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FSXA FS9 TO FSXA

pinkjr

pinkjr

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us-texas
Hi,

I've searched the threads and have found mixed answers to my question.

Ok, I hav been creating FS9 sceneries for a year and just recently Ive cnonverted one to FSX(A). So far the scenery ahs turned out to be 95% perfectly compatible. Created a new AFCAD with flattening for the gorund scenery, working great with minor bleed throughs (I think the compiling method of ADE solves a lot of this!).

Anyhow, had some general conversion questions:
1. Some FS9 Transparencies are no longer transparent in FSX. What are the MCX paramters I need to adjust? My transparencies have LM for night light effect, if I adjsut the daylight texture first, will the LM copy the same parameters as the daylight so that it works in FSX? (MCX question)
2. If I have an FS9 object that has been tewaked using MDL Tweaker to "rotate to user", will it work in FSX?
3. In FS9 the maximum texture size was 1024x1024 pix. What is the maximum in FSX?
4. Have been using ADE 1.6 to place objects in the FSX scenery. Is there another tool similar to Abacus EZ Library that would allow you to place objects "live"
5. Runway lights, do I still need to use Airport to create runway lighting over photoreal runways? What about Taxiways?

Thank you so much, this looks promising!
 
I'll try to answer a few of them
1- In MCX you can fix that, I think it was just setting "default transaparent" and Mcx will make the work. if I remember well
2-rotate to user don't work in fsx
3-2024 in fsx but you have to tweak the fsx config. file
4. sbuilderx, and the SDK OPT tool, here you can download a tutorial http://www.google.es/url?sa=t&rct=j...=GM7Z-D-V-vzKklxpBl81sA&bvm=bv.78677474,d.d2s
And here the link to the wiki http://www.google.es/url?sa=t&rct=j...=HVFckdcHOhdWPhI8CKYk5A&bvm=bv.78677474,d.d2s
5- over photoreal the airport lights don't work you would have to créate your own lights
I hope someone else extend a Little more the answers
 
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Gracias Tejal!
This is a very good start. 2024pix textures will allow me to create some very nice ground textures, or cut the 1024 work in half. :-)

Saludos España!
 
Tejal, rotate to user seems to work fine in FSX. I'm having trouble with the transparency, but the model does rotate fine.
 
...and the max is actually 4096 rather than 2048.

I'm speculating here but you're going to need FSX material settings to make your transparency work, which means you're going to have to export as FSX models, which will kill the rotate to user tweak. I think... Worth a try though.
 
FSX Users wishing to see the highest MIPs of textures at sizes of 4096 must set a FSX.Cfg file parameter to allow display at full resolution; under the [GRAPHICS] sub-section:

...change:

"TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024
to
TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096

before each load of FSX"

http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?...s-reverting-back-from-4096x4096-to-1024x1024/


https://polypoke.wordpress.com/2011/01/10/fsx-cfg-tweaks/



PS: If you're still developing / enhancing your FS9 packages, you may also wish to review these interesting threads on working with textures in which Jim Robinson has shared some helpful insights:

https://www.google.com/search?q=FS9 Jim Robinson texture MIP&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:eek:fficial&client=firefox-a&channel=nts

Hope this helps ! :)

GaryGB
 
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Thanks guys. My intention was to release my FS9 scenery package for FSX too within the same package (by adding an FSX AFCAD + some modified textures). This is an almost impossibe task, as my taxiway lights and 50+ trees have the rotate to user feature and use transparency textures, so I would have to regenerate them as an FSX model, potentially losing the rotate to user feature and I would have to place each object again for FSX.
I will very likely release the scenery as FS9 with limited FSX interoperability, and work on an FSX only version at a later time.

On the 4096 Max texture load, it is cool as long as everyone is on the same page, but 'Im afraid if I use 4096pix textures and the user has the PC set at default, only the lovely mipmap will show up :(

So, how do you create trees and taxilight objects for FSX if the rotate to user feature is not available? I can get rotate to user to work using the FS9 model in FSX, but only with no light gloom transparency is allowed.

Also noticed that the only texture parameter that seems to change by MCX when "set default transparency" is used is that the Z Channel test is set to greater than 4. That's it. Does it actually work? I've read other posts where it indicates that it should be greater than 128. My fences look fine, but stuff behind them seem to become transparent. In FS9 the solution was to create the texture as a DXT1 with Alpha and it worked great.

Really cool stuff on the FSXA SDK. I'm working on learning Arno's tool to place autogen scenery using GIS Vector maps.

