FlyTampa Copenhagen for XPlane

[Jah]

Hi everyone,

I really want to have a good Copenhagen Scenery, and the only real choice is the Flytampa one, but unfortunately its not designed for xplane as we all know...

 

So my mission is to get this one going in Xplane 10 using WED and Overlay Editor, I recently had a converstion with one guy in the german Aersoft forum who did the same job, so I just wanted to ask if anyone here made its own Copenhagen conversion as well? And if so, does anyone show me some Pics of the result?

I'm afraid to pay 30 Euros for an unchangable scenery...?!

 

Thank you!

Cheers
Steffen

[jettojig]

I've got it half done. I'll edit this post shortly to show - just got to take some shots!

[Jah]

Ohhh yes thank you! excited ^^

Edited February 24, 2016 by Jah

[jettojig]

See the attached images. You need to do a fair bit of work but it can look good. LOD editing and deleting black boxes in Overlay Editor particularly. 

[Jah]

Looks perfect, just tell me what LOD means? ^^  the thing with the black boxes is familiar to me...

So you didnt had to change anything concerning the textures?

 

And you bought it initially for FSX not P3D?

Edited February 24, 2016 by Jah

[jettojig]

As I mentioned in a thread on the other forum, "LOD - at least in terms of its use in X-Plane scenery - dictates how far away an object will be rendered from your position. A higher LOD means a higher viewing distance.
In terms of conversions, LOD is set at a very low value sometimes for ground textures, which means they seem to disappear very near to you. To make it so we can see all the ground textures at a scenery while in and around it, we need to set LOD to a suitably high value.
Fortunately, figuring out this is pretty easy, as X-Plane measures LOD distance in feet. Therefore you can easily gauge the value of LOD. For ground textures, I usually set this to around 40-50000 to ensure visibility for a fair few miles from the airport (for long finals etc). "

Editing LOD correctly is one of the most important conversion skills you can have. It makes those vanishing textures stay put.

 

Convert from FSX, as far as I know P3D is less likely to work.

[Jah]

Thanks for this explaination! But one question is still there, how do you change the LOD value? In WED?

 

 

[hadoken]

Here's a crazy idea.

How about we all go over to FlyTampa's forums and start demanding that they support XPX. This freeware / conversion stuff is killing this platform. We use all this stuff and then complain that none of the major developers are supporting XPX. Why would they support a platform where the users aren't willing to pay for their hard work.

Isn't it funny how Aerosoft hasn't announced a new version of LOWW for XPX, but they have for everything else? I guess Aerosoft has decided much like all the other developers that it's just not worth the risk to compete with the various different poor quality freeware version that are already available.

[Jah]

Yes we could go over there and start discussing.... Again. I found several requests at any major scenery fsx/p3d developer forums to get their stuff ready for xplane. The sad thing is - they dont do anything. As you already saw om the aerosoft example. 

 

I cant get a clue out of the affinity to this 32bit OOM platform with bad physics, why is everyone not seeing that these simulators are outdated? 

If your flying online, its incredible how often you hear "my sim crashed I'm out". Since I switched to xplane I havent had any crashes out of the sim. But even this is not stoppung them to try again and again and again and.....

 

 

[hadoken]

Jah,

People know that FSX/P3D is outdated. Our top developers continue to support it because you BUY it. Buy is the keyword here. These people need our money. Sad to say there's no money in XPlane scenery development because of the rampant availability of freeware/converted scenery.

I love FlyTampa, FSDT, FlightBeam, UK2000, Orbx and Aerosoft. I own a large catalog of their scenery, and I will be happy to give them more of my money for an XPX version of scenery that I also own for the 32Bit platform. They could probably even enhance some of their best work more on XPX. This will never happen because unfortunately people in this community push freeware/conversion over paying.

There is a reason why Aerosoft is even doing a new version of LOWW for FS2004, and that's because there's money to be made for that platform. Yes, the users of FS2004 will BUY a new version of LOWW. Not us, we prefer to keep our crappy freeware version. No progress for XPX because our community has a mentality of freeware first. Look around the forums and on YouTube, and see how the XPX community push this garbage.

We will never have continuous quality scenery until we change the attitudes of the XPX community. We must SUPPORT our DEVELOPERS!

