FSDeveloper connectivity – part 3

A few weeks ago we had trouble with the connectivity of the FSDeveloper server. This has now been fixed by a quick work around. But after discussing with the hosting company we came to the conclusion that a real fix would be to move FSDeveloper virtual server to another machine (a 64 bit one, instead of the current 32 bit one).

In the next days we (the admins) will start with the preparations for this move. You will not notice anything of these preparations. But once everything is installed on the new server we will have to close the FSDeveloper community for a short while, so that we can move over the database and point the domain to the new machine. This will probably happen somewhere in the next two weeks. We will inform you again once the exact date is known.

An interesting idea…

An idea on the ModelConverterX wishlist for quite some time already is to add an easy conversion wizard. This will be a wizard where you just select your object (for example a SketchUp made COLLADA file), tell which scenery folder to use and enter which location the object should get. After that the wizard will make the BGL file and the textures for you. Such a feature would be helpful for people who just want to place a few objects and don’t want to bother with multiple tools to generate the final BGL.

So with that in mind I started to experiment a bit with options on how to let the user determine the position of the object. The most easy way would probably be to point it on a map. So I have been looking a way to get a map into an application. The image on the right shows an OpenStreetMap map, with an additional object drawn (shown with the red cross and the bounding box polygon below). You can easily position it by clicking with the mouse.

The component I used for this does not only support OpenStreetMap, but also Yahoo Maps, Bing Maps or Google Maps. So it seems to be a very interesting option. Although I still have to double check what the exact license restrictions are on using these different services.

In the next days I will continue coding this wizard functionality. So hopefully it is available in the development version soon.

The past FSWeekend

This weekend it was the yearly FSWeekend again the Aviodrome aviation museum in Lelystad. I was there at both the FSDeveloper and NL2000 stand. I think it was a good event again, with a lot of people visiting, especially on the Saturday. It was always nice to talk with the users of the NL2000 scenery and to answer their questions.

In the FSDeveloper stand we demonstrated the usage of SketchUp. It was interesting to see that many people knew about SketchUp or had even tried it before. But most of them were not yet aware of the possibility to use it for FS. So let’s hope we encouraged some people to start making some scenery as well. It was very nice to meet the FSDeveloper forum member Robystar at the weekend. Together we manned the FSDeveloper stand and it was interesting to see the scenery projects he has been working on with SketchUp.

Other interesting people I met are Markus Freyt (the author of openVFR) and Andras Kozma (the famous developer, who I still associate with his LAGO EHAM scenery). And of course it was interesting to meet Lefteris and his wife again. So all together a very successful event again.

Fixed camera views

I have added another small feature to ModelConverterX tonight. This is something I had in mind for some time already. You can now select a number of viewing directions for the preview. This allows you to fix the view to the front or left for example. In some case that makes it easier to monitor the object. When not in “Free rotate” mode you will not be able to rotate the preview, but you can still pan and zoom it.

Animation editor

A new editor has been added to ModelConverterX, the animation editor. At this moment the functionality of the editor is still limited, you can use it to remove animations from the object. You can select at which keyframe you want to fix the geometry and then that becomes the static state of the object. The pictures below show how this can work for the default Baron.

For this simple functionality I would not have to make a special editor of course. But there are other animation related features on the wishlist, so these will be added to the animation editor later on as well.

A book

Last week I released my new tutorial about using SketchUp on the FSDeveloper Wiki. While I was writing on this tutorial it grew bigger and bigger. Initially I never planned to write a 75 page tutorial, but it seems there is quite a lot to write about making your own house.

Since it almost looks like a book now, I thought why not turn it into a real book! So if you want you can order a full colour paperback version of the tutorial on Lulu. The content is exactly the same as the free version that you can download from the FSDeveloper Wiki.

The small revenue made on the sales of this book will be used to the benefit of the FSDeveloper community.

Some ModelConverterX updates

I have made some updates to ModelConverterX today. These are the main changes:

  • Fixed some issues with exporting animations to the FSX MDL format. Sometimes some animations were missing after exporting, this should be solved now.
  • Improved the part of the MDL reader that reads the custom variables used in aircraft MDL files. These should now be read better and I have also expended the list of known variables, so that more of them should have a meaningful name now. Only for old FS98 MDL files the names seem not correct yet, I will work on that.
  • Fixed a bug that caused some animated parts to get a wrong offset after reading.

All of these changes are available in the development release from tomorrow. I hope that you will see that more aircraft MDL files can now be imported correctly and converted to static scenery objects.

Library Creator XML update

I have just released a small update for Library Creator XML. In version 2.0.3 the following changes have been made:

  • Added: option to export TXT file with GUIDs and names
  • Added: option to export SBuilderX style TXT file
  • Fixed: bug that last object was not showing when scrollbar visible
  • Fixed: bug with incorrect FS2004 GUID being generated sometimes

You can get the new version from the FSDeveloper downloads section.