X-Plane converted to FS9

1. offizieller Beitrag

    Afternoon all

    About two months ago I saw a post on here regarding Swedish sceneries and the total amount of airports available being remarkably high which is always a good thing for FS9. There was however mention made on the thread that no scenery exist for Hemavan (ESUT) for FlightSim. Only a link to an X-Plane scenery was given by Dedl.

    Having some knowledge of conversions from FSX to FS9, I thought this would be a great opportunity to see if conversions between X-Plane and FS9 was a possibility so I took on the challenge for myself to see if it can be done with relative ease. Imagine the possibilities if that was possible and what new sceneries could then become "available" to use in our beloved old sim.

    I had an idea in my head on how I was going to go about but that idea quickly led me into a dead-end street (see here ).

    Thus, I had to go about it the old fashioned long way of doing model for model and then placing them myself afterwards. For now this is just a quick notice of the fact that the models convert with a fair amount of easy but the textures and modelparts do present a slight headache as it is sometimes split into 2 or 3 seperate models making up a single one (the large hangar and terminal being examples of this). None the less, the models are converted and display quite well in FS9.

    2021-06-10.png

    The airport file (apt.dat) which is the "AFCAD" of the X-Plane world is a plain text file but for now I could not see any similarities with the FS9-AFCAD style (XML-file) types. This means that the AFCADS will most probably have to be done from scratch for every airport being converted except if some clever programmer could write a script which would automate this task.

    The biggest problem I see so far (with this particular scenery and possibly many X-Plane sceneries) is the fact that most X-Plane developers make use of a large amount of library objects to "fill" the airports. So short of converting all the libraries available (which is an almost impossible task) the "filler objects" would have to be added from FS9 libraries to make the sceneries complete and more alive.

    See the extract below of a portion of the .dsf-file (file placement in X-Plane) making mention of the fact that libraries are extensively used.

    15.069657 / 65.800824 / 15.078397 / 65.814650 sim / exclude_net 15.069657 / 65.800824 / 15.078397 / 65.814650 sim / require_agpoint 1/0 sim / require_object 1/0 sim / require_facade 1/36 sim / require_facade 6/0 NFED4? KICK? TJBO ‡? lib / street / waste_management / TrashCan_random.obj lib / street / waste_management / Dumpster_m10_full.obj lib / street / waste_management / Dumpster_30Y_full_2.obj lib / street / waste_management / Dumpster_30Y_full.obj lib / street / waste_management / Dumpster_30Y_empty /Dumpster_30Y_empty_3.obj lib / street / various / porta_potty.obj lib / street / furniture / Park_bench_01.obj lib / street / furniture / Rubbish_bin_06.obj lib / industrial_area / goods / barrels_8x_03.obj lib / industrial_area / goods / pall_stack_ets_us /damage_and_grunge/Oil_spill.obj assets / puddles / puddle1_small.obj assets / puddles / puddle4_medium. obj assets / Shaders / Hangar1_shader.obj assets / runway / rwy15.obj assets / runway / rwy33.obj assets / misc_objects / pile1.obj lib / cars / car_static_invar.obj assets / taxisigns / Taxisign_ESUT.obj assets / lights / lampa1.obj assets / buildings / Terminal / Terminal1-3.obj assets / buildings / Terminal / Terminal1-2.obj assets / buildings / Terminal / Terminal1-1.obj assets / buildings / Garage1.obj assets / buildings / Hangar1.obj assets / buildings /TaltHangar.obj assets / misc_objects / Elhus.obj assets / buildings / hangar2-2.obj assets / buildings / hangar2-1.obj assets / buildings / hangar2-Door.obj assets / buildings / Misc1.obj assets / GSE / Truck -1-Orange.obj assets / misc_objects / fuelstation.obj YLOP ??? assets / lines / White_line_solid.lin assets / Vegetation / Grass_overlay.pol assets / runway / Runway_overlay1.lin Ground-textures \ ESUT-7.pol Ground-textures \ ESUT-6.pol Ground-textures \ ESUT-5.pol Ground- textures \ ESUT-4.

    Please share your own learnings here if you are also looking into this kind of thing so we can all learn and who knows what we could add to "A century of flight"!

    Kind regards

    Kobus

    Kobus, I really appreciate your investigations.

