Experiences with FS2004 aircraft import/export

[jetpilot1980]

So I did a few quick tests with the new version... The NBAI Tomcats were willing to compile for me this time just fine; however, the NH-90's and An-10 were still problematic and gave red message issues. Test files attached. Thanks,

 

[Venom]

Hello Arno,

sorry that I havent replied earlier.

Regarding the Ship that was going backwards, it is moving into the right direction, now.
Thank you very much for the tip with rotating the model. I had to rotate the model 180 degrees around the Z-axis.


If you dont mind, I would like to ask another short question, which I have with transparent textures.
These dont seem to appear correctly after conversion with MCX.
I am sure that for you guys it is something very easy to solve. I havent found the reason that causes the problem.

I have made some screenshots to display what I mean:

After the model conversion for FS9, the textures look like these screenshots: Screenshot #1 to Screenshot #3:

Screenshot #1

Screenshot #2

Screenshot #3





Here you can see that I have opened the Material Editor. On the left you can see all the textures.

Screenshot #4



Here you can see that I have selected all the textures by pressing the ALL button.
The textures are grey now.

Screenshot #5




Then I have opened the list where you can read: Add Night Texture.
On the list I was looking for: Set Deafult Transparent.

Screenshot #6




Here you can see that I have selected: Set Default Transparent on the list.

Screenshot #7




Here you can see that I moved the Mouse Cursor to the button that shows Apply, right of the list where you read Set Default Transparent, now.

Screenshot #8



Here you can see that I have pressed the button that shows Apply. Now look on the Ship textures. All areas that supposed to be transparent, are transparent now.
Compare with Screenshot #4

Screenshot #9



Compare Screenshot #10 with Screenshot #1

Screenshot #10



Compare Screenshot #11 with Screenshot #2

Screenshot #11



Compare Screenshot #12 with Screenshot #3

Screenshot #12




Compare Screenshot #13 with Screenshot #3, again.

Screenshot #13



After that, I have saved the model as Aircraft MDL for FS2004.

Screenshot #14



Here you can see that Make MDL is working

Screenshot #15



Here you can see that Night Textures are availible, too and the Transparent look normal on the Night textures.

Screenshot #16



Finally, after I have set the AI Flightplan, the AI Ship moves, but the Transparent Areas wich you could see on MCX, are gone.


Screenshot #17




I have noticed this problem on many ships which have transparent areas. When I click on Apply, like on Screenshot #9, everything seems to be normal.
But when the AI Ship is loaded in the sim, the same problem occurs like on Screenshot #17.

Sometimes, I have noticed similar problems also on objetcs/buildings which I have converted in MCX.

So I hope to learn from you guys the magic trick, that solves this problem.


Thank you very much!

P.S. Effects like Wake, Smoke are not attached, yet.

 

[gapeters]

Thanks for taking the time to show this!. I have been slowly working on some AI planes and have been trying to figure out the exact process to get the night lighting to work properly. Will try this next time I am in conversion mode.

Greg

 

[Venom]

For me AI like UTT A350, 787-10, AIG A330 neo are important to have in FS9.

I dont need VC for AI model.

Hope that you guys make that work.

 

[tgibson]

Hi,

I would load the FS9 model back into MCX and check each texture supposed to include transparency in the material editor. If any of them have a specular texture listed, then that texture will be tagged as reflective instead. Remove that specular texture name from the slot, click on the scroll bar to enter the change, and use Set Default Transparent again. Then export again. Any change?

 

[gapeters]

Thanks Tom. Will play around with those settings..

And @Venom... Those three are already converted and flying in FS9, but the newer version MCX is already better and fixing animation issues that were present from early versions. Arno is getting there but the first main focus was UI planes so there is an growing list of bugs for Arno to dig through and alot of AI planes have some quirky animations/visibility conditons that will need to be looked at still.

Greg

 

[Venom]

@gapeters

Where can I get the models for testing?

Are there any issues still or is everything working fine?

 

[tgibson]

There are still issues. Which models?

 

[Venom]

All which I have mentioned.
I will wait if there are too many issues.

