Part of SDK in Average Joe Version

[DocMoriarty]

I'm a fan of dynamic stuff that evolves while you play. For example i would like to be able to create permanent scenery while the player is playing but that would require that tools like BGLComp are included in normal FSX.

The ideas i currently have in mind are things like if the player buys a hangar, office building, airport or whatever, i would like to see an "official" way to put that stuff into the scenery.

Also a basic runtime terrain SDK that allows stuff like determining the height of the ground at any place on Earth would be really nice to have (perhaps not as SimConnect feature but officially callable functions in the FSX dll's).

 

[lc0277]

Some terrain facilities would be very cool, but I doubt you could get data from any point on Earth. There is something like 900 mb of compressed mesh data in the scenery folder, so FS probably loads data only for the current area.
Dennis Belan already made a nice terrain profile gauge (www.dbsim.com). However I don't know how he extracted height informations from FSX.

Concerning "dynamic" scenery, here are two clues:
- Generate automatic missions. Since mission files can specify object placement, you can use them without having to compile BGL files and rehash scenery database. The file format (XML) is easy to generate. However if your addon focus on free flight, missions restrictions can be limiting for your users.
I didn't explored the mission-simconnect linking, but it seems possible to have dynamic interactions with your add-on.

- Create dumb simobject container files. Since FSX models have the same format for aircraft and scenery objects, you can install simple container files (like flour bombs or buckets, but not destroyed on impact) for every hangar or building you would like to add. Then add this model from your simconnect addon using simconnect_aicreatesimulatedobject(), setting it on ground and not moving.

With the visual_model_guid command in sim.cfg file, you may create objects without having to extract the .MDL file from bgl libraries, thus reducing disk space and installation problems (you cannot redistribute stock MDLs). However this doesn't seem to work for animated objects, like people or animals.

 

[DocMoriarty]

Terrain height: I think FS actually only knows the terrain of the "life bubble" or whatever it was called in the SDK docs where the player currently plays (9 squares with the players square in the center).

But if the dll functions are well written it would perhaps be easy for a FS developer to create a 2nd "life bubble" with 1 square size (if it's not in the current players bubble) for such information requests.

A function that retrieves information about the terrain at a certain coordinate could then return a lot of information such as:

- terrain type
- ground height above MSL
- is there a flatten area
- city, countryside, water, woods, mountain whatever ...
- scenery file for mesh
- area to which the location belongs

... whatever information is available to describe things at a specific location.

The function should not necessarely need a running FS but should be based on FS scenery engine dll's, this would allow to write addon design editors that need scenery information too (for example averaging the height of terrain in a certain area where objects are to be placed or like someone else mentioned in another thread runways with a slope in FSy).

Edit: It just came to my mind that the FS map viewer must contain everything that is needed ...

About dynamic object placement:

Yes i thought about placing the buildings or whatever via the AIObject calls but i guess there are some backdraws like you might need to exclude the area from Autogen.

I also thought about creating precompiled bgl's and just patch the location info and then copy the stuff into an addon scenery folder for my addon but that would take to know the height above MSL if i don't use the players current position.

It would just be nice to have an official way to persistant add stuff to the "world" that shows up immediately like the object placer thingy used for mission creation (and also allows to remove it again if the player gets tired of it or adds another addon that conflicts with whatever was placed there).

Another approach would be to add the stuff via the aiobject calls everytime my addon is loaded, which might be doable too if the number of objects is limited (which it would most likely be in my case).

Well currently i'm not at the point where i need it, just tossing around ideas and communicating my wishlist just in case Santa really exists.