Jaguar to be portover?

[gajit]

Hi - just paid a visit to the Alphasim site to see if there was any progress on the islander to read that they are planning a FS9 Sepcat Jaguar to be a portover for FSX.

[d0mokun]

I think it's been the intention all along to have the FS9 Jag as a portover.

Nobody wants to do/ nobody can do the FSDS conversion work.

[gajit]

never mind eh? I'm looking forward to the islander

[kilo delta]

The original Alphasim Jags worked fine in fsx anyhow (maybe some gauge /effects/alpha issues....but that's trivial) :)
Pity they can't convert it to true fsx.
Anyone know if there are any plans to convert their EE Lightning packages to true fsx, or will this also be impossible due to FSDS conversion? :gossip: :)

[Mickey D]

It's not a case of 'FSDS conversion'. FSDS 3.5 is more than capable of producing excellent FSX models with the help of FSDS Tweaker here and there. Anyone who has the Skysim Hawk and Mark Harper's Mirage will testify to that. They are every bit as good as and in some cases better than models made with Max which costs many thousands of dollars more.

As Dan knows the problems lay with MakeMDL and XtoMDL. FS9 models are compiled with the former and will port over to FSX. FSX models are compiled with the latter and won't work in FS9.
Most devs would prefer to start from scratch which is why many models are FSX only. Who in their right mind wants to build two seperate models for little extra return.

As I understand it the devs behind the Jag prefer to work in FS9 and who can really blame them for that.

[Bone]

I've been quite happy with the FS9 portovers I have. As beautiful as the Aerosoft F-16 is, I think it is overkill on detail. It's exterior is so detailed that flying in formation with it is too much of a drag on FPS to be enjoyable. And if you are flying solo, who needs an overdetailed exterior anyway?

I would rather fly a lower poly-count plane and be able to use some nice airbase scenery. Having a plane that hogs all of my CPU power doesn't leave any juice for wingmen and scenery.

BTW, a portover Lightning would be great.

[rdyoung]

I would rather fly a lower poly-count plane and be able to use some nice airbase scenery. Having a plane that hogs all of my CPU power doesn't leave any juice for wingmen and scenery.

In my experience with portovers compared to the same or similar native FSX model, many models designed for FS9 result in poor performance in FSX -- i.e. not leaving much "juice" for scenery. When Alphasim released their native T6 Texan, there was as much as 10 FPS and a lot smoother flying gained compared to the ported version. Personally, I don't care much about cockpit shadows and bump mapping. I do enjoy the smoother flying experience achieved with a lot of native FSX models compared to a lot of FS9 portovers. There are a number of nicely-designed portovers that come closer to the performance in the sim of native FSX models as there are complex FSX models that can demand much more from the computer, but I believe we can usually expect either smoother performance or much more detail with the native option.

Developers can and will, of course, do whatever they determine is "best". I just hope native FSX models will still be considered for performance reasons.

Rick

[Bone]

In my experience with portovers compared to the same or similar native FSX model, many models designed for FS9 result in poor performance in FSX -- i.e. not leaving much "juice" for scenery.

Rick

Point understood. I have had a few portovers that dragged my system down, but the majority of my portovers (and I have alot) work really well and get great fps. The gist of my previous statement was more along the lines of a "happy medium" of detail verses performance. I realize that is also a function of ones rig. Now that we don't have to chase after the next biggest/better rig to handle follow-on versions of FS, I would hate to have to start upgrading my rig to keep up with higher and higher detail addons.

[kilo delta]

It's not a case of 'FSDS conversion'. FSDS 3.5 is more than capable of producing excellent FSX models with the help of FSDS Tweaker here and there. Anyone who has the Skysim Hawk and Mark Harper's Mirage will testify to that. They are every bit as good as and in some cases better than models made with Max which costs many thousands of dollars more.

As Dan knows the problems lay with MakeMDL and XtoMDL. FS9 models are compiled with the former and will port over to FSX. FSX models are compiled with the latter and won't work in FS9.
Most devs would prefer to start from scratch which is why many models are FSX only. Who in their right mind wants to build two seperate models for little extra return.

