Comments on: The Turtle Needs a New Shell

By: Jonas Eberle

Jonas Eberle — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 20:04:03 +0000

Thanks for this update.
For AutoOrtho and whatever comes after it we would love a callback in the plugin API when a texture is accessed that would allow us to return data or a file descriptor. That would simplify and probably speed up things a lot and allow us to get rid of the dynamic file system and more easily support Windows and Mac. For asynchronous downloading we could even get a method to tell X-Plane that it should reload a certain texture? The latter would allow us to prevent stutters completely.
I feel this has more interesting use cases for scenery designers as well.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 02:27:18 +0000

In reply to Benjamin George Jr. No plans for this. This can be done by plugins now.

By: Benjamin George Jr

Benjamin George Jr — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 00:27:37 +0000

Hey Ben, when will there be an implementation of an internal FOV and external FOV? For instance if I want my aspect ratio to be 75 inside the aircraft and then my aspect ratio to be 45 external out of the aircraft.. when will this be implemented or is there any plans for that?

Thanks,
Ben

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:31:43 +0000

In reply to Martin Flek. It's too soon to say how WED and tools for the new system will interact.

By: Tom Knudsen

Tom Knudsen — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:26:29 +0000

In reply to Tom Knudsen. I think I save this topic for an later Q&A as to what vision you guys see X-Plane scenery in the future as to how it can look better than today :) Thanks for respondering Ben, response is understood.

By: Martin Flek

Martin Flek — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:26:00 +0000

In reply to Ben Supnik. Okay, thanks for the answer. One more question, will it be able to create Mesh only and the rest will be through worldeditor, or will it be possible to export ortho, forest etc. using shapefile data.

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:19:49 +0000

In reply to Martin Flek. New tool from us to convert GIS data to raster tiles. Because the raster tiles are way more flexible in how they consume data (and in requiring LESS data), the new tool should be _fundamentally_ less annoying than MeshTool...most of MeshTool's annoyance factor comes from "you need 8 tons of crap to bake the DSF", which is a DSF thing, not a mesh tool thing.

By: Martin Flek

Martin Flek — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:05:45 +0000

Hey, Ben,
As you wrote in your comment, Meshtool is retiring. So will there be a similar tool publicly available soon or will we have to rely on third party tools like Ortho4XP, etc.

By: Filip Chudoba

Filip Chudoba — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 18:22:03 +0000

In reply to Ben Supnik. Glad to hear that! Thanks a lot! Looking forward for future updates!

By: Ben Supnik

Ben Supnik — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 17:37:42 +0000

In reply to Filip Chudoba.

I would expect WorldEditor to keep on working and adapt, but MeshTool to be retired.

Organic animations aren’t a scenery issue, they’re a _modeling_ issue – the aircraft people are just as (or more) annoyed by the current animation tech in OBJ. We’re working on moving modeling to glTF 2.0 with skeletal animation, but this is a long term goal.