Abacus has released the FSDS 2.0 beta team from their NDAs. We are free to answer any and all questions you might have about FSDS 2.0Davewww.daviator.com

did you already compare gmax aircraft to fsds2 aircraft? is there a difference in mdl-filesize and/or fs2002-fps? does fsds2 create the correct material highlight "level" values (ms-xfile exporter doesnt)? does fsds2 support different smoothing groups and/or textures/materials on the same object? keyframe animation? custom animation macros? maximum texture size? does fsds2 has something similar as gmax

FSDS 2.0 produces true FS2002 compatible MDLs. A side by side comparison is difficult. The new 2.0 MDLs are considerably smaller than the old FSDS produced MDLs. To the best of my knowlwdge FSDS supports material hightlight level values and varying levels of specularity. Yes, smoothing groups are now supported. You can select any number of polygons for a part and have them smoothed or not. In addtion, you can texture any number of polygons on a single part you desire. Three types of animation are supported: The standard way of naming the part (I.e. rudder) and the part will pivot along it's axis. Keyframe animation is now fully implemented and SDL Macros will be supported (pending a new version of SDL Edit from Mike) In addition, FSDS now supports stacking of display conditions. Maximum texture size is 1024x1024 and now the texture window is twice the size it used to be. In addition shiny surfaces are now fully supported. I don't know what a modifly stack is. Still one level of undo. The the viewports stay the same. (front view ing being flipped to match top view)Part/child hierachies are now implimented. You can now copy/cut and paste groups of parts. You can also animate "parent" parts and all children parts assigned to the parent will animated as well.Hope this helps!Dave

>I don't know what a >modifly stack is. Still one level of undo. The the viewports >stay the same. (front view ing being flipped to match top >view) Thanks for the details... it sounds as though it is going to be a very nice and complete program!The 'modify stack' is a feature of GMax (and its big brother 3dsMax), which allows the designer to work on each 'part' in a variety of ways, such as vertex, edge, face, polygon, and element sub-level, and will maintain a separate (configurable) 'undo' record for each operation.What makes this so powerful, is that the designer can go backwards in the stack, modify the part's properties, etc. without destroying or undoing changes made in a higher level of the stack.

sounds good.....does fsds2 stil support crossection mode (add, delete, scale, moove)?if yes, anyway to place pre-orders?cheerstom

Of course it does :)

I wrote up a brief preview for anyone who's interested:http://www.kazoku.org/xp-38n/articles/fsds2pre.htm- dcc

>I wrote up a brief preview for anyone who's interested: >>http://www.kazoku.org/xp-38n/articles/fsds2pre.htm That was an interesting read. Thanks...Check again though to see if the key-frame animation can be increased to 200 frames.The reason is, that keyframes 101-200 are used by FS2k2 for specific movements. For example, keyframes 1-100 are used for gear retraction, and keyframes 101-200 are used for gear compression.Surely the author hasn't overlooked this... :)

Yes! Keyframes 100-200 are included. (Needed for strut animation among other things)Davewww.daviator.com

Hello Dave,I don't have any new projects in mind right now, but do think there is anything to be gained by taking a current FSDS model and running it through FSDS 2?Thanks,John Woodward

Well it depends but in most cases, yes. You now can have shiny parts, better animation (wheels that stop rolling slowly, working struts, etc), better frame rates, night lighting...Dave

Hi DaveDoes FSDS 2 really have full support for SDL macros in the FS2002 Mdl format?Also could you animate a gear retraction in FSDS without using keyframe?I guess the 100 frame limit is forced on us by FS2002 itself, but it is just not enough for a decent gear retraction animation.ThanksDavid Maltby

Hi David, FSDS supports SDL Macros for FS2002. However Mike C. is currently in the process of updating SDL Edit with the new FS2002 variables.FSDS uses 200 frame keyframe animation. However I think, like Gmax, that frames 100-200 are used for suspension animation. I don't think there is any other supported way on animating landing gear at this point. Dave

So hopefully I will still be able to animate a smooth gear retraction using SDLEdit?The frames 100-200 that you mention for suspension. Can they be used independantly of the first 100 frames, or is all the gear animation kind of lumped together?Thanks for your helpDavid

I'm not sure. Let me experiment a bit.