David
 
pinkjr said:
On the 4096 Max texture load, it is cool as long as everyone is on the same page, but 'Im afraid if I use 4096pix textures and the user has the PC set at default, only the lovely mipmap will show up :(David
Click to expand...


Example code for a Visual Basic script is discussed in the first link I posted above (...if you click it and read the thread): ;)

http://aussiex.org/forum/index.php?...s-reverting-back-from-4096x4096-to-1024x1024/



However, if a end user does not use the default FSX physical folder install location, the script source code needs to be edited to correct the end users actual FSX install location 'path'; some prospective users might get lost there.


Perhaps via Registry string variables created automatically when FSX installs, end users might utilize these utilities with 'minimal' edits (if any): :idea:

TML Editor (aka "TMLE")

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/258476-texture-max-load-editor-question/

http://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/18947/fsx-texture-max-load-editor-v12197/


...or:

FSX MyConfig:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/360153-how-to-easily-restoreguard-your-fsx-configuration/

http://home.kpn.nl/nowisgold/fsxmyconfig/


Hope these ideas help ! :)

GaryGB
 
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I would say 4096 textures are overkill for an average hobbyist scenery, where 4096 (and requiring the TML tweak) is useful is in very large commercial sceneries where many, or very large objects that utilize drawcall batching can be textured with a single sheet (material) therefore potentially reducing 16 drawcalls down to just one. If that large scenery required i.e. 100+ 1024px sheets to texture all the objects at a resolution of 10px/ft the drawcall count could potentially be reduced from 100+ down to only 6 or 7 and that could potentially improve performance when you're trying to do everything possible to optimize the scenery. Even then 100 drawcalls isn't an outrageous number and I doubt an end user would really notice much difference.

Incidentally the TML tweak doesn't need to be inserted every time you start FSX, it will remain intact in the .cfg until the user changes settings within the game. Also worth noting that if the user has FSDT sceneries installed the addon manager will maintain the TML=4096 tweak in the .cfg providing it's set to do so. That .vbs script is awesome BTW Gary, thanks for posting that, it has many other potential uses as well.

On the trees, I did some experimenting and indeed it seems rotate to user and fully functional FSX transparency are not possible at the same time. You can have one or the other but not both. Further, if you aspire to make a version of your scenery available for P3D2, rotate to user won't work at all so that needs to be taken into consideration as well. I think the solution there is to open the tree back up in gmax, clone the poly that makes up the tree, rotate it 90° (or maybe clone it twice and rotate each clone 120° for a six-sided tree) and export a new model.

pinkjr said:
Also noticed that the only texture parameter that seems to change by MCX when "set default transparency" is used is that the Z Channel test is set to greater than 4. That's it. Does it actually work? I've read other posts where it indicates that it should be greater than 128. My fences look fine, but stuff behind them seem to become transparent
Click to expand...

While "set default transparent" works fairly well, the alpha test level value is determined by reading the alpha channel on the texture sheet so it's imperative that the finished texture be available to MCX when you apply set default transparent. It should also change destination blend to from "zero" to "InvSrcAlpha", source blend from "one" to "SrcAlpha" and set "Z-write alpha=true". For transparent vegetation objects you need to additionally set "no base material specular=true", "double sided=true", "Assume vertical normals=true", and "no shadow=true". No shadow should be left "false" for P3D2 models BTW.

IMHO there are better settings for transparent vegetation, I suggest stealing the material settings off one of the conifers in FSX\scenery\global\scenery\vegetation.bgl. You can do this by dragging the .bgl into MCX and selecting "veg_tc_Hemlock1_40m" for example, then open the material editor and click the green jigsaw puzzle icon on the upper right. On the resulting material template editor click the down arrow by the "New" button and select VEG_CONIFER1, type a name, i.e. "veg_conifer" and close the material template editor. The material settings are stored as an ".mcxmat" file in the ModelConverterX\templates folder. Now you can open your own tree models in MCX and apply "veg_conifer" in the same manner you would apply "set default transparent". Incidentally the conifer material settings work fairly well on transparent fences too.

Jim
 
The cloning of the model at multiple rotation angles works great for trees, but for taxiway gloom light effects it doesn't look good, unfortunately.
 
You can either use attached "BGL lights" or you can set up some lights with emissive material properties and reverse LODs which get larger and larger the further the user acft gets from them. BGL lights don't work in P3D2 however. There's also the effect option but those tend to be rather dim and hard to see IMHO, might be OK for taxiway lights though. There's a thread here somewhere titled "New way to make light splash" or similar, tons of info there on making lights for FSX/P3D, also search "BGL lights". Not much on the reverse LODs as that's a relatively new approach.
 
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