Search results matching tag 'FSX'

Some autogen thoughts

arno — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 05:00:00 GMT

I am going to spend some time on the scenProc tool again the coming weeks. It's time to finish some of the features of that tool and make it even easier to make autogen. But of course there are some challenges left.

One of the main challenges is that most FSX autogen must be rectangular. So for a group of houses as shown above that will work. It is not so hard to define a rectangle for each of them. Some have a small extension, but even if you ignore those the result will look quite good. For the buildings shown below it becomes a little harder already, but you could represent their shape with 3 rectangles that partly overlap. An algorithm can be defined to derive those rectangles.

So, so far it seems quite possible. But now look at the buildings below.These are all very irregular shaped. If you would try to represent these with rectangles you would always get parts sticking out or parts missing. Not really a good approach thus.

You might be thinking, right, that's why we have polygonal autogen buildings in FSX as well. But unfortunately the polygonal autogen buildings must have an internal courtyard. This makes them very hard to use for this kind of shapes. I really wish Microsoft would have made them without the courtyards as well. But it seems that is not possible.

So my challenge is to find out how to classify the building footprints from the vector data. Which footprints can be represented by normal autogen buildings, which ones can be represented by row houses or by polygonal autogen. And which footprints can better not be represented by autogen at all.

For that last category it might be an option to create them as normal MDL scenery object. From the footprint it is possible to create a building directly. And by using drawcall batching it might not even be that hard on the performance. That's something I would like to test as well.

And finally I think I will try to analyze the autogen format of the polygonal buildings a bit more. Maybe, maybe, there is some undocumented bit to remove those courtyards? Let's keep dreaming....

All map images are from OpenStreetMap.

Correcting for the FSX curved earth

arno — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 05:00:00 GMT

One of the main differences between FS2004 and FSX when it comes to rendering the earth, is that FS2004 assumes that the earth is locally flat while rendering the scene, while FSX uses the correct curvature of the earth as well. But this has some consequences for scenery designers. When you make ground polygons they are usually flat in the design tool, but putting them on the curve of the earth will mean that the ends will float in the sky. The ground polygon wizard of ModelConverterX does correct for this problem, by shaping your ground polygons to follow the curve of the earth.

But this problem not only affects ground polygons, also normal buildings or animated vehicles can have this problem. Therefore an experimental function to correct for this problem was in ModelConverterX for a while already. Over the last week this function has been expanded and improved and therefore it now has become a new editor: the Earth Curve Editor. You can load this editor by clicking on the icon with the picture of the round earth.

From this editor you can set the position of your object and choose what you want to correct. Entering the exactly altitude of the ground is very important to get the correct correction.

A problem in FSX noticed before is that attached effects are offset from the geometry, the further you get from the reference point. This is related to the curve of the earth as well. So there are two chooses for a correction:

You correct the geometry to follow the curve. This will also correct the path of the animations and attached platforms. Attached objects, like effects, are not corrected however. Once the geometry has been corrected they line up again.
You only correct attached objects, like effects. This correction will move them to line up with your geometry. But if your geometry is big, it will still float at the end. So in general it is probably better to use option 1 instead of this one.

This new editor is in the latest development release. I hope it proves to be useful and let me know if there is any feedback.

Reading X files

arno — Thu, 17 May 2012 05:00:00 GMT

I have added a new function to ModelConverterX. It can now also read X files. This can be a X file generated by the FS2004 or FSX gamepack, but also a X file generated by another tool that does not contain the FS specific information. The following features will be read from the X file:

Geometry, normals and texture coordinates
Material settings (including FSX specific material settings)
LOD information
Animations

This new functionality is in the latest development release. Let me know if you have any issues with this feature.

Custom shadow model

arno — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:00:00 GMT

A recent question by Don Grovestine on the FSDeveloper forum made me look more at the shadows of FSX models. As everybody knows, turning on the shadows in FSX can have a considerable influence on the performance. But the FSX MDL format also does allow you to specify a custom model that is used to render the shadow. I did some testing today to determine how big the performance difference can be.

I started by making a rather complex object, with almost 6000 triangles. And I placed many instances of it at my favourite test location. The screenshot below shows how the scene looks with shadows. Without shadows I got a framerate of 22. When I turned on the shadows the framerate dropped to 15.

