Converting FSX content to Flight

[stonelance 136]

The /a option wouldn't help.  The only difference is that it packages it into a .flightAddon file for sharing, instead of installing the addon directly into your DLC folder.

 

Assuming that your scenery was referenced in FSX scenery.cfg, I can't think of any specific reason why that wouldn't work.  If you want to convert your own scenery probably the cleanest way is to convert each part manually so that you can create your own Flight addon that is separate from the FSX conversion, but it is a little more technical.  If you just run ContentConverter without arguments it will list a bunch of options for how to convert various types of FSX files.  I haven't created a way to mass convert an entire 3rd party addon separate from the FSX base scenery yet.

 

If you want you could share out your scenery with me and I can try to see why it wasn't working.

[BaronKen 144]

OK, last night I tried converting 2 very small, simple scenery files of my hometown area that I had created using FSX's object placement tool (scenery creator).

 

ContentConverter recognized the folder I placed them in and ran the conversion on the files and bundled them with the DLC. However, once again in Flight the scenery is not visible. In this case I'm wondering if it's because the SDK isn't installed with the new FSX installation being used to create the FSX World scenery, thus the scenery objects aren't installed and available for Flight to use in the scenery. (I'm just rambling here, don't know if that is why this particular scenery doesn't show up or not).

 

In any case, I will put this aside for now. Steve, if you would like just those 2 small files to see what you can produce let me know how to send them to you and I will. They are not world class scenery add ons by any stretch of the imagination, just some scenery objects I added to my home town to spruce it up a bit.

 

Thanks again...

[KavindaJD 31]

@Ken: Do you see anything on your ContentErrors log? Check with that first..

[BaronKen 144]

Contents of ContentErrors log:

 

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 028B2SU4DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 080B2SU4DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 028B2SU7DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 080B2SU7DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 028B2SU6DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 080B2SU6DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 028B2SU5DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 028B2SU2DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 080B2SU2DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 028B2SU1DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Terrain texture not found: 080B2SU1DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.273576, -85.828588): Requested asset does not exist: ({BB819418-4B0D-57E0-3674-89950B5E2883})

(38.273576, -85.828588): MaterialVariation '{BB819418-4B0D-57E0-3674-89950B5E2883}' for autogen failed because it is ether missing or is of the incorrect\invalid type.

(38.274272, -85.824903): Terrain texture not found: 080B2SU3DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.275434, -85.817817): Terrain texture not found: 028B2SU3DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.272487, -85.784818): Terrain texture not found: 080B2SU5DL.DDS (dir=88)

(38.271009, -85.780948): Requested asset does not exist: ({82B3DDA9-4572-B942-B2C7-41B062EB87F7})

(38.271009, -85.780948): MaterialVariation '{82B3DDA9-4572-B942-B2C7-41B062EB87F7}' for autogen failed because it is ether missing or is of the incorrect\invalid type.

(38.271009, -85.780948): Requested asset does not exist: ({F172DCC2-4CA8-DA3E-B57D-68996321B7B2})

(38.271009, -85.780948): MaterialVariation '{F172DCC2-4CA8-DA3E-B57D-68996321B7B2}' for autogen failed because it is ether missing or is of the incorrect\invalid type.

 

I don't think this matters much because none of the objects I placed in the scenery file(s) I created are showing up, and Flight isn't crashing either. If I were only missing a few of the objects (like the log suggests) then you could point to this and see why, but when all of them are missing it must be something else. But, what do I know?

 

Thanks for your continued interest...

[stonelance 136]

ContentConverter doesn't use the FSX SDK, so I'm not sure why that would matter unless you mean you are referencing content that is only included in the SDK.  Does your scenery show up in FSX?

 

You can zip up the files and email them to me at flighttoolkit@gmail.com.  If you do, also include where you placed them, and your scenery.cfg.

[stonelance 136]

Ok, I figured out why it doesn't convert.  In FSX the scenery.cfg is at the root but in my conversion I place the converted one in the scenery folder.  This means any scenery in Addon Scenery (or any other folder directly under the root FSX folder) will not get referenced by the scenery.cfg.

 

I'm not sure whether to think of this as a feature or a bug.  It is kind of nice to be able to have someone have other scenery installed in FSX and not get converted, although it could lead to other issues.

 

It should still be possible to manually convert your scenery like I said earlier.  There are two main methods to do that:

- If you have the original placement.xml files you should be able to use SceneryCompiler.exe (with 2bgl option)  from the Toolkit to convert the xml to a Flight bgl.

- If you only have the FSX bgl, you can use ContentConverter.exe (with landmarks option) from the Toolkit to convert the bgl to a Flight bgl.  The problem with this right now is that it requires passing in a path to the bgls containing the referenced models and the directories containing the referenced textures so that they can be converted along with the OBX bgl.  You don't want this since you only want to convert the placements and not any of the content since it was already converted with the FSX world.

- Once you have the BGLs converted, you create a scenery.cfg and .meta with the correct settings and package the addon using the Addon Builder.

 

If you are interested in doing this (shouldn't be too hard), then I could probably post a short tutorial on fsdev that explains how to do it.  I would also need to add a new option to ContentConverter to convert just the placement bgl and not the models.  This wouldn't take too much time for me, and it would be nice if someone was testing some addon conversion.

 

The ideal option for converting scenery I think, is if I can create some UI in Addon Builder that allows you to select certain areas out of a scenery.cfg and only convert those, so people can convert already installed addons, or complete addons in one shot with the tool.

