SBuilder for FSX

General discussion about Scenery Design. Questions about SBuilder for Flight Simulator FS2004.
User avatar
Luis Sa
Posts: 1736
Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 11:17 am
Location: Portugal
Contact:

Post by Luis Sa » Mon Mar 05, 2007 10:27 pm

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by boleyd</i>
<br />Luis,
Is it possible to provide an option for a "blending mask (alpha) when the user draws a polygon. Some land class look ok from SBX but others do not.
Also, could you make the landclass/poly type window larger or expandable. With so many selections it would be nice to see more as you scroll.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Hi,

The amount of "blending" is reduced and is not related to SBuilder. In FS) you could paint a stripe going over the border. The stripe could be done of semitransparent texture that could "blurr" the transition between the 2 textures. In FSX you can not use "custom named textures" and this possibility is out.

Regarding the enlarged textures, I will try something as you suggest when I will implement landclass scenery.

Regards, Luis

rhumbaflappy
Posts: 420
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:11 pm

Post by rhumbaflappy » Tue Mar 06, 2007 12:58 am

Hi Dick.

We can blend photoreal in FSX, and we can have up to 7cm/pixel resolution. That does allow something similar to what you are asking.

In the US, NAIP aerial images are available for about 30 states. These yield incredible 2 meter/pixel or better imagery... 1 foot in some cases. Sometimes these need to be reprojected to geographic WGS84 from UTM.

Other areas of the world may have free sources of hi-res imagery suitable for small areas.

Dick

boleyd
Posts: 402
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 10:57 pm
Location: USA

Post by boleyd » Tue Mar 06, 2007 6:34 pm

I was really talking about "cutting in" a section of landclass that has the outline of the actual populated area, which is irregular. It really does not match up well and I wondered if alpha blending of the edges might make the inserted landclass look less stark (actually quite bad). The landclass tiles are ok but real city outlines are sort of a poor person's photoreal.

I have begun to use NAIP stuff and it does look quite good in some areas. As is usual there is more attention to getting the photo geographically accurate than in maintaining a color balance. However, with some you can bring out a reasonably good photoreal coloring.

Global Mapper seems like the only truly universal tool for working with various photoreal sources. Edge matching, re-projection and alignment have not been an issue.

I would hope that Luis can create the code to meld the individual photos that Manifold collects in a manner that allows us to use large photosections for our photoreal texture backgrounds/land-cover. I use the JD Cox Terraserver compositor to do almost all of the San Francisco (1gb of BGLs) area based upon the excellent color material at Terraserver. I have worked with quite large files where, in some cases, I had BMPs of almost 500mb. Lots of fun plus a dose of frustration but mulling through the SDK was beneficial.


Dick Boley near 5G8

boleyd
Posts: 402
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 10:57 pm
Location: USA

Post by boleyd » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:02 am

Sloping Polygons:
I made a polygon with 4 points. two points were 363 meters and the other two were 351 meters. Set the landclass fill to grass. The compile went ok with a BGL produced. Opening FSX I saw the polygon where it should be, covered with the grass texture. However, It followed the mesh and not the specified elevations for each of the four points.


Dick Boley near 5G8

Image

rhumbaflappy
Posts: 420
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 10:11 pm

Post by rhumbaflappy » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:18 pm

Hi Dick.

You'll need 2 polys.

One for landclass-type, which clings to the mesh. Then also an Airport_Backgrounds_Flatten, to set the mesh altitudes.

The Airport_Backgrounds_Flatten is a bit of a mis-nomer. It doesn't have to be flat... maybe should have been named "Remesh" by the Aces, but it's original purpose was to flatten airfields.

Dick

francevfr
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:55 pm

Post by francevfr » Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:59 pm

hi luis, hi all,

a friend of mine told me sbuilder gets a lot of great functions, especially for fsx sceneries.

I do not use this program yet, so I'd like to know if a commercial licence still exists and how to buy it ?

thanks

boleyd
Posts: 402
Joined: Sun Sep 19, 2004 10:57 pm
Location: USA

Post by boleyd » Sat Mar 10, 2007 6:32 pm

Thanks, that weaned me away from the myopic view of Airport Flatten. Now able to construct sloping hillsides that mitigate the crazy cliff-like settings of elevated/Plateau" airports.
Dick Boley
===============================
<i>
Posted - 10 March 2007 : 07:18:04 Show Profile Email Poster Reply with Quote
Hi Dick.

You'll need 2 polys.

One for landclass-type, which clings to the mesh. Then also an Airport_Backgrounds_Flatten, to set the mesh altitudes.

The Airport_Backgrounds_Flatten is a bit of a mis-nomer. It doesn't have to be flat... maybe should have been named "Remesh" by the Aces, but it's original purpose was to flatten airfields.

Dick</i>

-Kurt-
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:58 pm

Post by -Kurt- » Tue Mar 27, 2007 11:37 pm

Hi again,

I´ve tried to add the shoreline waves but with no result.
I´ve tried almost every Hydro_shoreline polygon and the wave_effekt polygon.
I know this is possible...should I create an exclude? Should I use a certain width?

Thx for the great tool.

nigelgrant
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:46 pm
Location: Canada

Post by nigelgrant » Thu Mar 29, 2007 4:48 pm

Hi Luis

Thx for this interesting new program, I am gradually becoming familiar with it and have succeeded in creating a poly and compiling it into FSX, after phone help from another developer and re-reading and re-reading the message forums!

