SceneryDesign.org Just a quick note that a new stable version of ModelConverterX is available. If you have been using the development release lately there is not so much changed, but compared to the last stable release there are loads of improvements. I have also updated the user manual. For the coming time the development of ModelConverterX […]
A sunday morning experiment
By default landclass is defined as grid data within FSX, so that means that for each area of roughly 1.2 x 1.2 kilometre you can define what kind of land usage it has. For some time already I wanted to test what effect landclass polygons would have on the looks of the terrain, so this […]
Render modes
Today I have added some more options to ModelConverterX, this time different render modes for the preview. Before you could only render the object as it would show in FS, but now you also have the option to only show the faces (no textures) or to show a wireframe view of the object. I some […]
A too powerful tool?
A tool like ModelConverterX is very powerful in converting objects between different formats. But the fact that it can read BGL or MDL files as well also means it becomes relatively easy to import the work of somebody else into GMax and modify it to your needs. This gives some tension, on one hand you […]
Lockheed Martin and ESP
I guess you must have heard this news already, but last week it was announced that Lockheed Martin has licensed Microsoft ESP. I was at the I/ITSEC exhibition at that time and in the Lockheed Martin booth they indeed had a solution build using ESP on display, a PC-12 trainer. It is very interesting to […]
gPoly status update #2
Just a little update again with the progress of this morning. Using GDAL I got the geo-referenced background image loaded into gPoly. Until now it works quite good, but I think I will have to optimize the code a bit more to work better with bigger background images. Also I will have to add some […]
gPoly status update #1
OK, this is dangerous. I have made this mistake before, posting about a tool that is not yet finished at all. So let me start with a little disclaimer: although I have started coding on the new gPoly tool and although I am writing about it on my blog now, I am not sure when […]
Google Building Maker
Today I stumbled upon this new tool by Google: Building Maker. It is quite impressive to see how with a few mouse clicks you can make a 3D model using images showing the object from different angles. I guess this way of constructing would be the dream of many FS developers as well. I did […]
KMZ reader
As a little bonus feature on top of the COLLADA reader I added yesterday, I have now also added a KMZ reader. KMZ is the file format used by Google Earth for its objects and basically it is a ZIP file containing the COLLADA file for the object and all the texture used all in […]
COLLADA reader available
The COLLADA reader for ModelConverterX, that I talked about in the previous post, will be available in the development release from tomorrow. The reader can read the geometries and materials used by the objects. At the moment transformations and animations are not yet supported. Below is another screenshot of the duck test object, now with […]