FSX Not Giving Up Yet

[tgibson]

Edit: I’ve changed my mind, read below.

Well, I've come to the end of my patience, and it didn't quite last until the end.

I have been fighting with Merging isolated and saved slow and blurred props back into the plane, and while I was able to do it once a while ago, now all I get is the dreaded displaced gear, doors, and flaps:

It should look like this, from my successful merge:

For a long time I could Import the plane again and re-Export it and that would fix it, but that's not working now, even if I go back to older MCX versions. I assume that something is breaking the chain between the animated parts and the topmost SceneGraphNode (what some have called the Tick18 node), but looking at the Hierarchy Editor it's not obviously different from one that loads fine.

Since my goal was to try to create a simple and straightforward conversion process that didn't require a lot of fiddling and head scratching, this clearly won't work. I had even written an exhaustive HTML tutorial to help other beginners, but it's not much use now.

Arno, I really appreciate all the effort you have made in improving MCX at my request, and I hope it helps people with their conversions.

If I get a new burst of energy someday (or this problem is solved), perhaps I'll revisit this elusive quest.

Take care,

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

I understand your frustration. I'll try to keep improving the importing. I think the support for visibility conditions we started with earlier this year is the right path. In theory "all" you should have to do is import the plane and replace some of the visibility conditions and animations by the right FSX types. But I know this is far from perfect at the moment.

Your main issue is the props I assume? Can I ask you how you test if things converted well? You just try to fly the plane in FSX? If I know better how to test things (I'm not an aircraft developer you know), I can maybe take it a step further when I have the time.

 

[tgibson]

Hi Arno,

Thanks for the kind words. I know all too well the hours you have spent on this problem, and we all appreciate it. If it wasn't for you, my FS life would be so much poorer.

Sorry about this post - after several days working on this project and bashing my head for hours on things like landing light axes, today when I couldn't create a model that displayed correctly I just snapped. I realized soon after I posted this thread that I shouldn't have, but I decided to walk away from it for a while and left it.

I had even shut down my computer and went to zone out on some TV, and just forgot about it. Much like "sleeping on it", just as I was turning off the TV to head up to sleep I had a sudden thought - I have been isolating the FS9 props, and then converting them to FSX format as I saved them. What if I converted the entire plane to FSX format, and *then* isolated the props? Would this be any better? There is a bit of a problem (two engine nacelles insist on coming along with the isolated props), but after I figured out I could Remove the existing nacelles and use the ones that the Merge provided, that worked out OK.

And guess what? I deleted the 2 nacelles in my converted FSX model, merged the slow props, Exported it, Imported it back, deleted the two nacelles again (which had since separated from the props), merged the blurred props, and exported. I held my breath when FSX loaded the plane - success! Everything was located and animated properly.

Now this was a quick test run, so I didn't take every step required to have a complete aircraft. But this is further than I got this afternoon, which gives me hope I might come up with a reliable way to get the conversion to proceed. And now since I don't have to use RADItor (a side effect of your scaling removal efforts) and the landing light axes are visible by default this makes things that much easier (I hope!).

So I think I'll push forward for a little while longer and see if it works out.

And I would be more than willing to help with anything you need for testing, such as test models, etc. But this sudden breaking of the animations has me stumped; I don't see anything wrong in the Hierarchy Editor, so how could we test what's going on? Best for now to develop techniques that avoid the problem, I guess.

Thanks,

 

[arno]

Hi Tom,

How do you test in FSX? Just load the plane and see if the animations work?

 

[unc1rlm]

Thank you Tom and Arno for your hard work. Would be cool if there was someway to see the animation in p3dv4 or FSX without having to load all the time. I know you can see props in MCX and AI Aircraft Editor but in reality..that is not what you see untill you load the sim and find out that it "ain't right"... Working on a Premier Aircraft Jetstream 31 and a Beech 1900C with messed up props..lol.
Warmest Regards to all,
Bob M.

 

[tgibson]

Hi Arno,

Yes, I view the model in FSX. It’s immediately obvious if the animation chain has been broken. If it hasn’t, MCX is doing a great job with the animations and visibilities so far - they have been perfect.

BTW, that picture I posted above of the displaced animated parts looked very familiar but I couldn’t place it until you mentioned our previous effort with the Visibility Comditions setting - that was what was happening then, it looked almost identical. So what was probably happening was the animation chain was getting broken somehow. So if we can fix this problem that might make that approach viable again.

 

[tgibson]

Hi Bob,

I have come up with a few solutions for problem props, if you want to tell us more about them.

 

[unc1rlm]

Thanks but No, I am not going to bother anyone with my issues..lol… I believe Gavinc and fellow compatriots at AIG have come up with a updated Beech1900C and D for fsx and p3dv4...… I got to research something now about adding Alpha channels..my plane is totally black but I believe I see a prop...lol....Now if I can find a working Jetstream 31..Its got blurred props and Bob May at Premiere is looking at it. Still learning. I haven't tried the flyable m404 yet..... Hope you are well.

https://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=24755.0 Gavinc's plane if interested.

Thanks,
BobM.

 

[Essex]

I'm not sure whether this viable, assuming it is.
Would it be helpful to have a function available to delete all parts with visibility conditions or all parts without visibility conditions?
They could then be worked on separately and merged back when finished.

 

[tgibson]

I haven't needed that in the latest MCX versions, since the visibility conditions can be searched for and set in the Hierarchy Editor. It's worked well so far.

 

[tgibson]

Arno,

I have found that the breaking of the animations might be made worse by the removal of Nodes when CollapseNodes in Options is set to TRUE. I've tried setting that to FALSE and it seems it's less likely to break the animations (it has happened once though - I still cannot merge more than one part without an Export/Import cycle between each part). I can now do things (like merging props) using quicker techniques that used to break the animations. More testing may be required if you are interested.

Hope this helps,

 

[gavinc]

Tom,
Just saw this thread. I have been fighting with the animation chain breaking as well. I have found that the best results (ie least breaking) occur when all the settings of the "ObjectModel settings" "Optimize" options are set to TRUE. There are a number of models I was fighting with for a long time that suddenly compiled fine. I was baffled until I realized that CollapseModelParts had been set to False (to split out props etc) and I had set it back to True for some reason that I forget now.

Not 100% guaranteed, and there are still models that compile fine until you do "something" (no idea what, each model is different - sort of like Tolstoys families) and then there is nothing to do but roll back to the basic conversion and try again.

Don't know if this helps.

Gavin

 

[tgibson]

Thanks. It seems so variable between aircraft and users it's difficult to make a standard rule about these things. I can get the animation chain to break just by changing a setting in the Material Editor!