However, I have a question. In the polygon properties page for the Type and Colour window, there are no images, except for some of the water polys. Is this correct or have I missed something in my installation. Where can I get images of the different types?

Nigel
Vancouver

User avatar
Luis Sa
Posts: 1736
Joined: Sun May 18, 2003 11:17 am
Location: Portugal
Contact:

Post by Luis Sa » Thu Mar 29, 2007 8:35 pm

Hello Nigel,

Good to learn that you are getting results from SBuilder.

Regarding your question: In the polys.txt and lines.txt files you will see that the entries are similar to this one:

<font color="purple">[Texture.189]
Name=LandClassPoly_Golf_Course
Color=FF00C000
Guid={9D27A527-7684-46D5-813D-342056FF3E2B}
Textures=na.bmp
Type=LCP</font id="purple">

Note the Textures=na.bmp line! It means that SBuilder will use the texture (that should exist in the BMPs folder) na.bmp! I named it na meaning <u>n</u>ot <u>a</u>vailable.

If you look deeper in polys.txt you will see:

<font color="purple">[Texture.196]
Name=Hydro_Polygons_Generic_Lake_Perennial
Color=FF2938FF
Guid={BCD5C182-9C8B-4C57-97BD-272CF492CBFF}
Textures=000b2su0.bmp
Type=HPX</font id="purple">

Which means that texture named 000b2su0.bmp will be used.

This all means that I was very lazy! There is a table that tells us the correspondence between the Guid and the texture to be used. I had a hope that some SBuilder user could help me and make a complete polys.txt and lines.txt with meaningful textures. These textures could be edited with text information printed over the texture telling what it does.

May be someone reading this can jump in ... [:)]

Regards,

Luis

-Kurt-
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Mar 05, 2007 3:58 pm

Post by -Kurt- » Fri Mar 30, 2007 12:53 pm

Sorry Louis I´m to stupid for this but I used youre terrain.cfg for me waves[8D]

User avatar
luisfeliztirado
Posts: 436
Joined: Sun May 15, 2005 9:15 am
Location: Santo Domingo

Post by luisfeliztirado » Fri Mar 30, 2007 1:31 pm

Hello Luis,

I had thought of adding the texture references to the polys and line txt files, but the problem is the regional variations. The texture that might be used in the U.S. is not the same as might be used in Europe (which has multiple different regions now), or in the rest of the world, or where I live. A complicated problem, as many people would therefore not see the correct texture.

Best regards.

Luis

Andrew
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 3:13 am
Contact:

Post by Andrew » Thu Apr 05, 2007 4:47 pm

Luis,

Thx a lot for the FSX version! Today I was able to exclude roads in order to fit them to my gmax bridges.

But: I still have to remove the autogen brigdes by deleting the bgl files from the scenery folder. I know the new SBuilder version is only for terrain as of today.

So here is a suggestion: How about an exclude option in the future that removes both "all roads" and autogen bridges at the same time? With such an option, I would only need one exclude polygon to do the job, instead of making two...plus that I don`t have to ask people to remove default bgl files. Would be great if you could implement such a funtion [:D]

PS: Ideally, the exclude should remove autogen bridges, buildings and trees. If memory serves, in Ground2K I could exclude several layers in the same exclude polygon.

José
Posts: 126
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2006 8:49 pm
Location: Brazil

Post by José » Fri Apr 06, 2007 1:51 am

Hi, Andrew

To my knowledge, there are three kinds of exclusions, each one in its proper bgl file.

1) The code to exclude airports elements should be inserter in the airport section:

<DeleteAirport
deleteAllApproaches = "TRUE"
deleteAllApronLights= "TRUE"
deleteAllAprons= "TRUE"
deleteAllFrequencies= "TRUE"
deleteAllHelipads= "TRUE"
deleteAllRunways="TRUE"
deleteAllStarts="TRUE"
deleteAllTaxiways="TRUE"
deleteAllBoundaryFences="TRUE"
deleteAllControlTowers= "TRUE"
>
</DeleteAirport>

2) The code to exclude library objects could be in the same bgl, but outside airport section:

<!--Exc Hangares e predios 01-->
<ExclusionRectangle
latitudeMinimum = "-22.8130976610886"
latitudeMaximum = "-22.8123892762964"
longitudeMinimum = "-42.0959470028224"
longitudeMaximum = "-42.0952371409917"
excludeAllObjects = "TRUE"
/>

Those files are compiled with bglcomp.

3) The code to exclude vector lines is put in another bgl file and is compiled with Shp2Vec.

It's not possible put all the three in the same bgl.

Regards,

José

J.F.Lôbo

Andrew
Posts: 17
Joined: Thu Jan 06, 2005 3:13 am
Contact:

Post by Andrew » Fri Apr 06, 2007 12:22 pm

Hi Jose,

Thx for enlightening me. I tried to include the exclude rectangle in my bridge xml file, but it did not exclude the autogen bridge. Do I have to use decimal values (like your example) for the coordinates? I used the same format as for the bridge, which is "N60 22.16"...

Gotta spend this day reading forums and manuals [:o)] [:)]

Post Reply