I suggest to add the ability to define the visibility for placed objects or object groups in the scenery object placement area in addition to the visibility conditions in the model itself.
That would add very easy ability to enhance the immersion for instance based on parked cars depending on date and time, people outside depending on the weather like Farmers harvesting only in specific months if weather is good etc.
Or just imagine, we could add sports teams to stadiums at typical weekdays and times with the stadium lights switched on just then. Or having a circus, each month on a different Location.
If we had the option to set this conditions for placed objects - not just in the object itself, we could re-use the same objects (for instance cars) and park them on typical shopping hours in front of shopping malls, and on weekends in front of stadiums. That’s not possible at the moment as I know.
I have model visibility conditions with RPN Code working quite well for an scenery object I created.
Now I want to make use of one model instanciated multiple times on different locations but shown only on conditions per each instance / group.
For instance:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<FSData version="9.0">
<SceneryObject displayName="ATV with female rider" groupIndex="3" lat="52.25934938506865" lon="9.16823471162794" alt="0.00000000000000" pitch="0.000567" bank="-0.000601" heading="149.207245" imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" snapToGround="TRUE" snapToNormal="FALSE">
<SimObject containerTitle="42GB_Large_ATV_Yellow" scale="1.000000"/>
<Condition>
<Test>
<And>
<!-- Month is not January -->
<Not>
<SimVar name="LOCAL MONTH OF YEAR" value="1" />
</Not>
<!-- Month is not December -->
<Not>
<SimVar name="LOCAL MONTH OF YEAR" value="12" />
</Not>
<!-- Time of day is day -->
<SimVar name="TIME OF DAY" value="1" />
<!-- Precipitation state is rain -->
<SimVar name="AMBIENT PRECIP STATE" value="2" />
<!-- Wind velocity is less than 6 knots -->
<SimVar name="AMBIENT WIND VELOCITY" value="6" comparison="LessThan" />
</And>
</Test>
</Condition>
</SceneryObject>
...
or
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<FSData version="9.0">
<SceneryObject displayName="ATV with female rider" groupIndex="3" lat="52.25934938506865" lon="9.16823471162794" alt="0.00000000000000" pitch="0.000567" bank="-0.000601" heading="149.207245" imageComplexity="VERY_SPARSE" altitudeIsAgl="TRUE" snapToGround="TRUE" snapToNormal="FALSE">
<SimObject containerTitle="42GB_Large_ATV_Yellow" scale="1.000000"/>
<Condition>
(A:AMBIENT WIND DIRECTION, Degrees) 67 > (A:AMBIENT WIND DIRECTION, Degrees) 240 < and if{ 1 } els{ 0 }
</Condition>
</SceneryObject>
...
It would be great for scenery developers to have that available to make the MSFS world even more dynamic and “close to live”.
btw… If placed group, placed object and the object itself contain visibility codes, I suggest to use a boolean AND operation to make it visible. In case only one of them equals to false, the object should be hidden. Does that make sense?