Changelog

• Removed unnecessary blending-related warnings in aerial tool.

This update contains major changes to underlying components that deal with geometry calculations, coordinate transformations, elevation calculations and other geospatial operations. If you encounter a warning or an error or something else you didn’t expect, please report it immediately and it will be fixed.

Changes:

• Added parksort tool. By default, parking stands in MSFS UI are listed in random order. This tool sorts them by name and number (eg GATE A30 will always appear before GATE A31).

• Added version number and update notifications to script headers.

• Changed -simobjects argument in project tool. Previously you could customize the root folder of SimObjects, but now it is hardcoded. If you wish to set a custom path, add a custom asset group.

• Updated all components from the Open Source Geospatial Foundation to their latest version.

• Changed overall file layout and improved error handling.

General changes:

• Fixed an issue that prevented grid tool from being used.

• Improved multi-threaded progress messages.

• Added PATH variable set-up instructions (see Installation).

aerial tool:

• Increased maximum LOD level from 20 (~15 cm resolution) to 21 (~7 cm).

• Added -magick argument. This lets you run ImageMagick commands to color-correct imagery right inside the tool when PNG tiles are being written. Since tiles are created using all available CPU threads, this greatly speeds up ImageMagick that normally runs in a single thread.

• Updated aerial imagery tutorial to use -magick.

elev tool:

• Added a warning to elev tool when exporting to very high resolutions (2 m or better).

• Added different terraforming methods.

• Added user-defined extra areas for manual editing on top of the generated mesh.

• Improved smoothness of generated mesh.

• Improved transitions from one height map rectangle to another to prevent seams.

• Removed runway padding (-rwypad) as obsolete.

• Updated sloped runway tutorial.

imgex tool:

• Added this new tool to extract small parts from large collections of aerial imagery for manual editing.

minify tool:

• Added a tool to merge, minify and obfuscate XML behavior files.

rnp tool:

• Added a tool that lets you use RNP scripting language in XML files such as model behaviors. This is a very important tool for anyone working with Reverse Polish Notation in model behaviors or elsewhere, because it makes scripting much easier.

project tool was rewritten from scratch:

• Added -wizard option that starts interactive wizard to enter basic project information (title, creator, etc).

• Added automatic backup of overwritten files (use -nobackup to disable).

• Added user-configurable asset groups. When creating a new project, you can either use -group to manually define every asset group that belongs to the project, or you can use pre-defined groups that come with sample files.

• Added -extra argument that allows adding Extra files to asset groups.

• Changed default work mode to append-only, meaning that it will add to existing config files instead of overwriting them. For example, asset groups added with MSFS editor will be retained when updating a project. Use -overwrite to force full overwrite of all config files.

• See project tool page for usage examples.

• Fixed elev tool crashing when encountering unnamed group in airport XML file.

• Fixed elevations in elev tool. Geoid undulation was not properly applied when using it with the latest distribution of OSGeo4W tools, resulting in seams and invalid elevations.

• Improved reading statistics of input imagery. Slower full scan of input imagery is now used when fast approximation fails.

• Improved code related to scaling and shifting of elevation values.

• Added automatic backup to elev, meta, mat and fltsimn tools. Their output files get copied to Windows' temporary folder before overwriting them. This is an additional layer of protection against accidentally destroying files that are difficult to create. Backup behavior can be disabled using -nobackup switch.

• Added extra checks to installer to verify access to folders that need write permissions.

This release contains a full rewrite of many internal parts for greater reliability.

General changes:

• Added a separate interactive shell.
• Added glTF material editing tool mat.
• Added CFG section renumbering tool fltsimn.

meta tool:

• Fixed crashing on folder paths with a trailing slash.

elev tool:

• Added runway padding to ensure smoother runway edges.
• Added dynamic adjustment of rectangle sizes to fit MSFS XML file line length limits.
• Added saving heightmap rectangles into a group.

This is a maintenance release with relatively minor changes:

• The behaviour of msfs.bat shell was changed for easier scripting. From now on, it always exits, either with an error code (non-zero) or success (zero). Additionally, it pauses for 10 seconds before exiting if launched from local folder and without any arguments.
• Switched to safer DLL loading. DLLs are loaded only from limited system and OSGeo4W folders.
• Added automated testing for better quality control.

elev tool:

• Added -scaling and -offset to allow conversions from feet to meters.
• Changed resolution from Web Mercator meters to true meters. Web Mercator resulted in higher resolution than requested relative to true meters. Inspect your projects for changes when re-processing old sources.

shell:

• Added support for a separate user config at msfs.user.cfg to overwrite default settings (see Installation).
• Added settings to auto-accept the EULA and run unattended installations (see Installation).
• Added own mirror as the primary site to speed up OSGeo4W downloads.

Remarks:

• This update switches to the new version of Open Source Geospatial Foundation’s tools (OSGeo4W). A full new copy is downloaded into OSGeo4W_v2 folder. You may delete the existing copy at OSGeo4W.
• If you are using an external installation of OSGeo4W, it must be a clean install made with OSGeo4W v2 installer. Older installations are not supported, even if upgraded with v2 installer.

General:

• Updated OSGeo4W installer URL.

aerial and elev tools:

• Fixed projection differences causing skipped files even when projection was explicitly assigned with -epsg.

project tool:

• Added proper terrain shapefiles with XML metadata to act as placeholders.
• Added -watermask component (use with watermask tool).
• Added missing ContentInfo asset group.

• Added experimental watermask tool. You can use it to create land/water masks to redraw stock waterbodies.
• Added -crop and -separate to grid tool. These let you split a border area into individual terrain tiles to process them one by one with other tools.
• Added interpolation to runway deformations in elev and to elevations in shpelev tool. Previously, raw pixel values were read from elevation files. Now they are interpolated.
• Added more progress messages and made other smaller visual improvements.
• Changed default height map priority from 0 to 1.

aerial tool:

• Fixed blend radius. GDAL needs the blend radius in pixels of input imagery, not output imagery as it was previously. This led to broken blending when output resolution greatly differed from input resolution.

elev tool:

• Fixed seams between height maps caused by subpixel shifting.
• Added optimization to height maps. They now follow the shape of bounding polygons more closely.
• Added buffering to excluded areas to guarantee that they will be free from any influence of height maps.
• Changed default interpolation algorithm to bilinear.

Documentation has also been updated to reflect the changes and an important section on falloff distance was added.

• Improved heightmap blending in very uneven areas.

• Added -exclude to elev tool to exclude heightmaps in specific areas. See Excluded Areas.

• Added support for external OSGeo4W installations.

• Improved -fillnodata in elev tool with an option to manually set nodata values.
• Added -nowarn to project tool to bypass warnings when scripting.
• Changed automatic LOD method from next-best to choosing the closest one.
• Changed aerial tiles to explicitly 8 bit.

• Fixed heightmap surface property (accidentally removed due to erroneous info in the SDK).

• Improved placement of height maps.

• Fixed distant terrain artifacts caused by invalid heightmaps.
• Added -epsg to aerial end elev tools to override auto-detected projection.
• Added -fillnodata to elev tool, see https://msfs-toolkit.nool.ee/tools/elev/#considerations

• Added -nodefo option to elev tool to skip runway deformation profiles. Existing profiles will remain untouched.
• Added -dump parameter to elev tool to dump bounds of generated heightmap rectangles into ESRI Shapefiles for debugging.
• Fixed syntax errors in meta and shpuuid tools.

• First public release.