I am using a test-version of this software and all I can say is that it´s simple, brilliant and saving me HOURS of my valuable lifetime. Excellent job!
Great tool! However, there are 2 problems under Windows:
1. The path to the temp file storage (e.g. ../../..Users/myUser/wedbing/tempfilestore/*) containing the tiles is wrong if X-Plane is installed on a different drive than the OS.
2. The suggested URL to point the browser to and which uses the computer name as a host name does not work properly (the page displays but pressing the button “Make visible” does nothing). In my case I had to use http://localhost:8080 instead.
(#1 can be worked around by creating a symlink/junction on the X-Plane drive)
#1 can also be worked around, see the FAQ, but I do need to make it a seamless part of the app at some point.
#2 I’ve not seen before, thanks for noting the workaround for those it affects!
Thanks a lot for the hint. That workaround from the FAQ is even better, of course.
Too bad it doesn’t work properly with relative paths: If I configure “tempfilestore=temp” it is changed to “../../../../temp” in WED which is not found.
Perhaps one improvement idea: I think it would be better if the tiles are stored within the custom scenery folder instead of the user’s home.. That way the scenery would remain self-contained and the home directory is not going to be flooded with pictures over time…
I’m trying to stay within the license for the Bing service, and so I’m treating the tiles as only ‘cached’ which means they’re temporary and will eventually be wiped. There will be something in a future version that will manage the temporary files, and the user will be able to tune the cache.
Some Windows users including myself are having problems with WEDBing. After executing the .jar, Chrome opens, and after entering the path, it does not load all of the scenery package folders associated with WED. It only shows a random small selection in alphabetical order. Some package names remain constant across multiple Windows machines, like “KSEA Demo Area” or other default named packages.
It should be picking just the sceneries that have a ‘earth.wed.xml’ file in them.
If it is random, as in random every time, then I have a bug to be fixed!
But if it is the same sceneries each time Wedbing is loaded, then it should predictably be just the ones with an ‘earth.wed.xml’ file in their directory.
It requires earth.wed.xml because that is the file Wedbing reads and writes to. Let me know if this is not what you’re seeing!
I’ve re-tested, and I don’t see the problem.
WED 1.4.0r2 is showing my areas of the UK just fine.
But perhaps Bing have started using JPEG2000 in some areas at some zooms. Can you tell me where in the world, and at what zoom level you are trying to make visible in WED?
Biggest downfall of this program. Bing. They have some seriously outdated images on the site and when you’re trying to use it in WED, that, is VERY unhelpful Compare KIDP in Bing, with Google Maps and be surprised. Other wise the concept of the tool is great.
True, Bing images in the UK are usually worse at ZL18+ compared to Google.
The main issue is ‘license’ and I believe the Bing license is less restrictive than Google’s.
Maybe I should take the approach of offering the option of Google maps, and let them decide if it’s acceptable-use or not…
Wedbing was GREAT! “WAS great” for a few weeks, until Oracle published an update to Java which was supposed to fix some serious flaw in its security. Not one to take chances with viruses, etc., I installed the Java update, and Wedbing quit working. Uninstalled, then reinstalled, and I do get the small window that says,”Wedbing – Putting the Bing into WED”,
but I am unable to get IE to accept the location of X-Plane, which, for me, is “F:\X-Plane 10 Regional – North America”, a dedicated SSD. The URL is http://john-pc8080/, and the Wedbing browser tab has the little yellow-green leaf. I’ve tried installing Wedbing from several different locations, to no avail. I’m running Windows 7 on an Intel i7. Please help if you can, I loved Wedbing and want to get it back! Thank you so much! Respectfully, John Vybiral
Hi John,
I’ve just updated Java to 1.8.0_66 (latest), on both my Mac and Windows machines, and Wedbing was able to run fine. Windows did prompt me to confirm firewall settings, but ran just fine afterwards. Can I ask you to check the entries in Windows Firewall, see if that helps.
