Arno Gerretsen : FSDeveloper

FSWeekend 2009

arno — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:08:00 GMT

Time for a little update. This weekend was the annual FSWeekend in the Netherlands again, and I was present there on behalf of NL2000 and FSDeveloper. For NL2000 this was certainly not the first time we were there and it was a lot of fun to meet all those users of our scenery again. There are people you see almost every year at the weekend. For FSDeveloper it was the first time we were (a bit) visible at the event. Due to the more technical nature of the FSDeveloper community there was maybe a little less interest, but hopefully it helped some people to get starting in making some addons themselves.

Another interesting thing at the FSWeekend was that IVAO had organised a seminar about the future of Flight Simulation. At those sessions a panel discussed the consequences of the closure of ACES and what it meant for our hobby. The panel of 5 consisted of Jonckers (IVAO), Kenny Moens (IVAO), Mathijs Kok/Winfried Diekmann (Aerosoft), Francois Dumas (FSAddon and more) and me (NL2000/FSDeveloper). I guess this topic could deserve its own blog post later on, but in short the participants agreed that for the short term the consequences were mainly more stability and more time to develop nice addons. For the longer term the opinion varied more, but it is logical that you look differently at it when you try to make a living on FS addons. The fact that Aerosoft is considering to build their own simulator was also discussed of course and that sounds interesting indeed. I guess we'll see what the future brings, but the FSWeekend also showed that there are still many people enjoy flight simulation as a hobby.

So with the FSWeekend over now, it is time to move on to some other things again. Besides the busy work schedule and the normal family activities, I will try to focus on two things in the coming weeks. The first one is to finish the typical Dutch windmill objects for the NL2000 scenery. Since we got asked many times at the FSWeekend when the next release will be, it guess I should try to give this some priority. Because we can't release a Dutch scenery without such objects, we should keep up the myth that we all live in windmills and wear clogs. Oh and to come back to the question about the NL2000 v4 release (which I answered a dozen times this weekend), it will be released when it is ready and we can't promise a date yet. But we can see the end of the beta testing tunnel by now.

The other activity I want to put some focus on is the new gPoly tool I am planning. The idea has crystallized quite clear in my head by now, so I am looking forward to start the actual coding. I really think that a tool to make the creation of custom ground polygons a lot easier would be helpful to many developers. So hopefully I can report some progress on this soon.

FSDeveloper is open again

arno — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 18:33:00 GMT

We have been monitoring the server since yesterday and things seem to be stable again now. So we have decided to open FSDeveloper again. You can be sure we will keep an even closer look on the server performance during the next days and if you notice anything weird please let us know.

FSDeveloper is down - update

arno — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:17:00 GMT

At this moment the FSDeveloper server is running again,but not stable yet. So we keep the forum deactivated till at least tomorrow. Here is a little background on what happened.

At this moment we do not know exactly why the server failed, but we are suspecting a hardware issue might be part of it. That is also why we keep the forums offline until we are sure the server is working fine.

Since the last few days we did get some errors that the daily backups could not be completed. We were still looking into the source of this problem, but it might be related to what brought the entire site down in the end. The fact that the last backups had failed, also mean that we can not restore the most recent data. So probably all forum posts and wiki edits made after the 20th of October are lost.

We are just as annoyed by all of this, as you will be. We hope that by tomorrow we have more information about the health of the server, so that we can bring FSDeveloper back online as soon as possible.

FSDeveloper is down

arno — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 16:35:00 GMT

At the moment the FSDeveloper site is down. We hope to get it back as soon as we can.

FSDeveloper video tutorials

arno — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 09:54:00 GMT

This week I came across the Procaster application to stream you desktop to the internet and yesterday I used it to do a interactive video tutorial about GMax on the FSDeveloper channel at Livestream. There was a good audience of about a dozen people, especially when you keep in mind I only announced the event 2 days ahead.

I think the general impression was that the video and sound quality are good enough to do online tutorials. And with the build in chat option the people watching could ask me questions during the tutorial. Maybe have a voice chat would make that kind of interaction even easier, but on the other hand it might disturb the tutorial more. So in total I think it was quite successful and I am looking forward to do more such tutorials later on. If you still have suggestions or feedback, please let me know.

Yesterdays tutorial about making a simple object in GMax is now available through the FSDeveloper Wiki as well. I have also made available the GMax and texture files there for reference purposes.

On the Wiki I have also create a page to collect suggestions for new tutorials. I have put some of my ideas on there already, but would be even more interested in hearing which topics you would like to see covered in a video tutorial. So please add your suggestions there and hopefully we can cover that topic later in a video tutorial.

A clear license for the Wiki content

arno — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:00:00 GMT

At the FSDeveloper community we are working on adding a clear license to the Wiki, so that it is clear what people can do with the content that is on there. Therefore we are proposing to use a Creative Commons license, please read all the details of the proposal on the forum.

