• 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:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
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    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

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Greetings for the first time in ages

B

bob5568

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1,484
Hi all, I finally retired, and thought it would be fun to do a little designing. I only have fsx, and that's where I'll start. Before I lost track, I remember you need tools from several versions of p3dsdk, I see both a version 4 and version 3 sdk, so I downloaded them both. It appeared to install fine, but there's an error running configsdk:

<<
Unable to find the Lockheed Martin Prepar3D installation path.
Lockheed Martin Prepar3D must be installed and have been ran at least once.
Press any key to exit...
>>

ok, this made me realize that maybe the sdk install hasn't really been completed yet, and I suspect I'd see no aces menu, that sort of thing. Yet, the downloads don't contain an executable that I can see.

Does this mean I need to actually install the full prepar3d flying program before I can use the sdk?
My final 3ds Max version is 2018, thus my desire to use the latest sdk.

Thanks for any help!
Bob
 
Hi Bob.

If FSX is going to be your platform, then The SDK you'd want is the v1.4 as noted above. I'm not sure how it would work with 3ds Max 2018 however.

The Academic version of P3d v4 is relatively inexpensive. And the newer v4 SDK will work with it. There is a much more expensive developer's version of P3d but you could do your work and testing with the Academic version, and for a release, just pay for a month of the developer's edition to satisfy the critics. Lockheed-Martin doesn't seem to really care what version you have or why you have it. They are satisfying the legalities of their contract with Microsoft.

P3d is the direction most serious simmers are going. 99% of the scenery development is identical to FSX, and usually can be compiled using the FSX SDKs. Aircraft have some differences, but again, you could develop for both platforms without too much difficulty.

I retired earlier this year and I'm actually busier than I was when working. I struggle to get time for fooling around with the sims. o_O
 
I think you’ll find Max 2018 only works with the recent P3D v4 sdk, but if you compile the .X files with the v1.4 XToMDL.exe you’ll get an FSX compatible model. So you’ll need both sdks.
 
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Thanks guys, that refreshes the ol memory banks. So I do have to have a p3d version before I can install the sdk. I wonder, if I'm only compiling the .x file with v1.4 xToMDL.exe, and I can save out a .x file from max, makes me wonder why the v4sdk is needed to create .x files? And why not use the old fsx xToMDL? Sorry for such basic questions.

Dick, congrats on your retirement. I've actually been there for a year, but spent the year immersed in music theory.
 
Hi Bob.

I think you should be able to use the old FSX SDK, if this is for FSX. The v1.4 is used by folks that don't have the older FSX SDK availability... for instance the FSX:SE version available online from Steam. That version of FSX has some coding improvements over the old FSX. The P3D v4.x has a lot of coding improvement over the old FSX.

FSX is getting to be a bit of a dead-end with more people migrating to P3D and it's 64-bit format. X-Plane11 is getting some popularity as well. The current FSX crowd hangs on due to the 'investment' with addons. But if your focus is freeware, then Academic P3Dv4.x makes some sense. Lots of scenery transfers without problems. Some aircraft also transfer if no DLL gauges are needed (XML gauges seem to work fine). You can gather I like the latest incarnation of P3D.
 
The only sdk which explicitly states it supports Max 2018 is the v4. If you find an earlier sdk also supports 2018 then please let us know. However a v4 MDL file won’t run in FSX. For now, the workaround is to export the .X files from Max using the v4 exporter and compile them to .MDL using the v1.4 version of XToMDL.exe. So long as you haven’t used any of the new features of P3D v4 in the model, you should have an FSX compatible MDL.

Sorry to repeat myself, but this is a workflow used by others here, to the extent that models are developed for P3D v4 and exported to v3 and FSX as well by changing the version of XToMDL.exe used.

I don’t think you need P3D itself installed to use the sdk. My old version of Max uses it without P3D. Setting up the sdk to work with Max is little more than configuring Paths once you have the download.
 
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Hi Bob:

Although I do not yet have P3D to test with, I do have multiple numeric versions of P3D SDK installed compatibly along with P3D V1.4x SDK ...and the original MSFS Acceleration SDK installed from DVD.

AFAIK, one does NOT need to own a version of P3D in order to install and use any numeric version of the P3D SDK.

IIRC, it was recently posted here at FSDEV forum that, although running the P3D SDK installer does automatically add some entries to the Windows registry, IIUC, one must in addition, still manually run ConfigSDK.exe to implement full functionality of the 3DS MAX features in the P3D SDK.

Hope this helps. :)

GaryGB
 
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Again, many thanks to you, and so many folks I've known for so long! Thanks GaryGB, for your comment. And Dick, thanks for telling me about the academic version. Now I've finally seen P3D. Pretty cool, while totally familiar at the same time. And now the SDK finds it's paths properly.

Only thing I don't see in the new sim is the dynamic weather, the old Jeppeson data input concept. Not a big deal.
 
Hi Bob,

Good to see you active again here, brings back memories from years ago :). Enjoy the developing again.
 
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