I am having the same problem as John, WedBing no longer will find my X Plane Directory. I’ve updated the JAVA to 1.8.0_65-b17 just like you suggested, and I checked my firewalls, still doen’t work. Running Win 7 64bit with and I7 processor. Any suggestions or fix yet?
Like James Kieffer, I’ve temporarily turned off my firewalls, anti-virus, etc., but still can’t get Wedbing back. I miss it! What is the correct directory for wedbing-0.0.7.jar? Thanks for your help. Wedbing was -SO- good, when it worked, it should be payware! Respectfully,
John Vybiral
Sorry for no solution to this – I’ve not had any chance to investigate any further.
So far, my development systems have not suffered the same situation:
I’m using the Java JDK 1.8.66.
(JDK for software developers, JRE for everyone else)
I’ve not tried 1.8.65, nor the JRE (the JDK bundles the JRE though).
My X-Plane is on my C drive, NOT in Program Files (it’s on my desktop).
I run Webding also on the C drive, again NOT from Program Files (the Desktop too I think).
I can’t think of any other ‘variables’ that could make my system work and other people’s not work – I hope we get get to the bottom of this!
Yippee, Skippy! Just got WEDbing working! Displaying my awesome ignorance of computers, software in general, and Java in particular, one or both of these changes fixed it:
1 – Moved the WEDbing .jar file to SIMs (F:)>Users>John>wedbing, and ran it from there.
2- Set my default browser to Apple Safari, although I’m running Windows 7 on a non-Apple PC
(Always prefer to use that term, since Apple Computer INVENTED the PC back in the 1980’s!)
For what it’s worth, my computer is a JetLine Systems i7/975 running at 3.33GHz with 48GB of RAM, 64-bit O/S, two SSD’s, one for O/S and one for X-Plane 10. And I LOVE Apple products!
I’m a happy camper!
I spent some time today testing WED and WedBing from various places relative to each other, X-Plane, and on different drives (but never in ‘Program Files’), – even took the plunge to upgrade to windows 10 – and still could not break it!
So I’m really glad you’ve got it working again – if anyone else can corroborate your findings, please let me know!
Hi, first congrats on producing such a helpful tool. My question, which I can’t see asked before, is I appear to see the Bing underlay offset by a few metres. Is anyone else seeing this? Could it be a hemisphere issue with the inclination of the satellite? I’m in Australia. I’ve tried WEDBing on two different airports, separated by a few hundred kilometres, with similar results. Thanks.
One useful function would be to be able to place other sources on top of each other, like Bing and Google and Yandex etc, on top of the data already in X-plane, so you can see if there’s a quorum of what is right!
In the case of VLNK Lukla, the airport is significantly translated and rotated compared to the satellite image, I believe this is to make sure it still ‘works’ with the default scenery. If true, it makes it awkward to provide airports correct for better scenery.
One of the reasons I chose Bing was that it’s also used in Open Street Map which in turn is used to create a lot of building and road scenery. If the airport matches the scenery, that’s probably the best compromise.
I think it is a hard problem to truly know which source is ‘the truth’!
Excellent question. Excellent answer! I’ve also noticed small conflicts between different scenery sources. When in doubt regarding which scenery source is “the truth”, I rely on government-issued data, such as FAA official Airport Diagrams, Approach Plates, etc. This is because human life, in the hands of real-life pilots, may be depending on this data to bring themselves and their passengers down to a safe landing in real IFR conditions. If the government-issued coordinates were wrong, people could die. Runway coordinate data from AirNav.com also references back to official FAA-issued data. Sorry, I cannot help with non-USA airport data,
as I never fly, neither in a sim nor in real life, outside CONUS. I’m just a lowly Sport Pilot.
Hi sir. I plan to make a very detailed layout for Heathrow in the future. This will save me hours of assembling a mosaic if it works. Can you tell me, what resoloution can I get down to? Can I use it to do say parking position markings? I want it to be incredibly detailed, as seen in my recent Maiquetia and upcoming Gatwick.
