tkyler

Heiko, I just got off the phone with Ben Supnik to discuss airport population. This is the next thing we are going to address; however, BenS still has optimizations to do to improve xplane performance and then he will get with me to add a new feature to WED to help control performance. At that time, I will begin populating some larger airports with generic hangars and towers. As soon as the WED 1.2b comes out, you will be able to take the lego brick pieces and add them to any airport layout. We are discussing ways for users to submit their work when they contribute and determine how to best manage it and have that work available to other users through the xplane updater. I would guess perhaps 2 months for WED 1.2b to be available for now, but this is only a very rough guess. The delay is due to holidays and more important performance issues that must be addressed first. -Tom Kyler

The "normals of the wrong length" message, that is not a deal killer and wont' kill the sim. The other one, about "can't find resource"....that is worth sending off to Javier(the aircraft author) and/or Laminar. Can't verify the openscenery X issue, I don't have it.

as it happens Tom, I'm picking up a joystick shortly and will be doing some programming just for it....so I'll be testing out the commands and will certainly publish the info.

Yes, one of the things I am implementing is dumping that old activation system and adopting the new one. It should be MUCH less hassle I am working on a couple of extra liveries too. I'll be including the ones I posted on the org as standard and the black with gold wavy stripes will be the new default livery.

So XP10 is out and the MU2 is next in my inbox. I'm going to make a run to get this done with a couple of extra improvements than just the cockpit..new normal maps, some cleaned up texture work, etc.....and the price will go up when it does. As said, the update will be free for existing customers. So when will it come out? WELL...I am aiming for "by the end of the year" I'm on it now. If I miss that date, it won't be by much, probably only to do documentation of changes and a few extra liveries. This release will be a V9 version that should work in V10 (pending testing)...then I'll do a V10 variant with a few V10 lighting features.

I am definitely planning on releasing with both V9 and V10 compatibility yes; however, how that gets distributed I am not quite sure. If I wait to get a V10 version of the Moo working before I provide the 1.5 update, that might back up the release date and I don't know if I want to do that because there's a lot of V9 users out there (including me) because the Moo runs pretty well on V9. But really, the only thing the V10 version would have over the V9 version is the new airplane lights...so I don't think users will perceive that much difference between the V9 and V10 versions.

bc, I have a few ideas of tutorials along all of those lines you mentioned. There are details to work out of course, but I hear what you are saying. Simon / Baber. The old V9 lighting tech is still there....that is LIT textures and ATTR_light_level. For V10, "REAL" lights are somewhat "hard coded" into a text file. This is not a file you want to be messing with; however, it does contain (if I'm not mistaken) a totally custom light where you can set up color, brightness, direction, beam width..everything. How you get that light into your work is to either hand edit it into the obj file...OR wait for the 2.49b blender scripts along with the tutorial on how it's used. If you hand edit the file, you'll need to put entries like the one below into your OBJ file. This particular light is the generic yellowish light that is used all over KSEA. So the letters after the name...XYZBTSS represent values you need to provide. This is a naming convention I happen to use...not some standard you'd find in other light types. You'll notice that you need seven of these; however, if you count the number of parameters, you'll see that there are 10. This is because the first 3 numbers are the XYZ coordinate of the light relative to the objects ...and in the example code, this was automatically inserted by Blender. The following seven values I provided and represent: X: X direction vector of the spotlight Y: Y direction vector of the spotlight Z: Z direction vector of the spotlight B: (a bit complex to explain...make it 1.0 and you'll be fine) T: Throw of the light...bigger numbers = longer throw. 100 = big tarmac light.....10 = light over door S: The width of the spotlight beam. 0 = 180 degrees.....1 = 0 degrees. S: The size of the halo.....I think. Finally, you need to have HDR enabled in order to see the lights in sim. LIGHT_PARAM sodium_flood_XYZBTSS 0.0109 12.7033 -0.1128 0.0 -0.707 -0.707 1.0 35 0.5 8

