One of the challenges when converting old API macros or COLLADA objects is often how to make them framerate friendly. It is not uncommon for such objects to use many small texture files. If you for example load an object from the Google 3D warehouse, don’t be surprised to find it uses 40 different texture […]
openVFR
If you are looking to add more details to your FSX, have a look at the interesting project openVFR. It uses OpenStreetMap data and it really makes the scenery look a lot more realistic. With a bit of luck you can find your own street. I think this kind of scenery is a great alternative […]
Mass Texture Editor
To assist with the conversion of textures while converting objects for us in FS, I have added a new tool to ModelconverterX. It is called the Mass Texture Editor tool and it will help you to rename, resize and convert to another format all the textures of an object at once. So this will be […]
Free?
A few weeks ago I read the book Free by Chris Anderson. In this book it is described how many companies (mostly on the web) nowadays can make money using free products. If I try to summarize it in my own words, the author is saying that since the cost of distribution of digital content […]
gPoly (no) progress report
Just a quick note that the gPoly development has been slow recently. About two weeks ago I worked a bit on the texture mapping on the polygons, but since then I have been kept busy with other things. Mainly work, but on the other hand I have also been working on the ModelConverterX tool to […]
Modelling for FSX using Sketchup
One of the topics that is discussed often lately on the FSDeveloper forums is using Sketchup to model for FSX. The good news for those of you who think that the learning curve of GMax is a bit too steep, is that you can use Sketchup as well if you want to model some scenery […]
Texture conversions
In the last days there has been a lot of discussion on the FSDeveloper forum about converting COLLADA objects for use in FSX. One of the issues the users are facing is that many COLLADA models use textures in formats that FSX can not read, for example JPG files. So there is clearly a need […]
Performance video tutorial available on Wiki
The video tutorial I did yesterday on the FSDeveloper LiveStream channel about performance related issues for 3D models, is now available on the FSDeveloper Wiki as well. I hope you enjoy the tutorial and that the explanations make things a bit clearer to you.
Video tutorial about performance
Tomorrow there will be another online video tutorial on the FSDeveloper LiveStream channel. The subject of this tutorial is performance for 3D objects and the tutorial will start at 22:00 CET (21:00 UTC). The following topics will be covered: Definition of concepts important for the performance: levels of detail, drawcall and texture vertex Performance tips […]
gPoly status update #6
Today I have been making some progress on gPoly again, so time for another status update. The first part I worked on is the user interface, especially the texture library that contains the texture you can use on your polygons. And also other improvements like the interface used to define new projects. But most of […]