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Hi. Part of the way through searching for and downloading a bunch of repaints, this happened. Downloads were ok until that point, now nothing is available. Does anyone know why? D

Silly question perhaps but have you run the fault finder? Bear in mind that there are a few things it misses (at least in my v1.76): the favourites, especially from AfCad output or from downloads, are objects with orientation greater than 360° I think the xml output is just a step on the way to bgl D

Because sales of addons for those sims are still high enough to make the support a viable business proposition. Also, end-of-life is often pre-planned as part of the business model. Ultimately, in any business, it's the volume of sales of any product that determines whether or not the bean-counters are happy to spend money on supporting it. When sales revenue for that product diminishes to the point that the cost of support is greater than whatever percent of revenue then the business will end support. There are complex considerations like reputation and encouraging return customers (and in this case probably also increasing costs associated with server maintenance or replacement) but it always boils down to a single question: "How will this affect our profit?". D (I can take the dispassionate view here: I stopped using ASE when I dumped P3d)

Hi Hans. Land on the lakes with the mesh, and again without the mesh. I'm certain that you'll find the elevation of the lakes does not change. It's the surrounding terrain that changes according to which terrain mesh is in use:

I've recently returned to FS9 after another long hiatus during which I practically lived in Skyrim. I arrived in Mexico city in January 2022 and didn't leave until March this year. In the last six weeks I've flown back to S America via Panama, flown down the Amazon (if only there was better scenery) and south to Natal. I am currently somewhere in Africa, following Ernest K Gann's flight, in Fate is the Hunter, from Natal to Chabua in India. I'll take a commercial flight back and then I've two places to visit in Venezuela before Port of Spain and the Caribbean. This morning I departed Kano illegally while the airport was still IFR and arrived at Al-Fashir in Sudan, on a runway about six inches wide. The nearest metar for Al-Fashir was from Khartoum, about 450 miles away. Concepción volcano in Nicaragua A man, a plan, a canal. Panama En route to Espinar. Can't get away from these Approach to Yauri Not landing there. SPPA Braided water near Fonte Boa I must come back (please, no!) to follow this one day Climbing out of Manaus. A rather dull picture but I caught the lightning Beyond the endless river - departing Natal for new horizons ... and arriving at RAF Ascension Island, also rather romantically Wideawake Airfield Eek! See what happens when you break the rules? On the go at Kano, Nigeria

John, if all I've done wrong is to construct sentences that implied what I didn't mean then I'm quite happy. I walked in with very few problems but there are still any number of features I haven't needed. I intended to convey the idea that you don't need a full knowledge of all aspects of ADE and that the manual is best used when you need to look up how to do something new. I use aprons rather than taxiways because they don't clutter up the taxiway network while I'm tinkering. You probably have more experience than any of us at creating scenery & airports. Out of interest, how would you have tackled the terrain mesh v. LWM issue? D

I apologise, and I appreciate the correction. I've only used SBuilder to correct a few favourite islands' coastlines. I moved directly to ADE from adding flatten rectangles in scenery.cfg so skipped a lot of stuff in SBuilder. Yes. Flattens do not affect runways, taxiways, lights, ILS and probably a few other things. ADE will change all of them in one go when you alter the airport elevation so there's no individual editing. All that's left then is to reshape the terrain to meet the new airport elevation (because it's pretty certain not to be flat). You can do it either by adding a flatten or, if the difference in elevation is not huge, placing aprons under the rwy etc will also force the terrain to the airport's elevation. They only have to be a couple of inches wider than the runway so are not obtrusive. The apron method looks a bit strange if there is a big difference and is best reserved for when humps of ground errupt through the runway. Library objects will certainly also be adjusted automatically if they are part of the airport bgl. If they are in a separate scenery bgl, I'm not sure. It's a long time since I placed scenery objects but I think they are likely to have been set to 'zero feet above the terrain' so they should follow the mesh. Someone else will know for sure. If you've used AfCad then you already know how to use ADE. The size of the manual makes people think the application is difficult to use, and that makes them trot out the old 'steep learning curve' cliché, which everybody then repeats without trying it for themselves. The manual is a reference and a look-up, not a compulsory textbook. I'd be happy to go through it should that ever be necessary.

