Comments on: What’s Next for Scenery Tools

By: louist

louist — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:15:29 +0000

Have a request similar to "how do I fix the lake behind my house" with that bridge is not really the Puente Moscoso bridge which is more like the Florida Keys type.

Will appreciate any help to make this change.

Thank you,
W. L. Timm
louist@prtc.net

WINDOWS XP
e-GeForce 6200 NVDIA

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:24:55 +0000

re: manual for WED 1.1: I don't know.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 15:17:51 +0000

Hi Ben,
when do we get a manual with the new functions of WED 1.1?

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 05:01:06 +0000

You're totally right Ben. No point in submitting data that you can't test… Why didn't I think of that? 😉

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 19:49:52 +0000

Looks like a system similar to Flightgear's TerraSync. Nice feature 🙂

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:44:23 +0000

Re: ATC, a few things:

1. We will not accept ATC data before a working sim that can USE that data is available in some form (beta or shipping).

Our experience with user submitted data is that user submitted data that cannot be tested in a real app suffers from quality control.

2. In the past, tools have lagged new formats available in the sim, sometimes quite severely. In this case I think we will do a little bit better; it turns out the ATC data is complex enough that we need WED to even make mock-ups.

So there is ALREADY code in WED to edit ATC data.

I do _not_ recommend that anyone try to USE these features...the file formats aren't final yet. But having the stub code means that we'll be most of the way done when the code is finalized and the tools release should come quickly.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:37:19 +0000

That's good.

Regarding the ATC editing tools; will you give authors a head start to submit ATC data before the feature is introduced in the sim, or will we have to wait for tools to catch up?

By: Benjamin Supnik

Benjamin Supnik — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:42:15 +0000

Hi Dan,

I think they would be allowed to, as long as all of the input data sources were under a reasonably open license. This is true for _most_ sources (which are either under an open license or public domain). We have a few data sources that we have to get explicit non-repeatable permission for, but we could even sub out a comparable data source until the issue can be resolved.

The proprietary parts of the scenery system (e.g. art assets) are all referenced by the library, so users don't need to copy them.

/ben

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:36:42 +0000

Love the idea about a remote scenery request system. I think it could be huge, certainly lowering the threshold for authors to improve the terrain without having to do all the hard work of sourcing the data and figuring out how to tackle MeshTool. This could be a killer feature of X-Plane X in my opinion.

But will scenery authors be allowed to include the modified scenery tile along with their overlay scenery pack? Requiring a user to download additional files from another site could be a deal breaker. Very few user actually read the instructions or readme file. If you have a overlay scenery that requires the modified scenery tile to run and look right then that could be a cause for concern...