Cheers.
WedBing doesn’t add any extra restrictions on top the standard Bing imagery. If you see it on Bing maps, you will see it in WED.
There are ‘zoom levels’ with 20 typically being the most zoomed in. Not all areas of the world have images at ZL20, parts of the U.K. are only at ZL18. If you think a square of 4 pixels at ZL20 become the equivalent of 1 pixel at ZL19, and so on, then at ZL18 you would have 1 pixel representing what would have been 16 pixels at ZL20.
If there are no images available at the zoom level you request, they will appear as white tiles in WED. The web browser map viewers often re-use a lower zoom level, so you can be left feeling the browser has more zoom levels on offer. Don’t worry, the browser is cheating!
Another complication is the quality of the source images. If the image is a little blury, then it’s entire;y possible that one source of satellite imagery could have clearer images at a lower zoom level!
WedBing currently,only gives the option of Bing as the source.
Finally, WED itself doesn’t process the images the same as your browser, so they look more pixelated compared to in the browser.
Looking forward to flying to an out-the-box populated Heathrow and Gatwick!
Hi Wedbing, i have a slight problem with my file. Everytime I open it it doesnt open a browser. All it does is have a box which says “starting…”. For some reason it doesnt want to open a browser. My computer is Mac and I have the latest Java version.
In the sharing control panel, check the name of your computer. If there is a space in the name, then this needs to be changed. Insert a hypen where the space is so that there are no spaces in the name. Then rerun wedbing.
I have your most recent jar file which is 1.0.1. Previous I had been using the 0.0.7 version. Either way both stopped working for me. I suspect it has something to do with mac OS X 11.5 El Capitan and Safari 9.1.1. Do you have any ideas as to how I may get WedBing running again. I am running java 8 update 91. All indications are that Java is installed correctly and running.
I found the problem. Thanks! The name of my computer in the sharing control panel had a blank space “ “ and not a “-“. When the “-“ was entered wedbing worked like a charm.
Thank you!
Would you do me the favor of deleting the personal information from your comments section. on your blog.
I would pay to have the ability to switch between Bing and Google. I am currently editing many many airports and depending on the given airport differing images would be more beneficial.
I would like a Google maps version too; Bing maps is often outdated and scenery isnt of great quality. Is it possible to make the software open source so that one can modify with GMaps? (If google allows)
If you want to use Google Maps to create orthophoto overlays (or even a complete base mesh!) there is a very powerful tool called “GMaps” for Linux: http://members.ferrara.linux.it/cavicchi/GMaps/
It will output a complete scenery either as an overlay or a mesh which can be opened and modified in WED as well.
In the latest macOS Sierra you must now use the localhost trick to get the page to even open in the browser. Would be nice if the .jar pointed to localhost:8080 instead of the suggested.
Hi wedbing,
Can I change the port?
I use another program called FlightGear, and even when I change it’s port to 5503, when I go to 8080, it loads the browser ‘EFB’ program for it.
Wedbing 
I am using a test-version of this software and all I can say is that it´s simple, brilliant and saving me HOURS of my valuable lifetime. Excellent job!
LikeLike
Brilliant!
This should boost custom scenery output for sure, Great work.
Thank you,
bc
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Thanks – Hopefully the download page at forums.x-plane.org will be approved soon!
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Great tool! However, there are 2 problems under Windows:
1. The path to the temp file storage (e.g. ../../..Users/myUser/wedbing/tempfilestore/*) containing the tiles is wrong if X-Plane is installed on a different drive than the OS.
2. The suggested URL to point the browser to and which uses the computer name as a host name does not work properly (the page displays but pressing the button “Make visible” does nothing). In my case I had to use http://localhost:8080 instead.
(#1 can be worked around by creating a symlink/junction on the X-Plane drive)
Other than that it works like a charm!
