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MSFS20 Blender2MSFS support thread

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This is a great add on for blender however, is it possible to get it to work in blender 2.79? I cannot stand the new blender (2.8+) so I will stay on the old style blender.

I understand it relies on the Khronos glTF2.0 exporter but I'm pretty sure this can be added onto 2.79?

If this isn't possible then no problem!
 
Blender 2.79 can not do the node based PBR textures required by MSFS, so I suppose it is not possible. The 2.8+ has so many really useful advantages over 2.79 so it really is worth learning it...
 
Hi guys,
As some of you already saw, I updated the toolkit to v.0.36.0. The update will resolve the issue with the day/night cycle, which should be working fine now. For those of you who dig a bit deeper into the glTF: I added an attribute "enabled" to the day/night cycle extension so that it's not empty. Turns out that the Khronos exporter doesn't like empty extensions and just skips them. We tested the new method and it works perfectly, so it looks like MSFS is fine with added attributes.
The second big change is the addition of lights. You can now plop a light directly into your Blender scene and it'll export into the glTF. I added a section to the wiki in regards to this, so please check that out.


@matt2469: Nope, 2.79 is not supported. Blender 2.8 brought a lot of fundamental changes to the API. The whole ui is different, and even down to something fundamental as matrix multiplication - everything is different. Heck, this toolkit doesn't even support anything earlier than 2.83, because of some issues wit the Khronos exporter.
All that aside, why on earth would you not want to move on from such outdated software as 2.79?! In a space like this, we should embrace new technology, new things to learn, new procedures and yes: a new UX!
 
Thanks for the lights update!

I tested it and I wonder how I have to set up blender that I have similar results in blender and in MSFS.

Blender rendering:

t42iqjU.png


In MSFS:

AX4jQIJ.png


Also it seems like the blend setting doesn't do too much at all. All four lights have different values and I can't see any difference in the sim.

F3JVID5.png
 
David Hilker said:
Thanks for the lights update!

I tested it and I wonder how I have to set up blender that I have similar results in blender and in MSFS.

Blender rendering:

t42iqjU.png


In MSFS:

AX4jQIJ.png


Also it seems like the blend setting doesn't do too much at all. All four lights have different values and I can't see any difference in the sim.

F3JVID5.png
Click to expand...

have you already tried with 3D Viewer? Already works perfectly for previewing GTLF (normal and MSFS extension) models.
 
Thanks for the update, however none of my animations or visibilty tags are working with 0.36.0. Gone back to 0.32.1 and they work fine.
 
@David Hilker are you sure it's not that you didn't read the wiki? ;)
1598871838685.png


The sim has some limitations to the lights, we can only use the Color, Power and cone angle settings, everything else is omitted. That's not on me - it's the engine that doesn't know more.

@DaveWG I'm not quite sure what you mean? The addon doesn't do anything with animations/visibility yet.
 
Vitus said:
@David Hilker are you sure it's not that you didn't read the wiki? ;)
View attachment 61391

The sim has some limitations to the lights, we can only use the Color, Power and cone angle settings, everything else is omitted. That's not on me - it's the engine that doesn't know more.

@DaveWG I'm not quite sure what you mean? The addon doesn't do anything with animations/visibility yet.
Click to expand...

Yeah I checked it now again and first under Lightning they have "TO DO" but under the 3DS MAX Toolikit is a light section. Not the greatest documentation also...

Ok I can forget about the blend value. But how do you map the Intensity value from Watt to intensity? I just want to set up my blender so that it looks at least similar. In Blender the intensity is somehow a mix between Watt and Size. So maybe I have to always use size = 0.1 or something like that.
 
David, since you didn't mention it, I post the link again:

Blender2MSFS - FSDeveloper Wiki

www.fsdeveloper.com www.fsdeveloper.com

That's the wiki for the Blender2MSFS toolkit ;)
And sorry, I can't give you any recommendations for that, I'm flying blind as well. But it'd be great if you did some experimentations and share your findings.

Dave, I really don't know why that is. The only thing I could think of is if the exporter overwrote your behavior xml file?
 
Vitus said:
David, since you didn't mention it, I post the link again:
Click to expand...

Aaah yes this one I checked of course. But it is still not clear to me, which value you map as the intensity? Do you give the Watt value 1:1 to the exporter so that I have an intensity of 400 Watt = 400 intensity?

Only after that I can go ahead and test a few intensity values as the documentation (SDK) does not give a hint of the scale (is it between 0 and 1 or 0 and 1000)....
 
I think that if you plop a light with it's default values and then adjust the power level, it should track quite nicely. 1:1? I don't know.
You could create a test-rig, consisting of a plane with markers every 10meters or so. Then place spotlights of varying power. Have that render both in Blender and the sim and compare results. The markers will help determine the penetration of the light.

One thing that's funny is that the SDK is also talking about the temperature setting for lights, but it doesn't seem like this value is actually exported to the sim. What's that all about hu? :rolleyes:
 
I know my Python isn't 10/10 but when it comes to having to fix the XML file after export, is there a reason that after the os.path is opened, it can't just be:


xml_string = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>\n'
xml_string = xml_string + '<ModelInfo version="1.1" guid="{' + guid + '}">\n'
xml_string = xml_string + '</ModelInfo>'

Followed by the file write? I changed the .py file and reinstalled the addon in Blender with the new change and exported and object and seems to be no issues. It just seems like it would skip an extra step.
 
I'm not quite sure what problem you're trying to solve with this. Would you care to elaborate?
 
Because of a recent event, I'd like to point out that a Paypal donation of 0.01 Euro doesn't reach me. Paypal is charging fees for all transactions and so from EUR 0.01, exactly EUR 0.00 reach my account.
And I'd like to take the opportunity to express my thanks to every one who contributed to the project so far! Your support is much appreciated!
 
Vitus said:
I'm not quite sure what problem you're trying to solve with this. Would you care to elaborate?
Click to expand...

Following West Africa Virtual Air Traffic Simulation Club guide, he uses the Sample Scenery example XML of the Object as what the XML should look like however the current output is the wrong version. Right now, I'm not sure if there would be a reason to output the ModelInfo version 1.0 model information (but I could be overlooking something). It's not really a problem but just an extra small extra step. By writing the XML to match the one in the Sample Scenery, there wouldn't be a need to go change the ModelInfo version to 1.1.
 
This problem should be resolved with the current v. 0.36.0 of the toolkit. I think I forgot to mention that....
 
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