• 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.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Fantastic News for MSFS!

G

GaryGB

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Heretic said:
X-Plane supports DDS textures. Even without that weird x-flip that is required for MSFS.
Click to expand...

Indeed, I was pleased to see that recently developers were finally able to begin using *.DDS textures in X-Plane. :)


IIRC, DirectX-9 vertical DXT image 'flip' was used purposely by ACES to optimize run-time graphics performance.

docs.microsoft.com

Coordinate Systems (Direct3D 9) - Win32 apps

Typically 3D graphics applications use two types of Cartesian coordinate systems: left-handed and right-handed.
docs.microsoft.com

docs.microsoft.com

Rasterization Rules (Direct3D 9) - Win32 apps

Often, the points specified for vertices do not precisely match the pixels on the screen. When this happens, Direct3D applies triangle rasterization rules to decide which pixels apply to a given triangle.
docs.microsoft.com

stackoverflow.com

Why does DirectX use a flipped Y axis?

I am saving my driven X/Y coordinates, and then using a function that convert the coordinates to meters, and add 1280 to each point (so it will fit nicely into a 2560x2560 image), and then draw a p...
stackoverflow.com stackoverflow.com


My concern is whether MSFS-2020 glTF use of *.JPG / *.PNG will impose lossy compression of texture color detail.


Also, how is variable transparency achieved by glTF with those (2) above graphic file formats via 8-bit Alpha channels ? :scratchch

As a few questions are otherwise left unexplained by the 'categorical' descriptions of texture file types that glTFv2.x supports in the above linked Khronos glTF documentation, perhaps this info might provide some answers:

PNG 8, 24, 32…what? – PATRICK HANSEN

www.patrickhansen.com

en.wikipedia.org

PNG - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

en.wikipedia.org

JPEG - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

GaryGB
 
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arno

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Hi,

Looking at the glTF specification it seems JPG and PNG are the two formats officially listed. But given that the specification wants to be system independent and should also work in webbrowsers, etc that makes sense, I did also read about extensions for DDS when only running on Windows, so I guess we have to see what we get.

Although I don't fully understand the concern. Also with DDS DXT the compression is not lossless and we can have weird artifacts. So a format like PNG is not really worse as I see it.

As far as MCX is concerned the Assimp library I use seems to support glTF, so I'll try to update to a recent version of that library and have a play around with the format.
 
G

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Many thanks, Arno, for sharing your considerable insights, and for your years of ongoing work enhancing MCX. :)

GaryGB
 
rhumbaflappy

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arno said:
As far as MCX is concerned the Assimp library I use seems to support glTF, so I'll try to update to a recent version of that library and have a play around with the format.
Click to expand...
You might also check if the .glb format is available. It is a binary combination of the .glTF+.bin+textures. Also, I'm sure Dos Equis is using the 2.0 version of glTF.
 
Nagmaal

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Mostly good news, the only downside is it seems gITF does not seem to support PBR Depth Maps either. Disappointing.
 
arno

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Heretic said:
Useful for payware devs, I guess.
Click to expand...
Why would that be useful? The format is described in the specification so anybody can read it.

But I read nowhere that glTF is also the runtime format of the new sim.
 
rhumbaflappy

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As Arno points out, we don't yet know if glTF is the runtime file format. We do know they are using this as the development format. They could have a compiler that makes BGLs and MDLs for all we know. :eek:
(After all, they are promising some backward compatibility).
 
n4gix

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Well Dick, if they finally kick the Tech Alpha out to the testers, we should have an answer to that question! :cool:
 
Heretic

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arno said:
Why would that be useful? The format is described in the specification so anybody can read it.

But I read nowhere that glTF is also the runtime format of the new sim.
Click to expand...

Binarized models require decompilation and therefor a bit more effort before they can be modified and stolen.

For comparison, the OBJ format used by X-Plane is a simple text file, so anybody could write an import module for a modeling tool and merrily do what he/she pleases with it.
 
G

GaryGB

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At this point I am compelled to again point out what a Asobo lead dev stated in the Flightsim.com audio interview:

https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/t...-flight-sim-from-microsoft.445504/post-830403


Sebastian Wloch said:

https://www.flightsim.com/images/fe...icrosoft_Flight_Simulator_Interview_AUDIO.m4a

"Yes, and some more details about… so, basically, today we are not fully dialing into any SDK questions, like what are the file formats etc..

A few details: the idea is just to say that we started with FSX, and we are making every system that was used to mod and customize ...either better, or we are adding options, or we are making it easier; but we are not removing things that people could do.

For example, on the aircraft there was .X Files to customize or to create aircraft, and then there was these binaries, it was absolutely the same type of data ...it was just binaries, so it was harder to author.

So we have removed no data and no option to actually customize data, but we made everything text. So it's easier, but still comfortable with the binaries; so the binary is still open but it's now all possible to customize it in text.

We also exposed more variables, so none of them have been removed, but some of them were not open ...and now they are.

And it's the same for something for example like SimConnect, which I think we use for physical cockpit; we debugged some of the exposed variables, and added a lot.

So the idea is really to take what was happening in the past ...further and forward.

We are opening doors, we are making doors easier to get through, and we are not closing any doors."


GaryGB
 
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arno

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I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Whether the model format is text or binary, nobody wants to edit those files directly (I have hand made complex airport buildings in scasm in the past and would not recommend it to anyone). We need good 3d modelling tools and plugins to work with. And for performance in the sim you probably always need some kind of binary form.

But we'll just see what we get.
 
RED COOL

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how can you hand make a building in .X or SCASM ? i know it is possible but without any visual help is a blind 3D modeling :|
 
arno

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Yep, but that's how we had to do it 20 years ago. Piece of paper, pencil and then writing text for the vertices and texture mapping.
 
DragonflightDesign

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And just to add to that; pre- the first SDK, creating new aircraft panels meant editing directly in hex. Not good days - I was able to read hex files for years afterwards.
 
arno

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Here is a scan of some drawings I made a long time ago of an object. Manually assigning vertices and then hand coding it based on that.

10347090_719328494802149_5365626454948132767_n.jpg
 
rhumbaflappy

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I backwardly engineered CFS2 and FS2002 scenery vectors and made assembly code macros to compile them with MDLC.

Things have changed.
 
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