SBuilderX Forum

Hi,

I am new to Sbuilderx and I am trying to generate roads for my country using the correct roads shapefile.

What I did was Append ESRI shapefiles and selected all the all lines and clicked on Compile BGL, but when the Compile BGL window pops up there is nothing I can click except "start fsx" and "compile" hence it says there is nothing selected. So it does not do anything. Maybe I am missing something or not understanding how to create the roads from a ESRI file.

Kindly request some help.

I use Xplane 10 but want FSX to have roads for my country INDIA.

Thanks.

One of the requirements for anything to compile is that it is in the correct 'format'.

In GIS terms, there is a Projection and a Datum. These control the layout parameters for the data. FSX requires data to be in Geographic Projection and WGS84 Datum. If your shapefile isn't in this format no compiling will occur.

So you will need to determine the format, most data will come with a 'metadata' file that lists the Projection/Datum and if not in the FSX format, it will need to be changed. There are a few free GIS tools that could be used to change the formatting.

Hi Meshman,

Thanks for the reply, the shapefile I have downloaded is from geofabrik - INDIA and I use Qgis.

meshman wrote:One of the requirements for anything to compile is that it is in the correct 'format'.

In GIS terms, there is a Projection and a Datum. These control the layout parameters for the data. FSX requires data to be in Geographic Projection and WGS84 Datum. If your shapefile isn't in this format no compiling will occur.

So you will need to determine the format, most data will come with a 'metadata' file that lists the Projection/Datum and if not in the FSX format, it will need to be changed. There are a few free GIS tools that could be used to change the formatting.

The shapefiles i am using are from geofabrik and they are the same ones I use for Xplane. I choose Photo scenery it shows the correct location.

please help.

I did manage to compile but with errors for an integer , i shall try again.

Just curious - what did you do differently in order to compile? Did your shapes display in game? What was the error message?

Best regards.
Luis

luisfeliztirado wrote:Just curious - what did you do differently in order to compile? Did your shapes display in game? What was the error message?

Best regards.
Luis

I think I was not selecting the correct road e.g. concrete 2 lane etc.. , once I selected that I got the roads to display in FSX. But my fps is like 2 in FSX with the roads . So I switched to FS2004 but even after exporting the shapefile to a .BLN it shows up blank in Sbuilder (FS9 version). Got to try it later again as I need the roads / landclass / buildings etc..

The problem is that the roads.shp contains all lines even the stadiums and a lot of stuff shows up as lines.

I have a problem , Sbuilderx says "Cannot read this shapefile" , I can open the shapefile perfectly in Qgis , also tried to save it as lat /long but no gain.

I can use the roads / landuse shapefiles but this one which is buildings.shp gives this problem.

Yes, that may be so. SBuilder probably cannot open that type of shapefile.

Best regards.
Luis

luisfeliztirado wrote:Yes, that may be so. SBuilder probably cannot open that type of shapefile.

Best regards.
Luis

Yes could be. But I am running Fsx on a laptop hence I switched to FS9 now till I get a new system ready.

But now I want to make landlcass / roads for my country for FS9. What I tried is using converted .BLN and also the Polish MP in FS9 but when I append those files strangely they are all blank. There is nothing in them.

I will put it up in the FS9 (Sbuilderfs9) section .

Hi zulfiqar,

what I found out the hard way (:shock:) is: When importing a shapefile, SBX first sets the lines or polys to "..._of_Type_None". As long as you don't change that, it seems that SBX doesn't recognize them as valid objects – so this is another very important part of the "format" Luis mentioned above. You will have to assign a line or polygon type (e.g. "Asphalt 2 Lanes Undivided Median" for roads) to the imported lines or polys before they will compile. You can do this either in the import dialogue or afterwards, using the properties for each line or poly (selecting multiple of them is possible, too).

The "SBuilder cannot read this shapefile" problem I had to encounter as well, exporting the shapefiles from QGIS. Some SHP files work, some don't... I couldn't figure out the reason yet. But for roads it should work very well as long as there are no polylines in it. Depending on the area you're importing you might have to face another (small) SBX problem: The names of the roads, which are usually part of the shape file and get imported as well into SBX in the "name" tag (if I remember that well), will have no special characters (only ASCII).

EDIT: In the last hour I tested the shapefiles which I had available for my own project, in which I remember having the "cannot read" issue. But all of them worked perfectly (mostly exported from QGIS) now! It would therefore be possible that it was a problem connected with memory size (when the shapefile is large and only little memory). But sorry, I don't remember if I probably deleted the problematic files after having this error message.

Regards
Mick

Just for the record and the search engine, to round this up.

Unique shapes / lines need different names in SBX, otherwise there will be problems with assigned properties. I imported a couple of islands via the BLN format and ESRI some time ago, and after the usual hydro poly / exclude water / hole assignment only one island showed in the sim. It was always the island that was the last to receive the hole assignment. The cause was that all of them were imported with the same name. Setting them as "outer", changing the name to unique ones and reassigning as hole solved the problem.

Cheers,
Mark

Here's another completion for the records:

• After facing the "SBuilder cannot read this shapefile" message again, I checked the file in QGIS attribute table and found out that it had (in my case) two invalid entries without a name and type assigned. After copying these values from other entries and saving the layer as shp again, SBX could read the file without any complaints.
• Duplicate names didn't affect that import in my case. As an example, all my coastlines are called the same ("Küste") and that doesn't matter at all.

Regards
Mick

Was busy with Xplane OSM data , family and work hence I had stopped doing anything for FSX but I have reinstalled it and have tried using natural.shp and landuse.shp and railways.shp and roads.shp. Well out these natural.shp seems to give a better output for forests but not everywhere. I have no idea what to do with landuse.shp.

The problem is in the roads.shp , if I load the roads.shp in Sbuilderx it will show me correct roads for my hometown , but once I compile (during compile I can only select Terrain Vector) and use it in FSX the roads are all over the sea area , e,g. Bandra - worli sea link it is not coming out correct.

What happens to the data which shows as poly in Sbuilderx ? because the natural.shp has many of these where they should either be parks / forests.

Rgds.

Just because you add new data to FSX does not mean it's going to show. And I sincerely believe that there is nothing wrong with SBuilderX. SBuilderX does not display anything in FSX, it only prepares the data for FSX/P3D to display.

Roads in water? Imagine that! The default water/hydro data in FSX is a joke in most of the world. Overlay more accurate data and there will be visual problems. The solution is to properly build the landscape from the dirt up and to understand how the rendering engine does it's job. Ocean water excludes autogen, so of course you 'nature' data isn't going to show. Revise the water to where land *should* show, add your detailed data for the landscape and go check out the difference.