Legacy Aircraft

[OzWookiee]

from a post from MSFS devs, it was pointing towards helicopters in MSFS will be a payware content addon in the future. This was meet with some push back from a lot of people on various media platforms

who knows?

the only concern regarding these legacy converters that some payware developers may not make the effort to compile MSFS native models but rather use these converters and make rudimentary updates and ask the full quid for purchase. Its a bit of a catch 22 with these mods are we setting ourselves up for failure for a snappy enhancement?

Mate, speaking from experience, you cannot just use these converters and then do nothing more for a native conversion. I poured in over two months on the Goose now with a couple more to go.

[jeansy]

Mate, speaking from experience, you cannot just use these converters and then do nothing more for a native conversion. I poured in over two months on the Goose now with a couple more to go.

At the moment you are correct, this tool is a ever evolving and when the full sdk is available who knows what's next.Just like fsx to p3d there are many payware developers who take shortcuts when porting. And from what im seeing from digital retailers everyone is trying to make a buck on msfs addons not matter how small they are.When the market is open to xbox users what this space. The paid content is going to significantly increase. Game consoles are horrendous for paid content.

[DaveWG]

Oh, I didn't know you were going to do one proper for MSFS. Thanks!! It's been one of my favorite warbirds to fly for years. I've used it for recon runs, ball bearing runs from Sweden, low level bomb runs over the mainland, it's a great all purpose airplane. Any chance of an updated Beaufighter as well? (Yeah, I'm pushing my luck )

Yeah, the Beau will be coming as well, but don't hold your breath, it's going to be several months before either is released.

[OzWookiee]

At the moment you are correct, this tool is a ever evolving and when the full sdk is available who knows what's next.Just like fsx to p3d there are many payware developers who take shortcuts when porting. And from what im seeing from digital retailers everyone is trying to make a buck on msfs addons not matter how small they are.When the market is open to xbox users what this space. The paid content is going to significantly increase. Game consoles are horrendous for paid content.

There has always been varying levels of quality with flight sim add-ons, so nothing new there. We the consumer decide what is and is not acceptable.

[K5083]

So after two days messing around with legacy airplanes and the Legacy Importer I have some thoughts that will perhaps be of interest to other newbs who got the program for the holidays and are still getting their feet wet in the legacy thing.

Thought 1. THANK YOU Wookiee for the Goose. The difference between a carefully developed native plane and a jiffy legacy conversion is enormous. It is a delight to fly and your extra effort is much appreciated. The only tweak I made was to turn off "available for AI" since although it was fun to see a Goose on the ramp at every airport I visited around the world, it wasn't very realistic!

Thought 2. Jiffy legacy conversions do have their uses, at least for now, and at least for some users. In my case, these rough, partly-functional conversions will tide me over until there are some categories of planes, mainly vintage, available in more fully developed form. I know that the flight models aren't accurate (although some are surprisingly not bad) and I miss having access to many of the secondary controls and systems. When I want to fly planes that handle like they are supposed to, I still have Prepar3d and FSX. The legacy planes, for me, are just when I want to do what FS2020 does best - peep at scenery - from an open cockpit biplane, or use a P-51 to get around a little quicker than the Bonanza. For that reason, I don't need, and am not trying to convert, every warbird in my P3D hangar. Just a few that fly decently are fine, and I don't need dozens more with basically similar performance. When proper native versions come out, I'll happily delete the legacy planes, and maybe eventually build up a 300-plane hangar in FS2020 as I did in P3D. Or maybe not! Thus far, even with the stock aircraft, P3D still feels better as a simulator to me, and I may keep FS2020 mainly for scenery peeping, which doesn't require many different rides.

Thought 3. That Legacy Importer is a mighty impressive piece of programming. It deserves a lot of praise for being able to turn many FSX airplanes into reasonably flyable FS2020 models in 30 seconds on almost a turn-key basis. Good, no-nonsense interface, too.

Thought 4. Some planes jiffy convert a lot better than others! Personally, I have no interest in converting large or complex aircraft that I'm used to flying with pop-up panels or a lot of use of the mouse-clickable VC. That means basically nothing with a glass cockpit or a lot of complexity, and the biggest "big iron" I've converted so far has been the Just Flight Lockheed 10A. If you are interested in these jiffy conversions, it might be best to stick with the more primitive types.

