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Experiences with FS2004 aircraft import/export

Using the new build now dated 1/6.

I decided to try converting an FS9 AI aircraft to FSX. I used my AI DC-6B, which is a completely different model from the GMAX flyable version. The highest LOD of the AI model was originally created in FS Flight Shop! It has been moved to GMAX for these latest versions.

When converted, most of the animations do not work. I have tested it as an AI aircraft and it is the same. The gear is never down, the slow and blurred props do not rotate, and many of the visibility conditions are reversed. For example, the airstairs are supposed to disappear when the lights turn on, but they disappear when they turn off. This is except for an animated part that is supposed to slide back as the door opens. The passenger door is even worse, it does not animate and is displaced around the plane.

The right side, with static blurred props, no gear, and the door "opening" displaced to this side of the fuselage (and not animated). The outer part of the door is sticking out under the fuselage. The takeoff flap animation is working, down when the lights are on and up when the lights are off.

mcx_aidc6b_1.jpg


The left side with the lights on. The airstairs should not be visible. The sliding panel is not visible though which is correct.

mcx_aidc6b_2.jpg


The plane with the lights off. The airstairs should be visible. The sliding panel is here, but not animated.

mcx_aidc6b_3.jpg


The model looks fine when imported to MCX, all animations work correctly.
 
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Hi Martin,

Thanks for the detailed testing again. Happy to read that many of the visibility condition related items are solved. I have added all the remaining issues to my todo list now and will check them the coming days. I think some of them might be missing animation mappings in the conversion.
 
Hi Tom,

Could you provide me this model for testing as well, then I can check what is going on.

I'm afraid I don't have a lot of experience with AI aircraft myself, so I will have to rely on you (and Martin) to do most of the in sim testing. Are there specific animations that the AI aircraft support?
 
File sent. I tested exporting the original FS9 model back into FS9. In this case the props and passenger door now animate correctly, but the gear is still not down and the airstair's visibility is backwards except for the moving plate (which now animates correctly).
 
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Hello Arno,

I have converted an AI Ship successfully for FS9.

I have a problem with the moving direction.

The Ship drives backwards :eek:

I mean by that, that it stays on the "TAXI ROUTE", but the ship faces 180 deg in the other direction.

Remember, in FS9 you can let the AI Ships move with the AFCAD Taxiway method.

This is the first time that I have this problem. All other ships which I was able to convert with MCX, drive into the normal/correct direction.

At the beginning I wasnt able to convert the ship with MCX because of the bloody Max Vertices Problem.

I checked that the Ship consits of 8 Sub models. So I started to convert each one of them as FS2004 Aircraft model. Then I used in MCX the MERGE OBEJECT function, and I loaded all 8 converted models into MCX. Then I converted it agin as FS2004 model. But this time as whole model. And it worked!

Luckily non of these submodels had a Max Vertices Problem. Then I took care about the textures.

I should mention that I used MCX 1.5.

Where can I send the file so that you might have a look on it?

Greetings and thanks for your help.
 
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Hi Martin,

I have looked at the wing folding animations of the Yak-38. I see they use the f_canopy animation (just as the canopy) in the FS2004 model. Is the canopy animation also not working for you after conversion then?
 
tgibson said:
File sent. I tested exporting the original FS9 model back into FS9. In this case the props and passenger door now animate correctly, but the gear is still not down and the airstair's visibility is backwards except for the moving plate (which now animates correctly).
Click to expand...
Thanks, I'll have a look what happens here.
 
Venom said:
The Ship drives backwards :eek:
Click to expand...
Did you check that the orientation of the ship model is the same as for the other ships you did? You might just have to rotate the model 180 degrees.
Venom said:
I should mention that I used MCX 1.5.
Click to expand...
That is a really really old version. With all the improvements having been made recently on FS2004 export I would use the development release instead.
 