Oh honestly... you're confusing flattens with LWM elevation. As I wrote above, in what you've just quoted... if you alter the LWM, that will alter all waterbodies in that bgl. We've already established that flattens work in a different way: adding a flatten doesn't alter the entire HP***. bgl On the other had, you are exactly correct in yor replies to leuen about the interaction between mesh and LWM.

Forgive me if I misunderstand and I don't mean to be condescending but: The lakes you show in India are in a different bgl... Changing one HP***.bgl with SBuilder will only alter the water elevation for that bgl. All LWM water bodies in your installaltion were made by MS, as was the default mesh. The default mesh is inaccurate but MS made their water to match their mesh. So, except where by chance & coincidence default and real-world happen to coincide, pretty well every water body in FS9 is at the wrong elevation and nwhen you use accurate 3rd party mesh, will either be on a little plateau or in a big sinkhole. Every one of them. The only exceptions will be in any areas not covered by your addon mesh. they will still have default terrain elevation and so the water bodies will *appear* to be correct. ***** I can't think of a way of asking this question without it seeming sarcastic. That's not my intention so please just take it at face value: Is this a difficult concept for most people to understand? It just seems really obvious to me:-- MS made wrong mesh and then made LWM waterbodies to match. So they are also wrong. 3rd party mesh does not affect LWM so you now have correct terrain elevation paired with incorrect LWM.

World map drawn by a fish: (I'm not sure how it held the brush)

It is. But, if you use SBuilder to modify the bgl, it will change the elevation of all water bodies in that hydro poly bgl because you are changing that LWM cell. It works fine if you only have one lake in the bgl but if there are several, it will set all their elevations at the same time. I referred to that in the first sentence of my post with the instruction and again in my reply to Bernard. Creating a flatten is much more precise and, if you do have several lakes in that HP bgl, you can use several different flattens to set them to different elevations so they match the terrain more closely. SBuilder will also do flattens but the process is a lot simpler in ADE. D

Because the mesh is certain to be more accurate (you described it youself as "better") than MS placeholder default terrain, in the case of the lakes change the lake elevation with a custom flatten. For the RAF bases, change the airport elevation. It's simpler and quicker than the nested-flatten wormcan. ADE will do that too. If you also add a flatten (3rd party mesh is pretty lumpy) then that creates three bgls: airport, flatten & elevation adjustment. The first two compile into your project folder. The elevation adjustment bgl, an *_ALT.bgl, compiles into ../FS2004/Scenery/World/Scenery as it has to be at a low priority. I don't like cluttering the stock folders so I move alt files to a separate low layer, too:

Hi Bernard. What creates the "elevation problem" is that MS's default scenery is just a placeholder and is offset laterally and vertically, as well as lacking resolution. That is compounded by the fact that their default scenery LWM is all at the same elevation in any given cell. It's not a problem and there is no fault to find, not by reactivating scenery or by any other means. That would be the waste of time. It's simply that addon mesh is more accurate and more detailed than the default. Because of the way LWM works in FS9, adding new mesh doesn't alter the elevation of water so flattens are required in order to force MS water to the correct elevation. D