Thought 5. Legacy converter success seems to vary by publisher, not surprising as they each have their habitual ways of doing gauges, textures etc., some more "standard" and amenable to conversion than others. My results thus far:
- Flight Replicas P-40N converted well; I have not tried other Flight Replicas products, but the P-40 is so good that I'm tempted to try one of the 109s.
- Golden Age Simulations planes convert well, give or take some funky sheen/opacity on the textures.
- Warbirdsim P-51s and Warwick Carter's T-6s converted quite nicely.
- Rob Richardson's planes seem to convert well. I did the Vampire F.3 and it is delightful. I know that others have had success with Rob's other planes.
- I have not had any luck with Alabeo/Carenado planes. They end up with missing parts and/or gauges.
- Milviz is a bit of a mixed bag. The F-86 looks fine but I have some doubts about the flight model. The P-38 that came with P3Dv4 has a few glitches but is flyable. The Corsair had missing skins and just didn't work.
- A2A I have not tried. If their hype about Accu-Sim is even partly true, with so much of the flight model bypassing the standard FSX/P3D process, then they shouldn't convert easily.
- Just Flight/Aeroplane Heaven seems okay. Several people on this thread have reported success with these. I haven't tried many of them.
- RealAir's Spitfires seem to convert beautifully, thank goodness, since we won't be getting any authorized native conversion of these. This is the one plane that I'm willing to learn how to tweak legacy flight models for the sake of having.
- Virtavia's FSX-native products seem to work okay for me so far.

Thought 6. The one consistent flight model issue that many legacy conversions seem to have is wild swinging on takeoff. When I did the Iris P-40E and PC-9, this was so severe that even full trim, rudder and differential braking together couldn't keep it straight. Editing the scalars for these in the aircraft.cfg did not seem to help. My solution was to switch to the legacy flight model and dial down the p-factor, torque and gyro to 50%. That still gives more swing than it did in FSX, but at least it's controllable. It seems to help make other legacy planes behave more like they originally did, as well.

Anyway. I hope this is helpful to someone.

August

[Snurdley]

Thank for that report, August. I know that will be helpful. I've had the same experience. Payware aircraft port much better since they mostly have 3D gauges, however I've noticed that the single engine recip warbirds typically have the crazy takeoff behavior you noted. Thanks much for the tweaking tips, can't wait to try them. It seems that jets or multi-engine warbirds fare much better. Some of the better ones I've tried: Daan's Fokker T5, Flight Replicas Me262, Vertigo F9F, Iris A-10.

Having said that, this is a temporary fix for my own warbird craving in the new sim. I'll be the first one in line when and if MSFS native versions come out.

[K5083]

Yes, it seems like torque and related effects are one of the things that isn't yet being translated well from the FSX to the FS2020 flight models, although I'm sure Legacy Importer will do a better job as more is learned about the new sim.

I figure we can never have enough pilot reports and detailed conversion/tweaking advice in this thread.

I spent a couple of hours tuning the RealAir Spitfires tonight. If you just accept Legacy Importer's defaults, it flies all right in Modern flight model, but it is sluggish in roll. If you switch to Legacy flight model, even with the torque/p/gyro facts set to 50%, the roll is nice and snappy, but it is also so sensitive to torque that you will probably scrape both your wingtips off before you get airborne. I am finding that it feels better if you go into the aircraft.cfg and replace the following values.

In the [WEIGHT_AND_BALANCE] section:
empty_weight_roll_moi = 1000.000 ; originally 4020 for full span wings or 3880 for clipped

In the [FLIGHT_TUNING] section:
aileron_effectiveness = 5.0 ; originally 1.0
roll_stability = 5.0 ; originally 1.0

These would be crazy numbers in FSX, but they make the Spit's roll less sensitive to torque etc. while maintaining the aileron effectiveness. With flight model set to Legacy and torque/p/gyro sliders at 50%, so far this is the closest I've come to what Spitfires feel like in other sims.

