Want taller buildings in FSX

Hi,

I'm using Airport Design Editor and I want to enhance the Miami skyline with the recent taller buildings but the tallest buildings in the scenery library are only 15 stories. How can I get buildings that are 70 and 80 stories? thanks for any help.

You might want to try and add one that you can make with Gmax if you are able to. I think all that comes with the program is what you'll find in those.

 

You may also want to search in the file library here if they have any too. I wasn't sure, but thought they had a scenery object section here.

You have a few options...

The near building was added in ADE and is the Green Diamond condo building from ...\FSX\Scenery\NAME\scenery\Miami.bgl

 

That building is ~170 meters (~560 feet) tall.

 

It was added by right clicking on the screen and "Add... > Library Object".

 

Before doing so I had to go to Tool>Library Object Manager>Add File and add Miami.bgl to the LOM.

 

You could do this with any of the "city" .bgl files to access high rises from other cities, though if they are too far from Miami the buildings may not show in the sim. There is a workaround for this if you wanted to place something like the Space Needle in Miami.

 

The taller building is a generic building that is 500 meters (~1640 feet) tall.

 

As you are using ADE, that indicates that you have the SDK. If you look in the Environment Kit>BGL Compiler SDK you can read how to create generic buildings using nothing more than Notepad.

 

For this building I placed a Generic building with ADE, then saved the XML when compiling. The generic building selection in ADE is rather limited and ADE offers no way to change the height of a generic building so I hand edited the XML to get the height I wanted and compiled the XML with BGLComp.

 

One advantage of generic buildings is you can create them in Notepad and keep the Miami CBD separate from any airport.

 

The major disadvantage is the limited geometry and texture selection of the generic buildings. They do perform well in the sim though.

 

Somewhere I have (maybe had) a tool that simplified generic building creation for FS9. If I can find it I will let you know if it works in FSX.

 

peace,

the Bean

Hey Honus,

 

Im Thomas"Boss"Still from the FS Blue Angels and I was wondering you you were interested in helping us design an airshow scenery for our 2014-15 airshow season.

The components would include: a crowd, static scenery aircraft, tents, speakers, ground personell ex: crew chiefs, and comm cart personell, and the comm cart itself. Please contact me as soon as possible if you can or cannot at fsxusnblueangels@gmail.com or join our TeamSpeak. Ip: 99.176.20.139

 

Best Regards,

 

Thomas"Boss"Still

FS Blue Angels Team Commander

Hey thanks Bean. Some good info here. I'll explore these options.

Somewhere I have (maybe had) a tool that simplified generic building creation for FS9. If I can find it I will let you know if it works in FSX.

 

SbuilderX has a generic building dialog where you can specify heights, widths, texture tiling and of course the actual texture itself. You can load a preset (Office-2Story-MidGray-50x20 for example) and then build on it in a 3D viewer. You can then save it as a preset so you can place it in other locations. I just turned "Office-2Story-MidGray-50x20" into "Office-60Story-MidGray-100x60" then I retrieved the XML from the Work folder and compiled it with the FS9 compiler, of course it also compiles with the FSX compiler, the building works in either sim but not sure if the texture number will always work in either sim, in this case it did. Here's the XML:

 

  version="9.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd">

    lat="44.3962054"
   lon="-68.2252367"
   alt="0"
   altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
   pitch="0"
   bank="0"
   heading="42"
   imageComplexity="NORMAL">
      scale="1"
     bottomTexture="0"
     roofTexture="10"
     topTexture="0"
     windowTexture="81">
        roofType="FLAT"
       sizeX="100"
       sizeZ="60"
       sizeBottomY="0"
       textureIndexBottomX="0"
       textureIndexBottomZ="0"
       sizeWindowY="300"
       textureIndexWindowX="2560"
       textureIndexWindowY="7680"
       textureIndexWindowZ="1536"
       sizeTopY="0"
       textureIndexTopX="0"
       textureIndexTopZ="0"
       textureIndexRoofX="256"
       textureIndexRoofZ="256" />

 

Places a really huge building at Bar Harbor, Maine which may be a little out of place, but...

 

You can land a helicopter on top of them too BTW.

 

Jim

The FSX SDK section on Compiling BGL allows tall generic buildings

 

 

sizeWindowY Size of window layer in meters. For a skyscraper this is often several hundred meters

In the SBuilderX generic building editor you get "Height Y" and "Y Tiling" so when I loaded the Office-2Story-MidGray-50x20 preset it gave me a height of 10m and a Y Tiling value of 1. I increased the height of the building to 300m so proportionately I adjusted the Y Tiling value to 30 which keeps the windows the same size, just many more of them. There's a corresponding set of adjustments for X and Z as well. SBX handles all the sizeWindow*=n and textureIndexWindow*=n stuff in the XML while you watch the changes actually take place in the 3D viewer.

That is too cool! Thank you. I've not much experience with HTML but I'll play around with it. Thank you.

 

Also, I just discovered that in some cases, you can stack generic flatroofed buildings on top of each other in ADE, thereby turning a 15 story building into a 45 story. It doesn't seem to be consistent but I do have a nice bronze color 75 story beauty sitting on Brickell Avenue, Miami just as there is in real life. Thanks for the XML info too!

OK, I did some digging and the tool for building/placing generic buildings is ObPlacer XML by Arno Gerretsen and you can download it here- http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/resources/categories/tools.9/

 

I used v0.83 and apparently it works with FSX.

 

V0.84 is an upgrade and requires 0.83 first.

 

For the preview window to work you will need Martin Wright's DLL package available here- http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/index.htm

 

Both are free and from trusted, long time FS developers.

 

I also recommend you get the PDF tutorial here- http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Generic_Buildings it is an easier read than the SDK.

 

The ObPlacer tool gets location data from FSX via FSUIPC which I assume you already have.

 

There is an in depth discussion about generic textures here- http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/generic-buildings-large-texture-numbers.1581/

 

That thread is referred to in the PDF yet the URL has changed.

 

This should give you more flexibility for custom sizes and the PDF shows how to make semi-custom buildings by building composite buildings.

 

peace,

the Bean

There is a workaround for this if you wanted to place something like the Space Needle in Miami.

 

How do you do it? I do not wish to be rude with this, I've been trying to place the Willis (Sears) Tower from the Chicago file into another location and haven't been successful.

Install Model Converter X.

Import chicago.bgl

Use Scenery objects editor to find the sears tower in the list of objects

Use object information to click on "set new GUID"

Export object as FSX mdl (to temp location)

Import the object you just created.

Use object placement tool to find on map where you want the object to be placed. You can change scale, scenery complexity at which it will be drawn, etc.

Export scenery as FSX BGL (to addon scenery or as desired)

 

that should do it. Note that the object is MS game asset and don't distribute it.

 

scott s.

.

Install Model Converter X.

Import chicago.bgl

Use Scenery objects editor to find the sears tower in the list of objects

Use object information to click on "set new GUID"

Export object as FSX mdl (to temp location)

Import the object you just created.

Use object placement tool to find on map where you want the object to be placed. You can change scale, scenery complexity at which it will be drawn, etc.

Export scenery as FSX BGL (to addon scenery or as desired)

 

After that copy the textures called by the model from ...\FSX\Scenery\NAMC\texture to ...\Addon Scenery\texture or as desired.

 

MCX can tell you what textures you will need.

 

peace,

the Bean