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P3D v4 Possible Issue with Latest MCX Development release

G

ggeccles

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australia
I am currently updating FS9 AI aircraft to FSX ones using MCX and everything has been going fine until I updated to the latest Development Release on Friday. What is happening now is that any aircraft with visibility conditions I compile are having the animations destroyed in the process. If I remove the visibility conditions, the same aircraft compiles ok with all animations working as they should.

When I refer to visibility conditions in this sense I'm referring to those associated with non animated model parts, skins for window lighting and light splashes etc. Visibility conditions for animated parts such as tires, props, attached lighting etc. all seem fine.

I can't be absolutely sure the issue is caused by MCX but it is worth a look as the problem only emerged after I updated to the latest Development release. All aircraft conversions were fine prior to installing this update.

Cheers,
Graham
 
Graham, in the case of destroyed animations. Have you, in any way, modified the animation tags of the FS9 models to conform to the FSX standard? MCX cannot replace deprecated animation tags with more current ones. If you have not done this modification, please provide examples of models that compiled adequately and models that do not compile adequately. Since these are probably not your own FS9 models, you can post links to the originals if sharing violates the authors directives.
FSX does not support visibility conditions. Any FS9 model with visibility conditions will have those stripped upon compilation with the FSX SDK.
ggeccles said:
If I remove the visibility conditions, the same aircraft compiles ok with all animations working as they should.
Click to expand...
Please explain how you are able to compile a model with the FSX SDK, from which you have not removed visibility conditions.
Finally, are you able to test this hypothesis against the previous MCX version, perhaps you have a copy in your download folder archive you could reinstall?
 
I am part of a small team who have been updating FS9 AI aircraft to FSX ones for more than 6 months now. We have so far completed all the freeware HTAI aircraft, many of the TFS models, the OSP ATR's, and quite a few more without any major issues. These updated models have all been released on the AIG forum with appropriate permissions from the original developer.

Part of the update process involves adding a skin to the appropriate sections of the aircraft for the cabin windows and tail logo and light splashes on the fuselage and engines to be lit conditionally. Adding these parts and adding a 'Light_Cabin_vis' or 'General_Light" visibility condition as appropriate has been working fine. On Friday, I updated my MCX to the latest Development Release of MCX and now compiling a model with any of these visibility conditions destroys all the animations.

As a test, I then set each of those visibility conditions back to 'none' and the aircraft compiles fine. Add the visibility condition back, and the animations are broken. I've gone back on aircraft that had been compiled without issue and released earlier, and these now have this issue. It's interesting to note the animations are not broken permanently, just while the visibility conditions are set to anything except 'none'. The turning point seems to be the latest Development release of MCX.

If you visit the AIG forum, you can download any of the many models already updated using this methodology.

Cheers,
Graham
 
I think I may have discounted MCX as the cause of my problems. I uninstalled the latest Development release of MCX and reinstalled the prior one, problem still there. I then uninstalled the FSX SDK and reinstalled it and all was fixed. I am currently adding steerable nose wheels to these FSX updated models and the first one I did after restoring everything to working order broke it again.

I'm now uninstalling and reinstalling everything again but this time I will keep clear of trying to animate any nose wheels for now and see if the problem surfaces again.

It would appear to be coincidental that the problem started after I installed the latest Development release of MCX.

I'll report back here if I find anything.

Cheers,
Graham
 
Terminology may be an impediment to understanding. **EDIT I did some research since posting this which cleared up my own misunderstanding **
ggeccles said:
Part of the update process involves adding a skin to the appropriate sections of the aircraft for the cabin windows and tail logo and light splashes on the fuselage and engines to be lit conditionally. Adding these parts and adding a 'Light_Cabin_vis' or 'General_Light" visibility condition as appropriate has been working fine.
Click to expand...
So to me, this part was really confusing. It looks like you are adding night textures, except you do it through the Hierarchy Viewer, is that correct? An easier way to do this I think, is to use a darkened version of the same texture present for day. In the image below, "Lisannne_Bandana_LM.jpg" has been added to this model as a night texture:

627379Sanstitre.jpg


This is all that is necessary for a model to render night textures in the sim, once it has been compiled with this texture assignment. Bear in mind that these are not separate parts, these are textures that replace other textures that are rendered onto the same model parts.

