Some features are on the ModelConverterX wishlist for quite a while already. For example the feature request to export FS2004 aircraft mdl files with working animations and such is on the list for over 10 years already. And given that FS2004 is less popular nowadays I thought I might never come around to implement this feature request.

But sometimes strange things happen. A question from an user on the FSDeveloper forum triggered me to have another look at how MakeMDL handles custom animations and suddenly I realized it is not that different from how XtoMDL does it. Because I thought it might not be too hard to implement therefore, I decided to give it another try.

Of course reality is always different, because it still took me around 2 months to work on this. Once I had the animations exporting correctly, it turned out the reading of visibility conditions was not optimal and this affected the FS2004 aircraft mdl export as well.

But now that is all behind me and the latest development release of ModelConverterX can export a FS2004 aircraft MDL file with working animations and visibility conditions. I’m sure it will not work perfect on any aircraft around, but I think it should be a start for developers still working for FS2004. And if you encounter any issues with a specific model, just let me know via the forum.