Up, down, up, down, up...

arno — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:40:00 GMT

Today and yesterday the FSDeveloper website had a little bit of downtime. We are working on solving these issues by optimizing the server. Besides that we have also been working on the backups and some other technical issues. Hopefully so much downtime won't happen again soon, but at least you can be sure we are onto it.

Attachpoints

arno — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:16:00 GMT

Today I have been working a bit more on ModelConverterX. More specific on reading attachpoints for FS2004 scenery MDL files (for FSX files it was working already). While doing so I also took at a look at attached library objects, since their code is relatively similar I was able to add support for that type of attachpoint as well. So now the FS2004 and FSX MDL readers can both read attached effects and library objects. I have also updated the Wiki pages describing the MDL format with the new information I learned.

In the remainder of this week I plan to work on some other open issues for ModelConverterX, including the FSDS FSC format importer and exporter.

Moving status #4

arno — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 20:48:00 GMT

Since a few days FSDeveloper is running on the new server now and this are going well. The new server seems to be faster than the old one for most users. Today we have made two additional changes:

We have updated the style used. On the forum I explain the reasons behind this change.
The download section has a new user interface, it is less fancy but probably more user friendly. Once again the details are on the forum.

With this the moving of the FSDeveloper website is almost down, the only item still on our list is to improve the frontpage a bit, as we currently have a simple static one (which is still in the old theme). We have some nice plans for that already, but I'll keep that a surprise for now...

Moving status #3

arno — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 17:40:00 GMT

We have pointed the DNS to the new server now, so FSDeveloper should become accessible for you soon again. This might take a little while though.

We are still tuning and tweaking the last details, but the community could be reopened already. So we would like to welcome you back in our new home.

Moving status #2

arno — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:44:00 GMT

The moving of FSDeveloper is going well. We have got everything running again and are currently in the process of some final testing and tuning. So hopefully we can get the site live again in a hour or two.

Moving status

arno — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 13:17:00 GMT

Here is a little status update of the moving of the FSDeveloper website. We have moved everytihng to the new server and have upgraded the forum software by now. That all seems to be running fine. The wiki still needs upgrading and after that there will be a final test before the site can go live again. But until now things are going relatively smoothly and we hope to be ready in a few hours.

Offline during moving

arno — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:28:00 GMT

Opposed to what I reported before, the FSDeveloper website will be offline tomorrow during the moving process to the new server. We decided to do this, as it makes the moving easier to perform. Of course we'll try to be online as soon as possible again.

Tomorrow is moving day

arno — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:43:00 GMT

Just to remind you all that tomorrow we will move the FSDeveloper website to a new server. The work will start around 10:00 CET and we hope to finish in a few hours. During this period the old server will be in read only mode, so you will not be able to post.

In case things go wrong and the old site might go offline, I will use this blog to post information. So keep an eye here as well. But hopefully that is not needed and we are up and running soon on the new server.

FSDeveloper on the move

arno — Thu, 28 May 2009 18:39:00 GMT

Soon the FSDeveloper website is going to move to a different hosting company. For more details please check this post on the forums.

Video tutorials

arno — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:29:00 GMT

On FSDeveloper we have some video tutorials available for quite some time already, but most of the time they are hidden somewhere in the forums or Wiki. We have changed that now, by embedding a video player in the Wiki. This allows you to view the video tutorial directly inside the Wiki article. Have a look at the different tutorials that are available.

Currently there are not so many availble, but I hope that more video tutorials will be contribute in the future. They can be a very nice way to learn. You might also have noticed that I have put a new video tutorial for ModelConverterX online. It gives an overview of the basics of the tool.

International Flight Simulation Consortium

arno — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:16:00 GMT

You might have read about the International Flight Simulation Consortium on the internet already, for example at Avsim or Francois Dumas' blog. I don't so much to add to what has been said there already, except that I was also present at the meeting and that FSDeveloper is thereby involved in the initiative. Once there is more news to report I'll certainly do so.

FSDeveloper downtime

arno — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:55:00 GMT

In the last few weeks the FSDeveloper has been down twice for a few hours. This is not something that should happen so frequently, so we are going to investigate where the problem is. During this process I also plan to do an upgrade of the forum software. I will make an announcement when I know when these activities will be performed, as they will result in a little downtime as well.

FSDeveloper not reachable

arno — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 03:34:00 GMT

At the moment the FSDeveloper site seems not reachable. I have asked the webhost to look at this problem, so hopefully the site is up again soon.

EDIT: By now the problem is solved and the site is up and running again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Some Wiki updates

arno — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:18:00 GMT

I have added some additional information to the FSDeveloper Wiki.

Update of the information on the FSX MDL format. This is mainly what I figured out while adding support for animations to ModelConverterX.
Added an article to explain the different DXT compressions that can be used for textures. I would be happy to receive any feedback wether the information is understandable for a normal developer in the way I have written it.
Added an article about the FSX AGN format. It is far from complete at the moment, but hopefully it provides a start for more information on this format to be collected.