FSX scenery converting to FS2004?

[clocki 2]

Hello friends,

 

simple question: is it possible to merge/tweak/convert a FSX scenery to FS2004?

 

As we all know there are some newer or better scenerys available for FSX. For me it's Saarbrücken, Frankfurt-Hahn, Maledives, Madeira all from Aerosoft.

Is there a change to use them in FS2004 too? Of course not with all the FSX exclusive stuff like HD textures or the autogen and area around. But it would be great to have a real layout, the buildings and textures.

Especially the airports above are interesting as they are very old in FS2004 :(

 

Thank you

[JSkorna 137]

Nope!

[ematheson 19]

Yep! Certainly. Use ModelConverterX and imagetool to convert models and textures, use FSX2FS9 to convert afcads. Conversion is not perfect... photoreal ground textures don't convert at all and neither does vector-based scenery files like flattens, roads, etc. Landclass works occasionally.

But, with those caveats, it all works ok. I use KHQM by ORBX in my copy of FS9...

[alderon57 7]

Hmmm.  I tried a simple airport conversion once with ModelConverterX, and it reported there was nothing in the file.  Maybe user error?  :-)

[RWFeldman 159]

I converted FSX scenery to FS2004. Yep. Put FSX gold in DVD drive and intsalled it. It up the FS9 to FS10 scenery.

[ematheson 19]

I converted FSX scenery to FS2004. Yep. Put FSX gold in DVD drive and intsalled it. It up the FS9 to FS10 scenery.

where do these trolls come from?

 

That kind of ill mannered comment is not welcome here.

[clocki 2]

Yep! Certainly. Use ModelConverterX and imagetool to convert models and textures, use FSX2FS9 to convert afcads. Conversion is not perfect... photoreal ground textures don't convert at all and neither does vector-based scenery files like flattens, roads, etc. Landclass works occasionally.

 

Thanks for the answer. It's clear that specific FSX things or such things will not work I don't want to try to convert ORBX FTX GLobal

 

But I would be happy if maybe Madeira or Male (Helsinki,Oslo?) would look much more real then now

 

Could you give a more detailed instruction please (which formats, how-to,...)

 

Greetings

[ematheson 19]

The conversion process is really pretty simple - just open the files in the appropriate program and re-export them in an FS9 compatible format. You will need to convert the default FSX libraries, I suppose. I don't have FSX installed at the moment, though, so I don't remember where to find them...

You should be aware, though, that FSX does handle much higher poly-counts than FS9 does. You can jam all these FSX models into your scenery, sure, but it will drag down the framerates much more than it would in FSX!

More detailed instructions, if they are needed, later - I'm out of time right now - but I do recommend that you attempt a conversion on your own right now. You'll almost certainly be able to figure it all out pretty easily...

 

There is a special technique needed to convert FSX default airports - you'll import them into ADEX, export to an ADEX format file, then convert the ADEX file to FS9 format using FSX2FS9... and the objects and textures are in the corresponding region folder in FSX/scenery (OCEN, ASIA, NAME, etc... those folders)... but that isn't a lot more work than is otherwise needed.

[alderon57 7]

I would be interested in more details from someone on this.  There are a couple of small (addon) airports, local to me, that are FSX only.  It would be great to convert them!

Ron

[mmann 72]

You can convert FSX scenery to FS9 but the process can often leave out certain elements. I have converted my own BC PNW Lighthouses Scenery to FS9 but found that I had to make a large number of adjustments.

 

What worked:

I ran the custom models through ModelConverterX and the conversion worked great, even the landable platforms of the custom helipads converted. The textures I converted directly from my original images in Photoshop using the NVIDIA Photoshop Plug-ins. If you didn't have access to the original images you would have to convert from an already lossy DDS, which would make things worse.

 

What didn't:

The Orbx FTX PNW mesh in FSX is higher resolution than the FS Global 2008 mesh I have for FS9 so additional flattens had to be done; plus some of the small islands were much flatter than their equivalents in FSX. Some of the helipads I placed were default FSX models that don't exist in FS9 so custom models had to be created.

[Lyle221 38]

I'm so glad I use FSX rather than spending all my time trying to convert everything and twist and change everything to make it compatible for the archaic FS9

[mmann 72]

I'm so glad I use FSX rather than spending all my time trying to convert everything and twist and change everything to make it compatible for the archaic FS9

 

It's a two-way street; there are many people who spend their time converting FS9 scenery to work in FSX.

[Lyle221 38]

 

 

It's a two-way street; there are many people who spend their time converting FS9 scenery to work in FSX.

 

HA, ya, what, 3 people?

[SpiritFlyer 987]

Despite all that ^^ Jim is still right.

 

Question seems strange.  Why would you want to fly FS9 anyway where you want to convert scenery over. Why not stay FSX if you have FSX scenery?

[Lyle221 38]

 

 

Despite all that ^^ Jim is still right.

 

Jim?