LikeLike
#1 can also be worked around, see the FAQ, but I do need to make it a seamless part of the app at some point.
#2 I’ve not seen before, thanks for noting the workaround for those it affects!
LikeLike
Thanks a lot for the hint. That workaround from the FAQ is even better, of course.
Too bad it doesn’t work properly with relative paths: If I configure “tempfilestore=temp” it is changed to “../../../../temp” in WED which is not found.
LikeLike
Perhaps one improvement idea: I think it would be better if the tiles are stored within the custom scenery folder instead of the user’s home.. That way the scenery would remain self-contained and the home directory is not going to be flooded with pictures over time…
LikeLike
I’m trying to stay within the license for the Bing service, and so I’m treating the tiles as only ‘cached’ which means they’re temporary and will eventually be wiped. There will be something in a future version that will manage the temporary files, and the user will be able to tune the cache.
LikeLike
Hello,
Some Windows users including myself are having problems with WEDBing. After executing the .jar, Chrome opens, and after entering the path, it does not load all of the scenery package folders associated with WED. It only shows a random small selection in alphabetical order. Some package names remain constant across multiple Windows machines, like “KSEA Demo Area” or other default named packages.
Regards
Jonathan
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It should be picking just the sceneries that have a ‘earth.wed.xml’ file in them.
If it is random, as in random every time, then I have a bug to be fixed!
But if it is the same sceneries each time Wedbing is loaded, then it should predictably be just the ones with an ‘earth.wed.xml’ file in their directory.
It requires earth.wed.xml because that is the file Wedbing reads and writes to. Let me know if this is not what you’re seeing!
LikeLike
The latest version of WED does not support jpeg. PNG format is needed!
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I’ve re-tested, and I don’t see the problem.
WED 1.4.0r2 is showing my areas of the UK just fine.
But perhaps Bing have started using JPEG2000 in some areas at some zooms. Can you tell me where in the world, and at what zoom level you are trying to make visible in WED?
LikeLike
Biggest downfall of this program. Bing. They have some seriously outdated images on the site and when you’re trying to use it in WED, that, is VERY unhelpful Compare KIDP in Bing, with Google Maps and be surprised. Other wise the concept of the tool is great.
LikeLike
True, Bing images in the UK are usually worse at ZL18+ compared to Google.
The main issue is ‘license’ and I believe the Bing license is less restrictive than Google’s.
Maybe I should take the approach of offering the option of Google maps, and let them decide if it’s acceptable-use or not…
LikeLike
Wedbing was GREAT! “WAS great” for a few weeks, until Oracle published an update to Java which was supposed to fix some serious flaw in its security. Not one to take chances with viruses, etc., I installed the Java update, and Wedbing quit working. Uninstalled, then reinstalled, and I do get the small window that says,”Wedbing – Putting the Bing into WED”,
but I am unable to get IE to accept the location of X-Plane, which, for me, is “F:\X-Plane 10 Regional – North America”, a dedicated SSD. The URL is http://john-pc8080/, and the Wedbing browser tab has the little yellow-green leaf. I’ve tried installing Wedbing from several different locations, to no avail. I’m running Windows 7 on an Intel i7. Please help if you can, I loved Wedbing and want to get it back! Thank you so much! Respectfully, John Vybiral
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Hi John,
I’ve just updated Java to 1.8.0_66 (latest), on both my Mac and Windows machines, and Wedbing was able to run fine. Windows did prompt me to confirm firewall settings, but ran just fine afterwards. Can I ask you to check the entries in Windows Firewall, see if that helps.
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I am having the same problem as John, WedBing no longer will find my X Plane Directory. I’ve updated the JAVA to 1.8.0_65-b17 just like you suggested, and I checked my firewalls, still doen’t work. Running Win 7 64bit with and I7 processor. Any suggestions or fix yet?
