WED 2.2 extends the map window to allow a 'birds eye' view of scenery - so vertical walls of objects and facades can be inspected. Plus a number of other enhancements, speedups and bug fixes.

Its the offially released version now and accepted for gateway uploads as of today.

Windows: http://dev.x-plane.com/download/tools/wed_win_220r3.zip
OSX: http://dev.x-plane.com/download/tools/wed_mac_220r2.zip
Linux: http://dev.x-plane.com/download/tools/wed_lin_220r2.zip

Use the control buttons in the top right map window corner to 'tilt' the view angle:

Note the editing/selection of items is always based on the ground-level footprint. So it might be confusing at first to modify the scenery while the map shows the tilted view - but it greatly helps with vertically stacked terminal kit facades and terminal window/jetway alignment. The example here shows - I should have coded up this feature before I reworked KSEA recently ...

The footprint of the largest aircraft that can park at Ramp Start Locations is now visible in all map layers - but only if zoomed in sufficiently. This should help placing jetways and other items around aircraft parking positions.

Many parts in the GUI have been fine tuned to better scale with the (since WED 2.1) adjustable font sizes, e.g. the "Texture" tab for changing ground painted sign text is now much easier to reach.

The "Lines", which are preferred over "Airport Line Markings" in many cases, can now be selected with the same GUI. The 'Convert to' function is now aware of the line style attribute and preserves this when converting Airport Line Markings to Lines and vice versa as much as possible. See also https://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?/forums/topic/169024-how-to-choose-lines-vslso -airport-line-markings/

For XP10 and FlightGear designers - WED 2.2 will translate the with XP11.26 newly added Airport Line Marking styles to the closest available "classic" style when exporting to targets of XP11.00 or older. This will help porting newer/gateway sceneries to these platforms.

The new XP11.40 capabilty to specify 'endcaps' for lines is now displayed in the map preview. Although no default library art utilized this, yet - an example implementation to help full-custom scenery art designers is attached to this post.

For more advanced users - the 1st segment and exact ground reference point of facades is now indicated by a white circle. To support placing height sensitive facades on (slightly) sloping terrain.

A few validation changes now allow to specify VOR frequencies for AWOS broadcasts and disallow frequencies on which AWOS is in reality never broadcast. Runways with "T" suffix are now validated to have names to confirm to either "True North" or "Grid North" conventions - mostly of interest for gateway submissions of NZFX and other antarctic airfields.

Starting with beta2, you can make WED pop open the side panes auto-magically for you - just size them somewhat narrow and put the mouse cursor over them:

There is a 3rd party addon "Scenery Animation Manager" that modifies LR default Jetways to gain auto-docking capabilities. It also offers other animated scenery elements.

Unfortunately - installing this will also confuse the previews available in WED and causes strange and confusing behavior even for LR default jetway facades in WED. The beta 2 now includes a few hooks that allow 3rd party Library designers to hide these sideeffects from WED and make affected items look and behave "normal" again - like the six-armed marshaller. This also allows library developers to include scenery design relevant alignment markings that will show in WED only.

The fix requires to use updated SAM libraries that should be available very soon - look for a versio updated in 2020 or later at

Last - the startup, scenery load times and the occasional "loading textures" delays were reduced by 2.5x, along with changes to support orthophoto texture creation for mobile platforms or using external converters. See the new checkbox in the preferences for that.

CHANGE HISTORY:

WED 2.2.0r3 2/19/20 (windows only)
   Bug Fix:
   - fix resource names on windows for local objects and orthophotos after import from DSF

WED 2.2.0r2 2/3/20
   Bug Fix:
   - fix crash when .agp specifying non-existent annotations are visible in the map
   - fix some underground scenery parts becoming visible when map is tilted

WED 2.2.0r1 1/16/20
   Features:
   - add searchable column for ICAO/FAA/Local codes in gateway import dialog
   - add cmdline debugging option for gateway testing
   Bug Fixes:
   - fix (Windows only) scenery window changing size when dragged, can't be resized via frame

