Arno Gerretsen

Jetlag

Just got home this morning from my trip to Texas, so at the moment I have a slight jetlag. And to make things even better, my suitcase did not appear on the baggage carousel when the flight arrived. Luckily I already got a call from KLM that they found it though, so it should be delivered this afternoon.

On the flight from Dallas to Houston that we made, I had a window seat. And I must say that the view out of the window looked a lot like Flight Simulator (or was it it the other way around). The landscape over there is a lot different from here in Europe and you can see that the default textures work out a lot better for the US.

I guess I will need the rest of this weekend to catch up with my email and all the forums posts I missed. So you will see me appearing on the forums again soon.

Small Library Creator XML update

I have just released a small update of Library Creator XML. This new version has one new feature, the ability to copy the GUID of a selected object to the clipboard, so that you can paste it into some XML code or another tool more easily. Besides that I fixed some problems. For example a crash that happened when you compiled a BGL that FsX still had locked or a GUID reading problem for FsX objects, which caused problems with the API, SBuilder and Rwy12 export functionality.

Always those blurries

A topic that appears very often on the FsDeveloper is the appearance of blurries in FS, usually related to developers adding their new content when it starts to appear. Unfortunately this is not a problem that has a single simple solution to it, but Phil Taylor has now posted some information on his blog that will surely help is in understanding and solving such problems faster.

Replacement jetways

Since last week I have been playing with the new jetway feature of FsX, to see if I can get my own jetway model used in there. I still need to learn a little more about bones, skins and IK animations to get it all working on a proper jetway model, but tonight I learned a very valuable lesson.

If you are trying to use the GUID of a jetway model in the XML Jetway command and the objects do not appear, please make sure that the three IK handles as described in the SDK (IK_MainHandle, IK_SecondaryHandle and IK_WheelsGroundLock) are implemented in your model. If you use the GUID of a model that does not have them, nothing will show at all. So not even a static jetway. Took me a little while to figure that out.

Once I also got the animation working properly (only did some test IK animations until now), you can be sure I will report back again. But I am confident now that it will be possible to replace the default jetway model, with one that looks more like the real jetways on the airport.

 

Some changes ahead

We have been planning this for a while already, but now the implementation is getting close. So I think this is a nice time to talk a little bit about it as well. In an attempt to make the FsDeveloper webiste even more useful we will be making some changes soon. The most important are:

• Better integration of the Wiki and the rest of the webiste
• Improved navigation to find your way around easier (for example to the download section)

Preserve those geo tags

A while ago I wrote about using FwTools to create or manipulate GeoTIFF images for use with the resample tool. One common problem I did not mention right then is that the tags containing this geo information are not understood by every tool. If you for example open the image in a painting program, like PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro, to make some changes to it, the image will be saved back to disk as a normal TIFF file. I have now extended the tutorial on the Wiki with a small section about how to save this geo information and later put it back. That allows you to easily restore it after editing the image in your favorite tool.