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FS2004 Please help with Conditional Animation Tool

E

edphipps

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us-florida
Arno, I'm placing this thread in MCX subforum because the subforum for CAT is long archived. In one of my airport projects I'm trying to animate some of the scenery objects. Because I'm new to this I created a test object in the shape of a house and gave each side a different material color to make the rotation easy to see. The object rotates around the Z axis. The first jpg image is a screen print from FS9. The object on the left is has not been processed through CAT and as it should, using tick18 animation, rotates continuously. The object on the right has been processed through CAT with the animation condition set to NAV 1, frequency of 108.00. In the Cessna the NAV 1 frequency is set to 108.00. No other conditions are active. The object dosn't move. In the second picture I've reloaded the object model file as it was processed through MCX as a FS9 scenery object. In the third picture I've reloaded the object after processing through CAT. In MCX the object not processed by CAT the tick18 animation is present. In MCX the object processed by CAT has no animation present. Can you help me figure out what I am doing wrong? The zip file contains all the relevant model files except the Blender file. Let me know if you would like to have it also.

Ed
 

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Hi,

In the time CAT was made everybody used GMax or FSDS to make models. So it is very likely that if you use another tool (Blender or MCX) to make the asm files, that CAT will not be able to find the right places to insert the modified code.
 
Hi Arno,
Thanks for your reply. In order to help me find the solution let me ask you about the process that MCX uses. When I import the .glb file into MCX and then ask MCX to export as a FS9 scenery model doesn't MCX create a .x file and hand that to modelmaker.exe which creates the model file as well as the .asm files? I'm using the .glb format because it appears to be the only one available exporting from Blender that MCX recognizes the animation. CAT then reads the .asm files adds the selected condition(s), then creates a .x file and hands that to makemodel.exe to create the modified model file? It looks to me as though the only solution is to create the animation in Gmax and export through the FS9 Gamepack which creates a .x file and hands that to makemodel.exe which would create the .asm files that CAT could modify with condition(s). Is that correct?
Thanks for your help.

Ed
 
Hi,

Yes, the process you describe is kind of right. CAT modifies the asm files and does not go through makemdl afterwards.

The structure and names of the asm file are influenced by how things are called in the x file. So since MCX writes the x file different than GMax I suspect that is the reason CAT doesn't work.

If you can export the model from GMax that's worth a try indeed. Else the other option is to manually tweak the asm files, but that's not very easy either.
 
Hi,
Thanks for the information. After looking at the .asm files I admit I don't understand much about assembly file structure. So modifying the .asm file would be difficult for me. There is a snag however using Gmax and the FS9 gamepack. I have been using this PC for about 3 years now running Win 11. I have Gmax running but not the FS9 gamepack. That I had running on my Win 7 computer. I have to hope that the failing disk drive (that's why I switched computers) lasts long enough for me to see how I had Gmax configured to run the FS9 gamepack so that I can duplicate it on the Win 11 machine. Thanks for your help.
Ed
 
Hi,

The FS2004 gamepack is quite easy to install. Just copy the GamePack folder from the SDK to your gamepack folder and start it with the shortcut that is included. It runs fine on my Windows 11 machine (whereas the FSX gamepack is broken on windows 11).
 
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