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Like James Kieffer, I’ve temporarily turned off my firewalls, anti-virus, etc., but still can’t get Wedbing back. I miss it! What is the correct directory for wedbing-0.0.7.jar? Thanks for your help. Wedbing was -SO- good, when it worked, it should be payware! Respectfully,
John Vybiral
LikeLike
Sorry for no solution to this – I’ve not had any chance to investigate any further.
So far, my development systems have not suffered the same situation:
I’m using the Java JDK 1.8.66.
(JDK for software developers, JRE for everyone else)
I’ve not tried 1.8.65, nor the JRE (the JDK bundles the JRE though).
My X-Plane is on my C drive, NOT in Program Files (it’s on my desktop).
I run Webding also on the C drive, again NOT from Program Files (the Desktop too I think).
I can’t think of any other ‘variables’ that could make my system work and other people’s not work – I hope we get get to the bottom of this!
LikeLike
Yippee, Skippy! Just got WEDbing working! Displaying my awesome ignorance of computers, software in general, and Java in particular, one or both of these changes fixed it:
1 – Moved the WEDbing .jar file to SIMs (F:)>Users>John>wedbing, and ran it from there.
2- Set my default browser to Apple Safari, although I’m running Windows 7 on a non-Apple PC
(Always prefer to use that term, since Apple Computer INVENTED the PC back in the 1980’s!)
For what it’s worth, my computer is a JetLine Systems i7/975 running at 3.33GHz with 48GB of RAM, 64-bit O/S, two SSD’s, one for O/S and one for X-Plane 10. And I LOVE Apple products!
I’m a happy camper!
LikeLike
John – I’m so pleased to hear this!
I spent some time today testing WED and WedBing from various places relative to each other, X-Plane, and on different drives (but never in ‘Program Files’), – even took the plunge to upgrade to windows 10 – and still could not break it!
So I’m really glad you’ve got it working again – if anyone else can corroborate your findings, please let me know!
LikeLike
Hi, first congrats on producing such a helpful tool. My question, which I can’t see asked before, is I appear to see the Bing underlay offset by a few metres. Is anyone else seeing this? Could it be a hemisphere issue with the inclination of the satellite? I’m in Australia. I’ve tried WEDBing on two different airports, separated by a few hundred kilometres, with similar results. Thanks.
LikeLike
I asked the same sort of question about VLNK Lukla
http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=28617&p=923190
One useful function would be to be able to place other sources on top of each other, like Bing and Google and Yandex etc, on top of the data already in X-plane, so you can see if there’s a quorum of what is right!
In the case of VLNK Lukla, the airport is significantly translated and rotated compared to the satellite image, I believe this is to make sure it still ‘works’ with the default scenery. If true, it makes it awkward to provide airports correct for better scenery.
One of the reasons I chose Bing was that it’s also used in Open Street Map which in turn is used to create a lot of building and road scenery. If the airport matches the scenery, that’s probably the best compromise.
I think it is a hard problem to truly know which source is ‘the truth’!
LikeLike
Excellent question. Excellent answer! I’ve also noticed small conflicts between different scenery sources. When in doubt regarding which scenery source is “the truth”, I rely on government-issued data, such as FAA official Airport Diagrams, Approach Plates, etc. This is because human life, in the hands of real-life pilots, may be depending on this data to bring themselves and their passengers down to a safe landing in real IFR conditions. If the government-issued coordinates were wrong, people could die. Runway coordinate data from AirNav.com also references back to official FAA-issued data. Sorry, I cannot help with non-USA airport data,
as I never fly, neither in a sim nor in real life, outside CONUS. I’m just a lowly Sport Pilot.
LikeLike
Hi sir. I plan to make a very detailed layout for Heathrow in the future. This will save me hours of assembling a mosaic if it works. Can you tell me, what resoloution can I get down to? Can I use it to do say parking position markings? I want it to be incredibly detailed, as seen in my recent Maiquetia and upcoming Gatwick.
Cheers.
