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export ddts

FS9 doesn't even know what to do with a .dds as far as I know, so no, you don't want to export as .dds for FS9. You do need to make your textures Dx compatible though which PhotoShop, for example, doesn't do by default. They need to be processed through something, DXTBmp will work, or my personal preference is to use Imagetool to convert the PhotoShop .psds directly.

This can be done by making a shortcut to imagetool in your source texture folder with the appropriate switches in the target field of the shortcut (i.e. "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\Terrain SDK\ImageTool.exe" -brief -DXT3 -nobeep -e bmp) Then you just gather up whichever .psds need to be converted and drop them on the shortcut to batch process them all.

Jim
 
JRobinson said:
This can be done by making a shortcut to imagetool in your source texture folder with the appropriate switches in the target field of the shortcut (i.e. "C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X SDK\SDK\Environment Kit\Terrain SDK\ImageTool.exe" -brief -DXT3 -nobeep -e bmp) Then you just gather up whichever .psds need to be converted and drop them on the shortcut to batch process them all.

Jim
Click to expand...

Great stuff, although not really necessary as MCX will convert the textures for you when you convert the model.

Also, if you are using the FS9 ImageTool and your source textures don't have an Alpha channel, you will end up with textures that cause stutters. IMO, better to let MCX handle it.

cheers,
Lane
 
Sorry, I should have mentioned .dds is fsx, dxtbmp is fs9.

Also, the imagetool string works great, I have 4 or 5 variants of the suggested that I have used on occasion, I do think that MCX makes it easier to work with and to keep things simple.
 
Lane Street said:
Also, if you are using the FS9 ImageTool and your source textures don't have an Alpha channel, you will end up with textures that cause stutters. IMO, better to let MCX handle it.
Click to expand...

I don't do much with Sketchup and I have yet to convert a model with jpeg textures that are "not powers of two" except for the one time I did it for the sake of experimentation. I make my own texture sheets for all my models and I'll probably wind up doing the conversion on each sheet a hundred times or more between starting & finishing one. The shortcut trick is much handier in my view than starting MCX each time :) .

Neat trick is to put the above mentioned Imagetool shortcut in your "Send to" folder, then you can gather up your source files from any folder on your system, right click, and "Send to > DXT1_DDS" (or DXT5_DDS depending on whether or not your source has gradients on the alpha channel)

Put another shortcut in your "Send to" folder to your scenery's texture folder while you're at it, then you can gather up the converted textures after running Imagetool on them and "Send to > Texture folder".

The FSX version of Imagetool retains the "no alpha flag glitch" that the FS9 version had as near as I know, the only way around that is to use DXTBmp or include an alpha channel with at least one distinctly colored pixel (i.e. the alpha cannot be all one color). Doesn't seem to be a problem with .dds textures in FSX though. But yeah, if you're using the FS9 version of Imagetool get rid of it, the compression quality has been improved quite a bit in the FSX version.

To my knowledge MCX uses Imagetool to process textures BTW, I think that's why you have to define the Imagetool path in MCX options.

Jim
 
bglcomp.exe

Trying to convert to FS I'm getting failed to locate FS 2004 BGL comp please update the path in the options.This is my path set in options-c:\fs2004 sdk\bglcomp sdk\bglcomp.exe I can not find bglcomp.exe myself.Didnt this come with makemdl_sdk_setup.exe or terrain_sdk_setup.exe or did i forget to download something else?
 
JRobinson said:
To my knowledge MCX uses Imagetool to process textures BTW, I think that's why you have to define the Imagetool path in MCX options.

Jim
Click to expand...

It does, and saves them as DXT1, no Alpha, thereby avoiding the "no alpha flag" bug.

cheers,
Lane
 
What is the best way to find the latitude and longitude of the place in fs where you want to put your model?And is there a way in MCX to raise the model because one test i did it was about 1 foot to low in the ground.I do notice in MCX their are the red level lines and it shows there being a little low too.Thanks for all the help.
 
Instant Scenery II is worth the money for placing objects in the sim, it lets you position the object in-game with the mouse and then solidify it's placement with a click. It compiles a placement.bgl in your scenery folder when you close the sim. You can re-open the .bgl with IS2 to add things at a later time.

Failing that, there's TCalc2004 for FS9 (and TCalcX_003 for FSX) that'll connect to the sim and give you a lat/lon readout as you slew. You can copy & paste the coords into MCX or whatever.

There are "placement aircraft" available, search the freeware libraries for "chplus.zip" and "ch_pnl.zip". The latter is a guage addon for the former that reads out the position of the crosshairs "aircraft". (it's fun to fly and great for making videos as well)

If your working on an airport, ADE can place objects overtop of georeferenced aerial imagery and also connect to the sim showing the aircraft's position on the imagery.

Jim
 
The way I get lat and long of a place is to press Shift Z a few times in the sim, and the lat and long of my plane is displayed on the screen. You can also use AFCAD or similar programs to display your plane's lat and long.

Hope this helps,
 
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