• 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.

www.ptsim.com Down

Golf-HotelDelta said:
One of the most important features of SBX is its ability to display photo textures directly from Google and Bing.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree with you.
I use that to make reference plans since I can use many of the photos separately. In SbuilderX, we can obtain the same photos but it is too big sometimes and slow down Gmax/3dsmax significantly. I hide the reference plan that I don't use separately. If it is a huge photo, I cannot do that.
Please don't let it go. Bless for ptsim.:wizard:
 
There are alternatives to the background in other applications. I actually prefer the drawing capabilities of Google Earth. I can export the lines and polys as KML, and convert them to a format understood by SBuilderX or SB9 for type assignment and compilation. QGis and Global Mapper can use background tiles as guides for vectors, so there are 2 more possibilities.

But I like the idea of a new application.

Dick
 
+1 on QGIS, I use it a lot. One downside is it doesn't do a good job supporting 2.5D shapefiles, needed for flattens and hydro polys. That can be worked around awkwardly using WKT format. Otherwise it's a very nice open platform and programmable via Python and C++.
 
Unfortunately none of those programs mentioned interfaces directly with FS9 nor FSX.
 
bdf369 said:
+1 on QGIS, I use it a lot. One downside is it doesn't do a good job supporting 2.5D shapefiles, needed for flattens and hydro polys. That can be worked around awkwardly using WKT format. Otherwise it's a very nice open platform and programmable via Python and C++.
Click to expand...
I have tried QGIS and it is very difficult to use. If there is a tutorial for this would be good.
 
Is there anything essentially wrong with SBuilder? Some folks are still using AFCAD although Lee stopped working on and supporting it many years ago. I am still half sighted for the PC and may have missed the point of this thread. However I understand that the SBuilder site is down and we believe Luis has retired from 'Flight Simming' The community does a pretty good job of supporting SBuilder and has done for a long time so I can't see why that won't continue. The code seems reasonably stable (no more bugs than are in FSX I think). So no future development for sure but it is not going to die tomorrow - or is it?
 
You are absolutely correct Jon. It works perfectly for all the tasks I need it to do.
 
I think the more tools the better. Going forward, SBuilderX can be used for some work in Flight, and I would assume a future Dovetail release (assuming their sim will allow 3rd party scenery content).

Dick
 
There's nothing wrong with SBuilderX (except 3.14 crashes on my Win8.1 machine compiling any terrain vector).

However to me, SBuilderX is basically a GIS application that is FSX-aware. If QGIS was made FSX-aware by adding some plugins, the advantage would be the leverage of all the plugins and capabilities that are continually added to and maintained by a large community, pretty much all of it open source software.
 
I wonder why nobody mentioned that yet, but maybe I am missing something:

Is there any way to create Google Earth/Bing background images (.jpg) for ADE in a way which is as fast and as efficient as it was with the "Exploring Google Maps" tool offered at the ptsim site? I specifically used this site to create huge background images, that saved a lot of work (otherwise using many small images) and to create background images with given corner coordinates.

Are there any alternatives of such kind?

Thanks in advance.
 
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ian727 said:
I wonder why nobody mentioned that yet, but maybe I am missing something:

Is there any way to create Google Earth/Bing background images (.jpg) for ADE in a way which is as fast and as efficient as it was with the "Exploring Google Maps" tool offered at the ptsim site? I specifically used this site to create huge background images, that saved a lot of work (using many small images) and to create background images with given corner coordinates.

Are there any alternatives of such kind?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

There's rhumbaflappy's maps, online or download: http://www.ludowise.x10host.com/

Alternatively you can use SBuilderX Add Map function which tiles together a bitmap for the selected area and drops it in the SBuilderX work folder along with a text file containing the corner coordinates which can be used in ADE.

Another option is that if you have geo-referenced aerial imagery tiles you can use the gdal tools (or a GIS tool such as QGIS) to tile them together, reproject and clip.
 
GaryGB said:
http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/www-ptsim-com-down.434047/#post-710767

I'm rather concerned about this situation, as PTSIM has vast amounts of reference and learning resources which are of great value to the FS development community for SBuilder for FS9 and SBuilderX, as well as MSFS scenery development in general; IMHO it would not be a good thing for this website to remain offline. :(

Whereas one got no reply to a PING of http://www.ptsim.com a week ago, now one can PING with a return, but attempts at navigating to that URL simply bring up a blank page.

Could someone with "insider connections" to Luis Sa' and Luis Feliz-Tirado please give us a status update on what is going on with this website ? :scratchch

Many Thanks ! :)

GaryGB
Click to expand...

FYI: Google has purged PTSIM.COM web pages from its cache during the latest update; we are unable to view cached web pages of forum threads.:banghead:

SBuilder Help files continue to have have dead links to online documentation, worked examples, and discussion threads which IMHO are very important to not only use of SBuilder itself, but to FS Development in general.

What would it take to get a archived copy of the PTSIM forum system posted for download or browse-able web access at ex: FSDeveloper or a download site somewhere ?

I see Luis Sa' is often logged here at FSDeveloper; why are we still being left without a response from him as to our interest in having continued access to not only the latest working versions of SBuilder, but also the "missing link" Help documentation and other valuable reference resources ? o_O


LUIS: Please let us have access to the information we are seeking ...somewhere / somehow.

The blank page "cyber-squatting" on the ptsim.com domain name has now resulted in loss of access to even Google-cached forum web pages /images ! :wave:

GaryGB
 
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rhumbaflappy said:
Luis Feliz-Tirado has been minding the ptsim website for Luis Sa. Unfortunately, I don't have their email addresses. i have tried to start a conversation through this forum, so we'll see. Luis Sa has retired from active participation in his website, as I recall. Our friend, Luis Feliz-Tirado has had some difficulties with his computer and has limited resources to keep up with our hobby... he hasn't been active since January either here or at AVSIM.

I do fear we may not see ptsim.com anymore.

Dick
Click to expand...

I will try to keep it going which is more difficult during the summer! :-)

Luis
 
Hi Luis!

So good to hear from you. If you have any interest, fsdeveloper could perhaps help with the website. Let us know if this would interest you.

The sailing must agree with you if you are heading out again so soon. Best wishes to you and yours.

Dick
 
Hello to all, as you may have noticed, Luis Sá has brought the PTSim web site back on line. The forum is open for business once again and I, Lance, and anybody else who so wishes will be available there. Thanks for your concern.
 
Many thanks to both Luis Sa' and Luis Feliz-Tirado for their efforts with keeping this valuable information and forum system online ! :)

GaryGB
 
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