Hi. All of the water in any given LWM tile/cell (whatever they're called, I forget) is at the same altitude; it's why very long FS9 rivers fall in steps and why so many water bodies are at the wrong elevation. It's best to create a flatten slightly larger that the lakes, else the original elevated terrain bleeds through, and set it to the elevation of the surrounding (correct) mesh. The simplest procedure is with ADE - you can essentially just draw a shaped flatten polygon near the nearest airport and compile. ADE is particularly good for this because it will lock to your plane's position while you slew in FS9, and it compiles airports and flattens into separate bgls despite their being in the same project. Your nearest airfield is HKNV. You can make any shape of flatten in ADE and give it whatever elevation you want. It's not tied to the airport elevation. ADE compiles flattens separately from the rest of an airport so... You can open the stock HKNV, add a flatten to it of whatever altitude and compile. Both bgls compile to the same location. The newly created airport bgl can be dismissed. After all, you have the stock. The other bgl, a *_TER.bgl should go somewhere above all your mesh. I have a separate layer for elevation corrections. *** In a nutshell, with pictures below: 1. Open the stock HKNV in ADE. 2. Load a flight and slew to the edge of the elevated lake. 3. Connect & lock ADE to FS9. 4. Slew the boundary of the terrain that you want to modify. 5. Make a flatten polygon in ADE that matches the shape of what you are slewing around. (Top-down view in FS9 is good for this). 6. Double click to finish. 7. Set the elevation. The best way to do this is by noting your aircraft's altitude when it's sitting on the ground. Take into account the height of the model origin (3.7 feet for the stock C172). 8. Compile the airport. 9. Delete the newly-created airport bgl. 10. Move the *_TER.bgl from World/Scenery to a layer of your choice, above mesh and below airports (don't want it interfering with them...) 11. Make a cup of tea. It took about 30 minutes while preparing dinner. Making the screenshots took the rest of the evening . My lake with FS Global 2008 mesh: Nearest airport HKNV. It's interesting to note that you can see flat terrain in the map texture and it shows MS LWM is offset laterally as well as vertically: Me parked up on the grass by the side of the lake with ADE connected to FS9: Click the green polygon button and start dropping in some polygon vertices: 6174 feet per the terrain, not the lake surface and not the airport: I messed up, slewing straight past my start point. It doesn't matter -- double-click closes the poly and you can delete surplus vertices: Compile: Delete this one: you don't need it: This goes above mesh layers and below airport & custom scenery layers: Ter files in the correct place -- I have a layer dedicated to them: Took about 30 minutes: HKNV still at 6380 feet: But the lake is now at 6174 feet:

I did. See my posts above

If I could do it all over again, I'd do it all over you.

Hi. This one? It's definitely a favourite if you're using a headset. (Ha! I should have checked your link before I posted...) It might also be worth checking that the wavs in the target folder do actually play... out of context in, for example, Media Player or VLC. Also, though unlikely if you still have the same hardware, very high framerates can have an adverse effect on sounds although that's usually a buzzing rather than silence. D

A good question. When I'm looking for repaints, a preview really is essential unless Flightsim are planning to improve the thumbnails. The current resolution looks a bit like 32 × 32 pixels and doesn't show anything useful.

That Hedkandi tail! Retro even in 2008. Club Ibiza with Monarch.

In case you're wondering, it's "custard".