So next I made a simplified version of the model. Instead of 6000 triangles it uses only 250 triangles. And I inserted this model into my MDL as the shadow model. In this case I got 20 frames for the scene, so that is only a minor performance drop, especially compared to the original drop. The screenshot below shows the result. As you can see the shape of the spheres is less smooth in the shadow now.

In my test scene I placed a lot of objects and the object I used was rather complex. I am not sure if the performance benefit would be that big for an airport as well. But at least it shows that using a simplified shadow model can help improve the performance.

To insert the shadow model into the MDL, I used an experimental function in ModelConverterX. I will develop it further to make it useful for general usage and then put it on the development release version. Hopefully it should be available in a few days.

MDL Tweaker

arno — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 06:00:00 GMT

I have just added a new feature to the ModelConverterX development release. It is a MDL Tweaker that you can find in the special tools menu.

Let me first explain how this tweaker differs from loading a MDL into ModelConverterX itself. When you import a MDL into ModelConverterX the object is read and stored in an internal representation. ModelConverterX then works with this internal representation when you make changes. In the end this internal representation is exported again to a MDL file.

The MDL Tweaker works differently, it directly manipulates the binary code of the MDL file, without decoding it to an internal representation first. This means that you can for example make small modifications without loosing animations or other elements that are in the MDL file. But it also means you are more restricted in the kind of manipulations you can make.

So what can this new MDL Tweaker do? At the moment it supports the following tweaks:

Change MDL name
Change MDL GUID
Change radius as stored in the MDL file (this is similar to the function of the RADItor tool I made a while ago)
Change the bounding box values of the MDL
Add a custom shadow model

Below you see a screenshot of the form. After you have made the changes you want, you need to click Save MDL to saves the changes to disk. When you click the Insert custom shadow model button you will get a file selection dialogue where you can select the MDL file that should be used for the shadow model.

I would like to stress that at this moment the tweaker only works for FSX MDL files. I still need to test and adapt it to work with FS2004 MDL files as well. Also at the moment the tool might not be super robust yet, I am still working on that as well.

Ending the rumours?

arno — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

It for sure was an interesting week with the new announcements Microsoft made about Flight. Will it end all the rumours that have been going around for a long time already? Let's see.

The new announcement makes a lot of things more clear. Flight will have an integrated addon market and it is focussed around Hawaii. So those rumours were correct. The fact that it is free is something new. You will get 2 planes and one island of Hawaii for free. If you want more planes or more regions to fly in you can buy them in the market place. The announcements also seem to make clear that it is much more a game than hard core FS users are used to. It seems there are no jet planes included by default for example and the limited region also restrains serious IFR flying it seems.

Is this all bad? Another trend often mentioned is that the average FS users is getting older. Look at events like the FSWeekend in the Netherlands, the audience seems to get more grey hairs every year. So even if Flight seems not to be the "game" for the hard code FS user, it might interest more young people for flight simulation. Some of these might in the end even enlarge the already existing community around FS2004 and FSX.

The integrated market place is also not necessary a bad thing, since it makes it a lot easier for users to find existing addons. It is only a small portion of the people who bought FSX that found the addon communities on the internet. So an integrated market place might even increase sales. But it depends a lot on two things: how open is the platform for addons and what are the conditions of the market place.

For the last one it seems from the current reactions on the internet are that most existing payware addon developers are not happy with the proposed fees for using the Flight market place. And there is no official information at all whether freeware contributions to it will be possible. Although I have seen remarks that the market place would mean the end to freeware as we know it. If that would be the case, I think that would be a very bad move. I think the freeware addon community is the heart of the success of FS. Almost every developer has started in the freeware community, making small contributions to the FS world. So I would go as far as to state that without the freeware community, the payware addon community can not thrive either. So given the information available at the moment, it seems doubtful that the Flight market place will enable the kind of ecosystem of fans and developers that FS2004 and FSX have currently.

The second part is the openness of the platform for addons. I have seen hardly any information on that subject yet. One article mentions there will not be a SDK at all, but that seems hard to believe given the fact that there will be additional content to buy. But even if there would be a public SDK, that does not mean that the platform is also open and flexible enough to let addon developers do their work. For the previous FS versions the default aircraft and scenery were always just OK, but the platform was open enough to allow addon developers to make the great scenery and aircraft that we are all used to now. At this moment it is still unclear Flight can provide such a platform.