I'm not sure about that Ola. We are wanting to spend December optimizing xplane...after that, I think Ben wants to make WED1.1 final and then immediately release 1.2 beta, which is what I use for V10 work. The blender scripts will be available too but they might need a bit of polishing. and AGP file is a file that "specifices a scene" that is made up of individual objects and/or facades. You can think of it as a group of objects. It is defined by a rectangular polygon tile which acts as a boundary upon which you can place multiple objects and facades. The practical limit of the tile size is about 1 sq km according to Ben Supnik. After that you can get some numerical errors that cause alignment issues. The largest AGP tile I've used is about 200 meters max. This single polygon tile can be textured or it can be invisible and the tile will lay flat on the ground. As of now, you can only assemble an AG tile in blender and it's rather involved in that to use an AG tile, you have to specify objects to place on it and to do that you have to create a library of objects TO place on it and then you have to organize that library of stuff so that it can be "importable" into blender...and all that has to be structured in Blender's outliner system with some very specific conventions. Creation of AGP tiles is a powerful scenery building tool and probably for the more "comfortable" blender user. I expect to do a tutorial on it one day, but it will be pretty advanced.

Sorry for the confusion. "Times like these" as in a new X-Plane version is about to be released and all the ensuing logistics that comes with it, like testing every product in the arsenal for compatibility, making preparations for sales and distribution, etc.

It will be easier in my opinion. You'll have to adjust to the top down view instead of the 3D isometric but it's no real big deal. Once you have a WED file setup with an airport (more on this later), you simply navigate to the art asset you want in with the "asset browser" then insert > save > export...then fly. It's very fast.

Laminar will definitely get the info up on the wiki at some point. We have kept an internal dev wiki and I have a whole host of notes yet to organize into documentation. The new facade file format, in a nutshell works like so. You draw a facade path in WED. Each bezier path is defined by segments between nodes. Each segment has a finite length. What you do as a developer is create 3D linear "lego bricks" of varying lengths and types. For example I may have a wall type of "solid" and a wall type of "windows". Given each wall type, I'll have various lengths. This is just like lego where you had a "1" a "2" a "4" a 8" etc...and you combined those pieces to make your overall piece. So what xplane will do is look at the length of the line segments you drew in WED and it will auto-combine the pieces you have provided it to fill in that segment and try and match the length....any "leftover" dimension causes the individual pieces to be stretched slightly. A consequence of this is that you can now specify what wall type is what. You will select a node in WED and via a pull down menu will tell WED what kind of wall type that is. So one side of a facade building might have windows, another side might be solid...and you might have just one specifc wall type that is a type of building entry...with doors and a covered area with steps. You can attach other objects (we call these "annotated OBJs) to each wall type also. So lets say you create a wall type of "entry door". With this wall type you can annotate a vending machine next to the door, a garbage can, mailbox, some plants and even a overhead security light....whatever you want to attach to it..so that with one single pull-down in WED, you have this little mini-scene that looks like the entry of a building with detail and all. Right now, the tools to support this workflow are all in Blender and we have a very special facade script just for that purpose. There are very rigid guidelines for setting up the blender scene to succesfully export out a facade. Below is a screenshot of a scene set up to export facades so you can see what these pieces look like. Xplane will automatically create the roof and in my opinion, the roof is the "weak spot". To get a natural look, roofs need infrastructure like RTUs (Roof Top Unit Air conditioners)...exhaust fans, vents, drain pipes, ducts, you name it...and getting those onto the top of a facade at the right level is a lot of extra work. I have pinged Ben supnik about this and think that in the future, we can add in a feature where OBJs can be placed on top of facade roofs...it's definitely an area for improvement. After working with Facades for a good while now, I think the best use of them is for creating generic office buildings of a "typical" nature. That is stucco / metal / brick type with common commercial doors and windows. Also, you can create alternate "height variations" in Blender and in WED you can specify the height of the facade and xplane will look at the facades you created and pick the one nearest the height you specified. Xplane will NOT auto-create a multi-story facade. You create the multi-story variations in blender and xplane simply selects what you provide. If you provide only one story, then one is all you'll ever get no matter what height you specify in WED. So that's the gist...I know there's probably more questions than answers, but learning something new always takes one piece at a time.

We won't pretend there isn't problems to be solved. Internally at Laminar, we are FULLY aware that there will be enormous issues that will surface when software hits the shelf and it gets on old, new, slow and fast systems. The best kind of testing is to just jump out there and put it in the field. Recall that this is a demo release...a release candidate for the purpose of pursing problems. There is nothing new here. We put it out for testing (no beta team is big enough to represent the real market) ...we squash bugs, we optimize performance...we call it a "release candidate" all along the way until it can walk in the wild on it's own..then we'll call it final.

