Military AI Works

Hi,

a happy new year all - hope you got a good start...

Folks, as probably well known, I hesitate to change to MSFS because of several reasons - most of them is my missing beloved aircraft and missing military AI.
But as well as that, I am fearing the development of sceneries for MSFS because of the uncontrollable number of gratuitous updates of MSFS.

I see RAF Lakenheath and RAF Coningsby as reference for outstanding sceneries appearing in MSFS and they seem to be very very stable so far.

So I had been interested in knowing about the effort in this:
A scenery like Lakenheath - is it ready when you finish it or do you have to live with fear of daily/weekly/monthly updates of MSFS which destroy a working project?

Hi Manfred,

…just to say, most of us that have already taken the plunge and have purchased MSFS, understand that this is a Sim that will evolve over time.
Whilst I fully understand where you are coming from, I really don’t think that your concerns should prevent you from purchasing MSFS and then having a good look at it.
Initially, you don’t need to design anything, your WIP FSX version of Bruggen, will work inside of MSFS, without too much modification.
You wouldn’t need the Tree models or the ground polygons ( an Afcad would be required however ).
Anything SODE controlled would need to be included in the mdl library for the Scenery instead.
Apart from that, you would just make sure that textures are all in dds. format and that is pretty much it.

We can help you with the required folder structure for installing it.

At least this would give you a taste of what things might look like, before you go all out on things like PBR texturing etc.

You never know, someone might even convert those gorgeous FSX RAF Tornado GR1’s for you to go with it !

Regards,

Pete,

Someone definitely might! Happy New Year Manfred.

John

Thank you, mates

Manschy wrote: ↑01 Jan 2022, 13:43 Hi,

a happy new year all - hope you got a good start...

Folks, as probably well known, I hesitate to change to MSFS because of several reasons - most of them is my missing beloved aircraft and missing military AI.
But as well as that, I am fearing the development of sceneries for MSFS because of the uncontrollable number of gratuitous updates of MSFS.

I see RAF Lakenheath and RAF Coningsby as reference for outstanding sceneries appearing in MSFS and they seem to be very very stable so far.

So I had been interested in knowing about the effort in this:
A scenery like Lakenheath - is it ready when you finish it or do you have to live with fear of daily/weekly/monthly updates of MSFS which destroy a working project?

Hi Manfred

The scenery for Coningsby/Lakenheath/Honington has always worked without updating them.

Any updates I do I are to improve the scenery as I did a few days ago adding new ramps to both sceneries.

I converted my scenery purely using the in sim tools and manual XML coding. MDL converter or ADE was not available then and as such I still don't use them as I have a way of working now.

I imagine using them will speed up any conversion and like Pete said you can ignore the ground and trees. A basic conversion will be achievable efficiently. I have converted my ground polys though but I am not sure that will possible with MDL Converter.

My scenery (Not Honington as its retro) seems to be hugely popular with multiplayer and when I go to Lakenheath with live players turned on there is always 10-20 users flying the circuit etc in F-15s etc. I have joined in the last couple of days and its been nice to see the scenery alive with fast jets


Cheers

Ian

Thank you very much Ian. That sounds promising.
So as I understand correctly, all the legacy sceneries converted to work fine in MSFS do not need any updates or maintenance repairs when MSFS is doing some of its odd updates?

Manfred, from what i have read that can't be said. it really depends upon the manner and tools you use to create the scenery.
I am not saying that it won't be compatible but rather that it may need an update to make it compatible with the latest version. Not every version mind you.

For example if you go to Flightsim.to on a page for a download you will see that a little sticker which says if it is compatible with the SU7 or not. I am assuming that this is set by the developer, but Ian will confirm this as he uses the site.

The general rule is if you follow the MS guidelines in the SDK the chances are that you will be OK. Having said that they have changed the rules in the past, SU5 broke quite a few things.

As a user the biggest amount of problems I have had is with addons that use xml, especially ones that override the system xml.

Manschy wrote: ↑05 Jan 2022, 08:40 Thank you very much Ian. That sounds promising.
So as I understand correctly, all the legacy sceneries converted to work fine in MSFS do not need any updates or maintenance repairs when MSFS is doing some of its odd updates?

I cannot speak for future updates but so far I have helped convert between 10+ sceneries and built one from scratch for MSFS. All have survived the updates apart from a small blip with light rows on a couple which was fixed fast with a hotfix a couple of days later.

Scenery seems to be the most stable side of 3rd party add ons. You only have to look how many scenery add ons there have been since the sim was released.

The conversions I speak of are not so much conversions using tools to convert. There is quite a lot of work.

The sceneries are 100% MSFS code and materials which is why they probably survive the updates.

Mjam - sounds more and more interesting...