August

[FlyingsCool]

So after two days messing around with legacy airplanes and the Legacy Importer I have some thoughts that will perhaps be of interest to other newbs who got the program for the holidays and are still getting their feet wet in the legacy thing.

Thought 1. THANK YOU Wookiee for the Goose. The difference between a carefully developed native plane and a jiffy legacy conversion is enormous. It is a delight to fly and your extra effort is much appreciated. The only tweak I made was to turn off "available for AI" since although it was fun to see a Goose on the ramp at every airport I visited around the world, it wasn't very realistic!

Thought 2. Jiffy legacy conversions do have their uses, at least for now, and at least for some users. In my case, these rough, partly-functional conversions will tide me over until there are some categories of planes, mainly vintage, available in more fully developed form. I know that the flight models aren't accurate (although some are surprisingly not bad) and I miss having access to many of the secondary controls and systems. When I want to fly planes that handle like they are supposed to, I still have Prepar3d and FSX. The legacy planes, for me, are just when I want to do what FS2020 does best - peep at scenery - from an open cockpit biplane, or use a P-51 to get around a little quicker than the Bonanza. For that reason, I don't need, and am not trying to convert, every warbird in my P3D hangar. Just a few that fly decently are fine, and I don't need dozens more with basically similar performance. When proper native versions come out, I'll happily delete the legacy planes, and maybe eventually build up a 300-plane hangar in FS2020 as I did in P3D. Or maybe not! Thus far, even with the stock aircraft, P3D still feels better as a simulator to me, and I may keep FS2020 mainly for scenery peeping, which doesn't require many different rides.

Thought 3. That Legacy Importer is a mighty impressive piece of programming. It deserves a lot of praise for being able to turn many FSX airplanes into reasonably flyable FS2020 models in 30 seconds on almost a turn-key basis. Good, no-nonsense interface, too.

Thought 4. Some planes jiffy convert a lot better than others! Personally, I have no interest in converting large or complex aircraft that I'm used to flying with pop-up panels or a lot of use of the mouse-clickable VC. That means basically nothing with a glass cockpit or a lot of complexity, and the biggest "big iron" I've converted so far has been the Just Flight Lockheed 10A. If you are interested in these jiffy conversions, it might be best to stick with the more primitive types.

Thought 5. Legacy converter success seems to vary by publisher, not surprising as they each have their habitual ways of doing gauges, textures etc., some more "standard" and amenable to conversion than others. My results thus far:
- Flight Replicas P-40N converted well; I have not tried other Flight Replicas products, but the P-40 is so good that I'm tempted to try one of the 109s.
- Golden Age Simulations planes convert well, give or take some funky sheen/opacity on the textures.
- Warbirdsim P-51s and Warwick Carter's T-6s converted quite nicely.
- Rob Richardson's planes seem to convert well. I did the Vampire F.3 and it is delightful. I know that others have had success with Rob's other planes.
- I have not had any luck with Alabeo/Carenado planes. They end up with missing parts and/or gauges.
- Milviz is a bit of a mixed bag. The F-86 looks fine but I have some doubts about the flight model. The P-38 that came with P3Dv4 has a few glitches but is flyable. The Corsair had missing skins and just didn't work.
- A2A I have not tried. If their hype about Accu-Sim is even partly true, with so much of the flight model bypassing the standard FSX/P3D process, then they shouldn't convert easily.
- Just Flight/Aeroplane Heaven seems okay. Several people on this thread have reported success with these. I haven't tried many of them.
- RealAir's Spitfires seem to convert beautifully, thank goodness, since we won't be getting any authorized native conversion of these. This is the one plane that I'm willing to learn how to tweak legacy flight models for the sake of having.
- Virtavia's FSX-native products seem to work okay for me so far.

Thought 6. The one consistent flight model issue that many legacy conversions seem to have is wild swinging on takeoff. When I did the Iris P-40E and PC-9, this was so severe that even full trim, rudder and differential braking together couldn't keep it straight. Editing the scalars for these in the aircraft.cfg did not seem to help. My solution was to switch to the legacy flight model and dial down the p-factor, torque and gyro to 50%. That still gives more swing than it did in FSX, but at least it's controllable. It seems to help make other legacy planes behave more like they originally did, as well.

