SceneryDesign.org In the latest development release of ModelConverterX I have made a number of changes so that MSFS livery packages can now also be read correctly and show the textures as they should. Often these packages depend on their base package for some of the texture or part of the model. In the texture.cfg or model.cfg […]
Import MSFS developer project XML
ModelConverterX is able to export MSFS scenery packages for quite a while already. To do this a MSFS dev project is written and then compiled with the fspackagetool. But when I implemented this feature, it never occurred to me that the reverse would be useful as well. Until a few weeks ago when I tried […]
Oops, a bug…
In the latest development release of ModelConverterX I have fixed a bug with the export of the metallic, roughness and AO texture (the comp texture) to MSFS models. That there are bugs in my tools now and then is something I am used to (bug free software is hard to find). But for this bug […]
Changes to options
In the latest development release of ModelConverterX the way you can specify the different options has changed. Before all options were in one options form, but now they have moved closer to where you need them. That means that the options related to importing or exporting are now found in the same dialog where you […]
Minimum MSFS LOD values
In MSFS 2024 the level of detail (LOD) system has been changed. As specified in the SDK, based on the number of vertices in the level of detail representation there is a minimum minimum size value that is allowed in MSFS 2024. This means that objects with a certain amount of vertices will disappear at […]
Preserve node names
After importing an object ModelConverterX does optimise the scenegraph, the structure of all the nodes in the object, as you can see in the hierarchy editor. During this process the node names that ModelConverterX can read from certain file formats were often lost. After multiple requests from users that they would like to keep those […]
ASToFra libraries for developers
The libraries that are used in my tools, like ModelConverterX and scenProc, are called the ASToFra libraries. Which standards for Arno’s Scenery Tool Framework. Other developers are sometimes using these libraries in their (freeware) tools as well, for example to have a 3D preview of Flight Simulator objects. Until now these developers needed to pull […]
.NET version update in next development release
I have finished testing the upgrade to .NET 8.0 for my tools, so the next development release will contain this change. I expect to release it in one or two days. If you want to keep using the development release on Windows 7 or Windows 8 systems, you better make a backup of the current […]
Upgrade of .NET version of tools
As I already mentioned in this blog post from the end of last year, I am going to upgrade the .NET version that the tool use. Currently the tool use .NET Framework 4.8, but while developing I notice that a lot of third party library are nowadays only available for more recent .NET version. For […]
Reading MSFS 2024 library BGL files
Until now ModelConverterX could not read MSFS 2024 library BGL files, you would get an error that the objects inside were not recognised. This is because MSFS 2024 does store your glTF models differently in the BGL file than MSFS 2020 did. You might have noticed that the BGL files are also smaller for MSFS […]