Month: January 2008

Today I did some more work on the ModelConverterX tool again. There were some complex polygons that were not converted into triangles correctly, so I had to improve the triangulation algorithm. I did make such an algorithm a while ago for another tool, but that one was for 2D polygons only. So I had to convert it into 3D to work correctly with 3D objects. This turned out to be a lot of fun in the end. With some nice vector and matrix manipulations  it seems you don’t even need that much code to triangulate a polygon. And it was … Continue reading Triangulation

Two weeks ago I was able to produce a lot of updates for ModelConverterX quickly, since then it has been a little more silent. But that does not mean no progress is being made fortunately. Today I have been able to add some new features again. The most important new feature is that night textures are now read in correctly from the SCASM macros and also applied correctly to the FSX MDL file. So your objects will no longer be dark at night. Another improvement deals with the default scale that might be set in the macro. That scale value … Continue reading ModelConverterX – night textures

For some while already I wanted to learn a bit more about SimConnect and this week I found a good reason to do so. I wanted to try if I could connect FSX to CIGI. CIGI stands for Common Image Generator Interface and this is a common way in professional simulations to talk between the simulation host and the image generators. At work we also make use of CIGI for this. What I wanted to do is try to use FSX as an image generator with our simulation host, so for that I needed to connect FSX to CIGI. This … Continue reading SimConnect and CIGI

What will happen when GMax is no longer there is a favorite topic for discussion on forums for a while already now. One of the alternative modelling programs often mentioned is Blender. Personally I consider that a good alternative as it is open source and seems to have quite a big user base. A little while ago I bought a book about this tool and I am reading that now. When I have read enough I will start making some models in it to see how it works. The interface seems a bit hard to learn (but we heard to … Continue reading Blender

 Which version? That is a question often asked on the [FSDeveloper] forums. And usually it is not the the original question, but the first reply because the thread starter did not mention is he is working with FSX or FS98. As we all know the answer might be different based on the FS version used. So to make things easier you now have to specify your FS version when you start a thread. That way other people will now it right away and can provide you with the correct answer. Read more about this change here.

Complaining about the SDKs has been a favourite thing to do among developers for years. With previous versions of FS we always had to wait for ages to get them and of course it never told us what we wanted to know for our project (how could MS forget to include what I needed to know). I am sure you can all remember those good old time. But that is enough sarcasm for now. With FSX things have improved a lot already, the SDK shipped with the initial release and I think I can say that the quality and usefulness … Continue reading Are they listening?

This week I have been cleaning my computer room a bit and I came across my old flatbed scanner. You know, such a thing that was used before we had digital cameras to get a photo onto the computer as a digital file. I think I bought this one about 10 years ago, when I had loads of photos I wanted to scan so I could use them for my scenery design activities. A few years later I got my first digital camera and from that moment on the scanner has mainly been collecting dust. Now when cleaning the room … Continue reading Good old scanner

This evening I have uploaded a new alpha version of the ModelConverterX tool. It contains all the new stuff I have already blogged about in the last week or two. So if you are interesting in converting some of your old API macros to a FSX MDL file (or maybe an OpenFlight file), give this latest version a try. And let me know if you have any problems or suggestions, so that I can further improve the tool.

I would like to wish all readers of my blog a happy new year and a lot of fun with their Flight Simulator related developments in 2008.