Autogen exclusion / Prepar3D v4

[Dom78180]

Hi,
I am part of a group creating sceneries and we all noted that the autogen exclusions are not working any longer in version 4 whereas everything was working well in the previous versions.
Those exclusions are used on photographic sceneries and the autogen appears anyway above the excludes created for positioning other objects.
Do you have some information about a corrective update ?
Many thanks in advance for your help and feedback!

Kind regards

[Max Perry]

Can you detail the type of autogen exclusion you are talking about? I'm presuming it's an .xml exclusion element "<ExclusionRectangle...

[Dom78180]

Usually, we put an exclude polygon under our objects with Instant Scenery or Airport Design Editor (with "all") into our own sceneries that are above a photo-realistic scenery with autogen like France-VFR products.

This method worked fine with FSX, FSX-SE, Prepar3D V1 to 3.5 where the autogen exclusion was effective. But since V4,including the new hotfix, it becomes inefficient with the same sceneries (our object libraries are all recompiled with the last SDK).

Are there some changes in the autogen exclusion process between v3 and v4 ?

Many thanks for your help !

[abd40110a]

An exclusion sample that does not work:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!-- Created by Scenery Design Engine (SDE) on 28/06/2017 -->
<FSData
version="9.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation="bglcomp.xsd">
<ExclusionRectangle
latitudeMinimum="54.1826934367418"
latitudeMaximum="54.1827571392059"
longitudeMinimum="7.8843180835247"
longitudeMaximum="7.88442716002464"
excludeAllObjects="TRUE"/>
<ExclusionRectangle
latitudeMinimum="54.1826934367418"
latitudeMaximum="54.1827571392059"
longitudeMinimum="7.8843180835247"
longitudeMaximum="7.88442716002464"
excludeAllObjects="TRUE"/>
<ExclusionRectangle
latitudeMinimum="54.186935685575"
latitudeMaximum="54.1869993880391"
longitudeMinimum="7.91255369782448"
longitudeMaximum="7.91266277432442"
excludeAllObjects="TRUE"/>
<ExclusionRectangle
latitudeMinimum="54.186935685575"
latitudeMaximum="54.1869993880391"
longitudeMinimum="7.91255369782448"
longitudeMaximum="7.91266277432442"
excludeAllObjects="TRUE"/>
<ExclusionRectangle
latitudeMinimum="54.1856542602181"
latitudeMaximum="54.1857179626822"
longitudeMinimum="7.91064530611038"
longitudeMaximum="7.91075438261032"
excludeAllObjects="TRUE"/>
<ExclusionRectangle
latitudeMinimum="54.1831899806857"
latitudeMaximum="54.1889852285385"
longitudeMinimum="7.91248664259911"
longitudeMaximum="7.91967138648033"
excludeAllObjects="TRUE"/>
<SceneryObject
lat="54.1827252879739"
lon="7.88437262177467"
alt="0.0M"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
pitch="0"
bank="0"
heading="0"
imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE">
<LibraryObject
name="{6b2b7d78-967a-4dbe-9867-83e255f8b1b6}"
scale="1.00"
/>
</SceneryObject>
<SceneryObject
lat="54.1869675368071"
lon="7.91260823607445"
alt="0.0M"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
pitch="0"
bank="0"
heading="0"
imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE">
<LibraryObject
name="{6b2b7d78-967a-4dbe-9867-83e255f8b1b6}"
scale="1.00"
/>
</SceneryObject>
<SceneryObject
lat="54.1869675368071"
lon="7.91260823607445"
alt="12.192M"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
pitch="0"
bank="0"
heading="0"
imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE">
<LibraryObject
name="{5137c384-3c55-4346-a368-b0270a08fd11}"
scale="1.00"
/>
</SceneryObject>
<SceneryObject
lat="54.1856861114502"
lon="7.91069984436035"
alt="0.0M"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
pitch="0"
bank="0"
heading="0"
imageComplexity="NORMAL">
<LibraryObject
name="{c0b537c3-808a-48ba-8eff-e1ca1a872e84}"
scale="1.00"
/>
</SceneryObject>
<SceneryObject
lat="54.1827252879739"
lon="7.88437262177467"
alt="168.859M"
altitudeIsAgl="TRUE"
pitch="0"
bank="0"
heading="0"
imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE">
<LibraryObject
name="{5137c384-3c55-4346-a368-b0270a08fd11}"
scale="1.00"
/>
</SceneryObject>
</FSData>

[ananda]

An exclusion sample that does not work:

Of course it doesn't work, one needs a vector exclusion polygon.

[Dunringill]

This is a problem in v3 as well. If you place an exclusion polygon ("flatten exclude all objects" for example) via Sbuilder it doesn't exclude underlaying autogen. This would be a very welcome fix :)

[Max Perry]

Thanks for the responses. I'll look into both the vector exclusions built with shp2vec and the .xml exclusions.

[Max Perry]

So confirming that the .xml exclusion element "excludeAllObjects = TRUE" Does not exclude autogen but the shp2vec method of creating a polygon with guid {6C0C6528-5CF1-483A-A586-2C905CF2757E} (This is autogen exclude, no flatten or landclass mask) does exclude autogen (on my end).

I tested it in 2.5 and the .xml exclusion also doesn't exclude the autogen trees / buildings. This .xml autogen exclude is designed for the airport buildings, and other generic objects not autogen in particular but I am not sure we are on the same page for features trying to be excluded.

Thanks for the help.

Max