    It appears to be much easier to convert FS9 airports to X-Plane than the other way around. A few years ago I tried to swing a deal with Canada4XPlane to have their excellent Canadian airports converted to FS9 in return for allowing them to convert my FS9 airports for CYQR and CYWG to X-Plane. They approached me because they liked the quality of my work. In the end Canada4Xplane said it was impossible to convert to FS9. I gave them permission anyway, as long as I got credit for my work and they did not charge a few, and protected my copyright of any objects put in XPlane libraries. I was pleased with their conversion althought they had the jetways oddly misplaced. They originally planned to convert my Winnipeg but decided in the end to join forces with a commercial developer. Another organization called MapleSim did a conversion of my Winnipeg airport. I was very pleased with their effort and maybe in the end a reason why I've seen nothing from Canada4Xplane. I was glad to share my work with the X-Plane community but it is too bad they couldn't return the favour.

    I don't know why, but I never did quite believed the argument that it is impossible to convert X-Plane to FS9, despite Canada4Xplane swearing it so. Kobus, I think you showed it is possible but involves a lot of manual labour. Perhaps as time goes on someone will figure out a way to automate the conversion. I wish I had that kind of skillset.

    Greg

    Greg_Putz

    Regina Canada

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Everybody said, "that can't be done!"

    Than Kobus came around. He didn't know that it counldn't be done. He did it!

    Congradulations Kobus.

    That is the first time I hear that somebody managed to convert something from x-plane to FS9... Amazing!

    Dedl

    P.S. Hemavan looks already like there is only a little AFCAD-tweaking left :huh:

    Hi Greg

    I have your X-Plane and FS9 sceneries installed in my sims (yes, I do fly both :P:P and will hopefully not get banned from this forum for admitting it ;)) and I have to say that I am absolutely stunned by the fantastic quality of your work. I have a lot of close friends living in Canada and that is why I fly there quite often in my sims.

    With regards to conversions, yes, it is quite simple to go from FS9 to X-Plane. I started converting my FS9 releases to the X-Plane platform initially and it was really easy and a fully automated process. The only drawback was the lower quality textures, but even those were easy to fix afterwards.

    Going the other way (XPlane to FS9) always had to be possible and I have always been stunned that nobody really looked into this with real eagerness. I think the main reason is the Gateway sceneries for X-Plane and the habit of X-Plane designers to use Library objects extensively which would be almost impossible to really convert due to the large number of objects available and being strewn over multiple packages. However, designers who are much more familiar with the X-Plane SDK's must have enough knowledge to be able to do just that. In honesty, I have often felt like it is more a us vs them attitude (from both camps) causing this situation.

    However, I am willing to do the "effort" to see what can be done as I have quite a few X-Plane sceneries I would very dearly like in my FS9 as well as I use both sims for different reasons. I still need to fully understand the DSF files and so on and have even started to learn Blender to see if that will assist in gaining knowledge of X-Plane models and textures. A long road is still ahead but I am sure we can all gain from it. Even if it is only some models (like currently for ESUT) and not complete packages that can be brought over.

    Let see where this leads and who knows, maybe another world of sceneries can be opened to all of us.

    Best regards

    Kobus

    Hi Dedl

    After doing that "little bit of AFCAD-tweaking" you referred to I think the start of a resemblance between the X-Plane and FS9 scenery is becoming a reality 8o8o

    What do you all think (X-Plane first vs FS9 second pic). The models are done but the "filler" library objects is where the real pain lies.

    Kobus

    X-Plane ESUT.pngFS9 ESUT.png

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Hi Kobus,

    I don't know what the other User think, I can only answer for myself. The x-plane version looks nice but I find the FS9-version amazing. Because it is for my sim! :love:

    Buildings are the important stuff, the "fillers" are always nice "eye candy" but not really necessary. If needed, everybody can fill them with own stuff.

    Dedl https://smilies.4-user.de/include/Fahrzeuge/smilie_car_171.gif

    Is there a chance to get permission from the author to share this work?

    I didn't think it would be possible to convert scenries from X-Plane to the FS9.

    The greater the joy that Kobus made it possible.

    Many thanks to Kobus for the work and for showing that it is possible.

    From this point of view it looks completely different and offers new possibilities to embellish our FS9 with "new scenes" if the developer allows it.

    Nice that there are supposed to be experts who have a knack for doing something like this.

    If there is not the possibility to share the converted scenery then I am happy for tose who can use it.

    With Google translator

    Liebe Grüße aus Westfalen

    Thomas

    @Kobus

    I am very excited about your experiments.

    It would be a breakthrough if you should be successfull with the conversion.

    Ahmed

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von 737 Lover (13. Juni 2021 23:10)