Anyway. I hope this is helpful to someone.

August

Thanks for that description. The couple I've tried failed pretty miserably (engine wouldn't start in one and I'm hopeless at aircraft stuff, haven't put the time in, and the other well, pretty much didn't go at all and I'm pretty sure there's no hope for it (JF Warrior)).

Carenado's Mooney and Seminole are both suffering from the wild swings on takeoff since the latest update.

[K5083]

Here's one that has some real utility for slowing down and inspecting the scenery. The FSAddon Fi 156 Storch converts easily with the Importer and flies like a Storch should using the Modern flight model with no tweaks to the cfg file. Until we get rotorcraft in the sim, it's the next best thing to the drone cam for floating around looking at stuff!

Here I am inspecting the Deutsches Museum Flugwerft Schleissheim (EDNX) where I spent an enjoyable afternoon a couple of years ago. There is a real Storch in the museum. FS2020 did a nice job of photogrammetry-ing the museum buildings. It even height mapped and textured the An-2 parked out front! I think the museum was not within the FS2020 airport boundary which is why the museum buildings were not wiped out and replaced with generic hangars.

August

[firerx]

is there a program out there that will do batch bmp to DSS conversion?

[Priller]

Google is your friend! (not really, but who cares, they've got everything they want from us already)

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/4...ure-converter/

There's an explanation on how to use it and a download link to mediafire.

Enjoy!!

Priller

[Tom Clayton]

Thanks! I've added this to the Tools thread.

[robcap]

Bit of trouble still with the legacy importer. Sometimes it works, sometimes it didn't. Latest version works again...
Flightmodel needs loads of tweaking.
But gears-up landing works, including bent props... (wasn't my intention, but nice to know)
We will make a native model for MSFS.
Most gauges workwith the importer.
Maybe diving into the legacy importer will get more gauges going.







Best, Rob

[jankees]

Good to see you back in the saddle, Rob! Looking forward to the DC-2!

[Sundog]

Hi guys, I tried importing Miltons La Patrona Tigercat. I use the bmp to dxt texture converter, but the model appears all white. Is that an alpha layer issue? Thanks, Ken

[Snurdley]

This gem showed up on Flightsim.com and works pretty well in MSFS. Beautiful work.

[Cirrus N210MS]

dc-3 ?? is the dc3 getting ported soon ?

[K5083]

I noticed that a lot of legacy aircraft are missing sounds, in particular most of them make no tire squeak on touchdown and there is no ground rumble either. It can often be very difficult to tell when you have landed.

At length I realized that these planes were calling stock FSX/P3D wav files from the Sound folder that are absent in FS2020. So I tried the following process:

- Open sound.cfg in the Sound folder of the legacy plane. Look for all the sound file names in "filename=" lines. Check to see that there is a wav file with that name in the Sound folder.
- If any are not present in the plane's Sound folder, find them in the base Sound folder of FSX or P3D, and copy them to that plane's Sound folder in FS2020.
- When all sound files are accounted for, update the layout.json file in the plane's top-level directory using either the rescan command in Legacy Importer or the auto_json utility that OzWookiee has included with his FS2020 Grumman Goose.

This works great. My complete sound sets are now back in the planes I've done this to, and it's much better both for immersion and knowing when I'm on the ground.

But it's a laborious process re-copying the files to each plane I convert. Does anyone know if there's any way the whole FSX/P3D Sound folder could be copied someplace where FS2020 would know to look for it? I didn't get much out of looking into the Sound folders for the Asobo planes. They are using a very different file system.

August

[Mach3DS]

Anyone have an MSFS working copy of the XF-103 Rapier?

[FlyingsCool]

I've tried to convert 4 aircraft now, and none of them can keep their engines running, and I haven't a clue about how to manage that. I've done absolutely nothing other than run the converter. I don't know where to start looking. Are there any good tutorials out there on how to fix that? Or do people just use key bindings to do things like close fuel valves and set magnetos?

