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Category Archives: File Formats
DSF Mesh Formats – v9 vs v10
Tom asked a good question in the comment section of a previous post: what is the difference between DSF mesh formats for v9 and v10. Here’s the story: Mesh: In X-Plane 8 and 9, the terrain mesh is stored as … Continue reading
Posted in File Formats, Scenery, Tools
31 Comments
WED: WED’s Export Dies
Why the nerdy recursive acronym for WED? Sometimes the data just stares you in the face. I spent an hour today doing inventory on the build-up of WED bugs. That’s a screenshot of one of my bug screeners for the … Continue reading
Posted in File Formats, Scenery, Tools
15 Comments
The X-Plane 10 Beta Library is Not Stable!
I have blogged before about the importance of not shipping products that target beta builds of X-Plane, and the importance of waiting to the end of beta for file formats to settle down. This also applies to the library! While … Continue reading
Posted in File Formats, Scenery
7 Comments
New OBJ Commands
I have updated the OBJ8 specification with the new X-Plane 10.10 commands. This blog post explains why we added some of these commands. Pixel-Space Drag Manipulator The pixel-space drag manipulator is a new axis manipulator whose drag length is measured … Continue reading
Posted in Cockpits, Development, File Formats, Modeling
11 Comments
Manipulators and the Scroll Wheel
One complaint we hear a lot from tech support is that the 747 knobs are hard to control in the 3-d cockpit. Javier and I did some investigation into this; this post describes what we found, what we are changing, … Continue reading
Posted in Aircraft & Modeling, Development, File Formats
78 Comments
What’s New in OBJects?
I finally finished up an update to the OBJ8 specification, as well as the forest specification – see here for the documents. These specifications are mostly of interest only to developers who are working on scenery exporters. The OBJ specification … Continue reading
Posted in Development, File Formats, Modeling, Scenery
31 Comments
When Are We Going To Get High? The Plan For Cities
I realized the other day that while Chris and I have discussed cities with a bunch of people, I left out the city plan from my series of “road map” blog posts a while back. The picture on the right … Continue reading
Posted in Development, File Formats, Scenery, Tools
45 Comments
Three Kinds of Optimization
I spent a few hours last night working on X-Plane’s facade engine – that is, the part of X-Plane that builds buildings, fences and structures from their shape traced on the ground. Besides fixing some v9 compatibility bugs, I had … Continue reading
Posted in Development, File Formats, Scenery
15 Comments
Collecting Legos (or: the Roadmap For Airports)
I had a chance to catch up with Robin the other day and discuss airports with him. Here’s the basic road map for airports in X-Plane 10. In version 9, an airport consisted only of taxiway layout data. Robin collected … Continue reading
Posted in File Formats, Scenery, Tools
9 Comments
Art Assets and the Library
My last few posts have tried to paint a picture as to where the various art assets and files will live for the new ATC and airport lego bricks in X-Plane 10. I want to specifically point out how the … Continue reading
Posted in File Formats, Scenery
18 Comments