Hi Tom,
tgibson said:
File sent. I tested exporting the original FS9 model back into FS9. In this case the props and passenger door now animate correctly, but the gear is still not down and the airstair's visibility is backwards except for the moving plate (which now animates correctly).
Click to expand...
Did you try this model with earlier builds or is this the first time you try an AI model?

I checked the visibility condition for the stairs for example and it seems to be read as beacon light is one or velocity not equal zero. Which is indeed exactly the reverse of what you would expect. It might be there is a bug in the reading of these visibility conditions. But it would help to know if you tested it before with a build before I made the changes for Martin.
 
arno said:
Hi Martin,

I have looked at the wing folding animations of the Yak-38. I see they use the f_canopy animation (just as the canopy) in the FS2004 model. Is the canopy animation also not working for you after conversion then?
Click to expand...

Good catch, Arno :)

No, canopy animation is not working as well.
 
Ok, and how would you trigger that animation for testing? I have no clue how to test it. The animation seems to be converted correctly to FSX.
 
How would nav lights trigger the canopy? Or is that some specific logic for AI aircraft?
 
Canopy: The logic behind is that in the timeframe when the aircraft activates before taxi the canopy should open, because that is the time the aircraft is manned. When the beacon lights come on, the canopy’s should close again. Without Nav and beacon lights, canopy should be closed.

The folding wings should unfold when the beacon lights go on and fold again when they go off. Theoretically it would be better to have them triggered by the strobe lights, but that make sometimes for some weird visuals when the aircraft is accelerating on the runway and just then unfold the wings.

Does that make sense to you?


Send from mobile hence short
 
Hi Martin,

Yes, I understand what you say, but that's all in the AI logic. Not in the model itself. Would you have another FSX model where the wing folding is working? Then we can compare the two.
 
Hi Martin,

The example file for the folding wings that you send me has a very different animation. It is a custom animation that uses the light strobe, gear and flap positions to fold the wing. So I am not sure if the canopy animation will work for AI.
 
Hi Arno,

Yes, these animations are specific for AI aircraft. There are only a few animation triggers that work for AI aircraft, the two most common ones used are lights and wheel rotation.

For the lights, they come on when the plane starts to taxi from its parking spot, and turn off when it parks at its destination. So anything like airstairs visibility can use this to be visible only when lights are off.

The wheel rotation comes in during any pushback. The lights are still off, so you need something else to make the stairs disappear, and that is the wheels rolling.

the combination of these two means that the stairs will only be visible when the plane is parked at its parking spot, and never while the plane is operating.

Many other things like flaps lowered for takeoff can be triggered by combinations of landing light, flap, and landing gear triggers. MS didn’t think to add that to AI aircraft. Nosewheel steering can be triggered by the relative speeds of the left and right main wheel rotations.
 
And door (or canopy, the same thing) animation can be triggered by the same things that trigger the airstairs. Open when parked, closed when operating. You can’t use the standard f_canopy trigger, because that opens your own flyable aircraft’s canopy!
 
Hi Martin,

I'll push a new development release at the end of the afternoon. It will include the following changes:
  • Fixed issue with empty LOD in He-177 model that caused the model to be invisible in the highest LOD.
  • Fixed issue with parsing IfInF command that caused invalid visibility conditions, this made the wheels of the Me-262 not appear.
  • Fixed issue when alpha test threshold for materials with only diffuse color, this could influence the issue with the pilot not visible in the Mig-17 (I have not had the time to test this in the sim).
I could not find anything weird in the models that had a dark pilot or wheel. So that is something I need to check in the sim later.

The displaced wheels in the He-112 is caused by the userdefined8 animation that is used. This one is not supported by FSX. So you will have to replace it with another animation or remove it to get a correctly working model in FSX.

For the folding wings and the flaps I think the posts above by Tom already indicate that this will not be a simple conversion. It looks like some AI specific animation will have to be used to make them work.

This new build also has changes to the material editor, hierarchy editor, animation editor and attached object editor. All these editors will only show the details of the active representation and update their information when a different representation is selected. If you find anything not working correctly after this change let me know, I found a few bugs in it already :)
 
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