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Help with MDL8/MDL9 format

ModernMajorGeneral

ModernMajorGeneral

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2
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england
I'm currently designing my own DirectX 8 flight simulation/vehicle sandbox game and want to implement functionality to load planes and scenery from MSFS 2002 and 2004. Unfortunately I'm running into issues with the mdl8 and mdl9 formats. I'm not sure I nailed them - because when I attempt to render them they're always missing bits or having stuff in the wrong place. I'm not sure if this is a flaw in my understanding of the format or my understanding of how to *use* or "render" it. I've attached an image of one of my many failures for the curious. Every "fix" makes one thing look better and 3 or 4 other things look considerably worse.

oneofmanybadexamples.png


Are there any open source programs or thorough documentation on this subject? My attempts at understanding how ModelConverterX does it have not been successful.
 
Last edited:
Hi,

There is no formal documentation of the format. The HTML file that comes with the bglc_9 tool is a good starting point for the different opcodes that are possible and their attributes.

And then it is a matter of processing the mdl file and updating your object state based on each opcode.

And sometimes a bit of trial and error to understand how the FS engine works. That's how I developed ModelConverterX over the years.
 
1773164777929.png


I'm getting there. Once it gets to an acceptable state I'll release my source code (and by extension my MDL8/9 documentation) into the public domain.
 
If you want the documentation can also be put here on the wiki, we have some documentation on the FSX format there already.

And if you encounter weird opcodes just let me know, maybe I have figured them out for ModelConverterX already.
 
MDL8 and MDL9 is almost just a container of BGL codes.
So what I understand he is saying is about the BGL codes.
I've tried to understand but seems still some op code wasn't clear.
Works so so but some makes error so can't finish up too.
 
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