how can we build our own aircraft? can we at all? what do we need to download to do so?

Most people make the 3D models with blender or AC3D. Or, you can convert from MDL, at least with the models made for FS98 or FS2000. For the rest of it, it's best to just inspect the available aircraft directories to see what all the files do.

And how would you convert an MDL file? I have at least two dozen aircraft created in FSDS by either myself or others, certainly would be interesting to be able to import them. How exactly would I go about doing it?Paul

If you're using Blender, http://www.iki.fi/wwwwolf/games/nwn/gametools/neverblender/ might be helpful to you.

I have no idea what Blender is. As I said, I have a number of aircraft designed with FSDS (from Abacus) that have been compiled in .MDL format for FS2000/CFS2. The post above said that an MDL file compiled for FS98 or FS2000 could be converted. I was asking how this could be accomplished. I have the source files for all of them, so if modifications need to be made or a special compile do, I have the facility to do this. It would be nice to have a slightly better visual model for the sim.........Paul

Blender is a great open-source 3D modeling aplication. For more info: http://blender.org/That link just points to a site for a script for Blender that can import .mdl files, which can then be exported as .ac files.I don't know much about FSDS, so sorry if I'm not being very helpful. I just thought this would be a way to convert the files.

My eyes are opened! Thank you very much for the clarification, now I understand! I will take a swing at it. Thank you very, very much!!Paul

FlightGear comes with a utility called threedconvert (at least it does if you build from source. Don't know about the packages). To convert you just run something like threedconvert C172.mdl C172.acNow you open up the *.ac model in AC3D and do some work on it (or you can import it into blender)

BTW, this works for FS98 and FS2000 models as far as I know. I don't think it works with newer versions, but it's worth a try.

Oh, cool, I never knew that existed. Thanks for pointing it out!