Problem After SP1 Installation

[ditopilot07]

Dear freinds,

After installing the new SP1 (after unstalling then re-installing FSX and adding to it my addons), I went to my favorite location - Chicago and noticed that I lost my downtown Chicago freeway traffic (build with fsx_kml v.1.7). Is it an incompactibility issue or what? I read something related to SP1 and third party addons having .dll?

Any insightfull help please!

Thanks, dito

 

[MatthewS]

Dear freinds,

After installing the new SP1 (after unstalling then re-installing FSX and adding to it my addons), I went to my favorite location - Chicago and noticed that I lost my downtown Chicago freeway traffic (build with fsx_kml v.1.7). Is it an incompactibility issue or what? I read something related to SP1 and third party addons having .dll?

Any insightfull help please!

Thanks, dito

FSX KML is a standalone program (its not a FSX DLL module) and simply calls the FSX SDK programs (Shp2Vec and BGLComp).

Maybe try rebuilding your scenery.

I've not had any problems using it with SP1, but then again I have not tried freeways but will give it a try later tonight.

 

[ditopilot07]

FSX KML is a standalone program (its not a FSX DLL module) and simply calls the FSX SDK programs (Shp2Vec and BGLComp).

Maybe try rebuilding your scenery.

I've not had any problems using it with SP1, but then again I have not tried freeways but will give it a try later tonight.

OK, I will re-install the freeway BGLs I built and see what happens. If unsuccessful, then I will have ro rebuild then at a later time.

Thanks,

dito

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Hi dito.

Access the Scenery Library from within FSx, and press OK. This will force a rebuild of the Library, and your addon scenery should show up.

That's how it worked for me.

Dick

 

[Mace]

Dear freinds,

After installing the new SP1 (after unstalling then re-installing FSX and adding to it my addons), I went to my favorite location - Chicago and noticed that I lost my downtown Chicago freeway traffic (build with fsx_kml v.1.7). Is it an incompactibility issue or what? I read something related to SP1 and third party addons having .dll?

Any insightfull help please!

Thanks, dito

I had some of my traffic bgl's I made not showing up post-SP1.

Then I realized that I forgot to activate the scenery area.
I was pretty flabbergasted for about 5 whole minutes, but then again, I am easily confused.

Hopefully a rebuild of your scenery library will fix it.

 

[radivil]

Funny thing, I had an extrusion bridge I'd made to test how they work and sort of a placeholder while I waited on finishing the rest of the terrain around the bridge. I'd put a line of traffic on it, to make it pretty, and after SP1...bridge is there but the cars aren't. No idea why. Given the fact that my bridge and my inlet are there, you'd think the cars would have showed up to the party but no dice. Chalk it up to FSX being goofy.

Edit: Oh wait, I just realized I'd moved my road traffic down to 80% from 85%. Apparently that killed them.

 

[ditopilot07]

Hi dito.

Access the Scenery Library from within FSx, and press OK. This will force a rebuild of the Library, and your addon scenery should show up.

That's how it worked for me.

Dick

Dick,

Thanks! I will try that tonight.

dito

 

[ditopilot07]

I had some of my traffic bgl's I made not showing up post-SP1.

Then I realized that I forgot to activate the scenery area.
I was pretty flabbergasted for about 5 whole minutes, but then again, I am easily confused.

Hopefully a rebuild of your scenery library will fix it.

Hello Mace!

"I forgot to activate the scenery area." So do I. Tonight I will do what I should have done. Thanks!

dito

 

[ditopilot07]

Funny thing, I had an extrusion bridge I'd made to test how they work and sort of a placeholder while I waited on finishing the rest of the terrain around the bridge. I'd put a line of traffic on it, to make it pretty, and after SP1...bridge is there but the cars aren't. No idea why. Given the fact that my bridge and my inlet are there, you'd think the cars would have showed up to the party but no dice. Chalk it up to FSX being goofy.

Edit: Oh wait, I just realized I'd moved my road traffic down to 80% from 85%. Apparently that killed them.

EXTRUSION BRIDGE? I thought for that you'd have to wait for FSX_KML v.1.8! That's what I've been waiting for since I'd like to add an extrusion bridge at some point on Michigan Ave in Chicago (FSX default has no bridge there).

I didn't know you can build one. So I was planning to move one extrusion bridge from one location and try to place it on Michigan Avenue. Anyway,

HOW DID YOU DO THAT?...

dito

 

[radivil]

EXTRUSION BRIDGE? I thought for that you'd have to wait for FSX_KML v.1.8! That's what I've been waiting for since I'd like to add an extrusion bridge at some point on Michigan Ave in Chicago (FSX default has no bridge there).

