Debug Key Shortcuts

There are a few settings in VE3D that you can use for debugging that are turned off by default, but (for a dev anyway) are very easy to turn back on again.  All you need is this file.  Drop it into VE3D's settings directory, which is at this location:

(Vista) C:\Users\{username}\AppData\LocalLow\Microsoft\Virtual Earth 3D

(XP) C:\Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Microsoft\Virtual Earth 3D

Restart VE3D, and the keyboard shortcuts are activated.  Some of the interesting ones:

~ (tilde):   Output trace to the screen.  Useful for seeing the results of the other debug keys.  Plug-ins can also write to Trace and it will output here.

G:   Jump to a saved location.  You can edit the xml file directly to change this location.

T:   Turn on tile boundaries and LODs.  Useful when writing datasources.

L:   Turn on a center marker.  This is the value of the SceneState's CameraData.CenterGroundPosition, which in the center of the scene's foreground (not the center of the screen).

B:   Intersection test.  Items under the cursor are output to Trace, and if they support it, the face that was hit along with a surface normal are displayed.

K:   Display the current query area, which is a rough extent on the ground of what is in view, constrained to not be too large.  This value is from NavigationManager.GetCurrentQueryRegion.

These keys can all be remapped (along with the values for all the controls, in bindings.xml) by simply editing the xml.