LIVING WORLD CONFIGURATION FILE
Living World Configuration is described by a single *.xml file (compiled into *.spb while packaging), located in a folder called "LivingWorld_Config". It is possible to have multiple such files in the same folder, in which case they will be read in alphabetical order, each new one overriding part (or all) of the previous ones.
This file defines the models to use for various parts of living world (road traffic, airport life, and boats), separated into 26 different regions of the world. It also determines several settings of the living world. You can find information on the file structure as well as examples from the following pages:
In order to include such a file in your own package, just make sure the file is an *.xml or *.spb file located in a "LivingWorld_Config" folder that is itself within the package. Other intermediate folders will cause Microsoft Flight Simulator to not properly find your file.
When creating your own such file, please make sure to only use the sections you actually want to override. Any section not present in the file will keep the values loaded from the previous packages (including the default Microsoft Flight Simulator one). We also recommend using a unique prefix (such as your company name) to name your file.
The SDK supplies an example file for the Living World system that can be used as a learning tool, as well as used as a template for your own files. Please see here for more information:
General File Structure
A complete living world configuration file is mainly composed of two parts (excluding the fixed *.xml header):
- A
GeneralSettingssection - 24 LivingWorld region blocks
The GeneralSettings section is comparatively short, and describes some general worldwide settings regarding quantity and general behavior of life at airports. Those parameters can be seen as completing the Airport Services (see the here for more details), and are described more thoroughly in the XML Definitions.
Each LivingWorldRegion section corresponds to a unique region of the world, identified by a letter. Those regions are the same as in the FSX living world system, as defined in the following image:
| Region | Name | Region | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Europe (Germanic) | N | Europe Mediterranean (West) |
| B | North America (North) | O | Europe Mediterranean (East) |
| C | North America (Southwest) | P | North America (South) |
| D | South America (East) | Q | South America (West) |
| E | Africa (Central) | R | Tropics (American) |
| F | Asia (Central) | S | Tropics (Asian) |
| G | Australia | T | Africa (South) |
| H | Tropics (Pacific) | U | Asia (Cold-Dry) |
| I | Arctic | V | Asia (Industrial) |
| J | Middle East | W | Asia (Indian) |
| K | Europe (British) | X | Australia (Red) |
| L | Europe (French) | Y | Australia (North) |
| M | Europe (Russian) | Z |
South Oceania |
Each of the above mentioned living world regions can have all (or none) of the following three elements defined for them:
- FreewayTraffic
- Boats
- Airports
FreewayTraffic describes the list of vehicle sceneryObjects to use on various roads in order to simulate traffic. Apart from moving on roads, they can also be generated within parking areas. As those vehicles are generally viewed from a distance (not being present on airports), we recommend using models that have only one "low quality LOD", to help faster loading times and less RAM usage. Also note that, at night, lights are automatically generated on each traffic vehicle, and you do not need to worry about this. See the page section on Road Traffic for more details.
Boats contains a list of inland boat SimObjects. These boats are generated (and move) on coastal areas and lakes. See the page section on Inland Boats for more details.
Finally, Airports contain multiple lists, describing which SimObjects to use for various categories of vehicles and human characters. Most of these categories correspond to Airport Services, with two exceptions:
AmbientTraffic- These are vehicles that will park on airport parkings (the same type of parkings used by aircrafts) for a short time and then move to another random parking using the graph of Taxi paths, favoring "vehicle-only" paths when possible. See the Ground Vehicles page for more details of creating such vehicles.GroundVehiclePilotsare human characters that will be placed in various vehicles on the airport, whether they belong to AmbientTraffic or not.
Lists - General Principles
Multiple sections of this file contain lists of one or several ModelEntry or ContainerEntry elements, with an entryWeight attribute. This is used to create diversity in Microsoft Flight Simulator. When an object of a corresponding category is created, a random model is chosen in the list, taking into account the weights of each entry (favoring models with higher weight).
When a package contains only a "partial" file that has some lists (or even whole regions) that haven't been defined, Microsoft Flight Simulator will use the default built-in lists (and regions) only overriding the lists explicitly defined. See the examples section for more explanations on the subject.