So did the announcement stop all rumours? I think not. At least it seems to have started loads of new discussions. Within the existing community Flight does not seem to get a very warm welcome. For me personally, as a (freeware) addon developer, I can say that given the current information it does not sound to me like an interesting platform to make addons and tools for. But who knows Microsoft might surprise us with a superb SDK, a very flexible engine and a market place that also accepts freeware contributions?

And in case I am too optimistic with those thoughts, we always have FSX which is still a great platform. We can still continue to build addons and improve it for years to come. So even if Flight is not our cup of tea, nothing is lost, we still have FSX. And there are also Prepar3D (which has improved the FSX engine) and X-Plane to keep an eye on. I think it will be interesting times ahead for addon developers. With or without Flight...

Follow me

arno — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 06:00:00 GMT

Last week I finished the model of the new railroad bridge near Zwolle for the NL2000 scenery. It was the first bridge model I made with SketchUp and it was an interesting experience. As most modelling tools SketchUp provides a lot of operators and I had not used all of them in my previous objects. One of the tools I have learned to appreciate more with this bridge is the follow me tool. As you can see in the screenshot below the bridge is partly curved and there is also a small side road (of course a bicycle path here in the Netherlands). So how did I make this all?

I started with the main structure of the bridge, that crossed the actual river. I used a photo taken for the side to trace the correct shape of this part of the bridge. Afterwards I extruded it to get the right depth and cloned it to get the other side. Then I drew the railroad between these two structures. Now the follow me tool became useful. Because there is also a big part of the bridge that goes over the floodplains of the river. And these parts where partly curved. Besides that there are slopes for the trains to slowly increase their height above the terrain. For these parts I first drew a (curved) line for the right path and then used the follow me tool to extrude the railroad and the sides of the bridge along that path. To add the side road I also used the follow me tool again. I just drew the contour of it and then "follow me"-ed it along the entire bridge.

At the bottom you can see a screenshot of the finished bridge in the scenery.

It's the scale, stupid

arno — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:00:00 GMT

While working on the next update of the NL2000 scenery, I have learned some interesting things again. For this update I have worked on the road bridges we have in the scenery. These objects have been in the scenery a couple of versions already, but with the road traffic that FSX has added it became quite clear that the cars were not driving over the bridge, but through it. The solution for this was to add a platform to the road surface of the bridge. Adding the platform was easy, that could be done with ModelConverterX in a few seconds. But to my surprise that did not always give the desired result.

For many of the bridges the cars were now flying through the air. How comes? It turned out this was because the bridge had been placed with a scale smaller than 1. The road traffic is using the platforms as they are when the bridge is placed with scale 1. So in this case the platform was too big, hence the cars in the air. These bridges have been placed with the small scale, because they were designed in the time that integer vertices in SCASM made it necessary to use small scales to be able to have detailed objects.

So once I understood that, the solution was quite easy. All I had to do was scale the bridge in ModelConverterX as well, so that it could be placed in the scenery with a scale of one. That means that in the next update of the scenery we will have some nice road traffic using our bridges.

A few days later a related problem occurred. In a certain area all of the autogen trees were suppressed, but there was no big object nearby that could cause this. After some searching we found out that it was once again a bridge with a small scale. Guess what? The autogen was suppressed in the area covered by the bounding box of the object at scale 1, even though we placed it in the scenery with a smaller scale. So once again the solution was to scale the object in ModelConverterX and update the placement to use scale 1.

So what was the lesson of this all? You'd better use scale 1 for all your objects. Not doing so can give some quirky results in FSX.

Small DrawCallMonitor update

arno — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 06:00:00 GMT

I have just made a small update to the DrawCallMonitor tool. The change is that the user interface now has a status bar that will show you some additional information. The two main things are does this object have drawcall batching and does it have working levels of details. These two are related, but with this update you can quickly see how your object will perform. If the levels of details will not work, the text is red, if they will the text is green. Similar for the drawcall batching.

Library Creator XML 3.0 beta available

arno — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 06:00:00 GMT

A first release of the new Library Creator XML 3.0 is now available, you can get it as part of the development releases of my tools. The main changes are in the user interface, I hope the tool is even easier to use. Another reason for the changes is that with the changes I made now it will be easier to add new features in the future. One feature high on my list is being able to import a library from BGL. So that will come in a future update. I made a quick video to illustrate the new version:

(Please visit the site to view this media)