• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

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Fantastic News for MSFS!

n4gix

n4gix

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I truly believe that nearly everyone will be jumping for joy at this news!
  1. I've learned that the SDK is planned to be released before the year is out.
  2. The new modeling format for MSFS will be gLTF. glTF™ (GL Transmission Format) is a royalty-free specification for the efficient transmission and loading of 3D scenes and models by applications.
  3. There are free exporters for Max, Maya, Blender and Sketchup among others, but those are the ones everyone seems to use for FS development.
See: https://www.khronos.org/gltf/ for more (tons actually!) information.

‘Project “Polly” was produced to introduce all new features from glTF 2.0: Skinning, morphing and Physically Based materials are used in the demo. ‘Poly’ was developed using Blender and is used to test its glTF 2.0 exporter. The original Blender file will be provided to the glTF community for free!’
Click to expand...

 
I wonder if someone will convert "Polly" to be an avatar in MSFS... :rotfl:

I guess I should add that ASOBO has stated that the current FSX/P3D format will also be supported in "Legacy" mode.
 
The latest “roadmap” that I saw (fselite.com) had SDK updates in Jan 2020. So wouldn’t that mean the SDK is still in development?
 
I’ll add a cautious whoopee to that! The Blender mafia may also note glTF 2.0 support is bundled with v2.80. I presume glTF is then compiled to a binary format for FS2020, otherwise the model is highly pinchable by persons nefarious.
Y’know, Arno has a small challenge ahead if MCX is to keep up with this? (no pressure, Arno...)
 
Well, this is yet another step in the right direction by Microsoft / Asobo! It feels a bit like we're all suddenly in some kind of alternate universe, where everything is going the right way for developers for once. I model with Blender, so this is tremendously good news :)

I wonder, given that the new sim is based on FSX, whether they will have retained all the variable and animation names? This would make sense too, for devs coding animations and conditions etc...
 
glTF has both JSON and binary formats. There is a converter to exchange the two. I don't know if Blender or 3DSMax can read the binary format. The Sketchup exporter is going to be a bit crippled. The better workflow might be to import Sketchup work to Blender, and export as glTF.
 
hairyspin said:
Y’know, Arno has a small challenge ahead if MCX is to keep up with this? (no pressure, Arno...)
Click to expand...

At least this is some information to look at before the SDK is out
 
MS really buried the lead in the last Nov 24 announcement. :oops: This info should get it's own video! Animations, key frames, visibility, vulkan, DirectX etc. Integration with legacy (or not) how does multiplayer work with legacy and NG gITF?
 
While I believe Arno will be able to make more inter-conversions available via the ASSIMP DLL used in MCX. a greater concern IMHO, will be whether MSFS-2020 implementation of glTF allows non-lossy compression formats for textures.

I personally would not want to see any compromise of scenery object or image quality at closer aircraft camera distances.

Worse yet, would be enforced degradation of texture image quality via color compression as seen with X-Plane *.PNGs.

GaryGB
 
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What I read in the post about the SDK is that the SDK will support glTF, but that doesn't have to mean it's also the internal format used by the new sim.
 
Heretic said:
The binary is for mesh and animation data while the JSON serves as a header.
Click to expand...
Yes you're are right. the .gltf is a descriptive header, then there is a .bin with mesh and animation, and then there are the textures, apparently PNG is usual. There is a binary form .glb that does include everything. There is also an embedded format, of which I know nothing.

These files can be viewed with Windows10 3DViewer. Although animation is not supported by 3D Paint, it can allow some editing of files.
 

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