SceneryDesign.org
I am a bit late, so you might already have read this somewhere else. Microsoft is organising an ESP Developers Conference in both Orlando and London. For more details check the ESP blog.
The one in London is at the 19th of November and I am tempted to go there myself as well. At the moment I am looking for affordable travelling options. So maybe I will see you there.
One of the problems with the latest release of ModelConverterX is that the preview image can be a bit slow when a big model is loaded. And with a bit slow I mean that it can take a second or so to update while you are rotating around. This is a bit annoying to say the least.
So solving this problem was quite high on my todo list and today I decided to take a look at it. The good news is that the preview works a lot faster now, I just had to optimize the OpenGL code used a bit more. I have now made use of draw lists and vertex arrays and that gave a big boost to the performance. Now even with the most complex default models I could find, rotating around and running the animations goes smooth. So the leason learned for today is that it is very easy to slow your graphics down by just sending unoptimized code to the graphics card. And in the next release you will also be able to enjoy this improvement.
I am back from vacation now for almost a week, but today I finally had the time to get up to date with all the posts on the FSDeveloper forum. This was partly because I had to go to Paris on bussiness trip two days this week and also because there were just to many things to catch up with. For example when I got back there were first some spammer problems on the forum that had to be addressed. Luckily it seems we solved that problem for the moment.
While on vacation I did some thinking about a new tool to make the creation of ground polygons easier. It seems that is still a big issue for many users. So I think I will create a tool that can do the ASM tweaks for you and also automatically split up your polygons in smaller pieces so that the curvation of the earth in FSX does not give trouble. I hope to start working on this tool soon. Another feature I have in mind is allowing to split big airports up into several reference points. This is good for the performance and should also reduce the deformation that sometimes appears when the polygons are too far away from the reference point.
And of course I am also still working on the ModelConverterX tool. I want to continue on the new features for version 1.0 soon as well. When I think about all the things I want to do, I almost need a new vacation right away…
Just to let you all know that I will not be writing on this blog in the next three weeks. The simple reason for that is that I will be on vacation. So see you again in three weeks time.
If you have not heard it already, Phil Taylor is leaving ACES, check out this post at Phil’s own blog.
I wish him luck and a lot of fun in his new job. And a big thanks for all the work he did for FS in the past. Especially the role he played in opening up the ACES team more to the public is something that should be much appreciated. It must have been hard sometimes for him to deal with the community, especially the part that are never satisfied with the product, but in the end it is great that we have more interaction with the team now. So once again a big thanks for your part in that Phil.
At the moment I can’t reach the FSDeveloper site, so it seems down. When I get back home this evening I will investigate further. Sorry for the inconvenience.
EDIT: The site is up again now.
You might already have noticed that last weekend I released a new update for ModelConverterX. It contains just some small, but important bug fixes for the version 0.50 release.
So with those annoying bugs gone, I have started to concentrate on the next version again. The first feature I am working on is expanding the support for levels of detail. In the version 0.50 release I added support to read them from FSX MDL files and to display them in the preview. That is nice of course, but what is more important is being able to export them again. So on this version I want to add that functionality for the FSX MDL and OpenFlight writers.
Another feature I want to add is the automatic creation of the lower level LODs. I have been reading some papers on this subject and I think it should be possible to add such a function to ModelConverterX. I find especially the papers by Michael Garland quite interesting. I will start implementing that kind of logic soon and hopefully the results will be nice. I’ll keep you informated about that.
But besides the LODs there are more features on my todo list and from next week I will also be on vacation for 3 weeks. That means you should not expect another ModelConverterX release soon.
Since we moved with FSDeveloper to the new server we have also had a TeamSpeak server installed there. Sometimes it was running, most of the time it was down, but we never really used it. Until this weekend, finally Nick and I found the time to test the server and see if everything works fine. After a few minor changes we got evetything working, so now it is time to announce that we have this functionality.
Hopefully the users will find it a useful function, I personally think that sometimes a quick chat might be more efficient than dozens of forum posts. Also we are thinking about organizing some special events in the future that can use the TeamSpeak server as a way to communicate. We are thinking about discussion session for a certain topic or just a nice social chat. Or if you have other good suggestions, be sure to let us know.
Just after the release of the new ModelConverterX version, fellow MVP Lefteris reported the first bug to me. That in itself was not so weird, as there have been many bugs reported during the previous testing phases. But the bug that was reported was a bit unusual. It seemed the tool did not run on 64 bit Vista. I guess that was a combination that had not been tried before during the alpha testing. After some testing we were fortunately able to locate the problem and I have produced a fix for it now. The new version, that also works on 64 bit systems, is available from the tread at the forum.
This bug is the first time that I had problems with any of my tools on a 64 bit system. But I guess that was more lucky than whisdom, as I did not really consider what might go wrong on such a system. I guess from now on I will keep that in the back of my mind when working on the different tools. And if 64 bit systems get more common it might be time to have one installed for testing.
This morning I put all the last details together with the next ModelConverterX release. Yesterday I had already finished updating the manual on the Wiki, And now I have packed up the next release and made it available. Check out the announcement on the forum for all details. It’s always a good feeling to have fisnihed another version and hopefully the users will find the improvements useful. Now it is time to think again about new features. I have put myself some new challenges, like finding a way to generate levels of detail or trying to optimize an object for drawcalls. Let’s see how far I can come with these in the future…