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Dominique_K

Inserting your own scenery in the new sim

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No, I will not raise the issue of the SDK again 😇 but I found this recent video below quite interesting for all those who want to edit their scenery in Fs20 if Asobo allows for a minimum of compatibility with Blender. This is about how to create 3D terrain with Google or Bing maps, SRTM mesh and OSM data. 
 

 

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Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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20 minutes ago, domkle said:

No, I will not raise the issue of the SDK again 😇 but I found this recent video below quite interesting for all those who want to edit their scenery in Fs20 if Asobo allows for a minimum of compatibility with Blender. This is about how to create 3D terrain with Google or Bing maps, SRTM mesh and OSM data. 

 

Blender is great and has a lot of goodies for all sort of modeling techniques and purposes but the video shows how to create a terrain to preview an area for ubran or architecture projects.

If we have the tools, inserting this type of custom mesh into the terrain requires many things: 

Usually a mesh that does not fit in the world grid is impossible to insert in the default mesh unless its exact shape is cut and extracted. For the other simulator a 3rd party tool does it for us (i.e extracts from the terrain a portion we determine its shape with a KML.

Also the new mesh must link to every vertice and nod in the default mesh otherwise we see gaps. Considering this one being a much higher resolution than default terrain, it's impossible to have a basic link between vertices unless the engine does an auto transition and refinement in the default mesh to link to this one.

And it all depends how the engine works with the terrain: is it pre-loaded or loaded on the fly, are refinement part of a complete tile or seperate...

Ideally and we cross our fingers, we will have in-engine tools to allow manual terrain manipulation and editing on a granular level. 🙂


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LEBOR SIMULATIONS

Scenery for Flight Simulators since 1998

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20 minutes ago, Claviateur said:

the video shows how to create a terrain to preview an area for ubran or architecture projects.

If we have the tools, inserting this type of custom mesh into the terrain requires many things: 

🙂

Most of the video is about a mountainous landscape, Mt Wilder WA, not an urban one and this is exactly what we would need to create a scenery out there in the boondocks. Only at the end they show what the plugin could do for Manhattan.

The mesh issue is indeed complex. One of the recurring question is what kind of mesh do they use. I suppose that the SRTM is this best one for most of the places outside of NA and western Europe. And you rightly underline the insertion/compatibilty problem.

But that is the first time that I see a tool which would /could be kinda sophisticated SbuilderX v2.0 in 3D😊 to remodel a landscape from at images.


Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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For satellite imagery, MS seem to be doing so much machine vision post processing on top of Bing imagery that it's hard to imagine other imagery sources being useful.

For the mesh, I would guess that the resolution is adaptive based on how near you are to the ground. I assume they're pulling in lots of different formats from different sources. Maybe there's scope for really high res user meshes that would infeasible to stream.

What I can see being popular are "city detail" packs, where someone has hand modelled all the POIs in a non-photogrammetry city, and maybe hand tweaked all the residential house and tree types.
Blender would help make that accessible to anyone who wants to try. I'm sure someone will write a Blender plugin if Asobo don't.

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16 minutes ago, domkle said:

Most of the video is about a mountainous landscape, Mt Wilder WA, not an urban one and this is exactly what we would need to create a scenery out there in the boondocks. Only at the end they show what the plugin could do for Manhattan.

The mesh issue is indeed complex. One of the recurring question is what kind of mesh do they use. I suppose that the SRTM is this best one for most of the places outside of NA and western Europe. And you rightly underline the insertion/compatibilty problem.

But that is the first time that I see a tool which would /could be kinda sophisticated SbuilderX v2.0 in 3D😊 to remodel a landscape from at images.

Oh SBuilderX, I almost forgot about it 🙂 Been a long time...

Sorry I did not express myself properly, we must discuss things in french maybe 😉

I mean this terrain creation in Blender is genertated from elevation data, for a small area either remote or urban, and then the mesh is treated like any 3D object. It does not have a world engine curved Earth in mind unless the Blender tool has such capability.

Thus a mesh created in a 3D app like a 3D objkect, would be problematic to insert in the world engine terrain. I did not mention Earth Curvature in the previous post but this is another spec for the mesh to have.

A mesh that does not take into consideration this curvature can't be plugged properly. And the wider it is, the more problematic it becomes.

If you want to create a mesh from new data source, then the Engine terrain generator will only be able to create elevations respecting the tile limits, links to vertices, Earth curvature,etc... Unless the SDK give us plugins for Blender to export the 3D model and while exported it's automatically prepared to have all the specs the engine need to make it fit in the specific terrain coordinates.

To edit a mesh portion in Blender, the terrain must be extracted from the default terrain sim/engine terrain using a native or 3rd party tool...

