Demo = "Test sandbox"???

[Guest Vorlin]

Very cool... from what TDragger said in the FSX forum, we may be able to test out our designs in the limited world that is provided by the FSX demo.What does a dev need?A couple of airorts and the ability to render 3rd party scenery, aircraft and meshes in the FSX engine for testing.... that's about it.From what I understand, the demo is "supposed to be" capable of that.Having even a small corner of the world to work with would allow us to test our designs in advance of the release... let's jsut hope that I got the story straight!Scott / Vorlin

[Varmint007 2]

Well it definitely works, although some paths have changed or are non-existent. For example aircraft are now in ./SimObjects/aircraft.There were no modules or fonts folders that I could find and simply adding them apparently didn't work (no FSUIPC for instance).The Gmax models has some issues as well. I wanted to see what "Aircraft Casts Shadows on Self" looked like, but it apparently didn't work even though the interface option was there. I'll have to see if it works with the demo A/C. Perhaps it's a compile issue.Transparency (without textures in my case) didn't work. For example my canopy glass was completely gone or invisible. Also areas of a model which have no textures applied (diffuse color only) were all shaded black.Lots of things to explore here. I'm going to dive into the XML soon.I'll say one thing; people who are claiming their products are FSX compatible without even having tested them will have a lot to answer for, and I hope that irresponsibility comes around and bites them in the hind quarters. Installers will be broken, textures will be broken, gauges may be broken if they rely on modules in a specific path, who KNOWS what else.--Jon

[Varmint007 2]

I just wanted to add that the field of view appears to have narrowed in FSX. 1.0x zoom in FSX (demo) seems to be equal to 1.25x zoom in FS9. The only reason I can imagine this would have been done would be to improve poor performance, since a narrower field of view means less polygons per frame.Regardless, a lot of HUDs are about to break.--Jon

[Guest Vorlin]

Yea....Panther contacted me last night on TS regarding our updated HD500E. The canopy glass issue is present in our model too. It's just plain gone.A bug? An oversight? A known casualty due to the new way things have to be done? Not sure... TDragger, are you watching this forum too?We're on the verge of taking on a rewrite to fix the issue but I want to hear from the ACES team to see if they'll address it or if we have to before we try to take that job on ourselves.I noticed several things already, as have others. As long as the ACES team calls it a "sneak peek of a work in progress" then I think all will be well. It's a bit to buggy to be a final demo release but, overall, it's not too shabby at all!Scott / Vorlin

[taguilo 33]

Hi,Regarding XML gauge's structure...Be prepared for a tough migration. There seems to be some radical changes in tag naming and LVAR syntax - they use no units now, like GVars.Examples from CRJ_700 bird: (A:General Eng Generator Active:1,bool) 0 ==(L:Fire_Eng2_Warning)(L:CautionsCleared) etc.Just extracted from a 5 min first look!Tom

[n4gix 4,947]

1) Max/GMax Material Colors no longer work. All polys must now have texture applied.2) Self-Shadowing: this is a separate Material Editor Slot bitmap that will need to be created/applied using the new tools. Existing FS9 models will not have either Self-Shadowing or Bump Mapping (see #3 below), but will need to be reworked and recompiled using the new tools to be available in the FSX SDKs.3) Bump Mapping: as with #2 above, this is a new bitmap resource that will be added to the Material Editor's property slots.4) Module folder: no longer exists, although one may be created if desired. See the dll.xml file in the same place you'll find the fsx.cfg file.5) FSUIPC: Currently no FSUIPC support is available. It will be available at time of release... ;)6) XML Gauges: most will continue to work as before. As noted, there are many new features to be discovered and exploited.7) FS98 style gauges will no longer function at all...

[Guest Patrick_Waugh]

What makes a gauge FS98 anyway?

[WarpD 824]

>What makes a gauge FS98 anyway?>The header version used to define the gauge.

[dragonflightdesign 98]

Rotorcraft are in a separate folder too (..simobjectsrotorcraft) although whether that idea will last is open to doubt. The sim doesn't care where you put the airplane/rotorcraft; it still recognises them. Note that it's not an 'aircraft' folder anymore - it's now an 'airplane' folder, probably because of the 'rotorcraft' folder.-Dai

[Varmint007 2]

I did see some units in L:Vars, (CRJ MFD) but perhaps it was just an oversight. There were others as well. My guess would be that units simply don't matter and can be ignored, as everything seems to be treated as a double anyway just like in FS9. (L:Init) 0 == if{ 0 (>L:Display Scale, number) 3 (>L:MapItem Shown, number)1 (>L:Init)} Reloading the panel has NOT been reloading the gauges. It seems to be necessary to reload the entire A/C in order to see changes to XML. Hopefully there's a new command for simply reloading gauges.The new XML syntax seems to be very verbose. Here's a simple string print (non formatted). Anyone interested in seeing their line counts triple? Should make debugging interesting:)16.000,36.000TrueTrueArialWHITE12%((A:GPS drives nav1, bool))%{if}GPS%{else}VOR 1%{end}LEFT40,12TrueI wish there was some vector code to explore, but the GPS with the demo is FS9GPS.--Jon

[Varmint007 2]

Thanks for the confirmation, Bill. Do you happen to know if the true reflectivity I've seen on materials can be enabled without the new model compiler? Is it as simple as a reflectivity percentage applied to a material, perhaps without even an alpha channel?I'd be curious to know how it works/will work if you know anything about it.Thanks--Jon

[Guest Vorlin]

Wow... I'm looking through who is active in this thread and I feel like the baby of the group. In fact, I AM the baby of the group!To all those who are new to gauge design, look at the names above (besides me) for a list of most of the "go to" people when a probem seems to be impossible.I did say most, not all. I haven't had coffee yet so I apologize to anyone I miss... but it almost seems like we only need Nick, Jan and Arnie to jump in here and we have a reunion... or a guru convention.Most of these guys are the ones who helped me out and they're credited in the Customized MD500E Readme. Some, I fly and consult with currently when I have a question. If you're new, look for posts by the people above to learn your way. These guys DID write the books.Scott / Vorlin

[Guest Vorlin]

>Hi,>>Regarding XML gauge's structure...>Be prepared for a tough migration. There seems to be some>radical changes in tag naming and LVAR syntax - they use no>units now, like GVars.>Examples from CRJ_700 bird:...>Just extracted from a 5 min first look!>>Tom>Tom, welcome back! I was beginning to fear that you'd completely drifted away. If there was ever a time when we'll need "The Macro King", it's going to be over the next 9 months or so!Good to see you around!Scott / Vorlin

[Guest Vorlin]

To the gurus....Do you think it's too early for me to try to construct a DTD and XSD from the existing gauge files? I could do it within an hour or so but I'm wondering if we have enough total lines within the XML that's available to put together something that would represent the new structure properly or if the resulting picture it paints would be too incomplete.Scott / Vorlin

[Guest Patrick_Waugh]

I realize that, but as I don't have the header file, I can't see what is different in it.If anyone has an old header, that would be great.