FSDeveloper video tutorials

This week I came across the Procaster application to stream you desktop to the internet and yesterday I used it to do a interactive video tutorial about GMax on the FSDeveloper channel at Livestream. There was a good audience of about a dozen people, especially when you keep in mind I only announced the event 2 days ahead.

I think the general impression was that the video and sound quality are good enough to do online tutorials. And with the build in chat option the people watching could ask me questions during the tutorial. Maybe have a voice chat would make that kind of interaction even easier, but on the other hand it might disturb the tutorial more. So in total I think it was quite successful and I am looking forward to do more such tutorials later on. If you still have suggestions or feedback, please let me know.

Yesterdays tutorial about making a simple object in GMax is now available through the FSDeveloper Wiki as well. I have also made available the GMax and texture files there for reference purposes.

On the Wiki I have also create a page to collect suggestions for new tutorials. I have put some of my ideas on there already, but would be even more interested in hearing which topics you would like to see covered in a video tutorial. So please add your suggestions there and hopefully we can cover that topic later in a video tutorial.

Revival of a tool

Today I made a new version of a small tool I did some time ago. Actually I redesigned it completely from scratch using C# and .NET this time. The tool I am talking about is CompileHelper. This is a small tool to assist developers in compiling their source files. For many developers using command line compilers like BGLComp, BGLC or SCASM gives quite some trouble. This is mainly because they have not been designed to be used in the drag and drop fashion that is so popular nowadays.

On forum you often read that people get no BGL or MDL file from the compiler and that a little black window showed for a micro-second. That proves to be too short to read the useful information the compiler is throwing at the user. Often that information will tell you exactly why your BGL or MDL file could not be created.

A few years ago I made the first version of CompileHelper to ease this problem a bit. The tool allows you to drag and drop the source file on it, just like you would love to do with the compiler. CompileHelper then calls the compiler in the background, but captures all feedback. Then we the compiler is finished this feedback is presented to you. Besides that the tool will also determine which compiler you need.

So today I made a new version of this tool, because the problem is still as common as a few years ago. And the old version of CompileHelper did not support the FSX BGLComp directly. Therefore I decided it was time for a redesign. So if you want to get the new version, have a look here.

LOD Creator improvements

The functionality in ModelConverterX to create lower level of detail versions of a model was running very slow for complex objects. I have not fixed that completely (yet), but I have made some changes to this functionality that should at least make it easier to work with. The calculation that simplifies the object is now running on a different thread, so that at least the rest of the tool should remain more responsive. I have also added a progress bar, so that you can see how far in the simplification process the tool is already. See the screenshot of the new dialog below.

As you might see there are some more changes. I have removed the 3D preview from the LOD Creator dialog. Instead the mean 3D preview is used now to display the result of the LOD Creator dialog. You can still select the LOD you want to see from the LOD Creator dialog though.

Optimizing the simplication code further, so that it will run faster is still on my todo list. But at the moment I am also busy with preparing for the new gPoly ground polygon tool. So I am not sure which one will get my attention first. Now that I am talking about the gPoly tool, I would still be happy to receive your input on what you would like to see in a tool for custom ground polygons.

3DS exporter improved

I have just fixed some bugs in the 3DS exporter of ModelConverterX. The main issue solved is that complex objects often could not be imported into GMax. Without going into too much technical details, this was caused by some variables being stored as a short, allowing a maximum value of 65535. Some object parts had more triangles or vertices than this limit and that resulted in the error when importing. This has now be been fixed and those model parts will be split when exporting.

Another improvement I made to the 3DS exporter is that the night textures and bump textures are now also written to the material when exporting.

For future improvement of the 3DS exporter I still have the wish to add animations as well, but that is a little lower on the priority list at the moment. And another 3DS related wish is to have an importer for the 3DS format as well.

How do YOU like to work?

As I posted before, I am planning for a new ground polygon tool. To get more clear how potential end users, yes that is YOU, would prefer to make ground polygons I have setup a poll at the FSDeveloper forum. So please let me know what your ideal way to add ground polygons to a scenery would be. That will help me in creating a tool that is easy to use. I hope to see your vote!

Unions

You could say that recently unions have played a role in my life. First there has been my wedding one and a half week ago of course, forming a nice union between me and my wife. But that is not what I want to talk about in this blog post.

I have also been working on some code that allows me to do boolean operations between polygons. This functionality is something that will come in handy when I start working on my new ground polygon tool, It can for example be used to automatically slice the polygons into piece of no more than 100 meters, so that there are no problems with the curvation of the earth within FSX.

Below you see a screenshot of my test application, where I am testing out these boolean functions. The red polygon is polygon A and the green one is polygon B. The four small pictures below show in grey the union of A and B, the intersection of A and B, polygon A minus B and polygon B minus A respectively.

At first I looked around for some library that implements this functionality and although some exist, I still decided to code it myself in the end. The main reason for that was that I wanted to understand how the process works and that why learn a bit more from it (although it might not always be the easiest way). So in the end I used the algorithms described in Geometric tools for computer graphics and make my own implementation, building further onto for example the polygon class I had already made for ModelConverterX.

The boolean operations are not completely bug free yet, I have already found a few polygons that are not processed correctly. So there is still some more work to do and after that I will start with creating the tool for ground polygons that can make use of this logic. So I still have much more fun ahead…

Looking for input on a new ground polygon tool

For a while I am thinking about a new tool that will help in the creation of ground polygons, for the moment this tool will have the working name of gPoly. I have now setup a forum at FSDeveloper to discuss the requirements for such a tool. So I would like to invite other developers to provide their inputs and thereby help in shaping this new tool. I for example would love to hear what you see as the biggest issues currently while making ground polygons for your scenery and how you would like a tool to ease the process for you. So let me know what you think…

Announcing a new "project"

During the last weeks I did not write much on this blog. This was partly because of some travelling and also because of a new “project” I have been busy with. This project is not so compatible with FSX, or any other version of Flight Simulator. And where previous projects did not have a very clear end date, this one has. The name of this special project is Wedding 2009.

So until September of this year I will have less time to work on the different FS tools that are still in development. And it could be that I check the FSDeveloper website slightly less frequent as well. At least know you know why…