 

[gapeters]

AIG (Alpha India Group) has the UTT A350-900/1000, AIG A330-800/900 NEO's and the UTT B787-10 all hosted there in the forum/database. I have converted ones in my sim for testing but thats it right now. I would wait just a bit longer for a few more of the issues to get resolved unless you impatient like me .

Greg

 

[arno]

Finally, after I have set the AI Flightplan, the AI Ship moves, but the Transparent Areas wich you could see on MCX, are gone.

Like Tom said, what is the format of the textures that you use in the simulator? If MCX does set the material correctly and show the transparency I think the data should be there in the texture.

P.S. Effects like Wake, Smoke are not attached, yet.

As far as I know FS2004 aircraft MDL files can't have a smoke attachpoint, if I tried to export them MakeMDL always gives an error. I think you need to add those via the aircraft.cfg file.

 

[arno]

Guys, can we please keep this topic about conversion issues with MCX? If you want to discuss which model has been converted already or should be converted please open a new topic.

 

[Venom]

Hello Arno.

Format is 32 Bit bmp 1024x1024 or smaller sizes, as required. I have converted the textures which were DDS before.

There is only the Transparency problem, at least with this example.

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

I have been looking at the MCX FS9 AI DC-6B modeldef file to look for issues. One thing I found is possibly causing the nose gear doors to not disappear when the gear is fully up. In the GMAX model I used the FS9 visibility tag c_wheelwell, where the object is invisible if the gear is fully retracted. I don't find it in the MakeMDL.parts file so it must be an automatic tag. This tag appears to be missing in the FSX SDK.

MCX appears to have created a custom animation for this:

 <PartInfo>
    <Name>custom_vis_GEAR_ANIMATION_POSITION_0_00_mcx</Name>
    <Visibility>
      <Parameter>
        <Code>GEAR ANIMATION POSITION:0 1 &amp;gt; GEAR ANIMATION POSITION:0 200 &amp;lt; &amp;amp;</Code>
      </Parameter>
    </Visibility>
  </PartInfo>

I don't think the code is quite correct? I think there should be a & sign in front of the second amp at the end of the code line? And I don't know if &gt and &lt will work? They might be OK though. The rest of the file uses > and <.

And the variable should be (A:GEAR ANIMATION POSITION:0, percent) using the Code statement.

And it seems this is visible during gear travel, not when it's completely up? It would make more sense as:

<Code>(A:GEAR ANIMATION POSITION:0, percent) 1 &gt;;</Code>

I believe this could be converted to

<Variable>GEAR ANIMATION POSITION:0</Variable>
<Units>percent</Units>

and it should do the same thing - visible only when the variable is non-zero?

EDIT: I can confirm that the line

<Code>(A:GEAR ANIMATION POSITION:0, percent) 1 &gt;</Code>

Does give the proper visibility, matching the FS9 c_wheelwell tag.

I had another look at the c_wheelwell visibility condition. In the code that MakeMDL has generated the c_gear variable is used. In the modeldef.xml file this has listed GEAR ANIMATION POSITION:0 as variable and keyframe as unit. There is a mismatch in the unit compared to what you use (and the SDK docs also describes percent as unit). And how would I know this is a A: variable when it is not listed?

Edit: I did change the implementation so that a sim visibility condition is made now. That seems to work. I'll add the partial fixes for the AI model export to the new development release. Not all items you reported are fixed yet, but then you can have a look at the progress,

 

[arno]

Format is 32 Bit bmp 1024x1024 or smaller sizes, as required. I have converted the textures which were DDS before.

There is only the Transparency problem, at least with this example.

Without seeing the model it is very hard to say. Would you be able to show the model and its textures to me?

 

[Firebird]

I found a little bit of a weird one this morning when working on another conversion whilst I wait for updates on the issues reported before. I post in this thread as it might be related.

As i indicate this one may/may not be MCX conversion related but I will describe it here and see if Arno/Tom (or anybody else) has any ideas as to where the issue lies.

Firstly the model I was converting is a P3D mdl and I was trial converting to FS9.
Now I have to say that almost without exception everything converted across, which says a lot about MCX even in it's current state. All the animations worked in MCX so the final test was in game.
What I found was that trailing edge flaps did not work at all. Everything else did.

