could edit it in the list. I understand that you can just click it and center on the sign and make the edit, but yeah, working in the list would be really nice.


Jon, I get they come from the compiler, but (and I know saying is always way easier than doing...hehe) seems like with a switch to turn that one instance off, then catch them before they are displayed would be an easy (again, yeah, I know..hehe) thing to do.

- Greg

I guess the option could be something along the lines of:

[ ] Turn off rwy warnings if you use x-wind rwy technique. (WARNING: IF you turn this off, you will not receive warnings that you MAY need about bad runway positions.)

or something like that..
Click to expand...

It can be done Greg and I will add it to the list :)
 
mdm248111 said:
Shift-click already works
Click to expand...

Not in the list it doesn't, at least not for me using ADE9 v1.47.7.0

One other small issue with the lists, say I am editing an airport with 60 parking spots. With the list window stretched out to the full height of my screen I might be able to see 45 or so of the spots on the list.

If I want edit the 50th spot on the list, I scroll the list down so that spot is visible. I can then open the property box by double-clicking on the spot in the list, or clicking on it then clicking "edit". When I close the property box the list will scroll back up to the top. It would be nice if the list would not scroll back to the top and stay where it was when I opened the property box.

Maybe this will all be moot when v2 comes out, and when will that be? Oops, forget I asked that, I know better.

thanks,
Lane
 
You are right - shift click does not work in Lists. Scrolling of lists has come up before and, as you say, should not be an issue in 2.0 since there is no dialog to display and the property grid will show without a need to click or press enter.
 
Could it be possible in a future version of ADE to get the ground imagery automatically when editing an airport, like in SBuilder X (Although that is not for airports) from Google Maps, etc? This would eliminate the step of snipping a picture from Google Earth, paste it into ADE, and resize it to fit the already present taxiway lines.
 
saiarcot895 said:
Could it be possible in a future version of ADE to get the ground imagery automatically when editing an airport, like in SBuilder X (Although that is not for airports) from Google Maps, etc? This would eliminate the step of snipping a picture from Google Earth, paste it into ADE, and resize it to fit the already present taxiway lines.
Click to expand...

It is already on the 'TO DO' list.
 
I've just come across a related problem.
It's been a couple of months since I was developing Montserrat and I wanted to continue.
Can I find the google background image I was using to lay things out? No chance, it's obviously gone with the all too infrequent desktop cleanups I indulge in.
Would it be possible (once you've 'added image') to embed the file in the ad2 file?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top