 

I don't know how people feel about doing 3rd party scenery conversion, and what they would like to do.  Manually converting small addons is probably easy enough, but doing anything bigger by hand is probably a pain.

[BaronKen 144]

Thanks for the hard work in deciphering the issues here.

 

I'm in no position to suggest the ideal solution as to how to provide a method for converting 3rd party scenery from FSX to Flight. If you create a step by step tutorial on how to do so I think that would be appreciated by many who would like to do it, and you already know I'm a willing "tester".

 

The simpler and easier the better, and if you think doing it via Addon Builder is the way to go then I would concur.

 

I'm checking, and may have the xml files for the two scenery files I sent you, but I would need to know the syntax for SceneryCompiler.exe w/2bgl option, and how to create the scenery.meta file you listed. I'm afraid I'm a novice at using the Toolkit programs, but I learn quick with tutorials and a little direction.

 

Thanks...

[stonelance 136]

If people are interested I put a tutorial for creating custom OBX scenery for Flight on the fsdev forum: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/flight-tutorial-create-a-custom-obx-scenery-addon.432843/

[winjimon 6]

stonelance, what would it take to improve the trees in FSX conversion?

In tropical regions, the white trees look out of place.

I recall you saying something about having to use the Alaskan trees to populate the world.

[stonelance 136]

There are two main issues:

 

- Autogen annotations in FSX are very dumbly mapped to a generic one in Flight.  We would need to change that to do a smarter mapping to specific types of Flight trees.

- Flight doesn't contain all the same types of trees that are available in FSX, so we would need to either custom make tree textures for the missing types, or convert the FSX textures into a format Flight can use.

 

Both of these are theoretically something someone else can help with.  I basically need a mapping from FSX vegetation groupings, to Flight vegetation groupings for the first issue, and a texture atlas for the missing tree types for the second issue.

 

Edit: I forgot there may be one other issue, where the season mappings are not causing the right season of tree to be selected.  I'm not sure yet if this is a problem with my conversion process, or possibly a bug in Flight.

[winjimon 6]

Thanks for that info stonelance.

I might try changing season and see if the white leaf color changes.

It just looks real strange to see white trees in the desert, rain forests or along tropical beaches. It's only certain groups of trees, others look fine.

[stonelance 136]

It might be an error in some Flight content. Can you tell what type of tree has the problem?

[winjimon 6]

It might be an error in some Flight content. Can you tell what type of tree has the problem?

I had a quick look to see if I could find an obvious case.

I plopped my plane around the world and could not easily find extreme cases such as snowy trees on a tropical island.

I took these two screen shots over Australia. They are the same location, I just switched between winter and summer.  The white trees did change to green in the summer as these shots show..

 

http://imgur.com/cvFJkC8,jNHaMYm

http://imgur.com/cvFJkC8,jNHaMYm#1

 

The 'first image' shows the two types of whilte trees I'm taking about.  One type is in the foreground (spikey bush), I think a different type in the distance (round top tree).

[stonelance 136]

Ok, so you are saying in the winter in Australia some trees appear white even though other trees and the terrain textures do not?  Do you have the lat\lon of a place that has this problem?

 

Edit: Ok, I'm looking at the problem Dick reported here: http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/threads/fsx-conversion-scenery-errors.432604/#post-696467  Seems similar to your screenshots.

 

I think the possible issues there:

- The area is marked as having winter autogen, but summer textures

- The area shouldn't have any types of trees with snowy summer textures

 

It could be both too.  I think the first step to fixing these autogen vegetation issues, is to fix up the mapping so that Flight is using the same types of trees as FSX.  After that we can fix up the seasons if needed.  Looking at the veg_* textures in FSX, it doesn't seem as though it actually has that many types of trees so I am hoping the majority of them are already in Flight and it is just a matter of mapping the autogen ids.  If there are any tree types that we need to convert from FSX, I think we might have to do them manually.

 

When I get a chance I'll put together a list of what trees are in FSX but not Flight, and then maybe we can get to work making textures for them.

[stonelance 136]

Ran through all the files and tried to get a really quick list.  It actually looks like most of the trees from FSX are present in Flight, so it might just be a matter of remapping the autogen groups.  For the couple types that are missing we can probably just map them to the closest Flight tree.  Here is my list:

 

FSX:
Acacia
Aspen
Broadleaf_thin (several types, not sure which ones)
Chestnut
Conifer
Cottonwood
Coconut
DouglarFir
Elm
EucalyptusGum
EucalyptusSav
Larch
Maple
Mesquite
Norway Spruce??
Hemlock
Oak
Olive
DatePalm
FanPalm
PineScrub
Poplar
Sagebrush
Savanna (two types)
Snag
Sycamore
Tropical (4 trees, might be overlap with others.  Two look like cluster of Emergent)

 

Bush:
Bayberry
Creosote
Dry (two types)
Evergreen
Rhody

 

Flight:
Acacia
Alder
Apple
Aspen
Banana
Bamboo
Banyan
Boabab
Brazil Nut
Chestnut
Coconut
Coffee
CookPine
Corn
Cottonwood
DatePalm
DouglasFir
Elm
Emergent
Eucalyptus
FanPalm
GrandFir
Hemlock
Juniper
Kiawe
Koa
Kapok
Larch
Macadamia
Maple
Mesquite
Oak
Ohi'alehua
Olive
Pineapple
Pinyon
Ponderosa
Poplar
Snag
Sugarcane
Sycamore
Wheat

 

Bush:
Bayberry
ChristmasBerry
Creosote
Evergreen
FernSword

 

Cacti:
PricklyPear
Saguaro