I thought that the issue might be related in the jump from P3D straight to FS9, so I tried with an intermediate step, so P3D->FSX followed by FSX->FS9. This made no difference.

So i took some time and delved into the code. I found that the anim in question was called 'custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04'.
When I looked into that definition in the saved MCX_ModelDef.xml file saved I found this :-

  <Animation name="custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04" guid="3e2bff4b-1f89-4434-a43b-76a2f788b1dc" length="200" type="Sim" typeParam2="custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04" typeParam="AutoPlay" />
  <PartInfo>
    <Name>custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04</Name>
    <AnimLength>200</AnimLength>
    <Animation>
      <Parameter>
        <Code>
        (A:GEAR HANDLE POSITION,bool)
        (A:LIGHT BEACON,bool)
        and
        if{ 100 } els{ 0 }
      </Code>
        <Lag>70</Lag>
      </Parameter>
    </Animation>
  </PartInfo>

When I checked in the saved MCX_MakeMDL.parts.xml file I found this :-

  <part>
    <name>custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04</name>
    <animation>
      <parameter>
        <code>
        (A:GEAR HANDLE POSITION,bool)
        (A:LIGHT BEACON,bool)
        and
        if{ 100 } els{ 0 }
      </code>
        <lag>70</lag>
      </parameter>
    </animation>
  </part>

So it appeared to convert correctly. I then wondered if it was the format of the code.
I then realised that rather than mess around with various formatting attempts A simpler thing was to alter the code.
So after loading the original P3D mdl into MCX I loaded ModelDef.xml Editor.
I altered the code to replace the 'and' with '*' like so :-

  <Animation name="custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04" guid="3e2bff4b-1f89-4434-a43b-76a2f788b1dc" length="200" type="Sim" typeParam2="custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04" typeParam="AutoPlay" />
  <PartInfo>
    <Name>custom_anim_GEAR_HANDLE_POSITION_04</Name>
    <AnimLength>200</AnimLength>
    <Animation>
      <Parameter>
        <Code>
        (A:GEAR HANDLE POSITION,bool)
        (A:LIGHT BEACON,bool)
        *
        if{ 100 } els{ 0 }
      </Code>
        <Lag>70</Lag>
      </Parameter>
    </Animation>
  </PartInfo>

I then compiled straight to FS9 and checked in game. Hey Presto! The flaps work. I had found a work around.

So now the question is what was wrong with the original conversion?
Is it xml incompatibility between the two systems? Is it a line format thing? Is this something that MCX can/should cope with, even if it just flags an incompatibility?

Anybody got any thoughts?

 

[tgibson]

The word “and” often does not work properly in FS9. I replace it with the symbol

&&

, which does the same thing. In this case I guess multiplication would also work, since if either is false (=0) the result will be false, and both must be true (not 0) for the result to be true. But the “and” symbol will yield a more easily read logic.

 

[tgibson]

Arno,

If the gear extension/retraction key frames are 0 to 100, as is typical, then percent and key frame units will yield the same results. I use percent as the more generic case. Using keyframes should be fine.

Almost all FS variables are A: variables, but there are some that are not (like time, etc). So I use the SDK as the reference for that, along with the web. Using the Variable statement in a Sim section avoids this issue, as long as further code additions are not needed.

 

[arno]

The word “and” often does not work properly in FS9. I replace it with the symbol

&&

, which does the same thing. In this case I guess multiplication would also work, since if either is false (=0) the result will be false, and both must be true (not 0) for the result to be true. But the “and” symbol will yield a more easily read logic.

I guess the P3D model had the and already, but I can let MCX replace it by && if that's better for FS2004.

 

[arno]

Arno,

If the gear extension/retraction key frames are 0 to 100, as is typical, then percent and key frame units will yield the same results. I use percent as the more generic case. Using keyframes should be fine.

Almost all FS variables are A: variables, but there are some that are not (like time, etc). So I use the SDK as the reference for that, along with the web. Using the Variable statement in a Sim section avoids this issue, as long as further code additions are not needed.

The length of that animation is 200 frames in the model. But using the sim seems to work.