SceneryDesign.org After all the theory I blogged about yesterday, I thought it might be a good idea to illustrate the difference today. So let’s take a quite common example. I have taken the threshold coordinates of runway 06-24 from Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. And I have chosen the reference point to be near the middle of the […]
Coordinate confusion
OK, I got a question for you. What kind of coordinates does your 3D modelling tool use? I mean a tool like GMax, FSDS, SketchUp or 3DS Max. Ah, that is an easy question you must think now, all of these programs use a 3D axis system where you model your object in meters (or […]
Effects with an offset
A topic that has been raised frequently on the FSDeveloper forums recently is that effects attached to an object in FSX have an offset in their placement. Especially when you use these effects for your taxiway lighting or approach lights that is an annoying “feature”. So tonight I did a little experiment to see if […]
Performance indicator render mode
I have added a new experimental render mode to ModelConverterX. This mode gives the object a colour based on the amount of texture vertices at a certain location. So this mode should help you to see where your object can be optimized further to increase performance. I have made a quick video to demonstrate it, since […]
DrawCallMonitor vs ModelConverterX
DrawCallMonitor is a tool I made some time ago to show statics about the amount of drawcalls, texture vertices and triangles used in a specific MDL file. Recently I have not updated this tool, because the Object Information form of ModelConverterX gives the same information. But is this information really the same? While discussing how […]
An undocumented XtoMDL parameter
At the FSDeveloper forum there was a question about the size of crashboxes in FSX. These are often not so accurate around your object and that can give trouble with the aircraft crashing too early. So the question was how to change that? I did not know the answer, but I found it. There is […]
ObPlacer XML + FSX + web mapping services =
Seasonal textures in the Ground Polygon Wizard
About a week ago I already wrote about the new functionality I was working on for the ModelConverterX Ground Polygon Wizard. Now I have finished it and from tomorrow it is available in the development release. Since there is no manual for this tool yet, let me explain how to add night textures or seasonal […]
Creating ground polygons for FSX with SketchUp
Over the last days I have been working on the Amsterdam Heliport for the NL2000 scenery. One of the tasks I did was to update the ground polygons of this scenery. Instead of using GMax for this, I decided to give SketchUp a try. In this blog post I will give an overview of my […]
Autogen suppression
In the previous post about the ground polygon wizard of ModelConverterX I already mentioned that the tool also helps to prevent the exclusion of autogen by your ground polygons. I forgot to post some screenshots to illustrate this with that post, so here they are. They show Gilze Rijen airport in the Netherlands as developed […]