For those that don't know me, my name is Tom and I'm the primary developer of default x-plane 10 airport scenery and also the new library of airport "lego bricks" for developers to use. Please use this forum to ask any questions you may have regarding scenery development in x-plane 10....from technical questions to tip and tricks and techniques. I will not be addressing scenery related questions in other forums. I believe x-pilot.com to be the highest quality outlet of x-plane technical information and knowledge and choose to give my support here. Please spread the word if you feel people need to know about this thread. I would request that, in the spirit of maintaining quality content for new scenery developers, we keep our posts related to the pursuit of scenery development issues and minimize casual rhetoric. I would like this thread to be a treasure trove of useful information for aspiring scenery devs. X-Plane 10 has very exciting scenery capabilities and is a wide open canvas for the adventurous spirit. This is a new road and is just getting started. Patience, determination and perseverance is the key, but I think that once a few bugs are worked out of x-plane's scenery tools, you will find that x-plane is, without a doubt, the easiest sim to develop scenery for....and the open communication lines to the developers means that we all work on improving the quality together. If you enjoy scenery creation, welcome to the playground! -Tom Kyler

Each independent process of modeling, UV mapping and ultimately texturing are highly related. The mesh is the foundation of the UV map, and the UV unwrap quality will ultimately lead to "ease" of texturing. We have a common saying in our office where we like to say we're good at "seeing the end from the beginning"...which is a fancy way of saying we have learned from experience and we know that what we will deal with towards the end of the 3D creation process will be dictated by what we do at the beginning of the process. This is something that is difficult to teach, but comes with experience. If you model in SU, unsure of how you'll handle texturing, then you're already tripping out of the gate....as Simon is finding out. IMO, sketchup is not suitable for efficient quality 3D work for xplane. You want to give up efficiency or quality or simply enjoy the model creation process, then by all means use it, it is fun...but if you want good results in xplane fast, then blender is the way to go....at a cost of taking the time to learn it.

You don't lose our products forever Derek. Contact x-aviation with your purchase information and they can probably get you fixed up. Once you buy a product from x-aviation, you will always have access to it....though in times like these it might take an email or two to do it.

Can't say as I got out of the hotel much; however, I do look to be in Germany towards the middle of 2012 for my 20th anniversary while we visit a family friend stationed there. I'm hoping we can get to several parts of the country and it'd be nice to meet some fellow xplaners should the opportunity arise.

Hey Simon..that the result of coplanar polygons, that is two faces on top of one another. The guy in the link below had the same issue. There's a couple of workarounds if you need to render bake where two faces are coplanar yet have different lighting situation on the faces. I usually separate the mesh into separate objects, temporarily delete one (or move it to another non-rendered layer) and then bake just the one part...then I do the same for the other part and finally rejoin the object, combining the two baked textures into the one final texture. As i said, a workaround but the situation isn't that common in my experience.

Not rude at all Graham, no apologies necessary when talking to me.....you have NO idea how much I appreciate and respect people who can talk honestly and plainly. As I mentioned, it's a complex thing to discuss in the forums. Sometimes opportunity presents itself, no matter how small and you just have to take advantage of it. My post is simply to bring attention of an issue to whomever comes across it. It may not be the most effective delivery word wise...but being that I've been doing it for 3 years and will continue to do so, all I can say is sometimes my emotions get the best of my words. It's like advertising...when you have a message to get out, it really is appropriate everywhere. I mean, c'mon...do we really need a big sales banner for the Challenger 300 at the top of EVERY forum topic at the org (seriously...go check it out)? Couldn't they just put it somewhere else? ..and as to the negativity part, I see promoting freedom of information among the community as positive. I don't seek to persuade you of my view Graham, only explain it as per your question. Cheers Tom

