mue

It should be possible to change texture filenames inside a LOD file with a HEX editor, but I haven't done it myself yet. If you send me the lod file and tell me what texture file name should be changed, I can try it.

Finish my todo lists from 2016, 2017 and 2018

Since I mostly fly older jets I never noticed the following hud behavior: If I yaw the aircraft, the pitch ladder in huds from "modern" jets (e.g F-14, F-15, F-16) in game moves horizontally. Is this a bug or engine limitation? Edit: uups, after watching some youtube videos of real life huds, this behavior seems correct...

Is it possible to create a "caged" HUD in the game?

A lot of information from the thirdwire forums are preserved: https://combatace.com/forums/topic/92272-third-wire-forums-no-longer-linked-on-website/?do=findComment&comment=745634

Why are there textureset definitions in two places: one in the <aircraft>.ini file and the other in the textureset.ini file (within the texture sub folder). It seems both contain the same information. And if the content differ, which one has priority?

What I've learned so far about the decals system: Position=a,b defines the position of the center of the decal texture at the aircraft in meters. a,b are either the x,y-, y,z- or y,z- coordinates depending on DecalFacing. If DecalFacing is TOP or BOTTOM then its the x,y coordinates, if LEFT or RIGHT its y,z and if FRONT(?) or BACK(?) its x,z. In the lod viewer you can move the mouse pointer over the aircraft and the x,y,z coordinates are shown in the status bar at the bottom. Scale defines the size of the decal in meters. E.g. a Scale of 1.0 means that the decal has the size of 1x1m on the aircraft, a Scale of 0.5 means a size of 0.5x0.5m...

I'm trying to understand the decals system. In which directories does the game look for decal texture files (referenced by decals.ini)?

So, the game ONLY looks in Objects/Decals (and maybe subfolders here) and not in Objects/Aircraft/ or other folders?

The font texture is internally generated by the game accordingly to the given font type and size. An example you can see here: https://learnopengl.com/In-Practice/Text-Rendering If your defined texture area (uvMin, uvMax) cuts some characters then only fragments of those characters are drawn .

None that I know of. I think I used some kind of binary search: 1.) split the texture in two halfs: rectangle1 with uvMin / uvMax = (0.0,0.0) / (0.5,1.0); rectangle2 with (0.5,0.0) / (1.0, 1.0) 2.) try both rectangles and check with which the dot (besides other characters) is drawn. 3.) split this rectangle further on (step 1.)): e.g. if the dot is in rectangle 2, then the next two (smaller) rectangle areas to check are (0.5,0.0) / (1.0,0.5) and (0.5,0.5) / (1.0,1.0)

The relevant parameters are uvMin and uvMax in lines 93 and 94. These parameters define the rectangular area (which should contain the "dot") on the font texture. Only fragments (pixels) with texture coordinates within that rectangular area are drawn visibly.

In the huddata.ini the following must be set: [SmallLabelFont] TextFontName=Courier TextSize=10 The color numbers for grey are x,x,x. For dark-grey x is small, e.g EnemyTargetColor=0.1, 0.1, 0.1

My (partial) understanding of the tfd file format. Maybe Gerwin can fill the gaps since he wrote a tfd/hfd editor. number variable type description of bytes 4 integer number of tiles in x (W-E) direction 4 integer number of tiles in y (S-N) direction 8 double tile size in meters two dimensional array of tiles in row (W-E) major order, beginning in the south-west of the map: for each tile 2 short texture id, references the texture tiles as follows: texture id = NNN - 1, with NNN the number from the [textureNNN] entries in terrain_data.ini file 2 short tile rotation: 0 = 0 degree, 1 = 90 degree, 2 = 180 degree, 3 = 270 degree (I forgot if clockwise or counterclockwise) 8 ? ?

I fixed problems with the uv mapping.

"Sachsen ist wie das Internet. Nur in echt."

Do335 has already done it. He (manually!) downloaded all threads with posts from TK from the thirdwire forums: https://combatace.com/forums/topic/85815-preserving-the-tw-official-forum/ His download link is dead now, but fortunately I found a copy of this package on my HD : Third Wire.7z

Regarding view/head position changes: With Track IR you can change your view/head position also in the lateral direction (up/down and left/right). Add/configure the following entries in the [CockpitSeat001] section in the <aircraft>_cockpit.ini to allow larger lateral head movements: MinMovementX=-0.1 MaxMovementX=0.1 MinMovementZ=-0.1 MaxMovementZ=0.1