WED 2.2.0b2 1/03/20

   Features:
   - for library designers - support #object_wed/#obj_wed commands in .agp/.fac definitions
   - fine tune map detail - show aircraft footprints at lower map scale, add lines to ATC mode
   - add ability for Library/Property panes to auto open/close, when set narrow enough
   - map drawing w/large amounts of .agp (e.g. KATL parking lots - 13k cars !!) 5x faster
   Bug Fixes:
   - fix wall for type 1 facades not displayed using specific names, if available
   - fix tall objects, e.g. towers, not centered in library preview window
   - WED-1252: fix severe distortions in all windows when previewing certain .agp
   - fix WED not respecting 2nd of two directly successive SCENERY_PACKS_DISABLED
   - WED-1253: subdue facade structural lines - let tilted previews do the talking
   - WED-1254: fix runways of zero length not caught by runway minimum size validation

WED 2.2.0b1 17/12/19

   Bug Fixes:
   - WED-1225: show apts with only declined submissions in gateway import dialog
   - WED-1235: fix crash when processing OOB indices in bad .agp definitions
   - try harder to keep 1:1 pixel mapping when splitting orthophoto's into tiles
   - fix LineSelector GUI not popping up when style 'None' is selected
   - allow runways with T suffix naming to match either true or grid north heading
   - WED-1248: fix crash when libray.txt rpath includes trailing non-ASCII characters

   Features:
   - add 'birds eye views' for map window
   - startup time and zoom-in delays with more complex airports reduced by 2.5x
   - tighten ATC freq. validation to VHF airband & 200+ MHz, allow AWOS on VOR's
   - increase undo buffer from 20 to 100 operations
   - WED-1232: Support OBJ_DELTA in .agp previews
   - improve marking of facade 1st segment and ground reference point
   - WED-1217: show new 11.35 endcaps for lines in on-map previews
   - XSG-8722: report airport location to gateway server upon submission
   - option to create .png (rather than .dds) during orthophoto export
   - WED-1244: Combine exclusion zones upon import
   - WED-1240: Better visibility for UI mode tabs, ATC route segments
   - visualize ramp start sizes in all modes when zoomed in sufficiently
   - "Convert To" for lines now translates styles to resource paths and vice versa
   - allow GUI based resource selection for "Lines", same as for "Airport Line Markings"
   - WED-1219: Make it more obvious to user when export was aborted due to errors
   - Translate new XP1126+ line styles to pre-XP1126 equivalents for targets < XP1130

test_endcaps.zip

Edited February 21, 20205 yr by triplemon
Updated to r3 (windows only)

Wow Michael,

I just "testdrove" the latest beta - just testing the "facade tilt" function, and this alone is going to save me so much trouble!!

I also look forward to the "line convert" function - question: Does this also convert an airport line marking with many different attributes along the line into separate line segments? Or just those that have only "one" attribute?

I am not sure if it is too late to request another change: When working in the "traffic flow" view (where you can see the taxi and GV network) it is not possible to see regular "lines". But those are important, because many of the roadways and markings around the ramp starts are to be made out of "lines"...so I find myself switching between views all the time, trying to "guestimate" if my vehicle paths are matching my edge lines...

Thanks for all the hard work everyone!

Jan

 

Thanks for the update. It sounds very promising, but doesn't appear to work on my Mac. I see a blank window (columns visible, but nothin gin the centre panel), no OSM, no ESRI, no ability to zoom in/out. No objects (placed, in existing scenery) visible. Might be a problem with the Mac download. 

Worked a bit with the new beta and ran into a problem:

1.) My WED-Bing imagery does not load - all I see is white tiles:

I also noticed that my ESRI imagery was not showing - so I clicked to show ESRI images, but there was a problem loading them:

Then I noticed that a lot of my textures on top of facades and also one .pol terrain layer was just showing white! I verified this - the textures where there when I loaded my project, they turned white AFTER I tried to load the ESRI imagery. Then I tried to save my project, but got this error message:

I finally closed the WED beta, declined to save but got this message after shutting down:

Cheers, Jan

7 hours ago, tinmug said:

Thanks for the update. It sounds very promising, but doesn't appear to work on my Mac. I see a blank window (columns visible, but nothin gin the centre panel), no OSM, no ESRI, no ability to zoom in/out. No objects (placed, in existing scenery) visible. Might be a problem with the Mac download. 

