I have just put an update of the ground polygon wizard (GPW) in the development release of ModelConverterX. With this update it is now possible to export P3D v2 MDL files from the GPW as well. These can be used in P3D v2 and it allows you to use the full material properties on your ground polygons. As Lockheed Martin has announced this is the way forward, the old FS2002-style ground polygons will be removed in the next major release.

Are there limitations in the P3D v2 export? Yes there are:

• Seasons are disabled in the wizard, as these can’t be combined with MDL files
• The visibility range is disabled in the wizard, as MDL files work with LODs. For the moment only one LOD is exported.
• It is no longer possible to split your complex ground polygons into multiple groups. For P3D v2 they are always exported to one MDL file. This is because the BGLComp placement is less accurate and with multiple groups you would get gaps in between. If this leads to performance issues I can see if there are other optimizations that can be done.
• I did notice with my test objects that some of them seem to disappear or flicker a bit in the distance (10 nm away or so). I guess when combined with some resample photo scenery below you will hardly see this. But maybe this can be prevented by adding LODs or something else. That’s something that needs some more testing, let me know if you have any issues or ideas on this.

I would suggest that you don’t use this new feature for production work yet. I do expect there might be a few bugs here and there left. So please go ahead and try to break test this new feature. Let me know if you have any suggestions or issues.