View File LOD Exporter for Blender I tried to implement the exporter only based on the information I found by investigating LOD files. I'm not a 3D Modeler myself. I only tested the exporter with rather simple object (hierarchies). The bottom line is that I have no idea if the exporter works for you. So please give feedback. 1.) Installation Open the Blender User Preferences - Add-ons Tab (File -> User Preferences... -> Add-Ons) Click "Install from File..." Browse to and select the exporter python script "io_export_sf2_lod.py" Click "Install from File..." (or double click on the script name) In the Add-Ons Tab under Supported Level select Testing and enable "Import-Export: Strike Fighters 2 LOD Exporter" The LOD exporter is now installed and enabled. Under File -> Export you should see the menu item "Strike Fighters 2 LOD (.lod)". It's greyed out until an exportable object is selected. 2.) Usage Select the object you want to export and click File -> Export -> Strike Fighters 2 LOD (.lod) The file browser opens. In the lower left area you see the LOD exporter options: -enable/disable writing the out file (text file with information about the exported object(s)). -enable/disable animation export -allow decals: This option is similar to the option in the original TW-Exporter: "Exporting using AllowDecals=0 causes the vertex to be shared, so it can reduce the size of the .LOD but also causes decals to "bleed" along the edges." This dialog setting is used as default for all objects to be exported. However, it can be overwritten by each individual object via the custom object property "AllowDecals" = 0(false) or 1(true) The selected object and all child objects are exported. Two custom object properties are supported by the exporter: -AllowDecals = 0 or 1, This option is similar to the option in the original TW-Exporter: "Exporting using AllowDecals=0 causes the vertex to be shared, so it can reduce the size of the .LOD but also causes decals to "bleed" along the edges." -UseFlatNormal = 0 or 1, if set to 1 then all vertex normals are pointing straight up (normal = (0,0,1)) in the objects local coordinate system. Please note! The objects must meet the following requirements: -No scaling in the Transform Properties allowed (that means: scale x = y = z = 1.0). If your object has scaling, it should be applied to the mesh (Ctrl-A) Scaling is only allowed for animations. -A material must be assigned to the object. Only the first material of an object is exported. The following material parameters are exported: -Diffuse Color (the lod file format also contains ambient color. Currently the exporter set ambient color = diffuse color) -Specular Color -Specular Intensity -Specular Hardness (I think in 3ds Max it's called glossiness) -if "Shading -> Emit" > 0.0 then self illumination is enabled -Transparency (if transparency is enabled, then the object doesn't cast and doesn't catch shadow. if transparency is disabled, then the object cast and catch shadow. The specific LOD format version the exporter writes, doesn't support arbitrary cast/catch shadow combinations. The other LOD formats I don't understand enough (yet). Sorry!) -Alpha -Mirror Reflectivity -Diffuse texture image name (as diffuse texture the exporter uses the texture where "Influence -> Diffuse -> Color" is enabled) -Normal map texture image name("Influence -> Geometry -> Normal" is enabled and the Normal value is also exported) -Specular map texture image name("Influence -> Specular -> Intensity" is enabled) -Normal and specular map can only be used together with a diffuse map. (If I exported a normal or specular map without diffuse map, then the LOD wasn't shown in the game or the game crashed. I don't know why...) Animation Export: This exporter supports the following object animation types: location, rotation and scaling. Frames 10, 20, 30, ..., 100 are exported as animation 1 Frames 110, 120, 130, ..., 200 are exported as animation 2, ... 3.)Credits: Thanks to logan4 and angelp who provided me with specific lod files that helped me to understand the lod file format better. 4.)Changelog: Version 0.1: -initial release Version 0.2: -bugfix: didn't work in blender version 0.79 Version 0.3: -animation support -added custom object properties: "AllowDecals" and "UseFlatNormal" Submitter mue Submitted 04/30/2018 Category Utilities / Editors  

Since Stary kindly remembered me in the "tree planting" thread of my promised TOD Editor, I want to apologize for the (very) long delay. Shortly after I made the proof of concept of custom shaped tod objects another (Real Life) project took over: planning and building our house. Therefore in the last one and a half year I didn't have that much time and energy for modding/programming activities. Now we finally live in our new house and I recently resumed my modding/programming activities. This is my roadmap for 2018: 1) LOD Exporter for blender: Currently I'm working on a LOD Exporter for blender. It's in an early stage. Mesh export seems to work but only uses color information yet, no textures, no bump maps, no animation, ... . 2) Updating LOD Viewer and Target Area Editor Besides implementing new features I plan to switch to the OpenSceneGraph library for 3D visualizing instead of pure OpenGL. It will reduce the programming effort in the future and also brings other benefits. 3) TOD Editor Maybe I will implement it as an extension of the Target Area Editor, I'm not sure yet. The use of the OpenSceneGraph library should give me the capability to import several 3D file formats that OpenSceneGraph supports (instead of writing the file importer myself) and let me convert them to TODs.

What do you mean by "configure the models"? Do you mean defining/simulating aircraft systems, avionics,...? Then it's dependent on the game/simulation engine you are using, e.g: -In the SF/SF2 game engine the aircraft systems are not defined by a scripting language but by configuration (*.ini) files. -The Digital Combat Simulator uses LUA as scripting language. -The open source flight simulator Flightgear uses it's own scripting language NASAL. But if you mean a scripting language that supports the 3d modelling? Then it's dependent on the 3D model software you are using, e.g Blender uses Python.

Ok, I've put it on my todo list.

Do you mean using more than 999 target areas with SF2NA? I don't know if any of the SF2 games can handle that number of target areas.

I really hope flightsimlabs gets sued. What they did was very unethical and illegal. I'm a software developer myself and I know piracy is a problem, but I would never ever install malware on my customers computers. And even if the malware was targeted only at pirates, thats not the point. It's illegal. Period! The companys CEO even doesn't see the problem. He appologized not because he has done something unethical and illegal but because some customers may have been offended. I would never trust this guy. It seems he was also involved in the "PMDG MD-11 drm destroys fsx installation" stuff.