P3Dv4 - AI ERJ’s ?

[Dave_YVR 973]

3 hours ago, BillStewart said:

Sorry if this question has been asked before, but is there a user guide on how to remove a model from UT Live and how to replace it with another? 

 The UTL Gui is pretty straight forward in assigning aircraft, what most need to get up to speed on is adding liveries etc. I thought it was pretty common place that most users were well adept to adding to their own flyable collection editing aircraft.cfg's etc, but oddly I'm finding that's not the case.

[BillStewart 3]

3 hours ago, scottb613 said:

Hi Bill,

if you grab Arno’s ModelConvereterX - associate the “*.mdl” file extension to it - then go to the directory where you installed UTL - all the UTL aircraft are stored there - you can peruse all the aircraft by opening each respective  model file in MCX to inspect it in 3D...

MCX: https://www.scenerydesign.org/development-releases/

Regards,

Scott

 

Thanks Scott!

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Quote

And if you are savvy enough like myself and AIG guys you can download the Orbx FTX AI AU package.  This package has every GA model usable in P3D v4 so its just copy and paste.  I think most of us at AIG are just waiting for a good GA flightplan to take advantage of those models for NA and Europe etc.  It also has some models we were all missing like the BAE 146 and Avro models for P3D v4

Is that a free download? If so, then thank you for the tip. However, that still leaves all of those military AI models....and I have quite a few knocking around the virtual skies in P3D v3. I just hope that they are converted sooner rather than later!

[duckbilled 310]

I've been playing with AI since the early days (TTOOLS, first UT beta...), but I can't get my head around are the textures. The models are being converted at a pretty good pace. It is the textures that are causing me pain.

Which textures work out of the box? Do all FSX textures work? Is there a quick way to tell what will work and what won't work without examining every texture? Are they file extensions that always work or extensions that never work? We can tell with the models, but with the textures, it sounds like we have to decompile and examine them to figure out what will work. When you are talking about 1,000's of textures, that's a lot of work just to determine compatibility.

I've been doing major AI overhauls in UT2 approximately every two years, and now that the final version of UTL is complete, I'd like to whip that into shape in V4. It generally takes a couple weeks of me hibernating in my office to do an AI overhaul. I now have a 6mo old boy, so I really don't want to add a bunch of time tinkering with every single texture. I'm lucky my wife still lets me touch FS at this point:) 

If it is as simple as "no FS9 paints" and you can tell a paint is for FS9 "because it has xxx", that would be great.

 

 

[scottb613 1,188]

Hi...

Yeah - I'm actually writing scripts to do all the conversions using the command line interface ability of imagetool.exe, replace the textures, and rebuild the aircraft.cfg using a UNIX like BASH shell (Cygwin) that runs on WIn10 - LOL - while not for everyone (I happen to be a UNIX guy) it sure speeds my task...

Yeah - been doing the same with the ORBX pack that is really the freeware models available elsewhere converted to P3Dv4 in one convenient place - it's just all the paints are Australian and if your home is somewhere else - the textures need to be swapped... That Graham did some fine work on the package - the AU pack for V4 has far more models than the NA pack for V3...

FS9 textures are perfectly fine - just need to remove the compression and convert to a DDS file... Again - scripting inside your paint tool can make it go much faster... Yep - it still takes work and you still have the big Easter Egg Hunt to find the textures you want...

Arno's MCX can also be a HUGE help here because you can test models and textures - outside the sim - in a much faster and more efficient manner... Just click on a (*.mdl) file to launch... It also has texture conversion tools built in if you set it up...

Regards,
Scott

[Christopher Low 5,353]

Oh, for the love of God.....I need to upgrade the textures aswell?? This is starting to sound like a nightmare...

[scottb613 1,188]

8 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

Oh, for the love of God.....I need to upgrade the textures aswell?? This is starting to sound like a nightmare...

