P3D and SBuilderX

[falcon409]

I have found a possible reason for not uninstalling FSX, lol. I use SBuilderX to capture photoreal ground textures for scenery work. While I had FSX installed that was a simple process, however since I no longer have FSX, it also appears I no longer have that function available. It is grayed out now that I only have P3D. I have asked this question in the FSDevelopers site, but they are notoriously slow to answer, so I thought I would try here as well.

Update: I tried moving the tools from the P3D SDK over to SBX but that had no effect, so to move this along and answer my own question, I believe the solution is to do a base install of FSX and forget about trying to get P3D and SBX to work together as Luis Sa, the originator of SBX is no longer actively involved in flightsim and a compatible version is unlikely.

[roger-wilco-66]

Ed, I hope I understood that correctly. Which version of SBX do you use, the new one? Are your dlls for the download plugins up to date? They change from time to time, expecially the GE versions. Dick (Rhumbaflappy) updates them frequently.

I think this has nothing to do with FSX. Also, as a side note, Dick built a new version of SBX 64 that is easier to install, see: http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2315


Cheers,
Mark

PS: Louis is quite active, I can assure you :-) He updated SBX in a record time in May, despite his other ambitious projects. I was or am a member the beta team for the SBX 64bit update and do my scenery design work exclusively for P3D and did not encounter any problems in the recent version except a very minor one, which can be easily circumvented and has to do with native P3D V2.2 static scenery objects.
Louis is sailing the seas with his boat which is why he is frequently offline for weeks.

[falcon409]

Ed, I hope I understood that correctly. Which version of SBX do you use, the new one? Are your dlls for the download plugins up to date? They change from time to time, expecially the GE versions. Dick (Rhumbaflappy) updates them frequently.

I think this has nothing to do with FSX. Also, as a side note, Dick built a new version of SBX 64 that is easier to install, see: http://www.ptsim.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=2315


Cheers,
Mark

PS: Louis is quite active, I can assure you :-) He updated SBX in a record time in May, despite his other ambitious projects. I was or am a member the beta team for the SBX 64bit update and do my scenery design work exclusively for P3D and did not encounter any problems in the recent version except a very minor one, which can be easily circumvented and has to do with native P3D V2.2 static scenery objects.
Louis is sailing the seas with his boat which is why he is frequently offline for weeks.

Mark, I'm using the latest version of SBX (64bit). All current dll's are in place and neither the "maps" option, nor the "show background" option are available. The note about Luis Sa came from a post on FSDevelopers, where it mentioned he was no longer actively involved in scenery design and any work to make SBX compatible with P3D was not an option (not exactly those words but that was the general point of the statement I read).

[falcon409]

[Mark / Moderator / Edit]

sorry, Ed, I accidentally edited your post and can't revive it

[roger-wilco-66]

Glad it works for you now, Ed.

Re: Luis: I only know that he is away until September, until then there will be no major changes to SBX. I think it works fine for the time being, the biggest obstacle (in my opinion) was the limited memory problem and the instability when the adress space was exhausted. This is completely gone. Other new features are bulk changes, import functions, new photo sources, changes in the lodding, and a major change to the graphic subsystem, which was due for switching to 64bit.

I'm glad Louis and Dick made this update possible, SBX is way too good to be left withering away.

Cheers,
Mark

[skyblazer3]

Ed and Mark,

I don't think I've posted on SOH in a few years, but this post caught my eye and I've been struggling with something SbuilderX related.

A few years ago I, along with a friend, (and with lots of advice from Ed), made a massive 90 mile by 120 mile swath of high detail photo-real scenery of the Mojave desert with SBuilderX. We also got a very detailed terrain-mesh from the USGS. For the last three years we've been flying over it and really enjoying it. We've migrated to P3D 2.2, and recently began flying the Sim Skunk Works F-104.

The 104 has good multiplayer weapons capability, and we can drop bombs and see the effects. However, many times when we drop on our Mojave scenery, the AI object (the bomb) bounces around on the ground and never goes off. The effect of the smoke and crater never appear. I think this is probably due to some kind of exclusion polygon that we put in with the photo-scenery.

Do you think there is anyway around this? Could we put down a new transparent polygon that doesn't have exclusion? We are a bit at a loss of what to do.


Ed -- I'm glad to see that you are still flying in the sim and making scenery. I assume we are both continuing to wait for an F-100 to be developed.

Since we last corresponded, I've received a commission in the Air Force Reserve, and a pilot slot. I've finished primary flight training in the T-6, and begin flying the T-1 Jayhawk next week. It's been unreal; I know I owe a lot of my success in pilot training to flying FSX, and the passion that so many people in our community have for aviation.

Cheers,

Chris

[falcon409]

Ed and Mark,

I don't think I've posted on SOH in a few years, but this post caught my eye and I've been struggling with something SbuilderX related.

