Posts by Fabs79

    Give the users some serious and easy to use tools and we will do the job. One of IPACS biggest failures, in my opinion, is to fully appreciate the power of the user base.

    My thoughts exactly. Couldn't have put it better.

    Airport development tool

    Blender plugin

    Open up the texture files, great they are encrypted but naffing useless to a developer

    And don't get me started on the TMD file :D

    +1000 for the blender plugin

    Add to the list : ground flatten polygons like in FSX (easily usable with tools like ADE or Sbuilder X) ; exclude polygons that remove all default objects so that you can place custom ones

    True Earth GB for Aerofly has been put on indefinite hold according to the ORBX CEO because of problems with the conversion that made it difficult to achieve the same quality as for the other platforms (especially concerning the airports in the region if I remember correctly) and the small potential customer base. It seems that sales of previous ORBX products for Aerofly accounted for less than 2% of total sales so it seemed economically unreasonable to continue development.

    It´s good to hear I´m not alone. Another thing I was thinking of is that maybe the fact that not all the vertices are connected to each other causes the issue. My model has several components that I just moved into place so it looks like they are connected, but in fact they aren´t, i.e. the vertices of the turbine rotor blades are not directly connected via an edge with the vertices of the "nose" and so on. If all vertices need to be connected I´d need to use a whole different approach to modeling from the beginning. It would make things considerably harder.

    each geometry in your 3d model is displayed when the model is placed onto the terrain. The height offset comes from different 3d origins for each geometry which is useful to displace buildings by different amounts.

    You need to make sure that all objects that belong to your model share the exact same pivot point or 3d origin otherwise each part is going to be moved according to the terrain height directly underneath the origin, which at a slope means the parts move relative to each other.

    Hi again,

    I did what you suggested but still no luck, in fact it looks even worse now with the wind turbines sunken halfway into the ground and the rotor still detached. I set all the 3D origins of the individual components to the bottom of the pylon of the turbine because I assumed that the simulator would place the origin on ground level height. But obviously there's still something wrong? Is there a certain way to correctly place a 3D origin of the model? At the bottom? At the center of the geometry? Another thing that came to my mind was that maybe the export to collada format had something to do with the problem? Maybe the origin is not preserved correctly? Blender doesn't have a direct export option for Aerofly so I have to somehow get the model into MCX, But maybe exporting to .3ds format might help?

    Asked much as I appreciate Just Flight's support for Aerofly the recent aircraft are too similar in my eyes to justify buying them all, at least for me. Apart from the Duchess they are all single engine piston aircraft with at least similar performance specs. I'd love to see something like a single engine turbine aircraft like a C208 or a Pilatus PC 6, or something to complement the recently released Lukla scenery like a Twin Otter.

    each geometry in your 3d model is displayed when the model is placed onto the terrain. The height offset comes from different 3d origins for each geometry which is useful to displace buildings by different amounts.

    You need to make sure that all objects that belong to your model share the exact same pivot point or 3d origin otherwise each part is going to be moved according to the terrain height directly underneath the origin, which at a slope means the parts move relative to each other.

    Thanks Jan, I suspected it had something to do with autoheight and the fact that I made the model by assembling different components. I just thought that by joining the components into a single object before export they would automatically share the same origin but obviously somehow the original origin is preserved within the models. I'll try setting all origins to the same 3D location before joining the parts and see what happens.

    Hi, I made a custom 3D model for a wind turbine and tried to get it into Aerofly. Here is what the model looks like in Blender:

    Then I converted it to .dae (Collada) format and loaded in into Model Converter X:

    As you can see, the geometry still displays correctly. But now I placed several of those turbines into their corresponding geolocations using MCX placement tool and converted the scenery to Aerofly FS2 format. The .tsc file looks like this:

    <[file][][]

    <[tmsimulator_scenery_place][][]

    <[string8][type][object]>

    <[string8][sname][windturbine1]>

    <[string8][lname][windturbine1]>

    <[string8][icao][]>

    <[string8][country][]>

    <[string8][coordinate_system][lonlat]>

    <[vector2_float64][position][-13.596496 28.99792]>

    <[float64][height][0]>

    <[float64][size][500]>

    <[vector2_float64][tower_position][0 0]>

    <[float64][tower_height][0]>

    <[bool][autoheight][true]>

    <[string8][autoheight_method][]>

    <[list_tmsimulator_scenery_object][objects][]

    <[tmsimulator_scenery_object][element][0]

    <[string8][type][object]>

    <[string8][geometry][windturbine1]>

    <[vector3_float64][position][-13.595747 28.99925 0]>

    <[float64][orientation][0]>

    <[int32][autoheight_override][-1]>

    >

    <[tmsimulator_scenery_object][element][1]

    <[string8][type][object]>

    <[string8][geometry][windturbine1]>

    <[vector3_float64][position][-13.596179 28.998506 0]>

    <[float64][orientation][0]>

    <[int32][autoheight_override][-1]>

    >

    <[tmsimulator_scenery_object][element][2]

    <[string8][type][object]>

    <[string8][geometry][windturbine1]>

    <[vector3_float64][position][-13.596654 28.997807 0]>

    <[float64][orientation][0]>

    <[int32][autoheight_override][-1]>

    >

    <[tmsimulator_scenery_object][element][3]

    <[string8][type][object]>

    <[string8][geometry][windturbine1]>

    <[vector3_float64][position][-13.597244 28.996791 0]>

    <[float64][orientation][0]>

    <[int32][autoheight_override][-1]>

    >

    <[tmsimulator_scenery_object][element][4]