LikeLike
WedBing doesn’t add any extra restrictions on top the standard Bing imagery. If you see it on Bing maps, you will see it in WED.
There are ‘zoom levels’ with 20 typically being the most zoomed in. Not all areas of the world have images at ZL20, parts of the U.K. are only at ZL18. If you think a square of 4 pixels at ZL20 become the equivalent of 1 pixel at ZL19, and so on, then at ZL18 you would have 1 pixel representing what would have been 16 pixels at ZL20.
If there are no images available at the zoom level you request, they will appear as white tiles in WED. The web browser map viewers often re-use a lower zoom level, so you can be left feeling the browser has more zoom levels on offer. Don’t worry, the browser is cheating!
Another complication is the quality of the source images. If the image is a little blury, then it’s entire;y possible that one source of satellite imagery could have clearer images at a lower zoom level!
WedBing currently,only gives the option of Bing as the source.
Finally, WED itself doesn’t process the images the same as your browser, so they look more pixelated compared to in the browser.
Looking forward to flying to an out-the-box populated Heathrow and Gatwick!
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Thanks! That’s great — I will do my best 🙂
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Hi. Very cool tool. I am impressed.
Just to say that it works also with simlink even on an external drive.
Bravo
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Hi Wedbing, i have a slight problem with my file. Everytime I open it it doesnt open a browser. All it does is have a box which says “starting…”. For some reason it doesnt want to open a browser. My computer is Mac and I have the latest Java version.
LikeLike
In the sharing control panel, check the name of your computer. If there is a space in the name, then this needs to be changed. Insert a hypen where the space is so that there are no spaces in the name. Then rerun wedbing.
LikeLike
I have your most recent jar file which is 1.0.1. Previous I had been using the 0.0.7 version. Either way both stopped working for me. I suspect it has something to do with mac OS X 11.5 El Capitan and Safari 9.1.1. Do you have any ideas as to how I may get WedBing running again. I am running java 8 update 91. All indications are that Java is installed correctly and running.
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Hi,
I found the problem. Thanks! The name of my computer in the sharing control panel had a blank space “ “ and not a “-“. When the “-“ was entered wedbing worked like a charm.
Thank you!
Would you do me the favor of deleting the personal information from your comments section. on your blog.
Again thank you!
>
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i just discovered wedding with video on youtube from Jan Vogel. Incredible and serve me for make free sceneries for X-Plane 10.50 ! Thank you
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Would love to have the option to switch between Google Maps and Bing Maps to choose the best detail for the specific area of interest
LikeLike
I would pay to have the ability to switch between Bing and Google. I am currently editing many many airports and depending on the given airport differing images would be more beneficial.
Respectfully
LikeLike
I would like a Google maps version too; Bing maps is often outdated and scenery isnt of great quality. Is it possible to make the software open source so that one can modify with GMaps? (If google allows)
LikeLike
If you want to use Google Maps to create orthophoto overlays (or even a complete base mesh!) there is a very powerful tool called “GMaps” for Linux: http://members.ferrara.linux.it/cavicchi/GMaps/
It will output a complete scenery either as an overlay or a mesh which can be opened and modified in WED as well.
HTH
LikeLike
The latest macOS Sierra now requires http://localhost:8080/ instead of the old path, anyway to get http://localhost:8080/ as standard when opening?
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In the latest macOS Sierra you must now use the localhost trick to get the page to even open in the browser. Would be nice if the .jar pointed to localhost:8080 instead of the suggested.
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Please try the new 1.0.2 release, let me know if it doesn’t work (I have no Sierra compatible machines!)
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Hi wedbing,
Can I change the port?
I use another program called FlightGear, and even when I change it’s port to 5503, when I go to 8080, it loads the browser ‘EFB’ program for it.
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Ah, thanks – I’ve put an answer in the installation FAQ. Let me know how it goes.
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Cheers, thanks, wedbing 🙂
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And yes, it works.
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