SceneryDesign.org
It is quite a while ago already that I wrote on this blog about how to use normal maps on your FSX models. Today I finally found the time to put that information into a tutorial on the Wiki. I hope it makes the process of creating a normal map more clear. Or else feel free to enhance the tutorial even more.
And of course, don’t get carried away with applying normal maps. Only use them where really needed, as using them on all your models might not do the performance much good.
Today I got back home after a week of vacation in France. We have been camping in the Alsace and Lorraine region. Although the weather was not perfect all the time, it is always nice to be out for a while. So now I am going to catch up with the email and the forum.
Tent … check, sleepingbag … check, cooking equipment … check, pans … check, ….
As you can see everything is ready to go on vacation now. Only have to put it in the car and then we’ll head in the direction of France to go camping for a week. So no internet for the next week and thus no forum and no emails. So see you in a week and I am sure there will be enough questions waiting for me by then.
Do you remember that [Nick] has been talking for a long time already about a new video tutorial for FSX? One that shows how to make those nice new skin and bone IK animations for your gates? Adrian Woods made a really nice tutorial about that and Nick has got it edited now. From now it is online at the [FSDeveloper] site, see all the details in Nick’s post here. Let’s hope we see more addon scenery from now on which these cool animated gates.
Updating the manual is usually not my favourite part of making tools, so sometimes that seems to lag a bit behind the release of new tool versions. But I just found the time to update the ModelConverterX manual on the Wiki. I have mainly updated the part about the capabilities of the different readers and writers. Still to do is more explanation about the GUI and the different tools available in there, but that will be for the next update.
Today I handed in the key of my old house, so the moving “project” is now really finished. The last days I already had some more time to do some programming on my FS tools again, so as a result of that I have also been able to release a new version of ModelConverterX.
On the forum you can read all the changes in this new version, but the biggest new feature has to be the 3DS export capability. That opens new possibilities again to bring your old objects to life again in FSX. I think the next challenge I am going to tackle is making LOD models with the tool and writing them out as well.
At the beginning of this week a colleague entered my office and told me that I had been mentioned in an article he read. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. It appeared he had been reading the latest issue of PC Pilot and in their article about the realism of scenery for Flight Simulator they had an interview with the developer of the London Heathrow X scenery. When talking about the tools used they mention:
“Besides the 3D modelling programme, you need a lot of other FS-related software for the AI-traffic (AFCAD), tweaked animations (CAT of Arno Gerretsen) etc and some code writing/tweaking”
It it really nice to see my CAT tool being mentioned in such an article and let’s hope some of the tweaks mentioned also come from the [FSDeveloper] Wiki. I started to develop the CAT tool when I got a little bit tired from explaining agian and again to other developers how to make the ASM tweaks to get conditional animations. And by now it seems the tool is widely used by developers who want to get the most out of their animations. Let’s hope the next version of FS will offer this kind of control over the animations out of the box.
Tomorrow and on Friday I will be giving a presentation at the Dutch Microsoft DevDays titled “Flight Simulator
Secrets Exposed: The Microsoft ESP Visual Simulation Platform”. I must admit the titles comes from a presentation by Todd Landstad of the ACES team that I luckily could make use of when preparing. Originally it was planned that somebody from ACES would be giving the presentation, but I am happy to replace them as a local FS MVP.
The presentations will give some background information about ESP and the Flight Simulator history where it comes from. After that I will get into the details (the secrets) that make Flight Simulator (and thus also ESP) such a fascinating product. I will also talk a bit about cases that show how the products can be used for professional (non-entertainment) uses.
So if you happen to be at the DevDays, speak Dutch (sorry it is in Dutch) and want to know more I hope to see you. Below you will find the times of my presentations. I don’t think it is very interesting to attend both though, as I will reuse most of the material, only the focus will be a bit different depending on the audience.
Thursday 22 May: Geek Night 18:15 – 19:15
Friday 23 May: Academic Day: 13:30 – 14:40
Now that everything is settled a bit again in the new house, I finally found some time again to do some programming. So the last evening I tried to continue on the 3DS exporter for ModelConverterX, that I had been working on before the moving. And the good news is that I was able to fix the last remaining bugs in it. So the basic exporter functionality is working now. See the screenshot below for the museum API that I use often to test ModelConverterX, here it has been exported as 3DS and then loaded into GMax.
Currently the exporter only deals with the geometry, so no animations or advanced features like that are written (besides from the fact that ModelConverterX can not even read these features yet, the exporter does also not support them at the moment). An exporter like this opens a whole new world of reuse of your old scenery objects, like API macros.
But there is also one possible problem with it, it does allow people to import and edit work that is not their own. In general developers do not like that, so I think I will have to consider how to release this functionality in such a way it is useful, but restricts people from doing “bad” things with. If anybody has an idea about that, please let me know as well.
From today my internet is working again on the new address. I am still in the process of unpacking and installing things, but it seems things are getting back on track now. I think in a few days I should have enough time again to take a look at the forums and start responding to my email. Until then, back to unpacking boxes…
