Comments on: Pictures to Prove It

By: Fabio

Fabio — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:47:00 +0000

Hey Ben!

This is a very long shot, but...

Sometimes airports diagrams can be found in PDF format available from official aeronautical agencies. Here in my country we have access to all airports diagrams with a nice level of detail, including an special chart showing gates names, positions and even taxiing lines.

While they may not be perfect, they usually have better detail than XP's stock airports. In fact, the two airports I made with WED were designed over rasters from those PDFs.

I don't know how hermetic the PDF format is but AFAIK they are vectorial. I was wondering if we could import those drawings directly as vectors.

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:38:00 +0000

Holger: yes...you can encode beziers into the DSF now - X-Plane will ignore them for now.

Romeo:
1. Yes, you will be able to use WED with that configuration to make more detailed airports. You can put in taxiway lines, signs, more light fixtures, and anything else that the apt.dat file controls.

2. I can't tell you when WED will go beta.

3. If you mean the existing apps already out there, absolutely. Overlay Editor, for example, is a wonderful program!

By: romeo

romeo — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 21:20:00 +0000

ben, I use x-plane 8.6 and run it on a intel mac.
i have 3 questions. 1. will I be able to use this application to make my local airport more realistic using mac os x (v.10.4.10)?
2. how long can we expect to wait for this application
and(3) can the avrage intellect hope to learn to modify scenery effectively using any existing applications. thanks alot, Rob B , St.cloud MN.

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 16:54:00 +0000

It will not be possible to edit highways in the first version of WED.

The DSF format allows for bezier highways, but X-plane does not yet understand them - they are rendered as straight lines from curve's endpoints. We will implement curved roads someday as a future feature.

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 10:36:00 +0000

Hi Mark,

Does terraserver.com have a direct access protocol? If so, please email me with the docs! If not, they wouldn't be usable from within the app.

By: Mark Rashleigh

Mark Rashleigh — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:27:00 +0000

Benjamin, regarding terraserver.
You referrence a USA site, however there is a global site.
http://www.terraserver.com/home.asp
Does require registration which removes water mark etc. Would this be an alternative for those non USA and are willing to pay registration ($24). Maybe a drop down window within WED to select this alternative site notating that registration is required. Surely if approched by Laminar Research terraserver might offer a package subscription to x-plane user’s

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 08:59:00 +0000

Hi Dan,

WED will not allow you to make orthophoto-based scenery in this version. This version is ONLY an apt.dat editor! A future version will let you make photo-based scenery.

You can import orthophotos to look at them as REFERENCES when making an airport.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:53:00 +0000

When you talk about Terraserver or Google image, what about hortophoto ? Could we put real image everywhere ?

By: Fabian Piedras

Fabian Piedras — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 21:12:00 +0000

Wow!
Dreams can be true.
As i can see, it's Taxidraw plus AFCAD, and more! Background reference, curves, sign editing... I can't wait for WED.
Great job.

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 19:18:00 +0000

Hrm – it’s my impression from threads about tileproxy that Google does not like it when people direct-download from their mapping server.

If that app does work, you could simply use it to fetch a picture, then import the picture into WED as a reference image overlay (and enter the coordinates of the corners into WED) and you’d be all set.