• 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.

The tools Microsoft used for FSX Scenery Development

M

Mace

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(Mods if you want to move this post or sticky it, go right ahead. And if you'd like I/you can copy and paste the text directly instead of linking to it)

I, and others, thought this would be useful info for the FSDeveloper community to know about, since I've heard this question asked here before: "What specific tools did Microsoft use to create their scenery?" Some of you may be aware of MScenes, for example, but others may not. For those of you that did not know, this post answered that question:

http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=121&topic_id=382707&mesg_id=383312&page=
 
Good post - thanks for the link.

I can easily see how legal ramblings with contracts, security and copyrights (ownership) of source data can impede the process for the FS development community outside Redmond. Already we have quite a lot it seems.

In my experience, the legal counsel at the software company usually decides with the marketing team what can be released, what licensing looks like, etc... The development team usually ends up on the short end of the stick in this area. I'm not suggesting this is what is going on over there, but I've seen it happen in companies I'm familiar with. I thus suspect the tools available to us not covered by NDAs will take some time, if we ever get them.

This said, some things could probably improved. For example, history shows that once the file format is known, the community can take over and fill the gap. I'm thinking input file formats such as .X, .MDL, .XML, etc... I'm also thinking about the reason why DLL entry points are not documented in the SDK.

The SDK currently covers a lot of information and is by far the most open thus far and we should be thrilled that we have this much "stuff" already.

True, there is still a desire to avoid seemingly unnecessary spelunking we need to do. The grass is always greener next door, and we always want more. But then again, it gives us something to do :)


Etienne
 
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