New Wiki launched

Until now the launch of FsDeveloper has been a great success. Nick and I are very happy with the amount of discussion that is already going on. The site has also attracked a lot of well-known names already. So it looks our idea of creating a place where addon developers can have friendly discussions worked.

But not every part of the new site is finished yet. One of these parts was the Wiki. We have now installed new Wiki software (the one Wikipedia also uses) and all the articles from the old SceneryDesign.org Wiki have been transfered to this new one. Of course this new Wiki is for all addon development related tutorials, not only for scenery ones. So if you have a good aircraft or mission design tutorial, please add it to our Wiki!

 

FsDeveloper.com is live!

After a day of hard working, [Nick] and I have gotten FsDeveloper.com running. So please come over and have a look at this new community site for FS addon developers. We will use the next few days to check if all features are running correctly and to iron out small problems, and after that we will announce this new site more widely.

 

FsDeveloper

The last week [Nick] and I have been quite busy in getting our idea for a bigger community going. For those of you who missed the previous posts where we talked about this, let me start with a short explanation of the idea. The plan is to create a community for FS addon developers, it should be a place where they can discuss their (technical) issues with other developers. So the main focus is that it is for developers only, no normal users blaming you that you modelled that aircraft nose a few milimeters wrong or that your building is not completely correct. There are already enough forums that offer that kind of “services” to developers.

No, we want to create a community that has the same nice atmosphere as the current SceneryDesign.org community. But then not only for scenery designers, but for all addon developers. So it should become a friendly place, where everybody can be free to discuss his problems or ideas with other designers. No matter if you are a freeware or a commercial developers, a newbie or an expert. In the end such a sharing of ideas and experiences is of great benefit to any designer and will improve the available addons for the end users.

One of the reasons to start this community now, is of course because FsX is just around the horizon. And the new possibilities it offers (for example mission development and SimConnect) will certainly generate a lot of discussion. So therefore we think it is a good idea to provide a place for these discussions. And of course the changes in aircraft or scenery design will also generate enough discussions.

Another benefit of having a community of developers, is also that bringing a lot of them together also allows us to provide better feedback to MS. About wishes for future versions, problems with the SDKs, etc. If we can get a structured feedback about that (and we MVPs should be able to help there), we should be able to get even better addons in the future.

Of course not every developer will be interested in reading all parts of such a (big) community. That is why we will also provide portals for the different areas. So if you are only interested in scenery design, you can visit the scenery design portal. There you can find the news that would interest you and get easy access to the scenery design section of the forum. We will do the same for other areas, like aircraft design, missions, etc.

This sunday we will transform the current SceneryDesign.org forum into the new FsDeveloper.com forum. So stay tuned and expect some more news then. 

Do forums grow?

Lately [Nick] has been trying to hijack the SceneryDesign.org forums and today I finally gave in to him. So you can expect some changes to the forum in the near future. And of course Nick has no evil intentions with the forums, so you don't have to be afraid of it.

Now more seriously, as you probably know, we are both MVPs for Flight Simulator. And we would like to encourage discussion about addon development for Flight Simulator. So therefore we want to stimulate a community where addon designers can discuss all their problems. The SceneryDesign.org forums already provide that for scenery designers already, but we would like to expand it. Into aircraft design for example, but also into the new options that FsX will offer. So therefore we are going to transform it into a community for FS developers.

And no, the current users of the forum don't have to be scared for these changes. We keep seperate places to discuss these different subjects. Just stay tuned for more news. 

What is an AFCAD file?

Some time ago I blogged about the confusion that exists about SCASM BGL files and this time I want to discuss a similar naming confusing. It is about AFCAD files. On forums it is very common that you hear people talking about the AFCAD files they have made for their scenery. And I have already seen posts of people who tested the FsX demo and reported that their Fs9 AFCAD files still seemed to work fine.

But wait, I think we are missing something here. AFCAD files are nothing else than BGL files made according to the Fs2004 XML format (BGLComp SDK). As they are made with AFCAD we tend to call them AFCAD files, but with SceneGenX or a bit of handwritten XML code you could create exactly the same BGL file. So please keep that in mind when you see the term AFCAD files next time.

Of course AFCAD is a great tool, as it allows you to edit your scenery very easily. So I can very well understand that this naming confusing has appeared. AFCAD has allowed a lot of people who are not really scenery designers, to still make changes to their local airport.

But there is also a risk in this. Let's assume that you have made a nice XML file for a certain airport and you have handwritten some special commands into it to place a few objects and add an approach. If somebody will now try to load this file in AFCAD it will work just fine, but once they save it some of the commands you have put in there might be lost. This is because AFCAD does not understand those parts of the BGL file and has thus discarded this information. Knowing that Lee Swordy made the tool without proper information about the BGL format, this is something that is very understandable. But it is something we should keep in mind, as users tend to want to edit airports themself in AFCAD, for example for their AI traffic.

Especially with FsX around the corner this is something we should be aware of. How much will the XML format change in FsX? And how does it mix with the Fs2004 style XML files we have made before? That is something we should be very careful about and in those cases we should not forget that AFCAD files are just Fs2004 XML BGL files.
 

A new skin

As you can see I changed the skin that is used at the blog. As the software running this blog has been updated recently, the skin suddenly showed tags, instead of the posting categories. I really did not like how that looked, so that is why I am giving this one a try. I only need to figure out how to replace that silhouette at the top with a slightly more interesting image…

Another LiveMeeting

After the success of the first SceneryDesign.org LiveMeeting, we have now scheduled a second one. Where the first LiveMeeting was a short of online-video-tutorial-demonstration of the MDL Tweaker II tool, this second meeting will go a little more deeply into the techniques of scenery design. The subject will be how you can use XML for your 3D object design. So we will discuss things like how to place a MDL object using XML code or how to make an object library with the XML code. But the meeting will not only consist of boring source code and XML files (although I think it is important that you understand the basics of the underlaying XML format), we will also demonstrate some tools that can make your life easier and create the XML files for you. So if you want to know more about this, check the announcement on the forums!

ObPlacer XML and Rwy12 object libraries

After the release of EZ-Scenery, I have made a few posts on this blog about the object library mania that occured back then. As people tried to convert Rwy12 library into EZ-Scenery libraries, while they are actually almost the same (only the way the information about the library is read into the tool is different). In principle any object library made with the Fs2004 XML scenery format, should work fine with any of the object placement tools made for this XML format.

So, how about ObPlacer XML you might be thinking. That tool uses a different way to read the information about the library. While EZ-Scenery reads the information directly from the binary BGL file, Rwy12 uses its own XML format to store the information about names, GUIDs, etc. And ObPlacer XML reads the BGLComp XML files that you can also use to compile the library BGL. All those different formats can become rather confusing to the new users.

But I have now added a new feature to ObPlacer XML to make the life of the designer a little easier. ObPlacer XML can now also read the Rwy12 XML format, so that means you can now add libraries that have been released for Rwy12 easier to ObPlacer XML as well. So you know have the choice to either load a BGLComp XML file or a Rwy12 XML file to let ObPlacer XML now about the object library.

There are a few things I still need to finish, but I will try to release this new version within the coming days. And yes, I have also fixed the bug about the mixed up texture coordinates in the generic building preview.