I didn't know you can build one. So I was planning to move one extrusion bridge from one location and try to place it on Michigan Avenue. Anyway,

HOW DID YOU DO THAT?...

dito

I made it with three days of hard work and a lot of swearing. Had to make it the old fashioned way: almost entirely by hand with notepad.

Firstly, I drew a polyline where I wanted the bridge in GE, and made sure to put a point where I was going to want a bridge pylon. Then, I used FSX_KML to edit the height of the points, which determines the bridge deck's height above whatever the bridge goes over. After that, I was fortunate enough to have pestered someone into giving me the XML of an extrusion bridge that actually worked because my code, despite being perfect, just didn't work. I opened up the KML, and painstakingly copied all the coordinates for the pylons out of that and into the XML. Then I compiled it with BGLCOMP.

I have attached a before, after, and real world image of where my bridge went. As well as the missing inlet I originally set out to repair...two months ago before this thing turned into "redo the entire North Carolina coast" practically.

 

[Mace]

I think it's a great new feature of FSX to have the extrusion bridges in the sim now.

Look at how realistic your curved bridge looks radivil.

I think that's a pretty overlooked bonus in FSX.

 

[radivil]

I think it's a great new feature of FSX to have the extrusion bridges in the sim now.

I love the things. My project includes seven bridges; three of them are fairly short. But the other four come are a pair of straight bridges at 2.81 miles and 2.7 miles; a stretched S-bend bridge 4.6 miles long; and a stretched out C shaped bridge at 2.36 miles (pictured above). Those are some pretty good sized bridges and I've never made a 3D model of something that big. And I once did an entire international airport. But that could be made in chunks and assembled. Even then, the only parts (the runways) that came close to that big were just rectangles.

Are the extrusion bridges perfect? No, they're not. There's no decks or pylons that match what I need and I can't realistically put enough pylons to mimic the real bridges. I think if I put as many as I need, they won't display. But I figure they're close enough. Not that I'm lazy. I'm just not sure I want to put that much work into them. Of course, I'm going to try to get the extrusion bridges to be as good as I can (that bridge there is too tall right now). Maybe later after I've finished the new islands, made four lighthouses, two visitor's centers, filled three marinas with boats, and two geological features and released it I'll revisit it and do the bridges properly (as well as go back and do a few things I've scrapped like fisherman's pick-up trucks parked on the beaches).

If anyone's curious what exactly I'm doing and what I've rambled on about, I'd got lost flying VFR along North Carolina's Outer Banks because one major landmark, Oregon Inlet, was missing. So I got cracking on that, then realized that the whole place was pretty bad. Thus was born my project to rebuild four major islands of the Outer Banks (Cape Lookout and Bogue Banks were cut, because I've never been there). Really, for the place where Kitty Hawk is, I'm surprised how inaccurate the area is. KFFA itself is pretty well done, but even the immediate area around it is bad. For instance, the Wright Brothers memorial is on top of a huge hill, but in FSX its just sitting on level ground with no hill.

Without FSX_KML, I don't think I'd have ever started this crazy mission.

 

[BJamieson]

I made it with three days of hard work and a lot of swearing. Had to make it the old fashioned way: almost entirely by hand with notepad.

Firstly, I drew a polyline where I wanted the bridge in GE, and made sure to put a point where I was going to want a bridge pylon. Then, I used FSX_KML to edit the height of the points, which determines the bridge deck's height above whatever the bridge goes over. After that, I was fortunate enough to have pestered someone into giving me the XML of an extrusion bridge that actually worked because my code, despite being perfect, just didn't work. I opened up the KML, and painstakingly copied all the coordinates for the pylons out of that and into the XML. Then I compiled it with BGLCOMP.

I have attached a before, after, and real world image of where my bridge went. As well as the missing inlet I originally set out to repair...two months ago before this thing turned into "redo the entire North Carolina coast" practically.

Careful, you might find yourself 'volunteered' to do a userguide page with screen dumps explaining your technique !

 

[ditopilot07]

I made it with three days of hard work and a lot of swearing. Had to make it the old fashioned way: almost entirely by hand with notepad.

Firstly, I drew a polyline where I wanted the bridge in GE, and made sure to put a point where I was going to want a bridge pylon. Then, I used FSX_KML to edit the height of the points, which determines the bridge deck's height above whatever the bridge goes over. After that, I was fortunate enough to have pestered someone into giving me the XML of an extrusion bridge that actually worked because my code, despite being perfect, just didn't work. I opened up the KML, and painstakingly copied all the coordinates for the pylons out of that and into the XML. Then I compiled it with BGLCOMP.