    <[string8][type][object]>

    <[string8][geometry][windturbine1]>

    <[vector3_float64][position][-13.596954 28.996589 0]>

    <[float64][orientation][0]>

    <[int32][autoheight_override][-1]>

    >

    >

    <[list_tmsimulator_scenery_object_animated][objects_animated][]

    >

    <[list_tmsimulator_runway][runways][]

    >

    <[list_tmsimulator_helipad][helipads][]

    >

    <[list_tmsimulator_startposition][start_positions][]

    >

    <[list_tmsimulator_parking_position][parking_positions][]

    >

    <[list_tmsimulator_view_position][view_positions][]

    >

    <[list_tmsimulator_scenery_cultivation][cultivation_files][]

    >

    >

    >


    But once I load up Aerofly, I get this:


    As you can see the individual parts of the model get detached from each other and are displaced by several feet. The rotor blades are detached from the "nose", the nose from the generator and the generator is lifted off the pylon it should rest upon. If you look closely, you can even see that the displacement is not always the same, the rotor is moved downwards in the turbine closest to the camera and upwards in the one furthest away. I have no idea how to amend that. Does anyone know what causes this?

    Cheers, Fabian

    I noticed the exact same thing. The problem seems to be that the Scenproc script used to generate the cultivation uses the keyword "park" to place trees, which for the Central "Park" in NYC would be adequate, but not really appropriate for the Timanfaya National "Park". If you want I can send you alternative cultivation files for lanzarote via email I created for myself which also correct some other things like seven story buildings all over the place, trees east of the Papagayo beaches area and so on. These files are part of a long term project that I started a while ago to improve the overall quality of my favorite Canary Island, but it will probably take months before I'm finished with it. If you want to try out the preliminary content just send me a pm.

    Cheers, Fabian

    Edit : considering the large factory type buildings, if you take a look at the original osm data for lanzarote, the osm coverage really is that bad. It's incomplete and inaccurate. If developers just use raw osm data as a source for their cultivation you'll end up with results like this. There problem is that osm quality is very inconsistent, my home town Freiburg in Germany has near perfect coverage, while many places on earth are badly represented or even not at all existent

    OK, converting my Prepar3d models to a format readable by MCX and then converting them to Aerofly proved a little more difficult than I initially hoped, but at least some of them were usable with a little editing (those are early works so don´t expect anything fancy):

    These are the Callanish stone circle, the Carloway Broch and the Gearrannan Blackhouses. If anyone is still interested I´ll try to put them into Michael´s Outer Hebrides scenery, but I´m not at home right now so I don´t have Aerofly right now. I´m also thinking about creating some new models for the Outer Hebrides from scratch, but that will have to wait cause I´m away for a few months starting November.

    Cheers, Fabian

    The outer hebrides have a special place in my heart, I've been to Lewis and Harris a few years ago with my wife and though we expected the worst weather imaginable we actually had three days of sunshine there. We rented a camping pod right below the callanish stone circle and the sunset was magical. I even made some small sceneries for Prepar3d V2 with custom 3D models for the Callanish stone circle, the Carloway Broch and the Gearrannan Blackhouse village. If you're interested I could try to convert those files to Aerofly and send them to you so you could include them in your project.

    I hope the hand and finger tracking works better than leap motion did in P3D. Depending on the position of buttons it was hard to impossible to push certain buttons. Also the aircraft had to be specifically configured for the hand controls to work, some switches and levers had their functions reversed, so when you grabbed the throttle and pulled it out it would move forward instead. I gave it up and used the mouse again instead.

    Thanks for the quick reply. I will give it a go. I am right now working on a few places in New Zealand. I don't think anyone made specific AFS2 buildings for it, thus I think I'll go just with the base buildings for now.

    Kind regards, Michael

    Michael, if you need specific reference photos from New Zealand, let me know. I'll be staying there from November to January, so maybe I can help you out.

    OK Mr Rant :) Sketchup does support edge (vertex) material and coloring, on all versions since the beginning. If by "weight painting" you mean thickness of lines, it's not great but it can be done too.

    So that at least won't be an issue. now is the "black" in sketchup identified as black for aerofly, not sure, seems to work on buildings.

    If I'm not mistaken weight painting has nothing to do with visible colors on the model, it's a method of designating how much a certain vertex within a 3D model will be influenced by an action or modifier. I've seen videos where people used it to simulate how skin moves when muscles and bones beneath are moving, the vertices reacted differently (some followed the movement more than others like stiff or soft tissue) depending on which "weight" is assigned to them and the weight is shown by different colors in the modeling view. It's been awhile since I last used sketchup but I can't remember an option like that.

    Although it's good that you can do that with AC3D, it still requires users to buy a Payware modeling tool (though not as expensive as 3DS Max) and to have some knowledge how to use it. A simple flatten polygon should require no investment and modeling skills at all. As I said, as you can draw polygons in Google Earth (which is free) it would be great to have a way of importing those polygons into Aerofly and assign an elevation to them. This would only take a minute and then you could go on and place your objects on the flat ground.

    Also in your first screenshot, what is the floating white line at the intersection between the taxiway and the runway? Is that an elevation issue with a decal?

    Regarding the trees from the default vegetation, however, it is already possible in a simple way to exclude a small area without having to identify and delete the entire file and make the whole area new (it doesn't works with OSM-based cultivation-trees and objects like buildings). If you are interested I can show you how to do it.

    Yes please, by all means! I just need to remove three or four trees within the San Francisco area.