Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

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Mick
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Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:42 pm
Location: Germany

Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by Mick » Thu Nov 19, 2015 10:03 am

Hi everybody,

I'm having severe trouble making photo scenery with SBuilder X (latest Version with updated plugins), including crash of SBX at the attempt to get tiles from Google Satellite.
  • The problem with incomplete download seems to be known and might sometimes be solved by hiding the background (F1) and showing it again in order to repeat the process. But I don't seem to be lucky with that solution, as it just didn't work in more than 30 tries... sometimes only one tile missing, sometimes more, but always "Couldn't make an image".
  • With respect to other threads in this forum I took care that the resulting image doesn's exceed 1.3 GB (mostly they are much smaller). But many times SBuilder crashes during download of tiles.
Is it a bug which others know already? And found any probable workarounds? Would it still be possible to go the "old" way of calibrating maps akquired from GE?

Thank you for any hints.
Mick

(Platform: Core i7 with 4 GB RAM, Win7 64-bit)
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luisfeliztirado
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Location: Santo Domingo

Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by luisfeliztirado » Thu Nov 19, 2015 11:54 pm

Thanks for the report, Mick.

I don't remember anybody else getting a crash; perhaps another member of this forum has more information.

As for the "1 tile missing", problem, I had always thought the cause was an unreliable Internet connection. This was just an assumption; I have no evidence to back it up. But, when I was on slow dial-up, this happened to me most of the time. Now, with a faster connection, I never get it.

Best regards.
Luis

Mick
Posts: 59
Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:42 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by Mick » Mon Nov 23, 2015 8:05 pm

Thank you, Luis, for your response.

As an "assumption update" :lol: I can report having a strong and reliable 50 M internet connection in Munich (= big European city), so there must be another reason for the "1 tile missing" problem as well as for the crash. As a workaround I did some of the Thai islands I'm working on using the "old" way of calibrating a map-image.

BTW: Do you by any chance know if Luis Sá is still working on the further development of SBX (e.g. removing bugs and/or extend functionality)? If not, maybe he'd be open to make it Open Source so that other .NET programmers can contribute? Just an idea...

Regards,
Mick

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luisfeliztirado
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Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by luisfeliztirado » Tue Nov 24, 2015 2:51 pm

Luis is, in fact, very willing to have others continue the development of SBuilder. Anybody with an interest in doing so is welcome to make themselves known here.

Best regards.
Luis

Mick
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Joined: Fri Oct 05, 2007 7:42 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by Mick » Thu Nov 26, 2015 11:56 am

I can very well imagine, it's a lot of volunteer work.

Unfortunately I'm not the most experienced programmer myself, so I could most likely only contribute a little bit of coding myself. I was more or less thinking about the "programming cracks" like Arno Gerretsen or Scruffyduck, who are both programming very good (free) FSX tools - and might be willing and able to cooperate (maybe even integrate different tools) in an open source project, which still needs a leader (Luis) to decide which code makes sense in the full context of the program. If Luis would set that codebase up and inform the developer scenery, I would be really curious what develops... but since most people usually don't ask such things, I don't think anyone would "make himself known" for that purpose. Such information should also come direct from the author, not from a user which I basically am.

This is just a "seed" for both your minds, no need to answer.

Have a nice day,
Mick

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luisfeliztirado
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Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by luisfeliztirado » Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:11 pm

Ideas are always welcome. Thank you, Mick.

iangbusa
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Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by iangbusa » Thu Dec 03, 2015 9:34 pm

luisfeliztirado wrote:Luis is, in fact, very willing to have others continue the development of SBuilder. Anybody with an interest in doing so is welcome to make themselves known here.
Best regards.
Luis
Hi, Luis!
What language(s) has Luis used in development? Was Visual Studio used? Also, were any "payware" UI or other components used at all?
ian

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luisfeliztirado
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Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by luisfeliztirado » Fri Dec 04, 2015 11:22 am

Hello Ian,

Straight up Visual Studio, the last version. He used VS Basic, but any language can be used in VS, of course. There aren't many functional differences between VS Basic and VS C# anyway.

No payware modules as far as I know.

Best regards.
Luis

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Luis Sa
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Re: Bug in SBuilderX 3.14

Post by Luis Sa » Tue Jan 05, 2016 1:55 am

Hello,

I started SBX using VB6 and then ported it to more recent VB using Visual Studio 2013. The problem in putting the source in the public domain is that it was never thought to reach that stage.

When I started with SB, it was to automate some processes in scenery creation that I was working on. I made Madeira Islands in 2003 and thought that, by developing a tool, I would be able to make many more sceneries. But I only made one more, since SB took almost all the time that I had available for this hobby. My primary job was not related to programming. SB was for me, a kind of an exercise to learn programming. I am writing this to explain that the source code is very "intimate", not well documented, and difficult to read. If I was to put it in the public domain, I wonder what programming "experts" would say about it!

I may think about delivering my code to someone or some group that wants to develop it further. But I do not know if it is possible (to understand what I wrote) and even if it worths the effort.

There is also a question about tiles and the way plugins can add this functionality to SB. Some years have passed since I implemented that feature. I do not know how copyright terms are these days but I would not to be pointed as exposing a way .....

Regards and Happy New Year,

Luis

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