OK I just fixed it. The addon builder works now.

Hughes can you share what 'tweaks' are needed, I'm no graphics expert but can convert edit most transparencies using dxtbmp by Martin Wright @ http://www.mwgfx.co.uk

 

I also have gimp for Windows but haven't used it for transparency layers

 

Also curious if this same edit might work on the N-number box on the Cessna 172

I've only converted the Lear45, A321, and Piper Cub right now, and the Piper's the only one I can get it to fly. Unfortunately the airspeed and altitude in the HUD say 0.

The Lear45 and A321 just go in right circles on the ground no matter how hard I move the joystick to the left. The airspeed works on these two. The A321s doors are flipped backwards by the way.

Hughes can you share what 'tweaks' are needed, I'm no graphics expert but can convert edit most transparencies using dxtbmp by Martin Wright @ http://www.mwgfx.co.uk

 

I also have gimp for Windows but haven't used it for transparency layers

 

Also curious if this same edit might work on the N-number box on the Cessna 172

 

I'll explain the procedures tonight. I am about to head out at the moment.

Regarding the NNumber, I have come to the conclusion that the object it displays on is not given a proper material in the conversion process (the object doesn't technically have a texture in FSX), therefore it cannot be removed.

I was able to get some aircraft to "work". I too have problems with aircraft pulling to the left. It appears to be an issue with only the left side of any aircraft working. (Try using the flaps.) The 747 appears as parts floating in the air. I also can't get any sound out of any converted aircraft. But...I could care less about these issues, because WE CAN NOW ADD NEW AIRCRAFT TO FLIGHT.

I can wait. Also, when I try to upload a 3rd Party FSX aircraft like PA A320, the addon builder says "cannot load air file". It's the same with the default 737.

Hughes can you share what 'tweaks' are needed, I'm no graphics expert but can convert edit most transparencies using dxtbmp by Martin Wright @ http://www.mwgfx.co.uk

 

I also have gimp for Windows but haven't used it for transparency layers

 

Also curious if this same edit might work on the N-number box on the Cessna 172

 

Alright, now that I have time, I shall explain what I did to fix the glass.

 

For the Piper Cub at least, there is a tiny square of teal on the texture sheet "Piper_J3Cub_T.dds." You can access the texture in whatever directory you specified for the "addonSettings" file to be saved in (you will need to do the fix for every "Livery_#" folder). Once you load the texture in DXTBmp, open the alpha channel in an editor and find where the teal box would be, which in this case is now white. Change the box to dark gray/black and bring the alpha channel back into DXTBmp. Save the texture. My actual method of fixing the glass also involved changing what texture the glass object was looking for so that I could have an entire new texture dedicated to glass (rather than modifying the primary texture sheet), but that's not necessary; my previously mentioned fix works just as well.

 

After you've saved the modified texture, you can export the add-on and install it with the Addon Manager.

 

And like I said in my previous post, the NNumber object doesn't seem to have a material assigned and Flight just loads it as solid black because of it. Likely not a fix we can make ourselves.

Hey guys.  I'm still on vacation, but I can shed some light on a couple things.

 

Most of the errors you see during conversion are due to many configurations of the aircraft.cfg not being supported.  Some of it is because of .air files that can't load.  I'm guessing this is some format change, or some part of the .air file that I haven't added support for yet.

 

A lot of the aircraft have transparency issues.  This is because on a lot of the aircraft for FSX, the alpha channel was used for both transparency and specular.  The problem is that FSX had a flag to the shader that inverted the alpha value for the specular, but the built in Flight shaders don't do it this way.  Flight generally used a separate texture for all glass along with a different shader.  In order to fix those properly I need to add support to the conversion to split the texture into two so that one can have inverted alpha and the other can just be the glass parts.

 

The nnumbers in FSX were generated at runtime, so I was thinking to either generate a texture to replace it as part of the conversion process, or alternatively just remove those polygons from the model.

 

Several of the aircraft, especially the airliners appear to have screwed up animations.  I need to look into that.

 

Some of the aircraft that don't render or parts of them don't render (the trike, and 747).  This is because they have vertex data that doesn't match what Flight is expecting.  I plan to fix this.

 

No sound conversion is supported yet.

Thanks for the update Stone!

Great Stuff guys,  managed to get cub and Cessna converted and glass & reflections fixed/removed (thanks Hughes  :smile: )   I haven't had time to hook up my yoke & peddles to fly them yet but still enough to renew my interest in flight  Thanks again Stonelance, I can only imagine the time you've spent on this and I appreciate it

Well 1 of 2 isn't bad.  Piper cub is flyably 'out of the box'   Cessna isn't.

Some minor visual issues with both. Minor flight dynamics issue with Cub (pulls to the left)

 

So works as stone expected I guess   

 

now starting to compare some cool 3rd party aircraft air & config files for fun

 

Big Thumbs up Stone

It says that "Using addons requires that the Alaska Wilderness Pack is owned and installed." but I can't get the pack anymore?

If you previously purchased the Alaska Wilderness DLC; you should still be able to download it from the Marketplace from within Flight.

 

I checked this out a couple of days ago, and it was still working.

 

If you did not purchase it, then I'm afraid you might be out of luck now. Sorry.

I thought I removed the requirement for owning Alaska in a previous version. I'll take a look this week and see if it is still lingering in there somewhere.

 

If someone wants to play around with the simData files and see what could be the problem during the conversion process with the Piper, hopefully I can fix the issue in the converter.  All the source files that are generated should be in xml format.

hmm,  this may be an issue with my joystick - tried with keyboard and the cub flies straight.  Can anyone else verify this? 

Looking thru the simData files everything looks correct.  After comparing most, I have not found any values that are wrong or missing (keep in mind my minimal knowledge)

The visual issue is in the left aileron (which appears at the leading edge of wing) but I doubt that has anything to do with my flight dynamics issue (again may be local hardware only)

I'll do some more tests with my cyborg stick today - I had 'hot plugged' it after starting the game so will try with a reboot after plugging in stick & rudder

 

P.S.   - NOT important atm

Also curious how Flight handles cargo-payload weight?  As this could affect flight dynamics in a lot of aircraft (possibly why the Cessna 'noses up' drastically??)  I know this is unlikely to have anything to do with cub but thinking of 3rd party aircraft I would like to convert (one only works as AI in FSX if payload weight is 0 -  so should be ok but... )