SceneryDesign.org It has been much too long ago that I wrote about the ModelConverterX tool. Or actually it was also much too long ago that I programmed on the tool. But since last week I have been making some progress again. That is partly because I have a little more time now that all the travelling for work (and for vacation) has finished. And also because I need to tool for a little test case I am working on.
For that test case I am trying to convert all the 3D API objects of an old scenery into the FSX MDL format with this tool. To make my life easier I have also added a function to make a XML placement file from the old SCASM file that contains all the Macro calls. Other improvements I have added are direct export to MDL format (XtoMDL is called for you by the tool) and the ability to batch convert objects, so that you do not have to load them all manually.
In the next days I will have to test this new functionality a bit more and I guess during that testing I will hit some new bugs as well. But I expect a new alpha release somewhere during the Christmas vacation.
This is really cool Arno! In fact I’ve written a couple of lines of code to do something similar, but I’m no where close where you are. Porting old airports into the new format (with the ability to replace objects that aren’t 100% in the right place) has always been something I wanted to achieve. Do you plan to release this for the general public?
If I can help in some way let me know. I’d be happy to donate my old bgl decompiler code if that would be of any use to you.
Actually the first alpha version of ModelConverterX is already available on the forums, although it might still be a bit buggy.
The tool is focussed on 3D objects mainly, so a whole airport might not yet work. But you never know how far it can come :).
Later on I would like to add more direct BGL reading stuff, currently I focus on reading the API/SCM sources. So if I have some BGL decompile questions I guess I can find you.