This is not an easy question gentlemen. One could easily argue that this is just a flight sim hobby and they would most definitely they would be right....but none the less, the org is a American run company, practicing monopolistic behavior and censorship, acting in the best interests of the owner, not the community which founded it, nurtured it and made it valuable. "What's the big deal?" is one of those questions that people usually ask too late. Imagine you eat healthy to avoid a heart condition...and you go your whole life and never have a heart condition. Now if you never had a heart condition, then why did you eat healthy? You absolutely can't prove it was because you ate healthy because somewhere in the world is a guy who didn't eat healthy and lived to be 99....but none the less, you did what you thought was right to prevent something you didn't want to see. That's why I remind people about the org's practices frequently, to keep it in the forefront. I don't want to wake up 3 years from now and be paying 40.00 for a product that should be 20.00, getting no customer support, no quality assurance, only getting news about products sold at the org and nowhere else just because the org has no competition. I joined the org, contributed to it because it was a community where I gave and people gave back to me and I wanted to be able to know about x-plane related things there. Well it's not like that anymore, you don't get the full x-plane picture there and it's because it was hijacked . People tell me ...you can go to x-pilot or AVSIM and you don't have to go to the org and my response to that is, "you're exactly right....because some of us are making sure you not only have an alternative but that you also KNOW of an alternative. Leaving the org alone is tantamount to letting them run over everybody for their own gain.....not me man! It's a cronies club over there. It's not right for x-plane users who trust the org to keep them informed about x-plane related things....just as the moderators said ...er lied....and I'll continue to say so as long as it's so. -TomK

What forums posts? I went over to x-plane.org....THE place for xplane news (see screenshot below)...and there's no news on the front page or in the news section...just a bunch of news about .org payware. Does the org even know that XP10 is about to come out? I bet if they weren't selling it, they wouldn't even announce it's release.....pfff. One of the biggest releases in x-plane history and "our" own 'org' community isn't even bothering to share any news about it. Why is the staff even there? ...to get free stuff? There is no way you're going to sit back and give me any good reason why there's a link at x-plane.org sending everybody over to AVSIM to get news for x-plane 10....are you kidding me? ... and people wonder why we started x-pilot. The administration behavior at the org is a disgrace!

There are some things though that won't change no matter what.....so focusing on control towers is still viable. If I had to give any temporary recommendations, it'd be to get the UV map in to a rectangular form...with the idea of being able to cut and paste it into a master texture with contributions from other authors. Any polygon that can share the same texture space...DO share texture space and get your UV maps smaller. The new lighting engine in xplane will handle the night lighting and you don't need much in the way of LIT textures...generally just the "inside" of windows. Now in the context of dirt and grunge...this means that sometimes one polygon that is the same as another....say two identical doors except that one door is dirty. In that case, you need two doors in your texture, one clean and one dirty, BUT if both doors can look identical, then only put one door in your texture and make your model such that you can use the same texture space to UV map both doors. It takes a fair amount of practice to see how to construct your model to 1.) be UV friendly and 2.) be friendly to tiling. Here's one of the default textures....2048 x 1024. It makes heavy use of shared UV space and lets the new lighting make it look stellar at night.

Hey Ola, sorry for the slow reply. I've thought about it a lot and there are indeed several challenges coordinating work while trying to maintain a specific standard...there are just too many diverse ways of working amongst artists I think. Therefore, what I have in mind now are video tutorials showing the workflow and process along with some blender templates and PDF references. All the important information will be on Laminars wiki, but I can assure you making sense of it and connecting all the dots is a real chore. Being a volunteer effort, the best we can do, hopefully, is agree on a common goal and work towards that. The integration between modeling, UV and texture is so intertwined that I have no idea just how realistic it is to get some people modeling and others UV and texturing. As I said, I think I'll pour my experience out in videos and see how that flies.

Thanks. As nice as it is, it's still relatively low resolution IMO. I have about 3 1/2 2048x2048 to contain the entire airport library. Imagine what we could do with about 10 of them (providing good planning

well don't do this one....its shipping with xplane 10!

It only has to be organized and exported from Blender Ola. You can model in lightwave, generate a nice compact texture map and export that out as a wavefront, LWO or even xplane obj...whatever gets it into blender with UV/texture intact is fine. There have been occasions where I've received some work from other laminar teams and I basically import the 3D and cut/paste their texture into a master texture...adjust the UVs, set up the required parameters and viola!. So you don't have to use blender at all if you don't want to...but in such a case, you'd be handing your work off to somebody who is to be exported to the library.