I did this for the other simulator thanks to a 3rd party tool created (also) by a French Gentleman. This tool goes beyond what SBuildX is able to do for FSX 🙂

Edited by Claviateur
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LEBOR SIMULATIONS

Scenery for Flight Simulators since 1998

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I went again through Unigine in-engine editors for the terrain. It's highly unlikely Asobo will give us access to the full range of in-sim editing features such us these, but hopefully we could have in-sim tools to literally paint the terrain to refine it on a granular level without relying on 3rd party tools or complex compilers:

 

 

 

Edited by Claviateur

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LEBOR SIMULATIONS

Scenery for Flight Simulators since 1998

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They have already stated that they will allow additions by others.

 


Thank you.

Rick

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1 hour ago, 188AHC said:

They have already stated that they will allow additions by others.

 


Which will remain a philosophical statement if we don’t have user-friendly tools or, and this is the purpose of this thread, compatibility with existing tools like for instance Blender with this amazing  plugin (with due considerations to Claviateur’s and Nick’s remarks). It reminds me of Terrascene where you had to input USGS data files to get a scenery but with the added bonus of a pre-visualization. Truly a tool for a next generation of sim..

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Dominique

Simming since 1981 -  4770k@3.7 GHz with 16 GB of RAM and a 1080 with 8 GB VRAM running a 27" @ 2560*1440 - Windows 10 - Warthog HOTAS - MFG pedals - MSFS Standard version with Steam

 

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The more user friendly tools we will get (i.e: in-sim editors) the better the quality of the freeware mods will be.

As I mentioned, sometimes one needs to create micro adjustments in the terrain to make, let's say, the threshold of a runway higher than the the highway behind it for the sake of a true to life final approach slope with proper clearance etc. Or have tunnels running under taxiways or a sea bed linking to the rising coast...

These are cases that exist in the world, and especially in MSFS they need to look good otherwise it will ruin the beautiful landscape.

So it is counter intuitive and unreasonable to go through complex terrain editing in external tools and compile a whole tile for the region to get these adjustments.

So being able to create addons for MSFS, I am sure it will be possible, but then what type of flexibility and tools we will have. This is what I can't wait to learn about or experience.

Edited by Claviateur
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LEBOR SIMULATIONS

Scenery for Flight Simulators since 1998

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My simple question regarding Blender is this: Will the new MSFS provide a Gamepack for Blender or a toolset for Blender which allows the use of Blender to develop models for aircraft,
and the scenery. Or will GMAX still be the the toot for it ??

 
  

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1 hour ago, Dietmar said:

My simple question regarding Blender is this: Will the new MSFS provide a Gamepack for Blender or a toolset for Blender which allows the use of Blender to develop models for aircraft,
and the scenery. Or will GMAX still be the the toot for it ??

 
  

I suppose they should consider Blender with the capability it offers compared to expensive CAD software.

Gmax in my opinion is outdated and obsolete considering it was discontinued in 2005. 

I personally use Sketchup for my scenery work. It does most of what I need to create low polygon architectural infrastructure for a flight sim. But one can't compare it to Blender in terms of features and strength (for example no UV Map in Sketchup).

Let's not forget that MSFS will also support glTF format. 

But sometimes a Plugin for a 3D app gives more control than an import/export capability. For example, plugins could give the possibility to assign specific caracteristics to the model or parts of the models (ex: Collision, landable platform, reflective attributes as well as Animation etc.)

 


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LEBOR SIMULATIONS

Scenery for Flight Simulators since 1998

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Well, I can generate with Blender by exporting a file in Collada.dae format and using MCX converter from Arno to generate an mdl file which can be used in FSX for an .bgl file for a scenery. However this is not possible for an aircraft model. Also no animation is supported with this workaround. 
I don't think that a glTIF file will help. To support a aircraft  model you need to interface the XML.def 
functions in FSX or the potential equivalent in MSFS. By now I have not seen any answer from ASOBO
in this regard.

 

 

Edited by Dietmar

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I just hope they also give us a user friendly way to edit thingsUsing Blender will be more effort then I will be able to put into this.  I am fine if the user friendly way doesn't do everything.  It would be nice to tweak scenery around my area.  And I really hope I can modify other planes, or maybe combine them, to create a new plane.

 

 

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5 hours ago, Dietmar said:

My simple question regarding Blender is this: Will the new MSFS provide a Gamepack for Blender or a toolset for Blender which allows the use of Blender to develop models for aircraft,

Gamepacks are not really a thing anymore. Asobo already announced that MSFS supports standard export formats such as glTF, which Blender supports, so it's good to go. For some things like driving animations using sim variables, there may be an in-game editor, not sure yet, but that's generally how game engines operate these days.


Barry Friedman

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The glTF format seems to be indeed the the new  format for all the Microsoft 3D products. According to MS statement:

  " Microsoft announced that they will be using glTF 2.0 as the 3D asset format across their product line, including Paint 3D...etc."

So, the old .mdl format seems to be obsolete also. Now to support the existing FSX addon products, may be a model converter
mdl to glTF will be part of the MSFS pack ? Very interesting to see how the new SDK will look like.

   

 

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