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.

FSWeekend, FSDeveloper & SketchUp

Like last year FSDeveloper will be present at the upcoming FSWeekend event. It is the biggest Flight Simulation event in the world and will be organised on November 6 & 7 in the Aviodrome aviation museum at Lelystad airport.

This year our special theme will be the usage of SketchUp for modelling scenery objects for FSX. We will have a one or two computers available, so that you can give SketchUp a go at the event! And of course some users from the community will be available to give you a hand if needed.

If you bring some reference material of the object you want to model with you to the event, we might be able to give you a head start on putting it into FSX.

So if you want to know more about the FSDeveloper community, have some addon development related question or want to learn how to use SketchUp for FSX: we hope to see you at the FSDeveloper stand!

Build your house for FSX using SketchUp

I have uploaded the tutorial I have written about making a house for FSX using SketchUp. This tutorial is aimed at the novice developer that wants to build his (or her) first object. It covers the following topics:

  • How to gather the information about the building
  • How to model the geometry in SketchUp
  • How to create the texture from photo material
  • How to map the texture on the building
  • How to export the building to the file formats used by FSX
  • How to position the building at the right location in the world

You can find the tutorial on the FSDeveloper Wiki. I hope it gives you a head start in making your own objects for FSX! Btw, some of the topics are not SketchUp specific by the way, so they might also be useful when you are modelling in GMax or FSDS.

Back from Greece

We are back from our trip to Greece. We arrived in Athens and stayed there for a day and a half. That was just enough time to visit the Acropolis and do some site seeing in the old part of town. We also enjoyed a dinner together with Lefteris and his wife one evening. Great fun to meet in person again after all the virtual discussions.

Next we took the ferry to the island of Naxos where we stayed a couple of days. We just did you walking and drove around the island one day. You could clearly see that the end of the tourist season was approaching, since it was not super crowded anymore.

On one of our walks I made sure we passed by the airport, since I wanted to take a look at it. The island has a small airport, with only a 800 meter runway. That should be more than enough, since there is only one scheduled flight a day anyway.

After Naxos we took ferry to Amorgos. Since it was a nice and sunny day we enjoyed sitting on deck and viewing the different islands of the minor Cyclades that the ferry stopped at along the way.

At Amorgos it was even more clear that the tourist season is almost over, we were the only guests in our hotel. We felt a bit sorry for the owner who was every morning waiting to serve us breakfast. Just like at Naxos we did some walking around the island and drove around it one day.

Renting a car to drive around the island was another example of how the end of the tourist season affects things. The rental office in our town was closed already, just having a sign to call their other office on the island. After doing that we were told where to find the key of the car parked in front of the closed office, so that we could drive to their other office to sign the rental contract. I guess those things only happen on small islands.

Another surprise was that the island only has three ATMs. That in itself is not a problem, but none of them accepted any of our cards. It turns out that not all ATMs in Greece can handle the new bankcards with a chip that they are giving out in the Netherlands. This island just happened to have ATMs of a bank that had not upgraded yet. Luckily we found out that one of our credit cards still worked in the end. Else we would had to drive to the other site of the island to try our luck at the bank office.

After one day with a lot of wind and rain, we were happy to see that the weather was much better on the day we were travelling home again. First we took the ferry from Amorgos to Paros, where we transfered to the airport to fly to Athens.

Just like Naxos, the airport of Paros is also quite small. There are only three scheduled flights a day. When we arrived by bus there was no personal to see in the terminal building yet. They appeared after a while and checked in the 15 or so passengers for our flight to Athens. So even the DHC-8-100 was only half full with that. We even left 15 minutes before scheduled time, I guess because everybody was there already.

While waiting I made photos of the terminal building, in case I want to model it for FSX later on. If I need another test airport for the gPoly tool later on, this might be a nice candidate.

In the aircraft the stewardess seemed to intend to break the record for the fastest airline announcement, trying to do all safety announcements in 30 seconds (in both Greek and English). This did not really improve the understandability. But the rest of the flight was very enjoyable, we even got a drink and small snack on this 30 minute flight.

So after this vacation I am full of energy and ideas again. In the coming days I hope to be working on the gPoly tool a bit and do some preparations for the upcoming FSWeekend as well.

FSDeveloper connectivity

At the moment there are some issues with the connectivity of the FSDeveloper website. So it can happen that you can not reach the site, in that case please try again in a few minutes.

We are looking into this issue, together with the hosting company. Hopefully it will be resolved soon.

Duplicate attached objects

This evening I was working on a bug in the NL2000 scenery, the lighthouses did not have a light at night. It seemed that during the conversion to the FSX MDL format the attached effect was lost. Since adding I am too lazy to add all those effects by hand again, I added two new features to ModelConverterX.

You can now duplicate an attachpoint in the attached object editor. This can be useful if you need one attachpoint for day and night and another for dusk and dawn. In the effect parameter editor I have also added two more buttons to add the presets for day/night and dusk/dawn parameters.

Quick status update on the different projects

Here is a quick status update for some of the projects I am working on. I know I have not blogged much recently. That is mainly because it is quite busy at my work recently, so that affects the amount of free time a bit. Unfortunately I don’t expect this will change very soon.

In order of priority the projects have for me at the moment, these are some of the things I am working on:

SketchUp tutorial

At the FSWeekend in November there will be a FSDeveloper stand again (like last year). This year I plan to let visitors try their luck on modelling scenery objects with SketchUp in the stand. With that in mind I have started working on a new tutorial that will explain in detail how to make your own house for FS using SketchUp. I want to have this tutorial ready before the FSWeekend.

gPoly

After a long time of no progress, I have been able to do some work on the gPoly tool again as well. Currently I am adding one more feature (drawing lines). When that feature is added I think there is enough functionality for a first public alpha version. Although I will need to polish some features a bit more to make them useful to other people than myself.

While working on gPoly, I am trying to follow the Test Driven Development (TDD) approach that I have been reading about recently. That turns out to be an interesting experiment and I hope it will result in easier to maintain software in the end.

ModelConverterX

Also for ModelConverterX there are still some open issues. These mainly deal with finishing the aircraft importer, especially the functionality related to the conditions under which certain parts display need to be made a little more user friendly.