 

[Jah]

Hey Hadoken,

 

I can totally sign your post... but how? I would have bought a native xplane copenhagen scenery. But there is no.. only freeware "garbage". - On the other hand I'm really looking forward to the Xplane version of EFHK (if its ever coming out?), and because its annoucened I would'nt buy any FSX scenery and convert it.

If there were a few guys out there (developers like flytampa) who would risk the conversion of their scenery, maybe a bigger crowd would settle over to xplane?

[jettojig]

Hadoken, I don't quite understand your issue with FSX conversions... We don't just get conversions for free, and I'm pretty sure nobody is sharing them with the wider community for free as that's against the law.

I perform conversions not because I'm some kind of cheapskate, but because I want the variety of scenery FSX offers that X-Plane just hasn't got. I pay for every scenery, and often let developers know if there's an easy conversion that would help them into X-Plane. As I've heard back from them, most of the issue isn't in people not paying for X-Plane scenery, it's in the uncertainty of entering a much smaller market in the first place; if 1 in 10 X-Plane users bought a product, the same proportion for FSX would bring orders of magnitude more income since the simulator is just so much bigger, and many know no better. The issue is thus not with our mentality but with the distinctly smaller user base compared with FSX.

[jettojig]

Thanks for this explaination! But one question is still there, how do you change the LOD value? In WED?

 

 

As for this, LOD is an object property stored in the .obj text file. Open the .obj with a text editor (I recommend notepad++) and scroll to the bottom of the file. You will find a line that looks like "ATTR_LOD_draped xxxxxx" for a ground texture (the only files that should ever need LOD editing). The value of xxxxxx is the value I was talking about above, the render distance in feet.

[Jah]

Hey Jiggyb2,

 

thanks a lot! I used half the night to find out where to edit LOD and even went through the .obj in text editor but didnt look at the groundfiles. So everything is going to be changed now. Thank you! Now I just need to get the lights start again, how did you manage this? Did you create new taxiway and runway lights with wed? because mine wont shine at night... mhhhh strange

[jettojig]

You will have to draw new lights in WED. As a general rule a conversion will never have any useful lighting effects.

I'm working on something to help people add those in though, might have to get that done in the next week or so...

[Jah]

Okay. I already tought so, FSX cant handle the HDR lights in Xplane I guess.

And one more thing where did you get your static aircrafts from? I have only a few DHL A310 converted... Or is this some kind of AI Traffic on your gates?

Edited February 25, 2016 by Jah

[jettojig]

Yep, FSX uses effects, which FS2XP can't use so they're the black boxes you see on some conversions. 

My static aircrafts are a personal library of converted FSX AI aircraft I've made static. Most of them I released in collaboration with roymar over at the .org, you can find them as the FAIB library (mostly 737, A320, 747 series) and the TFS library (most Airbus and Boeing widebodies).

Hope that helps!

 

[Jah]

Hey,

this is an addition to the Fruitstand Library I'm using, just wondered where you get those NorShuttle airliners and stuff. I'm downloading the FAIB 2.0 now.. thanks a lot !

Edited February 25, 2016 by Jah

[jettojig]

The full fleet (or most!) of Norwegian is represented in the FAIB library. We have the full range of 737s and A320s there

[Jah]

Yes is saw and its PERFECT! Now every airport is closer to reality Thank you! Super job!

[frankbyte]

Great conversion! But frustratzing for me, since i purchased it, tried to convert. But i failed...The main problem was that the terrain looked more than strange. If i remember it was completely black. And I could not find how to rework it or delete etc. with the Overlay-Editor, although i have converted a lot of sceneries so far...

[jettojig]

Great conversion! But frustratzing for me, since i purchased it, tried to convert. But i failed...The main problem was that the terrain looked more than strange. If i remember it was completely black. And I could not find how to rework it or delete etc. with the Overlay-Editor, although i have converted a lot of sceneries so far...

If you get blackening textures when viewed from low angles, remove the alpha channel in the relevant dds textures.

[Wiebe73]

I get elevation issues. I seem to be underneath the Flytampa textures. It's very hard to convert this scenery. A little help would be nice as it's such a great scenery.