FSX KML Tutorial

Introduction

This is the tutorial for FSX KML.

FSX KML is a freeware scenery design tool for Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX).

Creating landclass tiles

• Land class tiles may be created tagging a polygon with a land class tag.
• FSX KML will process land class polygons in the order the appear in the KML thus allowing "layering" of land classes.

Creating islands

Islands are created by cutting holes out of water polygons using the POLYGONHOLE tag.

Lets say you want to create a lake with an island:-

In Google Earth

• Draw a polygon representing the lake
• Draw a polygon inside the lake that represents the island
• Save your KML file

In FSX KML

• Open the KML file
• Tag the island polygon with a water polygon tag, eg Hydro_Polygons_Generic_Lake_Perennial
• Set the elevation of your lake, click the vertices tab, then the edit button, then the "Set Elevation" button and enter the elevation of the lake
• Tag the island with the POLYGONHOLE tag

Important:
Polygon holes must be placed immediately after the polygon they operate on. In other words, the polygon hole is associated with the preceding polygon. Additionally the polygon and polygon hole must be in the same KML folder.

Direction of polygons

• The SDK tool Shp2Vec requires that polygon holes are drawn in the opposite direction to polygons.
• If you are using Google Earth, all polygons are written to the KML file in an clockwise direction irrespective of how they were drawn. FSX KML has the build option "Automatically Reverse Points In Polygon Holes" which will automatically reverse the direction of polygon holes. This is on by default because it is assumed most users will use Google Earth to create their KML files.
• If you have not used Google Earth to create your KML file you may need to manually reverse the direction or your polygon holes. You can use the "Reverse Points" button to do this. Also make sure you turn off the build option "Automatically Reverse Points In Polygon Holes".

Related forum posts

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5516

Flattening terrain around an airport

In GE

• Draw a polygon

In FSX KML

• Tag the polygon with the Airport_Backgrounds_Flatten_MaskClassMap_ExcludeAutoGen
• Set the elevation of the polygon to the elevation of the runway. You can do this by clicking the Vertices tab and then clicking the Edit button. Then click the Set Elevation button and enter the elevation of the runway.