Month: April 2011

Sometimes a new feature is not that difficult to implement as you first think. For example adding support for platforms was on the ModelConverterX wishlist for a long time already. Yesterday I have started on it and now the new feature is done already. So from tomorrow you will find that the development release can handle platforms as well. This means you can: Read platforms from FS2004 and FSX MDL files Write platforms to FS2004 and FSX MDL files Edit platforms using the Attached Object Editor Preview them in the preview Since I do not have FS2004 installed on my … Continue reading Added platform support

Maybe not the most exciting looking picture. But it shows the feature from the ModelConverterX wishlist that I have started working on. This feature is adding support for platforms. I have started with reading the platforms from FSX MDL files. What you see in the image indicated with the red lines are the triangles of the platform. I am still experimenting what is the best way to represent them in the preview. Also I will need to add support to write them back to the MDL files before this feature is really useful. So if will take a little while … Continue reading Platforms!

About a week ago I already wrote about the new functionality I was working on for the ModelConverterX Ground Polygon Wizard. Now I have finished it and from tomorrow it is available in the development release. Since there is no manual for this tool yet, let me explain how to add night textures or seasonal textures to your ground polygons while converting. Most of the process has not changed. So you still select the file you want to import. The gridview in the middle will then show all materials found in your object. In this view you will see two … Continue reading Seasonal textures in the Ground Polygon Wizard

I have updated the preview in ModelConverterX. It now uses more of the FSX material settings while rendering. More concrete this means that the framebuffer blend and alpha test function options in the material are now displayed in the preview correctly. So you should get a better idea of how your model will look in FSX. I have not tested all combinations, but it should be how FSX will also display them. Some settings really give funny results, I am not sure if there is a useful way to use them yet.

We have decided to close the Microsoft Flight forum we had on FSDeveloper. The reason for this is that we are a developer oriented forum and at the moment there is not much to discuss about development for Microsoft Flight. Therefore most discussing going on in that forum was gossiping, rumours and guessing. This often turned into heated discussions, not in the friendly tone we like to have in the FSDeveloper community. Therefore we have closed the forum now. If you want to gossip about Microsoft Flight there are enough other places on the internet to do so. When there … Continue reading Microsoft Flight forum closed on FSDeveloper

In the last few days I have been working on the last missing feature of the Ground Polygon Wizard of ModelConverterX, the option to add night and seasonal textures from the wizard. This work is not completely done yet, but the part that generates the actual code is done. I just need to finish the graphical user interface and do some more testing. So hopefully I can release this feature in a couple of days. On the right is a small preview of how the user interface will probably look. For each material you can specify with a checkbox if … Continue reading Ground Polygon Wizard: night and seasons

It seems that we have a few issues at the FSDeveloper website with sending emails. We are investigating these issues now. So if you tried to register a new account and don’t get an email confirmation this can be the cause. If you have trouble with this, please contact us and we’ll try to help you.

A little while ago a user reported problems with the Ground Polygon Wizard. When slicing the polygons, some polygons were missing. I have now debugged and fixed this issue. From tomorrow the improvements are available in the development release. So if you are using the Ground Polygon Wizard please update to this version, the previous version can deform or loose some of your polygons.

Since 2006 I was lucky to get an email every April 1st telling me that I had been awarded a MVP award for that year. But this year I have not been so lucky, I got a message my award has not been continued. So thanks to Microsoft of the opportunity of being an MVP for those years. Of course this won’t influence my FS activities at all. I will still continue doing what I enjoy doing, making tools for scenery designers, trying to find the limits of FS and running the FSDeveloper community.