What OSX version and what graphics - AMD or Nvidia ?

6 hours ago, Janov said:

Worked a bit with the new beta and ran into a problem:

1.) My WED-Bing imagery does not show

For me, wed-O-maker and ESRI both work, either separate or together. Can you email me one such .xml file ?

The hang-on-exit thing I have last night noted myself - it seems its trigered by certain operation (not the failed save) that needs to have ocurred before the exit hangs. That hang produces no messages by itself. If I just open and close a scenery again - exit works fine. Same for you ? Need to isolate the fatefull operation first that triggers something that doesn't finish - and that is holding up exiting.

8 hours ago, Janov said:

I also look forward to the "line convert" function - question: Does this also convert an airport line marking with many different attributes along the line into separate line segments?

Or just those that have only "one" attribute?

Correct - only the first line style encountered throughout a Apt Line Marking is used to set the style of the converted Line. It doesn't break up the thing into multiple Lines to be able to do better, yet.

39 minutes ago, triplemon said:

For me, wed-O-maker and ESRI both work, either separate or together. Can you email me one such .xml file ?

The hang-on-exit thing I have last night noted myself - it seems its trigered by certain operation (not the failed save) that needs to have ocurred before the exit hangs. That hang produces no messages by itself. If I just open and close a scenery again - exit works fine. Same for you ? Need to isolate the fatefull operation first that triggers something that doesn't finish - and that is holding up exiting.

Email sent!

Viele Grüße, Jan

Great

And  I figured the hang-on-exit:

Anytime you try to leave with unsaved changes - it pops up a window "wanna save y/n" at exit. Thats how it ever was and still is supposed to be. But, for some reasons - that window now sometimes does not go ontop of the main window ... so it just makes the notification sound and refuses to exit any time you try closing again.

So its clearly the users fault to fail to answer that invisible popup ...  Lemme see why that goes wrong now.

1 hour ago, triplemon said:

What OSX version and what graphics - AMD or Nvidia ?

High Sierra, AMD. 

Does the empty map pane on OSX show some text like "nan nan" in the bottom left corner ?

24 minutes ago, triplemon said:

Great

And  I figured the hang-on-exit:

Anytime you try to leave with unsaved changes - it pops up a window "wanna save y/n" at exit. Thats how it ever was and still is supposed to be. But, for some reasons - that window now sometimes does not go ontop of the main window ... so it just makes the notification sound and refuses to exit any time you try closing again.

So its clearly the users fault to fail to answer that invisible popup ...  Lemme see why that goes wrong now.

I fixed that - exit pop window now always stas on top. Its no new bug - this could happen with all WED 2.X versions out there.

Until then - if it just hangs on exit w/o visible popup - press the enter key to say ' yes - I wanna save unsaved changes' or press cursor-right and then enter to say "no - discard unsaved changes". So although the popup is invisible - you can still answer it and exit the darn thing this way.

On the disappearing textures -

I can't exactly repro that, but I think I know why it happens:. You have 11200 (eleven thousand two hundred !!!) reference images from Bing in that scenery. Thats WAY too many. Once loaded they take anything from 1GB VRAM upwards, potentially 2-3 times that much. As small textures are not stored on the GPU very efficiently.

Its beyond what WED's texture managment is built for. Way too many, very small textures. A dozen large textures of 256 MB each work fine on my GTX 1070 in WED. But, unlike X-plane, WED does no clever texture atlases, texture paging or other tricks to deal with extremely large numbers of small textures. So at some point the openGL driver will simply decide to skip a few textures and turning on the ESRI background is likely that final drop into the bucket that makes it spill. The ESRI background layer adds only some 20-50 textures, regardless of the zoomlevel - that is why imagery on the web is served in "zoomlevels" - so there aren't a bazillion textures around when zooming out. And once openGL decides to skip textures there is no way to say which texture it will dump first. The point at which textures start to get dropped also differs with every hardware, driver and most important - all other apps running that use the same GPU at that point.

In WED 2.1 you were likely lucky that it just barely fit ... digital systems give you zero warning even if you're just a single byte away from falling off the cliff.

