Hi all.Well, I've see some promotional stuff for the next version of FS. Screenies look great, but I'm still unclear about backward compatability, especially as it relates to scenery design. I understand that SCASM coded objects would not be compatable, but what other features of scenery design that are in the current utilities do have to worry about? Are there scenery design elements (eg, VTP polys, LC, etc) that we won't be able to use in FS10? Are there some tools that won't make it across, or some BGLs that won't work in FS10?Any thoughts?Cheers,Matthew.

Hi Matthew.There has been no indication that there will be any backward compatibility issues. SCASM is simply a programming language. It will have the same level of compatibility that any pre-FSX scenery would have.The few screen shots I have seen seem to indicate that All TMF elements ( landclass, waterclass, LWM and VTP, as well as mesh and photoreal ) will be compatible. It also appears all of our Scenery objects will be compatible.I think there may be some nice surprises concerning scenery animation and moving objects.I am not sure if objects driven by the old FS5 Dynamic scenery will work, or if some of the "tricks" we use to force object movement ( such as using air traffic to simulate ships ) will still work... but they may be replaced with better methods... we just have to wait and see.Dick

Hi Dick.Thanks for the reply and the info. I'm a bit of dope as I've dropped this in the wrong forum. I ment to put in the Scenery Design forum, not the Mesh Design one. Anyway, your response is what I was looking for, so thanks for that.Cheers,Matthew.

MS Compiling Scenery with BGLComp for FS2004 gives a very clear warning:"A new XML-based scenery format has been created and is required (my emphasis) for creating new scenery. Scenery should no longer be created with BGL opcodes or the BGLC compiler from previous versions of Flight Simulator. The older BGL opcodes are supported for backwards compatibility, however, we cannot guarantee their support in future."I wonder how many of the current scenery add-ons are strictly XML?