XML scenery problem

[TobyV]

So, I'm trying to get back into scenery designing, making an incremental step forward by using SceneGenX (effectively the "XML" version of AirportForWindows) rather than AFW. I've installed the newest version I can find (admittedly yonks out of date, but then I'm still on FS9 and quite happy).

I can create something as before, muc as I did with AFW, and then it generates XML code from that. I am then supposed to compile this using BGLcomp.exe (linked to inside the SceneGenX GUI). When I do I get an error that XML parsing failed and specifically:

"INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR C1003: Failed to create MSXML object!"

Googling this all the (admittedly quite out of date) replies on forums say you need to download MSXML. The newest version of that (v6) is from 2006 (so I suspect it has been superseded). Nevertheless, from the oh so helpful "check the filenames you want to download" (thank you M$ website, of course I know which .MSI I need from it's abbreviated filename? ), I installed what I think I need and low and behold, it still doesn't work.

Any ideas anyone?

[TobyV]

Ok, I am slightly further and have discovered:

The problem is not SceneGenX related, rather bglcomp related, which is from the MS FS2004SDK which compiles the XMLs to BGL. Windows 7 comes with MSXML6 so there was no need to reinstall it. Tried downloading the SDK fresh and trying to compile the sample XML provided. That produces the following error:

Code: Select all

C:\Program Files (x86)\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK>dir
Directory of C:\Program Files (x86)\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK

05/03/2015  23:17    <DIR>          .
05/03/2015  23:17    <DIR>          ..
05/01/2004  11:16           311,296 bglcomp.exe
20/01/2004  11:21            68,423 bglcomp.xsd
05/01/2004  11:16             1,672 Chelan.xml
10/11/2003  15:08            17,227 EULA.rtf
17/02/2004  15:37         1,221,120 FS2004BGLCompSDK.doc
17/10/2003  07:15            40,960 Generic Building Textures.xls
22/10/2003  09:15           238,080 LibraryObjects.xls
05/01/2004  11:16               785 MortonWa.xml
12/12/2003  15:46             2,566 readme.txt
               9 File(s)      1,902,129 bytes
               2 Dir(s)  197,357,248,512 bytes free

C:\Program Files (x86)\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK>bglcomp MortonWa.xml
INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR C1003: Failed to create MSXML object! (0x80040154)

Parsing document: MortonWa.xml

ERROR C2470: Unrecoverable error parsing XML!
ERROR C2006: Parse failed  (0x80004005)
ERROR C2003: Failed to process file: MortonWa.xml

C:\Program Files (x86)\FS2004SDK\BGLCOMP_SDK>

Still stuck

[DaveG]

Hi Toby,
I've no experience creating FS9 scenery, but one thing that occurred to me looking though the error messages. You seem to be working the Program Files (86) folder, which can be problematic where Windows is concerned. Win 7 and above likes to protect that folder from change unless you turn down UAC. Have you tried copying your work folders to another destination, say "C:/WIP" and running from there?
If that doesn't work, try asking over at FSDeveloper.

[TobyV]

Very good point. I was also thinking about running bglcomp in compatibility mode and with admin privileges, which i do for many other old programs and that seemed to fix their issues. It had never occured to me why, but the inability to write to the folder may well be it!

[TobyV]

Ok, fixed it.

The fix was, depsite Win7 having MSXML 6 and MSXML 3, it seemed to very specifically want MSXML v4 to be installed.