Autogen Building on add on airfields with VFR Real scenery
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Hello
Could anyone help to resolve or if not confirm if the following is a bug.
When I use the airfield agn files with add on airports there are generic autogen buildings within the airfields on top of the add on airport buildings, I have attached a couple of pictures.
Both are Newcastle (EGNT) but the issue is most if not all add on airfields (mainly uk2000 airfields)
I have all the airfields above the VFR scenery, it appears that the AGN files also include a lot of airfield buildings and hangers ect and displaying them as autogen,
Thanks
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The addon airport autogen files were an undocumented 'tweakers' option. They were included so users could, if they wish, experiment with adding autogen back to addon airports that don’t include a full set. There is no guarantee they will work 100% with all variations of addon airports as they are all different in design. Each developer uses their own design methods and they can vary widely.
These AGN sets have been auto-generated to cover the airports and surrounding areas so they cover the whole area.
Normally the placement of building objects in the addon airport would prevent the autogen buildings appearing in the same place but if the addon buildings are custom models this might not happen. Normal library building objects are placed with “exclude autogen” set but custom ones may not be so set (especially if they are built as one large model covering all the buildings).They are just sets of files that users can copy over manually to the offending airport scenery if they want. They can also remove them again manually if they want.
We didn't think any users would have even discovered this option as they would need to first find the 'airports' folder in the installation and then read the readme there. Even then they would need to have addon airports that were showing missing autogen around the airport to need to give it a try. So, well done for getting this far.
The results entirely depend on the particular addon airports concerned. We originally set them up because several of our testers had UK2000 airports installed and were reporting some missing buildings and trees in the areas around some airports. We soon worked out that these airports actually covered some of the surrounding area but didn’t include autogen for all of it. One tester worked out that you could restore the missing autogen by working out what filenames are needed and copying the relevant ones over from the VFR texture folder. As calculating the AGN filenames from the locations is a complicated and convoluted process (the tester had set up a grid to display in Google Earth giving numbered squares on the ground and just read them off and looked through the 30,000 AGN files in the scenery to find them one at a time) we set up a script to pre-extract the files for each default airport area and store them in airport-named subfolders for easy access.
We purposely didn’t include this in the general documentation because it is a decidedly hit-or-miss method. Although it worked ok, as far as we heard back, with most UK2000 airports, there are custom airports from Orbx, Aerosoft and many others (not to mention an unknown number of freeware addons) and all use different design methods. The unofficial plan was to not mention it but if a customer came to Support asking why a whole housing estate was missing just outside airport x we could point them to it with simple instructions. As it requires manually copying files into existing sceneries it is really for users with some knowledge of FS workings who are comfortable with manual tweaking and moving files about. It is an 'at your own risk' option because the results (as seen in this instance) will be dependant on the specific individual airport and may require a bit of trial and error.
For 'normal' users they won’t have spotted this option and at worst may have a few addon airports that are showing small areas of missing autogen immediately around the perimeter. In many cases this is just a few buildings or trees and so unlikely even to be noticed but for some there may be complete housing estates or forests bordering the airport not showing.
To be honest, if developers designed their custom airports properly there would be no need for this option. Too many design airports with a photo background but only include autogen (if at all) for the visible parts of the photo. As autogen is tile-based every (1kmx1km) tile the background photo bgl even slightly touches will need autogen. Even worse if they use an image that actually covers a much larger area but make much of it transparent to just display the bit covering the airport then they will need autogen for the transparent bits as well.
Well done for finding this option. To 'fix' it the best method would be to remove the copied-over AGN files, then copy them back in one at a time. Probably only a couple of them will actually be causing the problem so you just need to identify which. Happy tweaking!