With that said - I found one small memory leak that existed ever since in the slippy map code - causing those 20-50 textures to take up twice as much RAM and VRAM as they need to. Its only one small drop less into the big bucket - but its about all I can do for now.

3 hours ago, triplemon said:

Does the empty map pane on OSX show some text like "nan nan" in the bottom left corner ?

I have the same problem on Mac OS X (High Sierra), and it says "nan nan"

Yeah - the "nan nan" is the confirmation that Apple cooks with the same muddy water as MSFT  It means your X and Y mouse coordinates on the map are "Not a number" ... mouse curor position being outside the range a 32 bit float can encode ? I don't think to. No screen is that large ... no mouse ever got dragged that far.

Its a known bug in AMD OpenGl drivers on windows and it needs a workaround. I didn't enable that on OSX as well - as I can't test it; My old 2008 iMac as well as the Hackintosh, both Nvidia, run WED without at hitch. And Linux AMD drivers are fine, too.

I'll make an updated build in the next hour and that should fix all the reported stuff above so far.

WED 2.2 , SAM_Library marshaller ,Top view, not displayed guide, how to fix ?

I do see that marshaller, in both screenshots.

What exactly is missing ? Or post a screenshot with WED 2.1 that shows what should be rather seen.

In the tilted view you do see some bars - which are in the scenery object placed as deep underground items. They are normally not shown in the WED 2 map - it shows above ground items, only. Its gotta be some accidential loophole that these show up when the view is tilted. I'll fix that.

You can also use the library preview window and spin this thing around freely to study where these bars are.

The new binaries are on the server. I took the ugly shortcut to NOT name it beta2 - so just re-download the beta1. You can check the files in the archive are dated December 18th - then you've got the new fixed builds.

Edited December 19, 20195 yr by triplemon
The "About" window will *not* show Dec 18th - only the file date in the archive is 18th

Great work!

The .agp preview is odd sometimes. Rotating the preview results in rotating the entire object list  Used Windows 10 in this case. See the causing object attached.

ADB-Safedock-T2.24-7.0m.zip

Edited December 18, 20195 yr by marten@stairport

Who hoo - that is screwing up the other panes pretty good  ...

I have one bug report that WED 2.1 does similar cross-window artefacts with the default airport beacon on OSX - but I can't  now can repro that one at all. So lets see this one.

Just for completeness - graphics hardware and exact driver version ?

Edited December 19, 20195 yr by triplemon

14 hours ago, tinmug said:

Thanks for the update. It sounds very promising, but doesn't appear to work on my Mac. I see a blank window (columns visible, but nothin gin the centre panel), no OSM, no ESRI, no ability to zoom in/out. No objects (placed, in existing scenery) visible. Might be a problem with the Mac download. 

Yes same problem here on Mac 10.15.2, AMD,will wait patiently for a fix.

Short wait, and all seems working on new download. Thank You triplemon.

Edited December 18, 20195 yr by Andrew Cook

9 hours ago, antwob said:

I have the same problem on Mac OS X (High Sierra), and it says "nan nan"

Clearly I live in a different time zone. 😅

Yes, mine also says 'nan nan' (and a partly obscured '1m')

9 hours ago, triplemon said:

I do see that marshaller, in both screenshots.

What exactly is missing ? Or post a screenshot with WED 2.1 that shows what should be rather seen.

In the tilted view you do see some bars - which are in the scenery object placed as deep underground items. They are normally not shown in the WED 2 map - it shows above ground items, only. Its gotta be some accidential loophole that these show up when the view is tilted. I'll fix that.

You can also use the library preview window and spin this thing around freely to study where these bars are.

I mean the auxiliary red and white line, the top view is not displayed.

So handy, nice to see WED improving all the time.  Thanks @triplemon

14 hours ago, triplemon said:

The new binaries are on the server. I took the ugly shortcut to NOT name it beta2 - so just re-download the beta1. You can check the files in the archive are dated December 18th and the "About' windows also says it was compiled on the 18th - then you've got the new fixed builds.

On win version still 17th Dec - this is ok?

UPD:

2) How to set a default Top view after switching view angle?

3) And why line are so distorted in sim?

in wed:

in sim:

Edited December 19, 20195 yr by rudeboysheva