You didn't provide a lot of back round and I'm not going to go poke around AIG in the hopes of making things I know and believe seem more convincing. I did, however, stumble across this tutorial, presumably by Lazarus Starkwether, that by my interpretation of your described procedure, seems very similar. You may be pleased to discover he has a solution for your nose wheel steering, although you'll probably have to use his custom MDL Def file and if you already have one of your own, you'll want to merge the two. By the way, I am pretty sure the MDL Def file is stored within the SDK, if that is the case and replacing the SDK cured your issue, that file would be suspect.
 
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Hello Graham,

I have myself converted some FS9 aircraft to be used in Prepar3d V4 for my own purpose using the excellent guide found on Alpha India forum (and even before it was released).

Your email rings a bell to me. I am also using the latest MCX version (the developmental one) and I have issues making the AI aircraft lights working properly. I am not sure it has to do with that version but while the landing lights seem to work ok (I now have to double check that too) I cannot make the taxi lights working using the "light_taxi_vis" visibility condition.

Could your problem and mine be coming from the same issue(s) here ? Gavin said on the Alpha India forum that it could have to do with a corrupted modeldef.xml file

Any thoughts ?

Philippe
 
ggeccles said:
I think I may have discounted MCX as the cause of my problems. I uninstalled the latest Development release of MCX and reinstalled the prior one, problem still there. I then uninstalled the FSX SDK and reinstalled it and all was fixed. I am currently adding steerable nose wheels to these FSX updated models and the first one I did after restoring everything to working order broke it again.

I'm now uninstalling and reinstalling everything again but this time I will keep clear of trying to animate any nose wheels for now and see if the problem surfaces again.

It would appear to be coincidental that the problem started after I installed the latest Development release of MCX.

I'll report back here if I find anything.

Cheers,
Graham
Click to expand...

Graham. You are right. There is some isuue with visibility animations on latest versions. I found, as a matter of fact, TWO problems related to visibility animations.
A first one is that if you save a model as a .X file, when you reopen it, the visibility animations on the attach points, all disappear. Though, if you save the same model as .MDL, animations are not lost.
The second one, when I was experimenting a technique to use your AIG conversions with the original textures (no alpha added http://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=25796.msg258852#msg258852), I load your 757 into MCX to modify a texture parameter. After recompile, loaded the model into MCX. Everything looks fine. But when I loaded into the sim, the plane appears as a pile of garbage (good for a "Transformers" movie). After a lot of try and error, I´ve found a solution. Open file, removed the "night skin" visibility condition. Compile. Open that model again. Added the visibility conditions previously removed. Compile. And everything works OK again. So, definitelly there is something wrong in MCX with regard of visibility animations.

Rob
 
What kind of x file are you saving? The FS2004 x format doesn't store the visibility conditions of course.

Where is the night skin condition in the model? That might help to understand what goes on? Did you add it initially yourself, since FS2004 models have no visibility conditions at all.
 
MCX Version 8/28/2017

Saved as P3D v2 object x file:
Visibility conditions applied to:

Attached effect: lost
SceneGraphNode: lost
ModelPart: preserved

Attached effect: preserved
SceneGraphNode: lost
ModelPart: preserved

Note that if I save a .MDL with the option KeepXFile=true, reopening the MDL, keeps the animations, but reopening the X file, AttachedEffects animations are lost. But if I compile the X file thru XtoMDL.exe, the animations are preserved, so, it seems that the problem is the reading procedure, because the X file is capable of generate a correct MDL.
 
Second issue:
Download http://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=25627.0;attach=46725
Extract 757_300_W .It´s an FSX MDL.
Exported untouched to P3D v2.
Loading the MDL into MCX, everything looks OK.
But when the MDL is loaded into P3D, it appears as you see on the photo attached (all simulated surfaces are in the wrong places).
Opening the original MDL again, but now, go to Hierarchy editor, go to the bottom and will find 3 ModelPart with a visibility condition. Remove the visibility condition.
Export to a P3D v2 model. Loading at the simulator, everything is OK. No more parts on the wrong places.
But those 3 surfaces will keep on during day.
So, I reloaded the already converted MDL, added the visibility condition that previously was removed to the three surfaces. Exported again. And everything gets exactly as the original model was.
The strangest part is the fact that the "middle conversion" loads OK on MCX, animations work OK. But on the sim, it get messed.

It seems as the same issue reported by Graham.
 

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I'll try to have a look, but not sure how quick I'll have some time.
 
It seems I have no permission to download the file, so that makes debugging things a bit harder...
 
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