SceneryDesign.org
Just to remind you all that tomorrow we will move the FSDeveloper website to a new server. The work will start around 10:00 CET and we hope to finish in a few hours. During this period the old server will be in read only mode, so you will not be able to post.
In case things go wrong and the old site might go offline, I will use this blog to post information. So keep an eye here as well. But hopefully that is not needed and we are up and running soon on the new server.
Soon the FSDeveloper website is going to move to a different hosting company. For more details please check this post on the forums.
One of the features on the ModelConverterX wishlist is adding support for writing FSDS FSC files. I can now say that I started working on this. I got a SDK from Louis Sinclair, the author of FSDS, that explains how the file format works. To get more used to the format I decided to first make a reader that can import FSC files. The current development release has an initial version of this reader included already. It should read the geometry correctly, but I am still working on animations and other advanced features. I think I’ll also need some more test files to test the reader on those aspects. After the reader is done, I will start with the writer.
That I started on this FSDS support does not mean that the FS2004 MDL reader is completely done, I still have to look at the attachpoints and figure out a way to deal with the conditions and LODs. These issues are still high on my todo list as well and if there is feedback on how the FS2004 MDL reader works with your animations I would also like to now.
In the next development release of ModelConverterX you will find support for reading animations from FS2004 scenery MDL files. Or at least a first implementation of this feature. It is working for my test object currently, but I need to look for some more test files to be sure if it is robust enough. So if you try this new feature, please let me know how it worked for you.
While working with the FS2004 scenery MDL files I noticed that there is another problem I have to address. These objects often use conditional display, for example for the scenery complexity setting or for their LOD schema. Currently ModelConverterX does not support these commands yet and thereby they are always assumed to be true. In some cases this seems to lead to objects that appear to be empty because the empty LOD gets loaded only. So I need to figure out how to handle those commands that apply a certain condition.
I am sure this is old news to almost everybody already, but still it is too important to not mention it. When I came back from Brussels and opened my mailbox yesterday I read the shocking news that the Avsim website has been hacked and is completely gone for the moment. Here is the official press release:
AVSIM Hacked
Tom Allensworth, CEO and Publisher of AVSIM, today issued the following announcement; “We regret to inform the flight simulation community that on Tuesday, May 12, AVSIM was hacked and effectively destroyed. The method of the hack makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Both servers, that is the library / email and web site / forum servers were attacked. AVSIM is totally offline at this time and we expect to be so for some time to come. We are not able to predict when we will be back online, if we can come back at all. We will post more news as we are able to in the coming days and weeks.
There is a temporarily forum already where you can get the latest news about AVSIM. Hopefully we will see this great website online again soon. I have good memories to their scenery design forum, were we used to have detailed discussions in the days of FS2002 to figure out how the engine worked and how we could optimize our scenery.
Tomorrow I am going to Brussels for my work, as we are attending the ITEC there. This means that during the next days I won’t be behind my computer. Over the weekend I have been working a bit on the FS2004 MDL reader for ModelConverterX, but I am afraid it is still a bit buggy. I had hoped to iron out more bugs by now. Some of the default FS2004 library BGL files will still crash the tool. This is mainly related to reading the transformation and animations from the files. Once I am back I will continue working on this aspect, I feel I am almost there to implement it correctly.
On FSDeveloper we have some video tutorials available for quite some time already, but most of the time they are hidden somewhere in the forums or Wiki. We have changed that now, by embedding a video player in the Wiki. This allows you to view the video tutorial directly inside the Wiki article. Have a look at the different tutorials that are available.
Currently there are not so many availble, but I hope that more video tutorials will be contribute in the future. They can be a very nice way to learn. You might also have noticed that I have put a new video tutorial for ModelConverterX online. It gives an overview of the basics of the tool.
You might have read about the International Flight Simulation Consortium on the internet already, for example at Avsim or Francois Dumas’ blog. I don’t so much to add to what has been said there already, except that I was also present at the meeting and that FSDeveloper is thereby involved in the initiative. Once there is more news to report I’ll certainly do so.
In the last week I did not do so much development on the ModelConverterX tool. The main reason for that was that I was actually using the tool myself. In the NL2000 project we have a collection of hundreds API macros that are positioned through the entire country of the Netherlands. It would be a lot of work to replace all of these objects, which we have build in the 10 years that the team exists, with new GMax made objects in the FSX MDL format. So therefore I have used the ModelConverterX tool to convert them all.
While working on that last week I found (and fixed) a few small bugs in the tool. And I also got some ideas for new features. For example a way to find missing textures or maybe only report the textures used by a library would be useful already. So I’ll put these on the wishlist for the tool.
I have now started working on some other of the features on the wishlist. Improving the FS2004 MDL reader and adding support to read attachpoints from MDL files are now highest on my list.
On July 4th 2009 the Netherlands 2000 Scenery Design Team will be organising a one day GMax course. The aim of this course is to let new developers who might be interested in designing their own scenery as a part of the NL2000 team try for a day, with the guidance of the current team members. There is no obligation to join afterwards, although we would be happy with some extra members to build more objects. So if you are interested, have a look at the NL2000 website for more details. Oh and maybe it is good to mention that the course will be in Dutch, as we are a Dutch scenery team.