Overlays work!

I am pleased to say that I have overlays working in X-Plane 8.30. Overlays are DSFs that contain only objects and are loaded on top of the existing terrain. Overlays allow you to add objects to the global scenery to customize airports, etc.

The overlay system will become more powerful over time, but it should be available shortly when X-Plane 830 goes beta.

DISCLAIMER: the overlay DSF listed below may change in format during beta! This is only illustrated to show the relative brevity of overlays compared to full DSFs. (Users who have turned full DSFs to text know how big they can be.)

To give you an idea of what an overlay DSF looks like:

A
800
DSF2TEXT

PROPERTY sim/require_object 1/0
PROPERTY sim/overlay 1
PROPERTY sim/west -71
PROPERTY sim/east -70
PROPERTY sim/north 43
PROPERTY sim/south 42
PROPERTY sim/planet earth

OBJECT_DEF KBOS_TAXI:15R33L.obj
OBJECT_DEF KBOS_TAXI:279.obj
OBJECT_DEF KBOS_TAXI:C.obj
OBJECT_DEF KBOS_TAXI:D.obj

OBJECT 0 -70.999146 42.359913 76.000000 
OBJECT 0 -70.997780 42.359650 76.000000 
OBJECT 0 -70.997566 42.358742 75.000000 
OBJECT 0 -70.996155 42.358467 75.000000 
OBJECT 0 -70.993088 42.355259 75.000000 
OBJECT 1 -70.999634 42.358353 136.000000 
OBJECT 1 -70.998306 42.358078 0.000000 
OBJECT 1 -70.996956 42.358261 135.000000 
OBJECT 1 -70.996773 42.358913 135.000000 
OBJECT 2 -70.999100 42.358513 254.000000 
OBJECT 2 -70.994141 42.355080 136.000000 
OBJECT 3 -70.992317 42.361107 76.000000 
OBJECT 3 -70.998398 42.359409 314.000000

Tools to make overlays coming soon!