Hi Christopher,

LOL - not for V4 - the "upgrade" was for FS9 textures which applies to FSX or any of the earlier variants of P3D... Kinda the same thing we've been doing all the while if you want the AI to have textures of your choosing ???

Regards,
Scott

[Christopher Low 5,353]

So I will be OK if all of my textures are currently P3D v3 compatible?

[scottb613 1,188]

5 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

So I will be OK if all of my textures are currently P3D v3 compatible?

Hi Christopher,

Absolutely no change to textures - only the "model" (*.mdl) file...

Regards,
Scott 

[jason99vmi 157]

2 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

Is that a free download? If so, then thank you for the tip. However, that still leaves all of those military AI models....and I have quite a few knocking around the virtual skies in P3D v3. I just hope that they are converted sooner rather than later!

It is a free download under the Oceana tab.  All their model folders will start with FTX.  

yeah trust me i'm disappointed as well since I had a ton of C-17s, C-5s, etc tooling around.  I know the items John Young at MAIW are FSX models like the F-16s, A-10s, and a full set of blackhawks.  HTAI aircraft work as well like their C-130s.  

Its getting there.  Faster than i thought actually.  

[jason99vmi 157]

48 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

So I will be OK if all of my textures are currently P3D v3 compatible?

Yes.  If they worked in v3 they will work in v4.  Its just the FS9 Models need to be FSX or P3D.   Which is what I was talking about.  

[duckbilled 310]

10 hours ago, scottb613 said:

Hi Christopher,

LOL - not for V4 - the "upgrade" was for FS9 textures which applies to FSX or any of the earlier variants of P3D... Kinda the same thing we've been doing all the while if you want the AI to have textures of your choosing ???

Regards,
Scott

It is my understanding that FS9 textures don't work in V4, but they worked in V3. I know they worked in FSX - I have thousands of them installed.

Not sure what the right answer is, but it goes back to my issue. Do all FSX textures work in V4? I'm pretty sure FS9 ones don't.

I know the answer is over at AIG, but it is buried in massive threads.

[Drumcode 1,893]

6 minutes ago, duckbilled said:

It is my understanding that FS9 textures don't work in V4, but they worked in V3. I know they worked in FSX - I have thousands of them installed.

Not sure what the right answer is, but it goes back to my issue. Do all FSX textures work in V4? I'm pretty sure FS9 ones don't.

I know the answer is over at AIG, but it is buried in massive threads.

Most of the FS9/FSX models have to be patched with the new .mdl files for them to properly work in P3D. There's a link to a massive zip file which contains the mdl's and the cfg's for the likes of AIArdvaark, TheFruitStand and some other models. Let me do some digging and I'll PM you with the link.

[duckbilled 310]

5 minutes ago, Drumcode said:

Most of the FS9/FSX models have to be patched with the new .mdl files for them to properly work in P3D. There's a link to a massive zip file which contains the mdl's and the cfg's for them for the likes of AIArdvaark TheFruitStand models. Let me do some digging and I'll PM you with the link.

Thanks. I know all about the models. It is the textures I am concerned about. I was reading post after post of people having to open up textures in Photoshop, to add alpha channels before the paints would display. I have no idea what an alpha channel is. I asked about the necessity of doing this but never received a response. I'm guessing that it is a stupid question.

Edit: there were some responses. looking back at the thread now. Here is a link http://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=25796.msg258503#msg258503

[Drumcode 1,893]

1 minute ago, duckbilled said:

Thanks. I know all about the models. It is the textures I am concerned about. I was post after post of people having to open up textures in Photoshop, to add alpha channels before the paints would display. I have no idea what an alpha channel is. I asked about the necessity of doing this but never received a response. I'm guessing that it is a stupid question.

I didn't have to do any of this to be honest and my models are all fine in v4. There's a requirement of dropping some files into the default P3D texture folder in order for the aircraft lights to properly display. Most of the texture packages contain proper readme's, which is how I found out how to install these. Since I took a good three year break from the hobby, it was all new to me and confusing as heck.