As I understand it the devs behind the Jag prefer to work in FS9 and who can really blame them for that.



Thanks for the clarification, Mickey :)
I was under the impression that Alphasim were to be concentrating on producing addons for FSX only ....maybe they've had a change of mind? It certainly would not make much business sense creating seperate models for both sims, but i'd have imagined that the devs would have made the change to "The Dark Side" by now...as after all FSX is the future of flight simming :monkies: :amen:
:)

[Mickey D]

but i'd have imagined that the devs would have made the change to "The Dark Side" by now...as after all FSX is the future of flight simming :monkies: :amen:
:)

Hmm! Ah but is it? Since the announcement by MS many scenery devs have announced their intention to move back to 'The Light Side' because of all the utlities available to us which won't work with XtoMDL. I for one would much rather work in FS9 for the same reasons. For example using Arno's MDL Tweaker I can create FPS friendly 'face to user' seasonal trees. I filled Scampton with them. ( available fron Skysim at a very reasonable price :) ) The transparencies dont work in FSX and I can't 'tweak' an XtoMDL tree to be 'face to user seasonal' so FSX Scampton has a reduced number of 'evergreen' trees.
As you can see it's the 'plane devs who get all the gravy with FSX.

[MCDesigns]

Hmm! Ah but is it? Since the announcement by MS many scenery devs have announced their intention to move back to 'The Light Side' because of all the utlities available to us which won't work with XtoMDL. I for one would much rather work in FS9 for the same reasons. For example using Arno's MDL Tweaker I can create FPS friendly 'face to user' seasonal trees. I filled Scampton with them. ( available fron Skysim at a very reasonable price :) ) The transparencies don't work in FSX and I can't 'tweak' an XtoMDL tree to be 'face to user seasonal' so FSX Scampton has a reduced number of 'evergreen' trees.
As you can see it's the 'plane devs who get all the gravy with FSX.

I truly hope it is, with all due respect maybe it's time to find new utilities or try something new. I do scenery as yourself, I am truly enjoying working in FSX and have no desire to go back to FS9 and the way I did things designing for that sim. While some things don't work as they used to, I'd much rather have fully 3D trees anyway, same with people. While I do miss Arno's MDL tweaker in FSX, I find I can add more detail with little to no impact to compensate for some things. Transparencies work fine in FSX, just takes a special setting in the material editor for it to work. In FS9, I could do body parts and limited looping animation and it was fine for scenery people, yet in FSX I have this option still, or I can assign bones and have more realistic movement and more advanced animation. Does it take longer, yes, is the learning curve steeper, yes, but I think of it as moving forward and adding to the experience with something a bit new and unexpected.

I wouldn't say plane devs get all the gravy, they have had many hoops and hurdles themselves.

I see FS9 as a dead end for design, it has all been done, and nothing innovative can come, whereas, there are still so many unexplored options in FSX IMO.

:focus: As for the jaguar, I too am bummed it's not a true FSX model. I find on my old rig that native FSX models do usually have better performance and while I can test with a freeware portover, I can't see purchasing one. If an FSDS developer chooses not to produce an FSX native model, that is their "choice" since it can be done and they have the option .
Otherwise, it's a great looking design, always loved the look of the jag.

[Mickey D]

Perhaps I didn't put over well what I meant Michael. Yes of course transparencies work fine with XtoMDL models. I use the myself for fences etc..
What I mean is there is no way yet as far as I,Arno and Dave Nunez know of applying a set of seasonal textures to a single model compiled with XtoMDL in the same way as we can with MakeMDL and MDL Tweaker. So until someone devises a way to place fully seasonal Autogen trees ABOVE the airport polygon FSX airfields will be stuck in summertime. The alternative is to leave them out and an RAF base with no trees is akin to a cheese sandwich with no cheese.

BTW if you know of a way to do it let me know eh? ;)

As for 3D trees, it's a matter of personal choice really. To me they will always look like what they are i.e. crossed double polygons. Even the stock ones.

We'll leave the subject of global FSX 'desert' textures for another thread.
Britain is green all year round. :)