[kaigun]

I am also trying with my first conversions with Legacy Importer and indeed some are working reasonably stable, the others are going crazy... I am not expecting smooth performance, just stable flying, working gauges in VC to see main parameters and proper texture displaying, accepting all other limitations and not clickable switches etc.
Could some of You please share with some more tips about using mentioned Legacy Importer - I have few doubts before continuing with next conversions due to lack of time for empty "trials by error".
What bothers me most - do You use simple conversion only or switch to full conversions ?
If doing full conversion do You use also *.air file dump ? If so, are You inserting there data in engine and aerodynamics sections ? If so, do You choose them individually (by color ?) or accept inserting all that appear in the list ?
Should the majority of conversions fly well in modern flight model or You are testing both modern vs legacy to choose better ?
Legacy Importer is a true gem for users like me, with no experience in planes parts editing. What I really miss due to lack of experience is some kind of "cooking receipt" for succesful conversion (as much as possible of course) using Converter - for specific plane, what should be done on each tab in converter and what should not...
Thank You all for great ideas sharing here !!!

BTW, is is possible to add new planes for tests to Community folder to get them visible immediately in plane choice menu as it was possible in FSX-P3D (just adding to SimObjects folder and opening choice window again) ? or MSFS must be exit and started again each time ?

[keithb77]

Start simple and work up...the FSX Civilian P51D Racer is an easy conversion and works well - just do the basic conversion.
I always do a basic conversion plus the runway file and then if I really want that aircraft I will try the more complex conversion with airfile export etc.
Before starting I look in the panel.cfg file - if it's full of XML gauges in the VCOCKPITnn sections I don't bother.
You CAN do gauge conversion but it's not really worth the effort.
Old planes tend to give the best results, more likely to have 3D cockpits.

Some imports work with legacy FM, some are better with modern, no idea why.

You need to restart MSFS to pick up new models, you can change textures and just reload the aircraft.
CFG changes you need to use developer mode to resync.

[Manschy]

Before starting I look in the panel.cfg file - if it's full of XML gauges in the VCOCKPITnn sections I don't bother.

Keith, can you please tell us what you do mean with this?

Here are some parts of the MILVIZ F-4 panel.cfg, but I can't find any hint regarding xml. The lines behind "gauges = " only refer to the dll files in the P3D gauges folder...

//--------------------------------------------------------
[Vcockpit32]
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=1024,1024
visible=1
pixel_size=1024,1024
texture=$F4E_16_C_R
gauge00=MV_F4E_LT!L16, 0,0,1024,1024, R

//--------------------------------------------------------
[Vcockpit33]
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=512,512
visible=1
pixel_size=1024,1024
texture=$F4E_17
gauge00=MV_F-4E_Sys!Radar, 0,256,512,256
gauge01=MV_F-4E_Sys!RWR, 0,0,512,256

//--------------------------------------------------------

[Vcockpit34]
Background_color=0,0,0
size_mm=32,32
visible=1
pixel_size=32,32
texture=$F4E_sys
gauge00=MV_F-4E_Sys!SV, 0,0,1,1


[Color]
Day=255,255,255
Night=25,10,5
Luminous=202,220,147

[Default View]
X=0
Y=0
SIZE_X=8191
SIZE_Y=4000

Did I find the wrong file?

[Snurdley]

Start simple and work up...the FSX Civilian P51D Racer is an easy conversion and works well - just do the basic conversion.
I always do a basic conversion plus the runway file and then if I really want that aircraft I will try the more complex conversion with airfile export etc.
Before starting I look in the panel.cfg file - if it's full of XML gauges in the VCOCKPITnn sections I don't bother.
You CAN do gauge conversion but it's not really worth the effort.
Old planes tend to give the best results, more likely to have 3D cockpits.

Some imports work with legacy FM, some are better with modern, no idea why.

You need to restart MSFS to pick up new models, you can change textures and just reload the aircraft.
CFG changes you need to use developer mode to resync.

I believe it's xml gauges that work, dll don't. And I think you mean 3D gauges, not cockpits (all vc's are 3D). But they have to be native FSX models, with separate external and vc models.

[kaigun]

Thank You very much Keith ! I will follow Your experience Any other hints & tips welcomed !