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Autogen Internal Format

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I'm looking into the possibility of developing an autogen tool that can mass produce autogen vegetation that is photoscenery accurate and am wondering if anyone has enough knowledge of the internals for us to be able to generate code for it...

We'd use it in house but probably would also release it publicly due to the benefit it would have to the greater FS community...
 
Hi Dean:

Are you familiar with the autogen annotator tool by Art Martin?

http://simulatingart.com/mybb/forumdisplay.php?fid=6

He might have gained some insight independent of that by David J Griffiths in his Autotrees (automatic autogen file creation) beta v0.1:

http://library.avsim.net/search.php?SearchTerm=autotrees&CatID=root&Go=Search

Also, Adnan Arif (BEV) and John Venema aka Koorby (BEV/VOZ) might have gained quite of bit of insight in their autogen work:

Adnan: http://library.avsim.net/search.php...nan+arif&Sort=Added&ScanMode=1&Go=Change+View

Koorby: http://library.avsim.net/search.php...n+venema&Sort=Added&ScanMode=1&Go=Change+View

Of course, our gracious Host Arno likely knows quite a bit about this too! :)

Hope this helps! :cool:

GaryGB
 
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Thanks Gary, yeah I've researched those avenues before and right now Dave's approach looks like the best method, but if I can find out more of the internal structure for the AGN format (RIFF) we may be able to code a new autogen program for both trees and buildings for photoscenery in an automated fashion...

I could try and contact John at Orbx but I'm not sure about how they're coding autogen, may be by hand...

I'm wondering how much Arno knows about the internal structure, I'm thinking I can make a way to easily autorender the autogen files but the only thing is in knowing either:

A) how to code vector/raster so the annotator can import the data

or

B) the final format to code into from the imaging/gis software...

Here's the header info for the AGN files:

Code: 
00000000h: 52 49 46 46 98 28 00 00 41 47 4E 58 56 45 52 53 ; RIFF˜(..AGNXVERS
00000010h: 04 00 00 00 33 33 13 41 47 42 44 44 10 00 00 00 ; ....33.AGBDD....
00000020h: 0A 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 ; ................
00000030h: 47 42 4C 44 C8 01 00 00 47 42 4C 52 C0 01 00 00 ; GBLDÈ...GBLRÀ...
00000040h: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ; ................

Constants are:

RIFF (know what this is)
AGNXVERS 33 (autogen FSX version)
AGBDD (autogen ???)
GBLD (????)
GBLR (????)

I read somewhere that the autogen is based on 16x16 pixel data, so I'm wondering if it's perhaps a raster format? If it's a raster based set then what is the base format that the RIFF is encasing?
 
Hi Dean,

Some time ago I got some basic information about the AGN file format from a friend. I still planned to put that on the Wiki (and hopefully people will extend it then). He said the format is quite easy to understand. I am afraid I won't have time before I go on vacation to find this info though.
 
If you do figure it out it certainly would be a HUGE help. My personal wish would be the ability to convert shapefiles (with the relevant GUID of the autogen in the attribute table) into agn format.

You would have to cut the polygons into squares first as once an annotation block gets over a certain size, FSX crashes.
 
Yeah the FSX autogen format info would be extremely helpful, would love to code a tool we can all use...
 
fsfilmworks said:
Yeah the FSX autogen format info would be extremely helpful, would love to code a tool we can all use...
Click to expand...

It's fairly easy to decode. All you need do is create an agn file with one object and look at it with a hex viewer. Your example above starts with a building.

George
 
I'd do that if it wasn't for the fact that I'm kinda snowed under with full photoscenery coverage for Utah...

No point re-inventing the wheel if it's already been done, which it has to a certain degree... Especially when there's a couple of hundred objects in the mix and several formats available for trees, forests, mixes of autogen etc...

Just don't have the time, if I had the data available then could just write the code for a tool to convert datasets...

Otherwise it's a waste of time considering FSX is now 2 years old...
 
is the autogen format expected to change in FSnext though? There doesn't appear to be too much wrong with it (from my limited knowledge)....the limitation seems to be the simplicity of the models (i.e. 2 plane trees) and the way the sim reads the files rather than the format itself I would have thought?
 
It's not much yet, but I have added the information about the FSX AGN format that I have (vegatation polygons only for the moment) to the Wiki. If I find some time later this Christmas break I might try to find some more.
 
I haven't yet looked 'into' an agn file but from the wiki information it doesn't appear too complex??

How do you open them? Will notepad suffice?

And just to clarify my thinking: each veg polygon is defined in terms of coordinates from the LOD13 corner not in absolute terms (I guess that makes sense.....but it does make conversion of existing GIS polygons difficult)
 
I don't think notepad will work, with a hex editor you can see a lot more :).

Yes, some logic would have to be inserted with real geo data, so that the knowledge about the FS LOD system can be added and position given compared to that.
 
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