I have attached a before, after, and real world image of where my bridge went. As well as the missing inlet I originally set out to repair...two months ago before this thing turned into "redo the entire North Carolina coast" practically.

Radivil,

You said, "fortunate enough to have pestered someone into giving me the XML"... Could I also be one fortunate guy to lay hand on such a XML? Advise, please. Your work is awesome! How did you make it curve like that, while in GE it seems that only stright lines are posssible to be drawn?

WOW, I could rebuild the entire Key West long bridge (s) and have traffic moving on them!!!!!

Enthusiatically,

dito

 

[ditopilot07]

I think it's a great new feature of FSX to have the extrusion bridges in the sim now.

Look at how realistic your curved bridge looks radivil.

I think that's a pretty overlooked bonus in FSX.

FSX is indeed miles ahead of the previous version on FS!

dito

 

[MatthewS]

EXTRUSION BRIDGE? I thought for that you'd have to wait for FSX_KML v.1.8! That's what I've been waiting for since I'd like to add an extrusion bridge at some point on Michigan Ave in Chicago (FSX default has no bridge there).

1.8? I released 1.08 (see pinned post in forum), but it only adds scenery library object support and not extrusion bridges (yet!).

 

[MatthewS]

I made it with three days of hard work and a lot of swearing. Had to make it the old fashioned way: almost entirely by hand with notepad.

Firstly, I drew a polyline where I wanted the bridge in GE, and made sure to put a point where I was going to want a bridge pylon. Then, I used FSX_KML to edit the height of the points, which determines the bridge deck's height above whatever the bridge goes over. After that, I was fortunate enough to have pestered someone into giving me the XML of an extrusion bridge that actually worked because my code, despite being perfect, just didn't work. I opened up the KML, and painstakingly copied all the coordinates for the pylons out of that and into the XML. Then I compiled it with BGLCOMP.

I have attached a before, after, and real world image of where my bridge went. As well as the missing inlet I originally set out to repair...two months ago before this thing turned into "redo the entire North Carolina coast" practically.

This is great!... I had a look at the SDK docs and will try to add extrusion bridge support in 1.09.

Do you feel like uploading your XML file for the bridge? So i can see exactly what you did?

 

[José]

Hi, Mace

I think it's a great new feature of FSX to have the extrusion bridges in the sim now.QUOTE]

Do you refer to the new SP1A upgrade?
Wasn't it possible before?

Which is the new tool to help creating extrusion bridge, please?

Regards,

José

 

[MatthewS]

According to the SDK these extrusions bridges can also take traffic (ie Freeways).

I guess this means you can create properly elevated freeway intersections where traffic from one freeway passes overhead the traffic below.

Amazing!

 

[radivil]

I have attached what I believe to be everything an intrepid extrusion engineer needs for their latest civil engineering project. Even with a fancy readme to tell you what is what!

Be forewarned, I had a monster of a time getting a simple straight, one span bridge to display its pylons. My code was flawless and the ever helpful Doug Matthews uploaded the xml of an extrusion bridge that was known to work. Standing on the shoulders of giants, I was able to crack this extrusion bridge thing wide open, but honestly I haven't probed the depths of what can be done. Heck, i haven't even deviated from the concrete deck and pylons that his example XML used. Perhaps later tonight I will get more daring.

Bridges can and do easily carry traffic. For example, I don't know the height of the real Bonner Bridge, other than the hump for boats to pass under is 65 feet. I put a line of traffic on it to visualize how tall it "should" be because I know what it looks like from driving across it a few times before. I figured I could use the cars to see if it looked right. And there were my cars, happily driving along. But it might be to ready to accept traffic. When learning from the master XML I received, I modified the height of the bridge so I had two that followed the same path stacked like a double deck bridge. All the traffic flowed across the top deck.

By pure chance last night, I was flying the famous River Visual approach to DC's Reagan National and spied an odd behavior by traffic encountering an exclusion bridge (it MIGHT have been a library object bridge, and I will investigate later). If you fly directly north along the Potomac out of KDCA, you'll eventually come to a 90 left hand turn in the Potomac. There will be a large island right before the turn. The bridge here, the Francis Scott Key Bridge, has the George Washington Parkway passing underneath it on the southern/western bank of the river. The GW Pky has traffic on it. But when it encountered the bridge, cars were making a 90 degree vertical turn and climbing the side of the bridge, then going back down the other side. I will attempt to obtain a screenshot of this, as well as maybe trying to make my own set of crossing bridges with traffic. This link http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...76,-77.072439&spn=0.025682,0.057335&z=15&om=1 should provide you with the exact location of the bridge, if you want to see it for yourself.