From Runway12's tutorial document: "... enables you to place static objects into FS9 without having to understand a thing about scenery programming." Yeah, right. Unless the dev has uploaded only half of what you need. TBH, this upload is Linux/sourceforge quality: not much use for the 999 in 1000. On the assumption that John is correct, I had a go. Initially, the library didn't show up for me either. In Runway12's tutorial there's a section called "A Word to Scenery Designers". It states that an upload must include what this one doesn't. I have a word for such scenery designers. *** Here's what you have to do: Extract the zip's contents and declare the new folder as a new scenery layer. I extracted vol2 then vol3 then vol4 to the same folder, overwriting. I did not add the folder to /Addon Scenery/ as I have my own folder & layer structure. /scenery/ should contain 4 × bgl and 4 × txt files /texture/ should have 490 items /Textures to change alert stripe color/ uh, not interested The dev could also take some lessons in economical naming of folders & files... *** As you've found, you'll have to make the xml for each bgl. This is almost certainly where things have gone wrong. Notepad doesn't save as xml. Word and Wordpad do but what I did was to copy an existing xml to desktop then rename & edit that. Notepad is ok for that task. Here's my xml text for the smallest of his bgls. If you use it, you'll need to edit the thumbnail path & name for each instance. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <objectsLibrary> <category name="dlf_lib_AlertHangars_Black_FS9 - D. French"> <obj name="FS9_Black_Alert Hangar SS door ext CLOSED" guid="F5065C0E4C5F604B164D678510F8A07E" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="FS9_Black_Alert Hangar Center Bldg" guid="AD15BC2A426AE8CD834A5E853F780D7D" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="FS9_Black_Alert Hangar SS OPEN" guid="DA380131406C8248CAA01FAF8D5F83B5" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="FS9_Black_Alert Hangar SS PARTIAL" guid="88A3C84F497A808ADDF16A8DF3D2C191" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="FS9_Black_Alert Hangar SS door ext OPEN" guid="A105015940B07282A6AA518BFFEFD59E" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="FS9_Black_Alert Hangar SS CLOSED" guid="CE0693B0431DD16D6770B5828C4E66F5" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="59 FIS Bat Logo Sign" guid="FAE5AEDA4B6F8002605C0E9E07FB47C8" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="FS9_Black_Alert Hangar SS door ext PARTIAL" guid="DC2EC7E847AF1DDFE9E1CEAA672BF161" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="59th FIS Rocketry Champs sign with legs" guid="A034E0DF41AB19DEF35F2D96BFFFF562" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> <obj name="59th FIS Rocketry Champs sign" guid="AE63D8FA4D1FC92DE867698D2EEBD4CE" image="d french stuff\thumbnail.bmp"/> </category> </objectsLibrary> And below is a very short template for the other, much larger bgls. Stuff you have to edit starts & ends with ##. There's also a single empty entry (copy & paste is quicker when you don't have to select or delete first). Things you'll have to add are: name of the library bgl you are adding developer name object description taken from the text file that has the same name as the bgl hex object id taken from the text file that has the same name as the bgl filename & path of the thumbnail Don't forget the header info. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <objectsLibrary> <category name="##library bgl name## - ##dev name##"> <obj name="##the description taken from bglname.txt##" guid="##the hex id number taken from bglname.txt" image="##subfolder\filename.extension starting from ../Rwy12/img##"/> <obj name="" guid="" image=""/> </category> </objectsLibrary> The completed xml goes in the folder that contains ObjectPlacer.exe (Rwy12's root directory). Make a thumbnail - I just used a magenta & yellow bitmap as a placeholder. Thumbnails go into an appropriately-named sub-folder of the /img/ folder in Rwy12's root directory. A placeholder will have to suffice until you've created some FS9 scenery and had the opportunity to slew & get a good look at what's actually in the bgl. That's all I did. 1. Extract zips 2. Declare new folder as a new scenery layer 3. Edit/make xml and add it to the Rwy12 root folder 4. Make thumbnail and add it to a img sub-folder --- 5. Create some scenery. 6. Get some proper pictures for thumbnails. D

Hi. When you say 'don't show up', do you mean just the thumbnails or that they aren't listed at all in the Category and the Object to Place dropdown lists? If the former, is there an appropriate thumbnail in ../Rwy12/img/ If the latter, what were the files you downloaded? I've just done a quick trawl through my libraries and I don't have one called FS9Hangers. D

Thank you. It's a kind offer. If something I can't categorise catches my attention, I'll use your thread. D

Yes. It's my local. I've only just noticed that "Location" is no longer given under a poster's avatar. It used to say 'near EGCW'. The airport is one of Just Flight's British Airports series. The photoscenery (a bit dated) and the mesh are Horizon's VFR Photographic Scenery. I have some idea, recalling Garry Summons' old website, that the JF Airports are very similar to Garry's UK2000 VFR airfields for FS9. Here's Bob, the late owner as PF and Tony, PNF, about to take me, another engineer and a couple of French girls to Angoulême in a Gulfstream 695b. I absolutely adored that plane: zero to rippling face in a couple of seconds and what always felt like a vertical departure. Sometimes a vertical approach too, depending on the French controller's state of mind. The drinks fell out of the fridge on one descent (that was my fault...). Once he'd shut down, I asked Bob about the late clearance and he said something like, "No, it wasn't a problem. This thing falls like a stone." Enough. I'll shut up now - this is becoming a hijack.