A few years ago I, along with a friend, (and with lots of advice from Ed), made a massive 90 mile by 120 mile swath of high detail photo-real scenery of the Mojave desert with SBuilderX. We also got a very detailed terrain-mesh from the USGS. For the last three years we've been flying over it and really enjoying it. We've migrated to P3D 2.2, and recently began flying the Sim Skunk Works F-104.

The 104 has good multiplayer weapons capability, and we can drop bombs and see the effects. However, many times when we drop on our Mojave scenery, the AI object (the bomb) bounces around on the ground and never goes off. The effect of the smoke and crater never appear. I think this is probably due to some kind of exclusion polygon that we put in with the photo-scenery.

Do you think there is anyway around this? Could we put down a new transparent polygon that doesn't have exclusion? We are a bit at a loss of what to do.


Ed -- I'm glad to see that you are still flying in the sim and making scenery. I assume we are both continuing to wait for an F-100 to be developed.

Since we last corresponded, I've received a commission in the Air Force Reserve, and a pilot slot. I've finished primary flight training in the T-6, and begin flying the T-1 Jayhawk next week. It's been unreal; I know I owe a lot of my success in pilot training to flying FSX, and the passion that so many people in our community have for aviation.

Cheers,

Chris

Hi Chris,
Great to hear from you. To get right to the scenery. It is possible that an exclusion poly could be causing the problem and since they can be tagged to perform several exclusion tasks, you might try changing what it excludes and see if anything changes. Another option is to set certain areas within the poly as a "hole". Specifically, those areas where bombs are likely to strike objects on the ground. It's a process that basically cuts areas out of the exclude poly thus allowing what's under that to show through and in your case hopefully allow the weapons to detonate.

Congratulations on your Commission, Well Done!! What aircraft type will you fly once you receive your first assignment? If you end up at NAS Ft Worth, with the 301st. Let me know I'll drive down to see you, lol. All the best to you Chris!

[skyblazer3]

Ed,

I'll be flying KC 135s out of Grissom ARB, Indiana. The 301st at Fort Worth would have been an amazing unit to work with, but they are pretty tough to get into. I applied to units all over the air force Reserve and Guard. I got an A-10 interview, an F-15 interview, and lots of C-130 options. I never even heard back from any F-16 unit. I have a feeling they do a lot of their hiring from within. I really liked the tanker guys at Grissom, and it was close to where I am working on my doctorate -- so I accepted their offer. I'm glad I did, it's a great community and a good mission.

I wish I had remembered you were in fort worth; I went down there for a cross country two months ago. If I go back, I'll let you know.

As far as the scenery -- I've lost the source files. I just have the compiled BGLs. Is there anyway to create that hole in the exclusion polygon by adding another BGL to my photo-scenery?

Chris

[falcon409]

Ed,

I'll be flying KC 135s out of Grissom ARB, Indiana. The 301st at Fort Worth would have been an amazing unit to work with, but they are pretty tough to get into. I applied to units all over the air force Reserve and Guard. I got an A-10 interview, an F-15 interview, and lots of C-130 options. I never even heard back from any F-16 unit. I have a feeling they do a lot of their hiring from within. I really liked the tanker guys at Grissom, and it was close to where I am working on my doctorate -- so I accepted their offer. I'm glad I did, it's a great community and a good mission.

I wish I had remembered you were in fort worth; I went down there for a cross country two months ago. If I go back, I'll let you know.

As far as the scenery -- I've lost the source files. I just have the compiled BGLs. Is there anyway to create that hole in the exclusion polygon by adding another BGL to my photo-scenery?

Chris

Chris,

I'm afraid adding another poly won't have any affect on what's already there, albeit hidden in the bgl. I know you can decompile a bgl to gain access to what's in it, but never having done that before I don't know to what extent that info can be manipulated. I'll tell you who might though, Tom Stovall or Mark (roger-wilco-66). They have done a lot of WWII/Pacific Theater scenery which included ground bursts and detonations. One or the other may have some insight into how you can work around the current problem.

Tankers are definitely a good mission. We relied on them for every deployment we ever went on and watching those crews in action was pretty impressive. Most definitely if you ever get a HU that you're heading into Carswell let me know. I'm about an hour and a half north of there and I've been meaning to go down for a visit sometime. Take care Chris and congratulations again or your commission and your assignment.

[stovall]

Chris, You can append object BGL files but no joy with scenery BGL files. You can open them to see what is in them but as for importing and making a new SBP files I don't think that is possible. After losing some of my project files in the past I have tried this and couldn't make it work. Hopefully Mark has some answers here. He know Luis and is well versed in SBuilderX. Hope you get it sorted out.

[skyblazer3]

Thanks all; moral of the story -- don't loose your source files.