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FS2004 Flattens, Excludes not working

E

ematheson

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us-utah
I am using the newest release of ADE. I have shuffled my newly produced ADE scenery all through the scenery library, on top of things, beneath things, etc. They reside in their own folder. And nothing works.
The airports produced by older versions of ADE work perfectly. However, files produced after I upgraded to the newest version of ADE display, at most, revisions to the tarmac. Flatten polys and excludes which I have created and compiled with the newest version of ADE produce no change, regardless of scenery placement in the library hierarchy.
What possibly can be the matter?
If it helps at all, excludes and flattens produced by my copy of SBuilder don't work either - I suspect perhaps something is wrong with bglcomp?
 
At first thought I have no idea. ADE 1.60 has been in use as a Beta for nearly a year before it went into production so we pretty much know that it works.

So if you are having problems with SBuilder then it seems that the problem is outside these applications. What version of FS is this? Installing a newer version of ADE does not affect the compilers that are in the SDKs. ADE does ship with the FS9 compiler but that has not changed in years.

Other than installing the latest version of ADE have you made any other changes?
 
Well, as of today, I am thoroughly confused. Something seems to have changed in the last couple of days with my sim and it makes no sense to me. When I noticed what was going on, it is true that it only affected the newest files produced by ADE - older files still worked properly. Today - not so much. Now NONE of my ADE produced files exclude properly. Even the ones that did before. I've never seen anything like it.
 
I did a bit more playing around with the files and discovered some aspects of the exclude behavior - when the ADE files are placed in a directory WITH the associated _OBJ files, NOTHING is excluded. When placed in a directory ABOVE the _OBJ files, EVERYTHING is excluded, including tarmacs and vector scenery - excludes everything except the runway - which I'm pretty sure isn't correct either. When placed BELOW the _OBJ files NOTHING is excluded.
_TER files are hit-and-miss. They seem to be able to RAISE terrain to their level, but for some reason, they aren't flattening anything.

Yes, I do know that this doesn't make any sense at all. That's why I'm posting about it - if it made sense, I'd have figured it out by now.

About the only noteable change I've made recently was install Pete Dowsons Autosave module. I don't see how or why that would mess with excludes and flattens, especially in such a strange and inconsistent way...

This is all in FS9. I'm using Ultimate Terrain and FSGenesis mesh. I have TMVL set at 21.
 
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I am very interested in what you find. At the moment I can't see any reason for it. Clearly we have not changed the way that ADE works and the Bgl files it creates in a very long time. I think also that we need to be clear about exclusions.

There are exclusion rectangles created by ADE that will always be loaded before any scenery objects. This ensures that any object excluded (deleted) in ADE will not show but any object added in ADE (or left in place) will show. The order is fixed by ADE and you cannot change it.

Then there are the Delete All flags that are part of the airport record and delete airport items such as runways, taxiways and aprons. By definition ADE sets these flags to true so that any such items loaded in Bgl files before the ADE file are excluded. Thus only what is in the ADE file shows. This behaviour is in the Bgl file containing the airport and is fixed. Thus it is just not possible to force ADE to exclude what is in its own file - only what is in other files loaded before it. So if it is present in the ADE project file then it should show up in Sim.

The only other possibility is image complexity settings for scenery objects and the possibility that some parts of an airport get hidden by terrain when it is not properly flattened. BTW flattens will generate cliffs or valleys around them. I have tested both cases here with ADE 1.60 and they work for me.
 
When it comes to excludes, I think you'll find the file naming important and that excludes are only effective in excluding items in files processed after the file in which the exclude is declared. It's no accident Sbuilder prefaced exclude file names with "0_". That guaranteed they would be processed first by FS.

Don
 
gadgets said:
When it comes to excludes, I think you'll find the file naming important and that excludes are only effective in excluding items in files processed after the file in which the exclude is declared. It's no accident Sbuilder prefaced exclude file names with "0_". That guaranteed they would be processed first by FS.

Don
Click to expand...

Actually Don it is the other way around; at least for scenery objects; but my understanding is that in general any exclusion or delete flag in FS removes what il loaded before it. Excludes affect anything loaded before the file containing the exclusion. SBuilder does the naming trick to ensure that the exclusions load before any files containing objects placed by the user in SBuilder. If it was the other way around then the exclusion would remove the objects placed by the user.

Unlike SBuilder ADE has any exclusion rectangles in the Bgl file before any objects thus ensuring that objects placed by the user are not excluded by their own exclusions.

It is all down to Priority: https://scruffyduck.clarify-it.com/d/9t7w7x
 
At least I had the file naming important right.
This year has been about 3 days too long. I'm off to a fresh start tomorrow.

Don
 
gadgets said:
At least I had the file naming important right.
This year has been about 3 days too long. I'm off to a fresh start tomorrow.

Don
Click to expand...

Cool on that - Happy New Year Don 8-)))
 
In FS9 I have been using excludes starting with x for years, which means they are always last in the listing. They all have worked perfectly except those for effects, which do need to be first in the list.
 
Some more experimentation: I reinstalled ADE after completely deleting the entirety of my previous installation. I then recompiled some of the airports that had been giving me fits... and found that the excludes in the newly compiled airports now work properly. However, excludes compiled with my previous installation continue to fail to exclude anything. No idea if this is a temporary victory or if something screwy will happen like it did as mentioned earlier in the thread and ruin the excludes that now work OK, but for now I can compile new excludes.
For the benefit of full disclosure, I did reinstall ADE 1.60.5095, but I did not install the "OTA" update that the program suggests installing. I had installed that update on my previous installation.
I have not investigated what is going on with the flattens. For now, I've simply removed them.
 
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